So I was in high school at that time and I remember a comic book friend told me about the Ultimates and that I had to read it because it was amazing. I remember his excitement as he told me about a modern reimagining of the marvel universe. It was a huge hit as I remembered.
I never got around to reading it as at that time as I was getting out of comics. So this whole era of marvel comics is a mystery to me. I understand it’s hard to maintain momentum and eventually marvel being marvel would just kill everything. This recent heat on Ultimate Spider-Man has got me wondering.
How did marvel mess up the ultimate universe so badly that they had to kill it altogether and had to reboot it? As far as I know they only kept Miles Morales but everything else seems to be forgotten.
What can marvel do this time and learn from their past failures?
Keep it simple is the easiest answer I can think of. The Ultimate line became boring when they started using some of the same ideas they used in the regular Marvel universe. Keep away from massive crossovers. Do not redo storylines done previously. Most of all, keep the stories simple, that was the charm of the silver age and all. Keep characters to what people are used to.
The ultimate line started strong with great writing. Bendis, millar, b.k.v. etc. Abd great art. Which is why it was hot. Eventually the creative teams just weren’t all that good. We lost interest.
The Maker is Ultimate Reed Richards. So he also came over and somewhat responsible for this new reboot I understand. He prevented Peter from getting bit by the spider?
I was reading Ult FF and loved it. Especially the Zombie universe cross overs. Ult SM was geared towards the young audience, so I couldn’t really get into it. But I also remember a bunch of cross overs and “events” and those just turn me off.
Same thing was going on with Batman RIP and Crisis events and reboots…I dropped out of comics for about 5 years at that point. So I agree with @Anthony. Keep it simple, new stories geared towards a more mature audience.
Ultimate spider-man and ultimate x-men and the ultimates books were really good and fresh takes on these characters were great but then it just turned into the jerk universe. Ultimatum is one of the most widely hated comic events of all time because they just tried way too hard to be edgy and mature. Hank Pym being even more abusive to wasp, captain america and a lot of the main cast being jerks, nightcrawler was homophobic, and then in ultimatum so many characters get killed off in really shocking ways, blob eats wasp and then gets his head chomped off by hank pym. And then the really weird decision to make scarlet witch and quicksilver have an incestuous relationship. It felt like it just became shock value for shock values sack and now most people just remember the old ultimate universe for incest and cannibalism