Ultimate Marvel
Ultimate Marvel, later known as Ultimate Comics, was an imprint of comic books published by Marvel Comics, featuring reimagined and modernized versions of the company's superhero characters from the Ultimate Marvel Universe, later known as the Ultimate Universe. Those characters include Spider-Man, the X-Men, the Ultimates, the Fantastic Four, and others. The imprint was launched in 2000 with the publication of the series Ultimate Spider-Man and Ultimate X-Men in 2001, followed by The Ultimates and Ultimate Fantastic Four in 2002 and 2004 respectively providing new origin stories for the characters. The reality of Ultimate Marvel is designated as Earth-1610 as part of the Marvel Comics Multiverse.
The Ultimate Universe, as a part of a large-scale reboot of the All-New, All-Different Marvel Multiverse, ended at the conclusion of the 2015 "Secret Wars" storyline, when select characters from the Ultimate Universe moved to the mainstream universe. However, writer Brian Michael Bendis established at the end of the 2017 miniseries Spider-Men II that the universe and its superheroes still exist.
Between June and September 2023, Marvel published the Ultimate Invasion miniseries written by Jonathan Hickman with art by The Ultimates co-creator Bryan Hitch. The events of the miniseries culminated in the establishment of a rebooted Ultimate Universe designated as Earth-6160, which serves as the setting for a relaunched series of books under the Ultimate Marvel banner, which began with the eponymous Ultimate Universe #1 in November 2023. The new Ultimate imprint also encompasses new versions of Ultimate Spider-Man, Ultimate X-Men, and The Ultimates, as well as a standalone Ultimate Black Panther story.
Publication history
Background
In the late 1990s, the US comic book industry had declining sales. Annual combined sales from all publishers, which had been close to a billion dollars in 1993, had declined to 270 million. Comic books were briefly seen as valuable investments and sales shops flourished, but prices dropped as the speculative bubble popped in the early 1990s. In addition, the poor reception of the Batman & Robin film cast doubts on the prospects of any other comic book cinematic adaption. Marvel Comics went through a Chapter 11 bankruptcy, many notable artists left the company, and their rival, DC Comics, topped them in sales. Brian Michael Bendis, who was hired to start the imprint, said that "when I got hired, I literally thought I was going to be writing one of the last — if not the last — Marvel comics".Comic book continuity, which had been a key to the success of Marvel Comics in its early years, turned into a problem for some readers. All stories had to fit into a sixty-year continuity, a bar that not all fans could reach and which scared away some new readers. The usual style of superhero comics with pages of garish colors, fantastical villains and convoluted plots was of little interest to young adult audiences, who preferred the style set by the Matrix franchise. Most superheroes were adults, even those that started as teenagers, such as Spider-Man and the X-Men. Previous attempts to cut the long continuity did not work as expected: DC's Crisis on Infinite Earths and Zero Hour: Crisis in Time caused several plot contradictions, and Marvel's Heroes Reborn was panned by critics and fans. The Dark Age of Comic Books tried to counter the campiness of the Silver Age with violence and shocking content, but the trend was declining as well.
Creation
The idea for the Ultimate imprint was developed by Bill Jemas. A lawyer who had worked mainly at the collectible-trading-card industry before that point, he had little interaction with the production of comic books. In his perspective, the main problem of Marvel Comics was that it was "publishing stories that were all but impossible for teens to read — and unaffordable, to boot". He worked on an idea given by a CEO of the Wizard magazine: reboot the heroes to their original character premise. Marvel's editor-in-chief Joe Quesada preferred to start an imprint with new heroes, but accepted Jemas' proposal. The working title for the imprint at that point was "Ground Zero". Unlike previous reboots, there was no in-story explanation for the existence of the imprint, and the standard comic books were still being published, unaffected by the new project. Thus, Ultimate Spider-Man would contain the stories of a new teenager Spider-Man starting his career, and the usual Spider-Man titles would still contain the stories of the adult Spider-Man with nearly forty years worth of continuity.Quesada then hired Brian Michael Bendis, an artist from indie publishers, for the first comic book of the imprint, Ultimate Spider-Man. One of the previous auditioners had made a word-by-word rewrite of the Amazing Fantasy #15 comic, in a modern setting. Bendis preferred to avoid that writing style completely. Instead, he changed the narration style, so that it resembled a TV series more than a classic superhero comic book. There were no thought bubbles or long expositions, and the first issue did not feature any superhero costume. Jemas tried to bring more notice into the comic book by distributing it at chain stores like Payless Shoes and Walmart. The sales rose, and the comic book was acclaimed by critics. The art was created by Mark Bagley, known for his work on Spider-Man and Venom stories in the 1990s. The Bendis/Bagley partnership of 111 consecutive issues made their partnership one of the longest in American comic book history, and the longest run by a Marvel creative team, beating out Stan Lee and Jack Kirby on Fantastic Four.
Ultimate X-Men was also launched in 2001. It was initially delayed by the search for a creative team, and even Bendis' proposed scripts were rejected. The new title was finally given to Mark Millar, who had a controversial run in DC's The Authority. The two authors had conflicting styles: Bendis sought to modernize the old superhero tropes, and Millar sought to critique them. While Bendis tried to write atemporal stories, Millar preferred to set his stories amid the political tensions of the time, with edgy, quick action-driven stories and making the relationship between humans and mutants more realistic and distrustful. The first issue of Ultimate X-Men sold 117,085 copies in a month. Lacking previous knowledge about the characters, Millar based his general draft of the series on the 2000 X-Men film.
Jemas and Quesada paired Millar with artist Bryan Hitch, who had also worked with The Authority, but in a run that did not overlap with Millar's. They would reimagine the Avengers, who were renamed as "the Ultimates". Unlike the simple updates of the Spider-Man and X-Men titles, the Ultimates were a complete reimagination of the Avengers, with very little in common with the mainstream title. Captain America got a rash soldierly personality, Hulk was written as a murderous and cannibalistic monster that kills hundreds of civilians, and Thor was ambiguously introduced as either an actual Norse god or a man with stolen weapons and a psychiatric disorder. Nick Fury, originally a caucasian character in the Marvel-616 Universe, was modeled after the actor Samuel L. Jackson, and the new design eventually overshadowed the original one, being incorporated into the mainstream Marvel-616 universe and all new media adaptions of the characters. The main premise was to write a comic that looked the way a superhero film about the Avengers should look. At that point, the Marvel Cinematic Universe had not been created, and the prospect of a film about the Avengers was remote. The series was a huge success, and became the single best-selling comic of the year.
The Ultimate Marvel imprint was benefited by the contemporary topics that took place. Terrorism resurfaced into the public perception as a clear, dangerous and complex menace, which reduced the credibility of the usual supervillains of superhero fiction. Fictional conflicts involving explosions and property damage became more ominous. The Ultimate Marvel comics incorporated those topics into their plots, which would eventually become commonplace in the whole comic book industry. The higher realism of the Ultimate line, in stark contrast with the out-there superhero fantasy of the main comics, led to conflicts between Marvel's artists in 2003. A group proposed to cancel the Ultimate line, and another to close the traditional comics, expanding the Ultimate line to a full company-wide reboot. Although Bill Jemas preferred the Ultimate comics, he pointed out that there were advantages in keeping comics in both continuities and preferred to keep things that way.
''Ultimatum''
Jemas was fired from Marvel in 2004, and Millar and Hitch left the Ultimates after writing a second miniseries. Sci-fi writer Orson Scott Card wrote a miniseries, Ultimate Iron Man, which was poorly received and later retconned as an in-universe television show. In 2008, Quesada considered that the Ultimate imprint needed a big crossover event to keep the interest of the audiences, and hired Jeph Loeb for a third Ultimates miniseries that would lead to such event. This miniseries relied on shock value and gratuitous amounts of death and violence, instead of the political overtones of the first two. The art by Joe Madureira was standard superhero art, instead of the cinematic action provided by Hitch. The miniseries had decent sales, but was near-universally panned by critics.The series was followed by 2009's Ultimatum, a crossover between the Ultimate titles. In five issues, the story kills off thirty-four characters with an increased amount of graphic violence. The series was both a critical and commercial failure, and it has since been regarded as one of the worst comic books of all-time. The sales of the whole imprint were decreased, and never returned to their pre-Ultimatum figures. After the crossover, Ultimate X-Men and Ultimate Fantastic Four were cancelled, with a last issue for each title named Ultimate Requiem to give closure to their plots.