How The Ultimates Revitalizes Marvel’s Icons

Christopher Fase ‘26 / Emertainment Monthly Staff Writer

“They stole your future. The question is, do you want it back?”

Spoilers ahead.

“The world outside your window” is a common refrain among comic fans to refer to the Marvel comics universe. It typically refers to the comics’ tendency to intertwine their larger-than-life superheroes with real-world elements, such as the Fantastic Four’s family dynamic, Peter Parker’s relatable teenage struggles interacting with his superhero identity as Spider-Man, and the X-Men quickly developing into an allegory for real-world marginalized groups. These realistic elements rear their heads frequently in these characters’ stories, and are a large part of why their stories still resonate with audiences to this day. 

However, on a macro scale, it’s difficult to encompass the entire Marvel universe through this “world outside your window” lens. This is due in part to the simple fact that the universe in-canon has gotten a lot bigger over the last few decades, containing gods, cosmic entities, vampires, demons, and such a wide breadth of other fictional concepts. Even with all of these characters written as relatably as possible, the interconnectedness of these concepts inevitably breaks the pitch of the entire universe reflecting reality. Part of this is the appeal of a comic book universe like Marvel, but it’s hard for the two pitches to coexist with so many different writers and characters. There’s also the factor of the equally massive Marvel brand interacting with these stories, which puts the pressure of mass-appeal on writers, preventing them from making these stories as politically pointed as the premise of “the world outside your window” would imply.

I say all this because, when I first heard the premise of the current Marvel Ultimate line, I was floored. For those unaware, the rebooted take on the original Ultimate line that started in 2000 follows Earth-6160, a universe created and ruled by supervillain The Maker, a villainous version of Reed Richards. In order to make a world with no resistance to him, he uses time travel to visit the origins of various superheroes and interferes in various ways to stop them from happening. He stops the radioactive spider from biting a teenage Peter Parker, messes with this world’s Reed Richards’ equations to send the Fantastic Four into space at the wrong time, stops Captain America’s frozen body from being found, and basically goes after most every Marvel superhero you can think of in one way or another. The different books in the line go on to follow these characters taking up their superhero personas in the present day, often decades after when they otherwise would have.

This premise inherently invites reinvention of Marvel’s characters, allowing them a fresh and modern start in a way that has largely never been given to them before. While the original Ultimate universe attempted to give a similar fresh start, it didn’t have the consistent premise to sustain itself that the current iteration has, which gives a consistent jumping off point for the reinventions of each character. The story’s status as an alternate universe also frees it from the pressure of mass-appeal that the film iterations of these characters are unable to escape, which allows for exploration of the inherent political ideas that stem from each character (but I can get to that later).

While the more focused books about specific characters such as Ultimate Spider-Man have drawn a lot of attention, The Ultimates excites me for exactly the same reasons that this whole universe excites me. Every issue sets its sights on a different character, either someone who’s already on the Ultimates team or someone who is newly recruited, allowing each issue to function as both an expansion of the universe and a singular story in and of itself. This makes for a lively and inventive series that continues to excite me as a reader. More than any other comic, I feel like I could be getting something completely different with each issue, in a way that only makes me want to read more.

Issue #1 starts with a condensed reintroduction of the universe and the main characters on the team, Tony Stark as Iron Lad, a horrifically injured Thor, Lady Sif, a frozen Captain America, and (speaking of radical reinventions) Reed Richards as Doctor Doom. We see them using limited time travel to send “origin boxes” back six  months to a series of people to turn them into superheroes. This project largely fails, leading the team to recruit people in-person in the present day, starting with the characters that the rest of the issue focuses on: Hank Pym and Janet Van Dyne. In this universe, the husband-and-wife duo run their own pest-control business. They got their origin box six months ago, but Hank has kept it from Janet because he saw the damage he causes in the main universe, and is afraid of becoming the same person who invents Ultron and hurts the people around him throughout his time as an Avenger. The Ultimates fight off Captain Britain, a member of the Maker’s council, a group of people who know the truth about this universe and work to defend it, as Hank Pym contemplates the decision (with Janet quickly and enthusiastically taking on the mantle of The Wasp). As the story concludes, Captain America convinces Hank to become Giant-Man and that he’s free of the sins of his alternate self. Hank puts on his suit, providing a swift end to the fight and a giant footprint in the ground, a symbol that the Ultimates are out there, and are ready to fight against The Maker’s council.

Issue #2 focuses on Captain America, interweaving an Ultimates mission to save a captured America Chavez from an overtaken white house with Steve Rogers learning about this America’s alternative history. With the USA dissolved into the North and South American Unions under The Maker’s empire, we see this supervillain pushing his influence throughout American history, taking advantage of the country’s tendencies towards violence and unregulated capitalism until we reach the modern day, where the White House is run by a golden-armored supervillain named Midas. Captain America’s origins in propaganda make him difficult to modernize, and while some are willing to have him take a darker turn and embody the more belligerent aspects of America’s government and culture (the approach of the original Ultimate universe), most attempt to have him represent the dream of an idealized America, disconnected from whatever the audience may think of the actual U.S. government’s actions. I think this approach falls on deaf ears in most cases by attempting to have it both ways, paying lip service to real-world politics while keeping their main character marketable. However, The Ultimates succeeds by implying a more consequential reckoning with the corruption at the heart of this world’s America. The issue ends with Steve telling America Chavez that “things will be better now”, followed by a panel of his bloodshot eyes from his view of America’s history. It puts forth a mission to change the world, creating a better one going forward in a way that’s more confrontational than previous attempts in Captain America stories.

Issue #3 focuses on an island that’s been used as a site for experiments with gamma radiation, and explores the island’s native population that has been mutated by said experiments. The Hulk’s creation is commonly read as a reaction to the nuclear anxieties of the 1960s, but the Ultimates refocuses that story on the indigenous island populations that have disproportionately been affected by nuclear testing. The new She-Hulk is Lejori Joena Zakaria, a leader on the island, but she’s the only one whose transformation largely resembles the version of the Hulk we’re familiar with. Most of the others’ mutations have caused them much more pain, such as a girl whose body is mostly a skeleton and nerve endings who lives in constant pain, or a baby who turns into a monster and ripped his mother apart in a tantrum. The pain these people are experiencing are contrasted with this universe’s Hulk, the one who has standed to benefit from this gamma testing the most, who is currently part of the Maker’s council, and ends the issue ready to fight the Ultimates himself. As the issue concludes, Lejori agrees to join The Ultimates if they are willing to help restore her island to its former glory, and Iron Lad agrees despite the seeming impossibility of the task, setting up another place where the Ultimates can fix the world going forward.

Issue #4 is my personal favorite of the series so far. Taking a break from the recruitment processes that the other issues have focused on, this issue centers on Reed Richards and the origins of how he became Doctor Doom, told by presenting four points in time at once on each page: The Fantastic Four’s origins leading up to their first mission that traditionally gives them their superpowers, the fallout of this initial mission, Doom’s attempts to create his own time travel device while reflecting on his past, and a present-day conversation between Iron Lad and Doom. As it did with the nuclear anxieties that created the Hulk, the issue acts as a modern take on the galactic curiosity that created the Fantastic Four in the 1960s. While in their creation the possibility of space travel seemed limitless, that excitement is far less common today, with space travel mostly being in the hands of the rich and powerful, out of the hands of everyday people. Just as the dreams of intergalactic travel and discovery among the American populus were unrealized, the Fantastic Four’s initial venture into space results in no superpowers, only the death of Johnny Storm and a waste of government funds, both of which the remaining members of the team end up on the hook for. Ben ends up committing suicide, Sue ends up dying from exposure to cosmic radiation, and Reed ends up in prison and then in the hands of The Maker, who has been manipulating his whole origin from the beginning. Much like the initial space race was largely guided by a competition between Russia and the U.S. that today we can more easily see as petty, The Maker disrupts this universe’s Reed’s origins pretty purely out of his own petty grudge with the main universe’s Reed Richards. We see him messing with Reed’s calculations to mess up the Fantastic Four’s origins while we simultaneously see him telling Reed that it’s all his fault, torturing him, and creating this series’ Doctor Doom from a man who believes he brings doom to everyone around him. This Doom is the victim of pure circumstance, tortured at the hands of a man far more powerful than him all because of a feud he’s not involved in at all. He wants to reshape the world, fix what The Maker has done, and become the genius that the mainline Reed Richards is, but there’s clearly a part of him that doesn’t believe any of it will be successful, either failing pathetically or backfiring in a way that destroys the lives of those around him. Today, he keeps experimenting on mice to try and bring back the Fantastic Four, and the mice keep dying, but he has to keep going. The issue is a tragic recontextualization of the Fantastic Four’s story, and it creates a deeply pitiful version of Reed that quickly made him my favorite character in the series.

In Issue #5, we shift away from the insular focus on an existing character into the introduction of a new one, specifically this world’s version of Hawkeye. After Clint Barton rejects the mantle, a Native American teenager named Charli Ramsey picks up the suit and weapons that Tony Stark had made out of the trash and starts to blow up Roxxon factories and pipelines. Stark sends Captain America to retrieve the weapons from this new rogue agent, but as Rogers confronts them, Charli reveals that their attacks on Roxxon align more with the Ultimates’ aim of fixing the world than Stark was willing to concede, and Rogers ends up recruiting them for the Ultimates after they fight off Roxxon’s “cleanup crew” of mercenaries. The issue is lighter than the previous one, acting as a fun introduction to the new Hawkeye, but it still presents their goals in line with the history of Native American oppression in America, reclaiming the existing mantle of Hawkeye for an underrepresented population in a way that can excite readers going forward.

Issue #6, the final issue of this arc, sees the Ultimates facing off against The Hulk, who intercepts their operation to free a bunch of superpowered prisoners from a Damage Control black site. The confrontation goes poorly for the Ultimates, as Banner reveals that alongside his gamma-based powers, he also has the power of an Atomic Iron Fist and the backup of his own team of Immortal Weapons on his side. The confrontation reinforces that, despite how many allies they have gained, the Ultimates are still the underdogs at the hands of the Maker’s council, which remain in control of so much power in this universe. The martial arts techniques of the Immortal Weapons are shown in boxes on the page that dominate the traditional dialogue speech bubbles, expressing that the Immortal Weapons are always in control of this fight. The Ultimates barely escape with their lives, and end the issue more viscerally aware than every of the uphill battles ahead of them.

As The Ultimates moves forward, it continues to astound me more and more. These characters have been reinvented time and time again through new writers and artists, alternate universes, and adaptations beyond the medium of comics, but The Ultimates does so in a way that is directly in conversation with not only these characters’ legacies, but also the conditions that created them, and how those conditions have changed as time has gone on. In the constant string of new comics and adaptations, the things that connect these characters to their origins are often lost as they are rewritten or watered down so the characters can remain marketable to new audiences. The Ultimates allows them to exist in a distinctly modern landscape while reconnecting them with what they meant to people in their creation, as well as what they can mean to people now. In my eyes, it is the most exciting thing being done in comics right now, and I can only hope it keeps my excitement alive and well going forward.