1 – “Good Artists Copy”
Were it not for a car accident, this project would have looked very different.
The entire rebirth of the Ultimate Universe was meant to be different. How different, we don’t know currently and may never know. What we do know is that, originally, Donny Cates was meant to write this series (under the existing title or another) and it was an unfortunate car accident that has had horrible long-lasting effects on Cates that resulted in the need for another writer to step in. Again, details are short on how this all happened, so there could have been numerous false starts or discussions involving other writers before Jonathan Hickman took over the project. I’ll be the callous prick who points out how fitting that this project, recreating an alternate version of the Marvel Universe was sent on a different path by a single, violent event. It’s the sort of thematic connection that’s so on the nose that a reader would roll their eyes. Truth is stranger and all that...
It also meant that the man tapped with bringing the idea back to life is the same that killed it originally. The first Ultimate line of comics ran from 2000-2015, coming to an end in Secret Wars #1 by Hickman and Esad Ribić, where the regular Marvel 616 universe also perished. By the end of the event, the 616 was back, while the Ultimate Universe was nowhere to be found. There were some holdovers: Miles Morales and his family, the Maker (an alternate version of Reed Richards), Ultimate Mjolnir showed up, and maybe a few others. But, the idea of a new reader friendly version of all of Marvel’s characters was no longer a going concern, not with movies filling that gap, to an extent. So, it was a bit of a surprise when Ultimate Invasion was announced as bringing the Ultimate Universe back.
It was an even larger surprise when the issues began coming out and it became apparent exactly what sort of Ultimate Universe was being created. This was not a return to the old 1610; instead, this new universe, created by the Maker, is designated 6160. After escaping confinement in the regular Marvel Universe, he gathers the necessary materials to escape that world and recreate his old one, albeit with changes. Over the course of the series, we see that he carefully managed this world through time travel to eliminate most of the superpowered people of both the Marvel and Ultimate Universes, setting up a world basically ruled by himself along with a hand-picked council that each oversees a geographic portion of the world. When an attack from the future decimates one of their gatherings, one of their number, Howard Stark, is brought into the conspiracy, having distanced himself from ‘politics’ previously, leaving that element to his partner, Obadiah Stane. To make matters more interesting, the superpowered attackers from the future looked to be an army of clones resembling the Ultimate versions of Captain America, Thor, Giant-Man, Wasp, and Vision, sent by Kang back in time to kill the Maker and his council.
After, Howard Stark is brought into the conspiracy and put to work building the Maker another time machine, an Immortus Engine, alongside a masked prisoner identified as Reed Richards. While they succeed, they also make plans to work against the Maker, resulting in another invasion of Kang and his army into the Maker’s City where they battled with his own genetically created army, eventually leading the seeming death of most of those involved and the City being sealed off for two years (with an unknown amount of time passing in the City). Outside, the council makes plans for what to do with the world for the two years without the Maker and Howard’s son, Tony, adopts similar armour to his father, calling himself Iron Lad and allying himself with Doom (Reed Richards) to free the world from the control of the Maker and his allies.
It’s a very different sort of Ultimate Universe, one not designed as a back to basics entry point. It is an entry point, of sorts, albeit one filled with allusions and mysteries and ‘Easter eggs’ for those in the know. It’s a world of systems of power hidden from most who live inside them, but shown clearly to the reader. While the original Ultimate line featured modern updates of familiar concepts, distilling and simplifying them of decades of stories, taking advantage of the ability to pick and choose different elements to create something, hopefully, better, this is something else entirely. This is a world equally curated, though both in and outside of the comics, albeit one that twists and bends the Marvel Universe as we know it. It is a world just as designed by its real world creators as any other; it is also one designed by the Maker, which sets it apart in a dramatic manner.
That doesn’t mean it’s completely unfamiliar, though...
2 – “Great Artists Steal”
The idea of a version of Reed Richards curating his world, picking and choosing what wondrous elements make it to the public, which ones are purloined for his personal use, and which are similar smothered in the crib is not a new one. In Ultimate Invasion, Hickman recasts his Maker, in part, as Randall Dowling of the Four. Planetary by Warren Ellis, John Cassaday, and Laura Martin, published by the Wildstorm imprint of DC Comics, ran for 27 issues and three specials from 1999 to 2009, and it followed an organisation that sought out the hidden history of the world, investigating weird happenings and, over the course of the series, was revealed to be working directly against a group called the Four, which had spent the latter half of the 20th century covering up all the strange and wondrous things that could have made the world so much greater. Throughout the series, we’re given numerous examples of the Four’s efforts to suppress superhumans and the advancements that they could bring, mostly at the behest of their leader, Dowling. Ellis modeled Dowling and the Four after Reed Richards and the Fantastic Four, ostensibly as a metaphor for the superhero genre’s dominance of comics in the latter half of the 20th century, a process that began, one could say, with the release of Fantastic Four #1. While it was eventually revealed that Dowling was also attempting to save the world from an alien threat in addition to controlling it, the Maker has no such lofty goals. Hickman even throws a subtle clue to this line of thinking near the end of the first issue of Ultimate Invasion when the Maker asks Reed Richards, “If you could do it all against – if you could truly change things – if you had the chance... / ...would you erase me from existence?” When Richards answers, “... / ... / YES.” the Maker responds, “I’ll keep that in mind.” Which, of course, is his entire plan in this new universe: erase all threats from existence.
His methods match those of Dowling, but his attitude (and look) is reminiscent of another Wildstorm character that Ellis wrote: Henry Bendix, the Weatherman of Stormwatch when Ellis’s run on that title began. Up through the final issue of that volume, Ellis painted a picture of a man obsessed with controlling the world to make it fit his vision of what it should be, primarily through his control of superhumans. By being in charge of the United Nations’ superhuman response team, he was able to influence and shift things and is only revealed when another group of superhumans makes their presence known – and their intentions for how they wish to change the world. It’s that group that threatened Bendix’s burgeoning world, Stormwatch, and Stormwatch’s superteam descendent, the Authority, that shows in the Maker’s council. There are a few easy comparisons (Ra and Khonshu to Apollo and Midnighter, for instance), but it’s more of a general concept of a group of roughly seven superhumans (or superhuman ruling groups) being the true power of the world, all under the thumb of a single man.
Ultimate Invasion’s plot recalls, after a fashion, the opening story of The Authority, “The Circle,” where the formerly-deposed-and-impersonated ruler of an island nation, Kaizen Gamorra, sends superpowered clone armies out into the world to decimate cities, creating his mark (a circle with three dots on it) across the entire planet. Kang’s army of clones sent into the past to destroy the Maker (the epilogue in issue 3 with Kang rallying the troops recalls Gamorra’s similar speech to his army) and all he’s built is a variation on the idea, one taken even further in the fourth issue when the Maker’s own army, a different sort of cloned superhuman force, engages with it. It’s a battle of Gamorras to an extent, highlighted by Howard Stark in the middle, attempting to somehow destroy both sides. And, when all is said and done, what’s left is the next version of the armoured hero (Iron Man to Iron Lad ala Engineer to Engineer) creating his own version of the Authority/Planetary to take down the remaining rulers of the planet, the corrupted Authority/Four/Bendix’s Stormwatch.
There are no easy one to one comparisons, as I said earlier, it’s more like Hickman is operating in a sub-genre of superhero comics called “Ellis’s Wildstorm.” While the original Ultimate line took many cues from that period of Wildstorm (and Ellis was one of the more prolific voices in the initial Ultimate line after Brian Michael Bendis and Mark Millar), it was more influenced by Millar’s following Ellis on The Authority. Hickman, in creating this new version, takes a few steps back to what came before.
3 – Broken Boy Soldier
But, Hickman is also playing with his own toys and exploring his own interests, of course. In some ways, Ultimate Invasion is unfinished business. In 2011, Hickman and Esad Ribić launched Ultimate Comics: The Ultimates, part of the second line wide relaunch of the Ultimate books, and this series pitted the Ultimates against the Maker as he created his time-advanced city, and looked to change the world. From a personal standpoint, it was definitely an exciting highlight of the time and it lasted less than a year before Hickman left the title to take over the main line version, the Avengers and New Avengers, on a run that would culminate with Secret Wars in 2015. While Hickman had used the Maker since his time on Ultimate Comics: The Ultimates, there was still a sense that whatever plans he’d had for the character and that world were left unfulfilled, perhaps not for him, but for some readers (like me). Ultimate Invasion presents a version of that unfulfilled promise by having the Maker not pick up where he left off, but go even further and completely succeed. It’s like the time between Ultimate Comics: The Ultimates and Ultimate Invasion actually happened and we’re jumping back into that story with the Maker having won and remade the world as he wished, in a way.
Beyond that, Ultimate Invasion is a story of global systems and politics, of the seen and unseen powers that control everything, a frequent topic of Hickman’s work. He’s particularly interested in power and systems controlled by a small group of people. While Ellis’s Wildstorm work is an obvious and inescapable influence over Ultimate Invasion, and it’s also a continuation of Hickman’s earlier Ultimate work, he gives a big clue of another influence on how he approaches the Maker and his plans in the first issue: the Illuminati. A staple of Hickman’s New Avengers, the Illuminati is a group created by Brian Michael Bendis and Alex Maleev, a council of superhumans in the Marvel Universe, that would meet and work together to quietly shape things behind the scenes. Bendis had them form as a response to the Kree-Skrull War under the guise that, if Earth was entering into a larger universe, it needed a more unified approach to survive. Hickman pushed the group into much greyer moral areas as it was the primary defence against the multiversal collapse that resulted in incursion events where two alternate Earths would occupy a shared space with a limited time to destroy one in order to save the other, or both would die. Hickman’s Illuminati killed Earths. In Ultimate Invasion #1, the Maker steals something from each of the seven members of the current Illuminati (as a variation of Reed Richards, he is the stolen item for Richards) to create his gateway to his new universe. He does so purposefully and clearly, sending a message to them that not only is he leaving and they cannot stop him, he’s taking the lessons he learned from them with him. You may as well call the Maker’s council that world’s Illuminati.
Howard Stark’s betrayal is the lone man standing up and refusing to participate that recalls the original Ultimate Tony Stark doing something similar at Davos under Hickman in the Ultimate Fallout series that preceded Ultimate Comics: The Ultimates, or Reed Richards’s disillusionment/break with the Council of Reeds. That singular conscience that cannot abide the group think status quo that looks down on everything, willing to treat lives as mere currency in the service of their own ideals. This idealism is shared by his son and, to an unknown degree, by this world’s native Reed Richards/Doom. It recalls the original break from the world by the Maker. He too looked at the status quo and decided to make things right. It’s all cycles and different perspectives, systems that breed systems that breed systems...
4 – The Architect
Visually, there is no better candidate to draw the rebirth of the Ultimate line of books than Bryan Hitch. He is the bridge between the Ellis Wildstorm period and the original Ultimate line, having drawn parts of the second Stormwatch volume, the entire first year of The Authority, and, then, the first two Ultimates series. No artist better embodies the visual look of the late 1990s/early 2000s and the concept of ‘widescreen’ superhero comics than Bryan Hitch, here back with his Ultimates inker Andrew Currie. To see Hitch draw this new world, a synthesis of Wildstorm and the original Ultimate line, is to see both simultaneously. Perhaps, no visual better demonstrates that idea than the initial invasion of Kang’s future clone army, coming out of the sky like Gammora’s clones, but looking like the Ultimates. That visual resonance is key to this book. More than any artist, he hammers home just how much the look of the Maker recalls Henry Bendix’s all black spandex suit with metal headband implant crossed with the mark of Gamorra that his army wore on similarly all black spandex suits. By the final issue, when the Maker and Kang’s forces have their final battle, it looks like elements of The Authority at war with elements of The Ultimates.
Beyond his ‘usefulness’ as the visual connector between the two major antecedents of this new Ultimate Universe, Hitch is really fucking good. A stylist who is immediately recognisable but able to adapt to anything. He does big ‘widescreen’ action better than anyone, becoming the dominant influence for all that came after him, but also able to do visually arresting ‘quiet’ scenes. Some of the best moments in the series are the discussion scenes where Hitch shows body language and facial reactions to carry as much weight in rooms where what’s unsaid is just as important as what’s said. Those council scenes are so good at establishing characters who literally say nothing, like the casualness of Omega Red who lounges with his hands behind his head or comes up behind Colossus, flinging his hand over the other’s shoulder. Hitch is wonderful at little details that allow you to go back and stare endlessly at pages.
In the final issue, Alex Sinclair does some very interesting things with colour, seemingly eschewing realism for effects throughout the battle between the Maker and Kang. Mid-battle, the colour shifts from ‘realistic’ to overly saturated by a blue light for the Maker’s immediate surroundings, while Kang has a more green lighting effect surrounding him, resulting in something like a rainbow when they clash on this magnificent double-page spread. So powerful are these two beings that their very essences radiate their energy, in a way. It heightens the conflict and gives these two monsters, each thinking themself right, an almost heroic effect when they clash.
And, later, after Howard Stark decimates both groups and the City counts down to its closure, all colour is stripped away for a grey, desolate effect. Sinclair, while adhering to realism throughout most of the series abandons it to great effect here, emphasising the emotion of scenes. Even the followup with a orange tone to the council’s meeting suggests a sunset/autumn feel that is on the world before the coming night/winter.
5 – No One Left to Save the World
Up until this point, I’ve mostly focused on Ultimate Invasion, leaving the one-shot followup Ultimate Universe #1 out of things. But, going forward with the Ultimate line of comics, Ultimate Universe #1 is much more important. Ultimate Invasion is the back story, the set up, the looming threat hanging over the entire thing, but it’s not the actual story. Ultimate Universe #1 provides the actual story of the line, the one picked up by the four series that have (so far) followed it.
In an inversion to the concept of the original Ultimates, who acted on behalf of the US government to enforce a specific political agenda rooted in the status quo, this group, as led by Tony Stark (Iron Lad), is a terrorist one set on overthrowing the status quo. Imagine if the Authority made up Planetary, after a manner. This issue establishes part of their mission to free the Maker’s locked away secret knowledge of the world and begin to re-establish the World That Should Have Been, putting them in direct opposition to the Maker’s council. In his absence, they have taken more control of the world, including dividing up North America with the loss of Stane and Stark. The issue ends with a direct confrontation with the council and them using Stark’s own weaponry against this new resistance, blasting New York City from space and blaming Tony for the attack. That leaves him and his allies not just as terrorists to the true powers of the world, but to the public as well. While their war remains secret to a degree, they also exist in the minds of the world in a very public manner. Less superhumans as weapons of mass destruction and more as IEDs.
Even in the regular Marvel Universe, the superheroes are very much agents of the status quo, reacting to crime and other threats. In Ellis’s Wildstorm books, there was a sense of a larger responsibility for superheroes, to not abide a corrupt status quo, but to change it. First glimpsed in the group of superhumans in the “Change or Die” arc that concluded the first Stormwatch volume and, then, continued with the Authority (who, by their actions, Ellis described as villains within the traditional definitions of superheroes), and, then, in Planetary where the mission of the organisation was explicitly to eliminate a ruling power that had purposefully suppressed information and held the world back. To destroy the world as it is is an act of terrorism and villainy, a remarkably bold direction to set the heroes of this world. Tony Stark’s mission isn’t simply to fight the council directly, but to create an army of superhumans with the Maker’s hidden knowledge, to subtly affect the world around him. Until the launch of The Ultimates monthly series, the line of books followed this understated element of his mission, painting fairly disparate portraits of this world, almost at complete disconnect.
An underrated idea established in this issue is that Stark’s group, while having lofty goals, is fairly inexperienced and may not be good at this. They bumble around this issue, barely survive a confrontation with Captain Britain, ruler of Europe, and, then, are almost killed from space in attack that they are blamed for. These are idealists flailing about, making mistakes, and surviving by the skin of their teeth. It’s smart to introduce them as somewhat incompetent, giving the 24 month deadline weight. As is hinted at in Ultimate Invasion #4, time moves at an unknown rate in the City and they don’t know what they’ll face when it opens again. That this group of ‘Ultimates’ bear that name with irony more than anything makes the need for progress urgent, almost frantic. If they could only squeak by Captain Britain by himself, how will they survive the full council, or the Maker and his forces?
Appropriately, to continue the idea of the past influencing the present, the artist on this issue is Stefano Caselli, the initial/primary artist on Hickman’s first ongoing series for Marvel, Secret Warriors. That book was, basically, the big break at Marvel for both men and, here, they reunite to set into motion the next two years of the new Ultimate Universe. His involvement also breaks the visual spell of Hitch’s Authority/Ultimates look, bringing things back more towards Marvel’s general visual aesthetic, while also setting up his own involvement as artist on Ultimate Black Panther. Caselli is an adept superhero artist and draws a wonderfully thick Thor, giving the imprisoned Thunder God an appropriate heft and power.
6 – 24 Months
We return, then, to Wildstorm and the broader influence of that company upon the shaping of this new Ultimate Universe. It has gone through different periods of attempting a larger, overriding story. Periods where there was a central theme to the line, up to and including the most recent attempt to begin a Wildstorm line under Warren Ellis, beginning with The Wild Storm series, continuing in the Deathblow series that spun out from it, and... nothing. The line never materialised, notably as a result of the accusations against Ellis. I can’t remember if Hickman was one of the rumoured writers recruited to do one of the series to spin out of The Wild Storm (though, Deathblow writer Bryan Hill is the writer of Ultimate Black Panther for this line). Before that, there was the reboot of the line featuring the likes of Grant Morrison, Garth Ennis, Brian Azzarello, and Gail Simone. And, in between, there was an apocalyptic version of the Wildstorm Universe, I believe. While not completely unified under Ellis in the late ‘90s, there was a sense of a unified creative vision with books sharing a sensibility. The new Ultimate line takes that idea forward in spirit more than anything...
The big innovation (as Marvel is apt to point out at every opportunity) is that the ticking time bomb of the Maker’s City being closed for two years following the events of Ultimate Invasion #4 results in a line of comics that progresses in real time. Each month of comics corresponds with a month passing in both our world and theirs. If this world can’t look like ours, it can age at the same time as ours. It’s a clever variation on the original idea of Marvel Comics as superhero stories that reflect the world outside your window. Hickman sees through the lie that you could have a world full of superpowered people and have it remain anything remotely like ours. By their very existence, superhumans would dramatically change the world. So, if the space is incompatible, why not make the time identical?
And, so, the new Ultimate line operates on a deadline that will end January 2026. While not exclusive to Wildstorm, when that company was part of Image Comics, Image once did a month where every comic skipped ahead a year and delivered that issue, a flash forward. A promise of what’s to come. A ticking clock. As the line is beyond Hickman and his plans, inviting in a variety of voices and perspectives, he’s crafted a variation on that idea. The same clock without the specifics of what would happen. A story that was rooted in time travel being defined by time as it moves forward... It also brings to mind the end of the first year of The Authority, which ran across the course of 1999, even approaching the year 2000 when the Spirit of the 20th Century would no longer be needed or relevant.
Influence on influence on influence.
Next: Ultimate Spider-Man #1-6
