#ultimate universe

[soranatus]

HAWKEYE/CHARLI RAMSEY In The Ultimates (2024) #5

[bioniclechicken]

ULTIMATE MATORAN UNIVERSE

[newnamejenkins]

Feels like it’s a rite of passage for new Hawkeyes at this point

[crisisofinfinitemultiverses]

Ultimate Spider-Man 12 (2024) variant by Pepe Larraz

[artbyblastweave]

The Maker I think is an example of comic books generating a character who's incredibly good, but also incredibly dependent on the gnarled sprawling context and editorial meta-context in order to understand why he's good. He's born out of the core tension of the Ultimate Universe- the tension between retelling familiar stories in a way that's accessible to modern readers, and actually doing genuinely new and unexpected things with the characters in a continuity where you had the leeway to do so without having to enact an editorial snapback- and it's not a coincidence that he's one of only two characters who differentiated themselves enough from the 616 status quo to escape the sinking ship that the original Ultimate Marvel eventually became. He's probably not a character that would exist in the way that he does if The Ultimates and then Ultimatum hadn't sent the entire tonal trajectory of the setting into a tailspin, he's the end result of that tension embodied, a character whose backstory you can't even describe without talking about two separate Universes.

Then, of course, you get into the fact that "what if Reed Richards snapped and turned evil" is a character concept that's only legible because of the existing referent of 616 Marvel, where people have been going, "Man, Reed Richards has a lot of character traits that would make him terrifying as a supervillain" for decades. And once you notice that, you get into the issue that in fact, quite a bit of ultimate Marvel was dependent on some recognition of the old thing to recognize why the New Thing is clever. For example, is the ambiguity surrounding whether Thor is actually a Norse God or just a crazy super soldier interesting, without the context of 616-thor for comparison? Is Gah Lak Tus an interesting spin on the world-eater if you don't know about the giant asshole in purple tights? All these characters where the new take is dependent on some knowledge of the original to land effectively (or, in many cases, to understand why the new take is dogwater.)

And then, of course, you get to the Maker's big Plan for the 2023 Ultimate Universe- to pare down and reconstruct a version of continuity that's simpler, more manageable, less chaotic- a metatextual reference to the project that originally created him, and like that project it almost immediately flies off the rails because for good or ill you can't keep an entire setting's worth of plates spinning without some of the participants getting their own ideas and breaking from the script. And what you're left with is a character with an arc about how we're never getting out of here- about how you're never, ever going to be able to escape the weight of continuity, you're never going to be able to reboot your way out from under what came before, and moreover it's not completely clear why you'd even want to- look at all this great stuff we've accumulated! Look at all the thematic parallels we can draw if we bother to remember what we've done! If you're not gonna pull all these ancient threads together why are you even bothering with 60 year old characters instead of just writing something new?

[couldtransitionsaveher]

PETER PARKER/SPIDER-MAN from ULTIMATE SPIDER-MAN (2024)

JUSTIFICATION:

"read these panels and tell me you don't see what i see" - Anonymous

Reminder: Submissions are always open! Submit here!

[joezy27]

HAWKEYE - "Relax. I never miss."

Ultimate Avengers (2009) #1 by Mark Millar, Carlos Pacheco & Danny Miki

[nickfuryagentofsword]

Ultimates 4 (2024) by Deniz Camp & Phil Noto

Cover: InHyuk Lee (variant)

Ultimate Universe

[illyanarasputinfan]

Ultimate Universe: One Year In #1 (2024) Marvel Comics

Variant Cover Artist: Josemaria Casanovas

[current-comix]

[soranatus]

HAWKEYE In The Ultimates (2024) #6

[bioniclechicken]

ULTIMATE KARZAHNI

[bigstepdisk]

Fantastic four 24 vs. The Ultimates 4

[crisisofinfinitemultiverses]

Ultimate Spider-man 2 (2024) variant by Dike Ruan

[artbyblastweave]

That said I do think that The Ultimates falls into a similar pit that Millar would eventually fall into with Kick-Ass, where the front half of the story is a pretty effective deconstructive indictment of the characters where they're a Military-industrial showboat project stumbling around trying to find their ass with both hands and only barely containing probems that they themselves created. And then in the back half it turns out that there are a bunch of Secret Nazi Aliens planning to blow the world up and it veers back into a standard superhero resolution that undercuts the overall idea that these guys aren't good or necessary to have around. You buy yourself a lot of slack the first time you stop seven billion people being killed all at once. This is basically the main problem I have with it at this point, that failure to pick a lane

[spyrothefox]

So this is the Reed and Tony dynamic in 6160 right