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Ultimatum (Marvel Comics)

Mr Light

Mr Light

Admiral
Admiral
So I just read the trade collection of Ultimatum, the big massive Marvel Ultimate line crossover. Written by Jeph Loeb, Art by David Finch.

I'm not a huge fan of the Ultiverse in the first place, I prefer my 616, but this was... odd. They kill off MAJOR heroes and villains left and right. Seriously like 20 major characters die. It's just overkill, man. Hard to have shock value when so many die.

And there aren't "comic book deaths", either. The characters are visibly decapitated/incinerated/blown apart.

Also the story is pretty wonky. I did read Ult Origins which introduced the Watcher statues. One appears in the first issue watching the Hulk. And then they don't appear in the rest of the story. And Hulk didn't do anything remotely important in the story. Also Ult Origins said Rick Jones would save the world from the coming disaster... Rick Jones didn't even appear here!

And apparently the story kept cutting out to the tie-in issues, which occurs without explanation here. For example in between two issues Spider-Man is suddenly dead, oh wait no he isn't.

Also, Gwen Stacy was with Peter at the opening of the issue. I thought Carnage killed her years ago in Ult Spidey?
 
Mr Light said:
Also, Gwen Stacy was with Peter at the opening of the issue. I thought Carnage killed her years ago in Ult Spidey?
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A carnage-Gwen Stacy clone comes back in later issues. Things happen and eventually the carnage piece is eliminated and it's just the human Gwen Stacy left. So she's alive in the Ultiverse.
 
That sounds really lame... of course I never cared for Ult-Spidey, and I've actually ended up reading about half of it between discount $3 trades and library copies.
 
This was the big crossover that has sort of cleaned up the Ultimate Universe. There isn't an X-Men book and Ultimate Fantastic Four has been discontinued as well. Ultimate Spider-Man Comics has replaced Ultimate Spider-Man and Ultimates has become Ultimate Avengers with Mark Millar returning on the title. Ultimate Red Skull has been introduced as well. Nick Fury is back from the Squadron Supreme universe and finds everything a mess.
 
I've also read about half of Ult X-Men as well, and while the first few trades were interesting, all of the later ones I read were just completely uninvolved. Still it's shocking how many of the X-Men they gratuitously killed off!
 
there will be an X-related book. 'Ultimate X' was announced at the Diamond Retailers summit thing, as was Loeb's 'New Ultimates.'

the new UMU is:

Ultimate Comics: Avengers
Ultimate Comics: Spider-Man
'Ultimate X'
'New Ultimates'

plus the Ultimate Comics: Iron Man: Armor Wars mini.
 
For those who are up on the Ultimate universe, should I read Ultimatum if I am a fan of the Ultimate Fantastic Four? If something awful happens to any of the quartet, then I will just skip it.
 
Mr Light said:
That sounds really lame... of course I never cared for Ult-Spidey, and I've actually ended up reading about half of it between discount $3 trades and library copies.
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It's not as bad as I made it sound. I wanted to give the info in the least spoiler-y way possible.

All in all, I've liked some parts of the Ultimate Universe - Primarily Ultimate Spider-Man (which has 20 odd trade paperbacks now). Ultimate X-Men comes second in terms of issues (about 19-20 trades) but there are lots of hit and miss issues here. I think at least partially it's because of the changes in the creative team every few issues. Desmond Bagley and Bendis stuck together on Spider-Man for nearly 100 monthly/weekly issues. And that kept it all together for them as far as storylines, look, long-term threads and such.
X-men was extremely spotty - some good, some bad, some really bad.

I don't recall if I have read the Ultimates but everybody praises it.

What little I have read for Ultimate Iron Man is a little ho-hum. Orson Scott Card wants to keep telling child genius stories (imo).

What I liked was Ultimate FF - The God War trade was particularly good - it might be that I'm reading about some of these concepts for the first time (instead of in Ult X-men where when Cable appears, I already know Cable's background from the 616 Universe. I guess I have read fewer of the usual FF - generally it's in relation to something else - Secret Invasion or something like that.

I have only read March to Ultimatum TPB so far. Which was a pretty crazy story but I still don't know what's happening there. And part of the March to Ultimatum trade has a really unique story about somebody I've never heard of called Zarda. When I read the story I thought this was the Ultimate version of Big Barda - several weeks later I realized Big Barda is DC and not Marvel. Anyway that was one of the more interesting moments - Hulk is naked (I mean completely *nekkid*), She hits him in the Nuts, Later on, they have passionate sex (after she finds him trousers, ie, she finds him trousers only to ask him to take them off? lol ). The context will speak for itself.

It was a weird book. I haven't read the other Ultimatum related books.
 
Mike Farley said:
Isn't Zarda from the Squadron Supreme?
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She is. I didn't know about her until that time. Also I didn't know that Nick Fury has disappeared into the Squadron Supreme universe. Even tho' in the Ultimate Spider-man stories we repeatedly see mention of the fact that Fury is "unavailable" and Acting Director of SHIELD is Carol Danvers.

If I may say so - my enthusiasm for comic books is much more than my knowledge! :alienblush:
 
Ultimatum, while interesting in theory, was flawed in concept.

The action jumped around from location to location with little to no transition many times, threads seemed to be picked up and dropped, the pacing was very random and the ending made ZERO sense. While the art was good, the story was lacking. Some major characters, or at least important ones, were killed or brought in or did things off panel. Compared to Long Halloween, this was Crap X3.
 
And Ultimatum was just so RUSHED. Magneto floods NYC and boom they go off and kill him. It was so fast. They didn't really give a sense of what Mags plan was next, he just sat around on his ass waiting for the heroes to come kill him.
 
It's funny how quickly the Ultimate universe dropped the ball. I remember about 5 years ago reading lots of comments from fans that the Ultimate universe was going to kill the 616 universe and make it obsolete. But today the notion of anything of the sort happening is laughable. In a few more years it will probably have gone the way of 2099.
 
Yeah that's what bothers me about the whole Ultimatum thing, they are going to screw up the Ultimate universe so much that eventually no one will give two shits about it and it'll go the same way 2099 did.

I wonder how many comics readers who didn't collect in the 90s will even REMEMBER 2099!! I remember when that universe started up, it had a lot of promise. Stan Lee wrote Ravage 2099 and everyone was thinking it was the "Second Coming of Marvel!" and then... boom. It dropped like a turd in about what? 4 years?

I kinda think it'd be awesome if like Nick Fury went back in time, popped a cap in Magneto's head right off the bat and then sat back with a big smirk on his face and a cigar danglin' from his mouth "Fixed that mess!"
 
That's what Fury basically wanted to do...he let Xavier handle Magneto at the end of the first Ultimate X-Men arc and look how that turned out.
 
They handled Thor pretty damn good up until Ultimates 3...Blech.

Making him out to be some psychopath was a genius stroke and I wish to God that marvel does this in the movies.
 
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