What went wrong with the original Ultimate universe?
Jeph Loeb and Mark Millar, /thread, 'nuff said.
>>156085884>Jeph LoebI know it's pretty common knowledge now, but I heard the main reason his writing was so terrible on stuff like Ultimatum was because he was dealing with the death of his son at the time.
>>156085876Why is nobody responding to my thread :(
all the heroes were too cucky
>>156085876It was meant to be mainline Marvel without the baggage, and then in less than a decade it had more baggage than the mainline.
>>156085876>what went wrong with a garbage fire
>>156085876>very much a product of its time, even moreso than the original Marvel universe>whole point was to be a clean continuity universe for normies that avoided all the convoluted shit but thanks to constantly changing creative teams the universe quickly became just as convoluted>Two of the three main books got fucked HARD; Ultimate X-Men was placed in a weird holding pattern for years waiting for Bryan Singer to write it (which he never did) so you'd get writers who thought they were only doing one arc being forced to extend a run they weren't terribly interested in to begin with and then Ultimates was delayed to the point we'd maybe get one issue a year *if you were lucky* which quickly killed interest>the main Marvel Universe had gained enough momentum with things like Astonishing X-Men, New Avengers, House of M, and Civil War to further make the Ultimate Universe irrelevant >by the late 2000s the Ultimate Universe was a shambling corpse Marvel didn't know what to do with so they gave it to Jeph Loeb to run wild with since he had some heat thanks to Heroes which was popular at the time but Loeb was also grieving his recently deceased son and basically used the Ultimate Universe to work out his grief which ended up blowing the brains out of the shambling corpse
>>156085876They forgot about her.
>>156085923Yeah I feel sorry for him but literally what he did in Ultimatum is insane shit that ruined the universe. Doesn't matter the reasons. Yeah we can cut him some slack, but who wants to continue reading a comics universe when something like Ultimatum or Millar's shit happens? Also yeah, EMH is still partly his fault.
>>156087595>ruined the universeEh, the Ultimate universe was pretty much done by the time Loeb did Ultimatum. In the forums at the time the big question about Ultimate was "can the imprint survive on Spider-Man alone" because no one gave a shit about any of the other books
>>156085876It's several parts. >>156085884 is on the right path but there was more going on>Millar set the tone for the Ultimate line that people fixate on>Marvel wanted the prestige of having Bryan Singer working on an X-Men comic, so they demanded that Ultimate X-Men not do too many changes after Millar so that Singer and his writers could get around to doing that comic.>Ultimate X-Men flounders for a while and then Kirkman comes on board and people disliked his run>Millar and Hitch's Ultimates 1 and 2 were heavily delayed so it'd be hard to write things involving those characters in other books>Ultimates 3 was hated a lot>Ultimatum was the nail in the coffin for a lot of the Ultimate readers
>>156086776Please elaborate.
>>156087549Also one of their biggest missed opportunities was failing to secure a new licensing deal with Toho after Godzilla Final Wars. A 1610 Godzilla could have a design based on the Stan Winston concept, Since Marvel's old design was the basis of the Stout design from the cancelled early 80s movie
>>156085884Nah it was Bendis.
>>156085876Oneupmanship
>>156088760People who read the Ultimate universe today/uncs who never grew out of the Bronze Age bitch about the Ultimate heroes being "unlikable" while leaving out the context of when it was written. Limp Bizkit and Eminem were the biggest thing in music, The Matrix was a huge movie that featured the heroes mowing down an entire floor of minimum-wage security guards in a badass action sequence, and the biggest TV hero was Stone Cold Steve Austin. Cynicism and assholery was chic. If you weren't there or were an unc you just can't get it, it's like trying to explain the color red to someone who's been blind from birth. It's also why the Ultimate universe has aged very, very poorly because it very much is a product of its time
>>156089068Frankly it was all three and I’m surprised that anon didn’t mention BMB at allI guess because people still think USM is good, for some reason, despite it being the same dogshit Bendis always writes (except now with his self-insert being Spidey’s best friend and cucking his girlfriend)
>>156085876UltimatumUltimate never recovered from this.
>>156089442>his self-insert being Spidey’s best friend and cucking his girlfriendKong was not Bendis's self insert, Bendis's self insert was Peter. He's said this on multiple occasions. Speaking as a fat bald fuck you're not going to write your self insert as another fat bald fuck. Bagley may have based Kong's design on Bendis to fuck with him but he absolutely was not Bendis's self insert.
>>156089442USM would be mostly harmless if he was just contained there and Marvel didn't have leadership willing to torpedo the mainline
>>156085876ultimatum
>>156085876Its main architects were Millar and Bendis. It was poisoned from the jump.
>>156089442>I guess because people still think USM is goodUSM is good, anon. I wouldn't say it's the best spidey story ever or anything, but it is a decent read.
>>156087572don't worry anon, she can always whore out her superpussy
>>156089442>makes an OC that is just Flash Thompson, despite Flash still being in the book>takes all of Flash's development>OC just happens to look like Bendis>also gets with Kitty Pryde>Flash himself is just sort of around and does nothing beyond being generic bully early on
>>156087800It wound up getting better after Ultimatum and they brought new writers in (even if I otherwise hate Hickman). The worst stuff was still Spider-Man which no longer felt like it had much of a point and turned into dog shit once Miles came around and Millar's Ultimate Comics: Avengers.
>>156092114
>>156087067/thread
>>156087572Sad!
>>1560894662009 feels like a whole LIFETIME ago...
>>156085876>Bendis sets the 'plot everything for the trade' pacing for every book, this quickly gets imposed on the rest of Marvel and DC follows them>Millar and Ellis can't stop themselves from being retarded edgelords and a lot of Ultimate versions of characters are basically DOA because of this.>Loeb dials the edginess up to 11 and canonizes some of the insane stuff even Millar restricted himself to just implying>The founding writers of the Ultimate books all move over to working on 616 Marvel and making it increasingly more like Ultimate>Bendis stays on Ultimate Spider-Man, most of the other books get lower-tier writers, or Literally Who? TV writers Loeb met when working on Heroes>Ultimate Marvel eventually lasts long enough that it's started to build up a decade of continuity and 'baggage', it's no longer the "new reader friendly" entry point it was created to be>Ultimatum appears to be the grand finale of Ultimate Marvel where they burn it all down in a way you could only do with an AU>Ultimate Marvel just keeps going somehow>Millar returns and does some more Ultimates stories, Millar and Bendis work together for the Ultimate Death of Spider-Man and Bendis does an Ultimate Reed heel turn because Sue cucked him>Ultimate Marvel just keeps going somehow>Bendis introduces Black Spider-Man to capitalize on the campaign to cast Donald Glover as the new Peter Parker>Hickman takes over and makes everything about Evil Reed in a stupid looking hat>Hickman bails and most of the books get taken over by Literally Who? writers again>Ultimate Marvel just keeps going somehow>Hickman's Secret Wars in 2015 gets used to finally put Ultimate Marvel out of it's misery>They keep Evil Reed and Black Spider-Man around anyway and force them into 616 Marvel forever>Evil Reed turns himself into a tree, Susan, now he's Tree'd Richards
>>156085884>Millar>The guy who made the line a massive success alongside Bendis>"Went Wrong"People have got to stop thinking the opinions on a Mongolian basket weaving forum affect reality. Millars Ultimates 1+2 and Bendis's first 100 or so issues of Ultimate Spider-Man were massive successes both in sales and critical&fan reception. People hate Bendispeak and Millar edgelordism now and try to retroactively apply that to comics written 25 years ago. Bendis was hot back then, anything he touched turned to into a best seller. His negative qualities did not reach intolerable levels until much later (Man basically had a psychotic break irl and his writing fell off a cliff into the meme it is now). Millar seems more to have just too much of a certain time and place. Ultimates was exactly what people wanted in the post 9-11 hooraa kill the terrorists mass hysteria, but as the world pulled back from that he instead doubled down and now makes shit like Nemesis.Not saying you have to like their old stuff, but you can't pretend OTHER people didn't like it.
>>156085876It lasted too long and it was too tied to specific creators
It started off really edgy and didn't stop doing that until after they were already fucked over from Ultimatum. As >>156089466 said, Ultimatum was essentially the end. Ultimate Comics tried to salvage the universe but the good will was almost entirely gone outside of Miles Morales, Maker, and some aspects of the New UltimatesI still read the Pre-Ultimatum stuff but I tend to avoid everything after even though it's better. It's hard to shake that "Somebody fucked this up" feeling
>>156085923ultimates3 and jeph loeb
>>156099965It is genuinely heartbreaking that one man having a bad time can deliberately tank an entire comic line and just get away with it. He tanked Earth's Mightiest Heroes too, the bastard.
>>156099926Who is this semen demon?
>>156100288Kitty Pryde, who in Ultimate is a Spider-Man character for a long time then leads the (remnants of) X-men
>>156100128I thought comics have editorsnobody cared that he couldn't be arsed to write the characters as previously established and just started doing 616 version of them on crack
>>156100330Thanks, she foyyyyyne asl
>>156099831>but you can't pretend OTHER people didn't like it.So?
>>156092846She needs to come back!
>>156089313Wouldn't kids prefer this stuff? They like it when something's edgy. Makes them feel cool.
>>156085876It sucked from the start. Only Millar Ultimates is worth checking out as a zeitgeist thing. Maybe the Wolverine vs Hulk mini too for a fap.
>>156099831>massive successes both in sales and critical&fan receptionI'm aware and I don't care. Ultimates is worth checking out because there is nothing like it and it's a much better time capsule. USM was slop through and through. The storytelling devices that made Bendis and his ilk successful were bad.
>>156095907Ultimate ass
>>156089466Why doesn't Miles have PTSD from ultimatum? It's basically a crisis event for his world that killed off half of the active heroes in the universe
>>156099831Yeah I don't care about the context, hiring a stupid faggot like Millar to do American political commentary is retarded.
>>156087572She's really popular now
>>156105486To who?
>>156105486It's literally just one anon being obsessed with her
>>156105486Doubt it
>>156105428I think his memories have been kind of blurred since Molecule Man transported him and his family to 616. His mom was dead and his father deserted him. Probably best to not think about those things while back to living with them.
>>156109079Okay, I can tell one of those is Dagger and one is Spider-Woman, but who are the other two?
>>156085876It was a generation of comics for people who really didn't like comics.
>>156110451Black Widow and Electra if I had to hazard.
>>156110451>>156110494IIRC it's:BombshellKitty PrydeUlt Spider-WomanDagger
>>156085876Everything
>>156092846>peetah
>>156111753Which ones are gay?
>>156109079>jess comes out as lesbian and says she has a thing for redheads and jewish girls to kitty>this panelWhat a great issue.
>>156085876i couldnt tell you because i only read spider man and ignored everything else completely
>>156105638No, I post about her too. So there's at least two of us.
After Jemas was fired, Buckley became president, and one of his first decisions was to double down on making the main line the best sellers again (which led to Civil War and beyond). At that point, the Ultimate line was on borrowed time.
