For as quickly as titles in the Ultimate Comics line ascended in the early-2000s, their decline in the late-2000s was just as swift. Ten of the fifty bestselling comic books in 2002 were Ultimate Comics with The Ultimates #1 being the bestselling comic book of the year. By the end of 2009, only eight Ultimate Comics titles ranked in the top two hundred in units sold with Ultimate Comics: Avengers #1 finishing highest with the thirty-fourth most units sold that year. Not coincidentally, the decline in sales at the time also happened to coincide with my own waning interest in comics.
So what led to the decline in popularity of the Ultimate Comics line? There were several factors that I believe contributed to shifting interests among readers. First of all, the initial appeal of Ultimate Comics was for new readers to dive in without having to worry about years of continuity. With Ultimate Comics being around for almost a decade, it was no longer easy for new readers to jump onboard due to a well established and sometimes convoluted history of its own. Another factor was seeing the architects of the line (Brian Michael Bendis and Mark Millar) make the jump from the Ultimate Comics to the primary Marvel Comics publishing line. Bendis continued to write Ultimate Spider-Man, but he also began writing ongoing books like Avengers, New Avengers, and Mighty Avengers as well as major event comics like House of M and Secret Invasion. Millar departed both Ultimate X-Men and The Ultimates in favor comics like Civil War and Fantastic Four (with Bryan Hitch leaving The Ultimates to join him on art duties). The killing blow for the Ultimate Comics line was delivered by the Ultimatum event comic from Jeph Loeb and David Finch wherein numerous major characters were unceremoniously killed off. The event was meant to give the line a shot in the arm, but it was poorly received by both fans and critics alike.
The Ultimate Comics line was barely holding on in the 2010s, but the early part of the decade did see two exciting developments come out of the line that would become staples of Marvel Comics going forward. The first and most obvious success was the creation of a new Spider-Man named Miles Morales by Brian Michael Bendis and Sara Pichelli in Ultimate Fallout #4 following the death of Ultimate Peter Parker. He would go on to headline his own series from the same two creators called Ultimate Comics: Spider-Man that would run for twenty-nine issues. The other major character to come out of the Ultimate Comics line at the time was an enigmatic villain known as The Maker.
As I alluded to earlier, I stopped reading comics on a regular basis in the mid-2000s. In the early-2000s, I was reading titles like New X-Men, Avengers, Ultimate Spider-Man, Ultimate X-Men, and The Ultimates. When Grant Morrison left New X-Men, Kurt Busiek left Avengers, and Mark Millar left Ultimate X-Men and The Ultimates, it seemed like it was time for me to find some new hobbies. That changed when I got myself a first generation iPad at the start of the 2010s and saw that you could now read comic books digitally. The first new comic I read in that format was Ultimate Comics: Ultimates #1 by Jonathan Hickman and Esad Ribic. To say I was immediately hooked would be the understatement of the decade. I had never read a superhero comic quite like it. It continued with the tradition established by Millar and Hitch in the first two volumes of The Ultimates by focusing on massive global threats (with that “widescreen comics” flare one had come to expect), but it added an additional layer of heady science fiction and world building that I was totally unprepared for in the medium.
The basic premise of this new run (as though anything about this story is basic) is that a mysterious helmeted figure going by the moniker of the Maker has developed an incredible new technology that allows him to build a structure where time moves exponentially faster inside than it does in the outside world called the Dome.
He chooses a location within Germany to build this structure, and he begins creating a new advanced civilization within it. Those raised within the Dome are imbued with incredible abilities as the result of genetic engineering and technological advancement. They are referred to as the Children. The Dome itself is controlled by a powerful artificial intelligence known as the City. Due to the rapid advancement of time within the Dome, the Children and the City have become an incredibly advanced civilization that had been built over the course of a thousand years in a mere five minutes in the outside world. Suddenly there is a new global superpower on the scene, and the United States with its team of Ultimates is totally unprepared for it.
That’s the overall plot of this new run, but it is hardly the only story taking place. Beyond this new threat of the Maker and his Children, there is also a new superpower that has arisen in Southeast Asia known as Tian that is controlled by a new race of superpowered humans referred to as the People. The People are governed from two twin capital cities: the Celestials controlled by Xorn and the Eternals controlled by Xorn’s brother, Zorn.
To make matters even more complicated, Tony Stark is nearly killed at the outset of the story when a cabal of ultra wealthy capitalists attempt to assassinate him with a nuclear bomb while he’s conducting a mission as Iron Man in Uruguay. Fortunately for Tony, he was merely piloting the Iron Man suit remotely and survived the attempt. Many innocent people in Uruguay were not as lucky.
What we are treated to throughout the twelve issue story is global warfare that encompasses the entire Ultimate Universe. I had never read a comic this ambitious and epic in scale up to this point in my comic book reading life. Some of the highlights from the run include but are not limited to:
The Children go to war with Asgard and commit mass deicide with Thor being the lone surviving god.
All of Washington, D.C. (including President Obama) is annihilated by a nuclear blast carried out at the behest of the Maker.
The Children engage in a massive battle with the People that ends when Zorn takes off his helmet and opens up a localized black hole to consume both armies.
While all of these events are truly massive in scale, the true showstopper in the run is the reveal of just who the Maker really is: Reed Richards of the Ultimate Universe.
The Maker is far and away the most successful character to come out of the Ultimate Comics line outside of Miles Morales. Though Ultimate Reed Richards had already made a heel turn in Ultimate Mystery by Brian Michael Bendis and Rafa Sandoval, it was Jonathan Hickman who turned him into the fully formed villain known as the Maker. Strangely, the Maker first appears in the Ultimate Fallout anthology series in a short story by Hickman and artist Salvador Larroca. It definitely undercuts the huge reveal in Ultimate Comics: Ultimates if you had read that first. Fortunately, the surprise wasn’t spoiled for me since I hadn’t read that story first.
Unfortunately, Hickman and Ribic’s run ends rather abruptly as Hickman was pulled from the book to begin writing both Avengers and New Avengers in 2012. The series also never reached the heights of the first two volumes of The Ultimates by Millar and Hitch in terms of sales numbers. That makes the series a bit of a hidden gem which is shocking considering Hickman’s ascension to becoming one of the biggest superstars in the comic book industry due in no small part to his time on Fantastic Four, Avengers, New Avengers, and (most especially) Secret Wars for Marvel. A lot of the the themes and story structures that have made Hickman such a fan favorite are present in this run. It definitely feels like he used the freedom of the Ultimate Comics line to try things out that he would explore more thoroughly in future series.
While Hickman and Ribic’s Ultimate Comics: Ultimates run struggled to sell more than 40,000 copies per issue, their collaboration on Secret Wars was a monstrous success. The first issue of Secret Wars from Hickman and Ribic sold a staggering 527,678 copies. In that issue, the heroes of the primary Marvel Universe go to war with the heroes of the Ultimate Universe as both universes are on the verge of destruction. While I won’t go too in depth here on Secret Wars, just know that the series concludes with the Ultimate Universe completely annihilated. With the conclusion of the series, the entire Ultimate Comics line had ceased to exist. The only characters who managed to survive and be folded into the main continuity were Miles Morales and the Maker (both of whom played major roles in Secret Wars).
That brings us full circle to the recent announcement of the Ultimate Invasion miniseries. The details we have are pretty sparse, but we know that Miles Morales and the Maker will play major roles in the story. We also know that two creators closely associated with The Ultimates will be telling this story. Bryan Hitch, the man who co-created the Ultimates team, will be providing the illustrations. Jonathan Hickman, the man who co-created the Maker and ultimately destroyed the Ultimate Universe, will be writing it. I can’t think of a more fitting duo to bring this universe back to life.