One of my big objections to what (admittedly little) I've seen of the Ultimate Universe is the completely wasted opportunity.
Created to be an entry point for new readers, to negate the need for knowledge of 40 years of continuity, the Ultimate books were in a perfect position to tell brand new stories, create brand new characters, and go where no Marvel has gone before.
Instead, all too often, the books seemed to be a race to introduce as many "Ultimate" versions of Earth-616 characters as possible. Damn the original story ideas, here's Ultimate Cable and Ultimate Stryfe and Ultimate Scorpion and the Ultimate Galactus trilogy and Ultimate this and Ultimate that. Rather than an entry point for new readers, they were marketed to attract old readers: "Come see our new version of X and Y!!"
I'm probably being unfair, because I haven't read many of these, but the Ultimate line just came across as Heroes Reborn with a more respectable pedigree. Same heroes, "different" universe, keep reintroducing the same characters we already knew. Instead of going original places, it looked like one huge extended "What If?" riff, re-telling stories they read in your youth with a "modern" spin.
Then along came Ultimatum, which looked like it promised an all-new start, a way to break away finally from the ghosts of Earth-616 and tell new stories, not echoes of past Marvel glories. They couldn't punt it this time, could they?
And then we get this solicit:
ULTIMATE COMICS ARMOR WARS #1 (of 4)
Sigh.
Stay tuned for Ultimate Kree-Skrull War, Ultimate Contest of Champions, Ultimate Infinity Gauntlet, Ultimate Celestial Madonna Saga, Ultimate Demon in a Bottle, Ultimate...
Their new motto should be:
Ultimate Comics: Retelling Classic Marvel Stories So We Don't Have To Think Of New Ones...
Created to be an entry point for new readers, to negate the need for knowledge of 40 years of continuity, the Ultimate books were in a perfect position to tell brand new stories, create brand new characters, and go where no Marvel has gone before.
Instead, all too often, the books seemed to be a race to introduce as many "Ultimate" versions of Earth-616 characters as possible. Damn the original story ideas, here's Ultimate Cable and Ultimate Stryfe and Ultimate Scorpion and the Ultimate Galactus trilogy and Ultimate this and Ultimate that. Rather than an entry point for new readers, they were marketed to attract old readers: "Come see our new version of X and Y!!"
I'm probably being unfair, because I haven't read many of these, but the Ultimate line just came across as Heroes Reborn with a more respectable pedigree. Same heroes, "different" universe, keep reintroducing the same characters we already knew. Instead of going original places, it looked like one huge extended "What If?" riff, re-telling stories they read in your youth with a "modern" spin.
Then along came Ultimatum, which looked like it promised an all-new start, a way to break away finally from the ghosts of Earth-616 and tell new stories, not echoes of past Marvel glories. They couldn't punt it this time, could they?
And then we get this solicit:
ULTIMATE COMICS ARMOR WARS #1 (of 4)
Sigh.
Stay tuned for Ultimate Kree-Skrull War, Ultimate Contest of Champions, Ultimate Infinity Gauntlet, Ultimate Celestial Madonna Saga, Ultimate Demon in a Bottle, Ultimate...
Their new motto should be:
Ultimate Comics: Retelling Classic Marvel Stories So We Don't Have To Think Of New Ones...
4 comments:
I haven't read much Ultimate Marvel, and, by the sound of your review, perhaps I haven't missed much. But my daughter and I did read the first few issues of Ultimate Spiderman. And it was very depressing. I'm not sure what the thoughts were behind it, but by word count, I think it was written for, well, maybe a dog. A smart dog, see, but a dog. There were so few words - in fact, there were probably an equal ratio of sound effects to words - , I didn't understand why they simply didn't throw them out altogether. If you ask me, it was the closest thing I've ever seen to a comic's simply having no story at all and proving Wertham's theories outright as far as the intelligence derailment that can occur if you keep reading this kind of fare. I ran very quickly to the first Alan Moore comic I could lay on hands on. Ahhhhh ... intelligence . . .
Don't forget that in regular, plain ole Marvel continuity there's "Iron Man & The Armor Wars" in September as well:
http://marvel.com/catalog/?id=12685
http://marvel.com/catalog/?id=12894
So not only will we see the Ultimate version of the Armor Wars, we'll see a rehased version as well.
Oh, did I mention there's going to be another Clone Saga plotline too?
http://marvel.com/catalog/?id=12867
You know because "you’ve been asking for it" after all.
Completely agreed. I enjoyed the first few Ultimate issues and titles until it became obvious that all they were planning on doing were more violent versions of the originals.Since then, I have blissfully ignored them all.
Rottgutt--you're psychic, because that's exactly the topic of today's post...
Lawrence--please take my "review" with a grain of salt, because as i said, I've read damn few Ultimate books. Some people I respect have thought very highly of Bendis' run on Ultimate Spider-Man.
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