Ultimate Marvel re-structuring

[zuludelta]

From today's Lying In The Gutters:

As part of the big Ultimate Universe revamp, I hear "Ultimate X-Men" is for the chop. And Ed McGuinness' one drawn issue of "Ultimates 4" may not even see publication...

Also, in a recent Jeph Loeb interview regarding his work on Ultimates 3, he says that they're looking to get away from one of the most common (and I think legitimate) criticisms leveled at the the Ultimate U: that they subsist merely on modern re-tellings of classic Marvel stories and don't really offer much of anything new.

While I agree that the Ultimate Marvel imprint needs to do something beyond "a taller, handsome Wolverine with a soul patch" and "Ultimate Thor is also a Norse god, and not actually a mentally deranged metahuman", I'm not sure Jeph Loeb (on Ultimates) and Bendis (on Ultimate Spider-Man) are the right creators to do a turnaround for the Ultimate U. They're solid writers, no doubt, but Bendis has already invested too much in USM that I foresee the transition to be rocky, and Loeb, well, his stuff just reads like standard, plain vanilla superhero fare to me (although I'll be the first to admit that I've only read a limited portion of his work). Mike Carey on Ultimate Fantastic Four is a favourite of mine, but even I have to admit that his current direction on the book still hews too closely to 616 Marvel history. 

[AfghanAnt]

Agreed, I'm actually disappointed in a lot of the direction of Ultimates. I also think Millar was told to make Thor a Norse God and not crazy metahuman for Loeb's sake. I am actually really hate UXM and USM right now.

[tommyboy]

Declaration of interest:
I've never really liked any of the ultimate line.
Ultimates was at least high quality, and entertaining, but all the rest left me completely cold (even though they were probably high quality and entertaining too).
And now that the "616" "regular" marvel universe is much closer to the Ultimate one (in terms of production values if nothing else), and now that one of the UU's(ultimate universe) unique selling points (ie no unwieldy continuity of hundreds of issues) is gone, it looks increasingly redundant. New readers coming to Ultimate Spider Man or the Ultimates are not much better off than with the regular MU books in terms of jumping on points, even with the decompressed pace of MU books.
I'd buy pretty much anything Robert Kirkman writes, but have no interest in UXM whatsoever.
I think its likely that the ultimate line will continue, as the sales are still pretty good, but it's definitely not the Future Of Marvel anymore.

[Previsionary]

I think the re-structuring may do a great deal of good. I was/am a big ultimates fan but of late, I find myself falling behind and not really caring. Ultimate X-men lost me sometime after the ultimate phoenix arc and with cable somehow being wolverine (for now) and the thing with beast...it's just pushing me further away (the death rule is so much closer to being thrown out the window). The Ultimate New X-men arc is barely hold my attention. Spidey, on the other hand, completely lost me when kitty came into the book and the clone wars began. -_-

Also, if I recall correctly, I remember reading somewhere that the 616 verse and the Ultimate verse weren't so different and they might collide soonish. Hopefully that was just a bad dream...but I wouldn't put it pass marvel at this point.

[Talavar]

I agree that the Ultimate Marvel line needs something, but I don't know what.  I still enjoy Ultimate Spider-man, but Ultimates has basically come full-circle to almost parallelling 616 Avengers with more violence, and the current run of Ultimate X-men is the one thing Robert Kirkman's done that is crappy.

[zuludelta]

I think its likely that the ultimate line will continue, as the sales are still pretty good, but it's definitely not the Future Of Marvel anymore.

I think the problem might have been partially due to expanding the cast of Ultimate characters too fast. The somewhat forced introduction of so many "Ultimatized" characters (many of whom had ancillary importance to storylines and/or had little to set them apart from their 616 versions) served to dilute the brand to the point where seeing "Ultimate" anything wasn't so special anymore.

I'd like to see the Ultimate Universe turn into a real parallel universe where creators can tell stories that otherwise wouldn't be feasible in the regular Marvel universe, rather than a forum where they simply re-interpret old stories. I think Kirkman is actually trying to do that in his Ultimate X-Men run but his execution falls short for a variety of reasons. The real acid test would be creating an original character in the Ultimate universe capable of standing on its own, maybe sustaining its own limited series or something.

Another possibility would be for the Ultimate line to dispense with any notions of shared-universe continuity whatsoever and just use the brand to showcase acclaimed creators' different takes on Marvel's most popular heroes. It would be interesting to see an Ultimates mini-series based on Mike Mignola's vision for the Avengers for example. Any other creator wants to work on a new Ultimates mini-series and they'll be given carte blanche as far as history and continuity is concerned. Of course, the biggest reason why this appeals to me so is because I'm much more interested in the creative teams than in the characters (and their accompanying continuity) themselves... in fact, it's precisely why I stuck by the Ultimate Universe for so long... I enjoyed Millar and Hitch's work on The Authority and that interest carried over into the Ultimates, Ellis and Carey's past writing was enough to convince me to give Ultimate Fantastic Four a try (despite a horrendous mid-series run on art by Greg Land).   

I still enjoy Ultimate Spider-man, but Ultimates has basically come full-circle to almost parallelling 616 Avengers with more violence

I was real disappointed with how Ultimates 2 resolved itself. I think I sort of understood the point Millar was trying to make (no matter how different these characters appear to be, their classic roots will always be at the core of their history and motivations), but it didn't make the fantasy-tinged ending any more palatable to me.

[detourne_me]

i think it's time for a Crisis on Ultimate Earths  ^_^

wasn't it set up in Ultimate Fantastic Four that the Ultimate U is also a somewhat displaced Earth (just like the New Universe, or any of the other planets the Exiles visit?)

actually thinking of New Universe,  I really like newuniversal,  and if they were able to spin-off some more titles from it,  i'd be happy to read them.

i dropped reading ulitmate universe a long time ago,  but only picked up an issue or two of Ultimates since.

[Ajax]

Maybe they should drop the Ultimate universe and invest in the newuniversal written by Ellis <.<

Honestly I kinda saw this coming. Ultimate-verse was designed to bring new readers in who didn't want to sort 40 years of backstory. But eventually the ultimate-verse would be just as convulted and they would scrap the unvierse and start all over until this new ultimate-verse grows too complex and they start all over again again.

[zuludelta]

Honestly I kinda saw this coming. Ultimate-verse was designed to bring new readers in who didn't want to sort 40 years of backstory. But eventually the ultimate-verse would be just as convulted and they would scrap the unvierse and start all over until this new ultimate-verse grows too complex and they start all over again again.

I think it was a given that it was going to happen, what seems to be taking everybody a bit by surprise is the fact that it only took 7 years to reach the "convoluted and overly-complicated" universe saturation point, especially since Quesada and co. specifically lay down a rule that there would be no more than 4 Ultimate on-goings at any one time to keep the Ultimate-U as accessible as possible for new readers. The problem, as I see it, wasn't in the number of titles, but the speed with which storylines matured in Ultimate X-Men, Ultimate Spider-Man, and Ultimate Fantastic Four (speed was never a problem on Ultimates  :D). What happened was even though there was only one X-title, it was burning through years of re-imagined/recycled 616 X-Men history months at a time. Same thing with Ultimate Spider-Man. In a relatively short amount of time, the Ultimate U has developed a cast of characters and history dense enough to compete with the 616 Marvel version.

Think about it... it was roughly 25 years between 616 Spidey first meeting Doc Ock and Spidey battling Venom in the late 1980s. The Ultimate universe has traversed that juncture in less than 5 years. Sure, Bendis has distilled out most of the filler and stuff that doesn't really carry over to the current reader's sensibility, but it still tells you that a a lot of stuff has been made to fit into a disporportionately short span of time. What could possibly happen is that the Ultimate U might end up having the same expansive cast and convoluted continuity problems of the 616 universe with none of the depth that comes from having a shared universe grow organically over time.   

[thanoson]

So, the Marvel Zombies were a product of Ultimates Fantastic Four, correct? Well, in Black Panther Initiative, They have just come into contact with the "Galactus Marvel Zombies." This means Ultimates is another earth similar to what the Exiles do. Hmm.... King Hyperion versus The New Hyperion. Hmmm....

[Previsionary]

So, the Marvel Zombies were a product of Ultimates Fantastic Four, correct? Well, in Black Panther Initiative, They have just come into contact with the "Galactus Marvel Zombies." This means Ultimates is another earth similar to what the Exiles do. Hmm.... King Hyperion versus The New Hyperion. Hmmm....

Well, if you wanna go back further, the ultimate xmen were shown in exiles awhile back before the zombie cross over. They didnt play a big part, but they (or was it just wolverine?) were shown on screen with a bunch of other universes. Not to mention (different) zombie wolverine played a part in that wolverine storyline.