Originally Posted by
WebLurker
Yep. There was some rebranding over the years, but the Ultimate comics started with new series based on Spider-Man, X-Men, Fantastic Four, and the Avengers (albeit renamed "the Ultimates"). Stuff did change over time (for example, Spider-Man became a legacy character, and the Ultimates roster changed to the point that the last iteration, All-New Ultimates, had nothing in common with the Avengers franchise). There were also other miniseries, too, but the aforementioned series were the core.
It was functionally as complete a worlds as the 616/classic Marvel comics one was, albeit shorter-lived. It also had a profound influence on the MCU. For example, the Avengers movie is basically the Ultimates (except the characters themselves are based off their 616 selves).
Love that series. The first Spider-Man comics I picked up. It was also the only aspect of Ultimate that I really got into. It's also been pretty influential overall; the Mark Webb and MCU movies are using it as source material for creating their adaptations. It also has a lot of strong parallels to the original Raimi movies. Because of that, and the relatively straightforward nature of the series (just follow the books in numerical order and you'll get pretty far before you'll need to google to get your list straight), it's still a good first-time comic for new fans.
Hey, you got nothing to apologize for.
If you were curious about Ultimate, for all the backlog it did pick up, it's still fairly easy to get started in. Most of the original comic are fairly self-contained (as in you don't need to read everything to understand the series in the context of itself) and you just read the trades in numerical order you'll get pretty far before crossovers and other stuff become important. By then, though, I found it easy to make sense of.