So the Ultimate Universe is ending – theoretically – with Cataclysm. I mean they have Galactus there (instead of Gah Lak Tus) and he’s going to eat the planet. But for people who lost track of the universe I figured I’d go over what has been happening since the reboot (because that’s what I spent my weekend doing thanks to Marvel Unlimited and other sources).
Everything You Needed To Know Since Peter Parker Died! Peter Parker’s death in the Ultimate Universe was a big turning point. The SHIELD guys were all disappointed that they didn’t train him enough. It was a dark turning point since he was friends with the X-men (which includes Johnny Storm) and ultimately that led to the next phase.
Mutants were genetically altered humans made via science instead of evolution. That meant that it sucked even more to be a mutant. Reed Richards rejected his family (following the line that only 616 Reed chose his family) and he’s the world’s biggest super asshole. In fact, minus Spider-man and J Jonah Jameson, everyone is a bit more dickey in the Ultimate Universe.
Reed Richards Is An Asshole
So Avengers starts off with Reed Richards destroying most of Europe with a super advanced science city of temporaly advanced superbeings (they evolved 1000 years within a few days) and became the Builders (shout out to Hickman building his brand that has moved to the 616 even though they are different). So Reed is like “WE ARE SUPERIOR BEINGS NOW AND WE ARE THE RULERS BUT WE WON’T KILL YOU.” And the Ultimates are like, “Yeah, you killed most of Europe and plan to expand into space.” And so they launch attacks and get their asses kicked a few times.
And then Reed is like “hey Thor is able to hurt us and Asgard might see us as a threat” and so the City sends its army to kill everyone in Asgard. Except Thor takes his son and shoves him into their big old tree till he is ready to save the world. They even drop the Hulk and Reed is like “Hulk, we can be bros,” and the Hulk is pretty cool with that. Oh and somewhere on the way Reed blows up all of Washington DC. And so the Ultimates are like “Shit, not again.” And they call up Tian which is a mutant only floating nation run by Zorn and Xorn. Remember Xorn, the character so cool that they retconnected the character destroying him completely? Well here they are sort of twin rules and Zorn and Xorn fly in and suck up everything into a black hole. But that doesn’t really work – except it allows Jean Gray to take over Tian (and she’s not really Jean Gray except she is – it’s kind of stupid, but she was also a SHIELD agent).
So the Ultimates are like “well shit. Again!” and then Tony Stark who has a magical talking tumor goes in and gets captured and Reed is like “HAHAHA I have won. The City and I are the best ever!” except that Tony’s tumor convinces the City that Reed is bad for it because Reed lied and did some bad stuff and he’s emotionally less evolved so the city blows itself up, Reed and the Hulk are captured and everyone celebrates, minus the dead Europeans. Luckily all we lost were like – most of the developed world! And they find a mysterious infinity gem.
Kitty Pryde Is A Terrorist
Meanwhile over in the X-world, Quicksilver is being a dick and he offers Cerebro to the President who is kind of in a shitty place. The world still hates that Magneto killed most of New York in Ultimatum which is understandable. What kind of dick reverses the poles of the Earth. It doesn’t work that way.
Anyway, the President gets a swarm of Nimrod Sentinels and he decides to peacefully move the mutants into camps. Sorry president whose name I can’t remember but if you are gonna do a Hitler style plan, you are a bad president. So Kitty Pryde, Iceman, Bobby Drake, Jimmy Hudson (Wolverine Jr) and a band of younger mutants including Nomi Blume decide to fight the evil Reverend Stryker. And he’s evil. And he’s also pulling an Amon and curing mutants (before killing them) and it turns out that he’s got the power to control machines – like the ones that apparently are part of genetics that make mutants mutants. And then Rogue shows up and she has been talking to God, just like Stryker. Except the drop that whole thing later on along with some subplot about Apocalypse returning. It is super weird.
So Rogue leads the X-men to Stryker and the X-men think she’s betraying them so Kitty kills Stryker just as Quicksilver activates Cerebro and so Stryker’s sentience goes into the Nimrods and he’s controlling all of them and also he’s now got all of the information on where the mutants are across the world. And nigh unbeatable death robots.
And then I’ll hold off on Miles Morales stuff for later.
That Time Captain America Became President
We end up coming to the big old first event, Divided We Fall. Captain America becomes the president with Carol Danvers as chief of staff! After the whole City situation, the world and the United States fell into chaos. It turns out Thor’s son got out of the tree and apparently being raised in a void of chaos isn’t too good for a young child so he’s going around using the soul gem to make people try and destroy America. He starts up the new Hydra and he makes California which seceded send out killer bugs until Thor destroys a trailer. And eventually it leads to a big fight against Hydra where Thor kills his son saves the day and he is also cursed for it because Norse.
Lemons Into Just Utter Shitstorms
The mutants meanwhile are dealing with a bunch of jazz from the camps and the Nimrods attacking so Kitty leads a band of mutants to try and save their friends from camps in the southern states that also succeeded and Captain America and Nick Fury joins to help them out. Kitty eventually kills the giant Styker robot and as a reward Captain America offers the mutants a cure or land. Most of the mutants take the cure till there are only 20 left to move to Utopia, Quentin Quire hooks up with Rogue and takes the God voice out of her head and then he takes the cure and vanishes forever.
The mutants get a shitty spot in the desert to grow but because they have just the right mutants, they make a sentient seed that can grow anywhere and let Tony Stark know. Tony is all for helping them distribute it but because this is an X-men title the rest of the world hates and fears them and eventually they pretend it was destroyed because racism. During this debacle, Nomi Blume starts to rebel against Kitty leading her own group that wants revenge against the normal humans but that doesn’t matter for a while. It’s time to talk about Miles Morales.
Hey Miles Morales Talk!
Miles Morales aka the only good reason to continue the Ultimate Universe, besides evil Reed Richards. Like Miles is the only character with humanity and a draw. I don’t care about any of the other characters. Except maybe Tony and his talking tumor.
Miles got into a charter school and then got bitten by a radioactive spider while hanging with his uncle who is the Prowler in this universe. Miles decides to Spider-man it up and most of the time he gets his butt kicked and then SHIELD is like “you can’t be Spider-man” and then he helps save the day and then they are like “you need training” but he never gets it. And Miles dad is anti-mutant and anti-hero because he had a criminal background and he used to work with his uncle and worked hard to get a new life, so Miles tries to keep his secret.
Prowler is like “Miles we should try and get rid of the bad crime,” and Miles is like “No I don’t wanna do that” and Prowler is like “I’ll tell your dad if you don’t help” and Miles is like “Fine I’ll help” and they stop weird Ultimate Scorpion (does he got a big ass chain?) and then Prowler accidentally dies in a fire after fighting Miles who realizes he’d just be helping his uncle take over the crime in New York. Miles feels guilty about this.
When Divided We Fall happens, Miles is off with the Ultimates fighting Nazis and his father shoots some HYDRA soldiers in New York and tries to back off from being a hero especially when the new companies come after him. People start putting together clues and they assume that Miles’ father is Spider-man including Venom2, Venom Harder, who tries to kill his dad. Miles fights and protects his dad but then Venom kills Miles’ mother instead who is like “keep fighting son” but Miles stops being Spider-man for a year which disappoints a lot of people including Gwen Stacy and Miles sort-of girlfriend Kate Bishop (Hawkeye in the 616).
Nick Fury: Super Nazi?
Back with the Ultimates, Nick Fury has turned into white Nick Fury and seems to be working with HYDRA which turns out to be a massive scheme so he can get a new Infinity Stone and Nick starts to recruit new people to his Secret Ultimates, Captain America steps down because there is a lot of political dickery going on and Black Widow is now the SHIELD director. Eventually the SECRET SECRET Ultimates show up and get beaten and it doesn’t really lead to much except another Gem if I remember.
Seriously Reed Richards Is An Asshole
And then Reed, (Lady) Kang and Quicksilver show back up with Hulk to wreck shit up. Kang is from the future and she’s trying to get Reed to save the world with his super mind. Reed eventually removes Tony’s tumor – which was another infinity gem, but Tony’s mind turns into living electricity or something so now he can scientifically control Iron Man and machines and he turns the evil plan against Kang who turns out to be future Sue Storm (Sue Storm in this current time line is getting it all day and night from Ben Grimm who isn’t stuck as a rock man). A bunch of fighting goes on, Iron Man gives Thor a science powered Mjolnir again and the team stops Kang and Reed dooming their universe and Kang Sue is like “screw you guys I’m going back further.” And they have most of the Infinity Gems now because it turns out Reed was creating disasters to grow them artificially.
Let’s Just Blow Up Our Enemies With A Rail Gun
Meanwhile in the X-men, the sentient seed came back and now it is a living forest turning Utopia into a real Utopia. Nomi and her crew including Psylocke are still grumbling even though lots of mutants are now moving to Utopia. Thunderbolt Ross comes with his troops because now that Cap stepped down as president, mutants are now considered government property but they get their asses kicked. Meanwhile meanwhile, Jean Gray came over to try and get Utopia to join Tian, Rogue is best friends with the sentient forest and Wolverine Jr is sad because he’s looking for a purpose. Jean decides that because Kitty still wants Utopia to be its own thing, she’ll try and blow it up. This sets off a stupid war between the two nations. Jean uses her mentally handicapped flying puppet to destroy the forest, Kitty ends up using mutant powers to make a rail gun to blow up Tian to save Wolverine Jr after Colossus takes over Utopia for her. And there is other stupid stuff with a fight between Psylocke and Jean for some reason but it ends up with Tian being destroyed, Jean is defeated and everyone lives happily ever after til the end of the universe (woops).
To Those About To Roxxon
And then Miles gets pulled back into being Spider-man by Spider-woman who teams up with Bombshell, Cloak and Dagger to fight Roxxon who are illegally producing new mutates with the help of Afro Zola, Mister Sinister and a few other people. They stop the bad guys and are now sort of a new team. And that is where we are now.
The biggest issue is most of the characters are non-players. I didn’t find myself connecting to them. The stories, while sharing a shared universe, seem to take way too long to get anywhere and even while countries get destroyed it doesn’t feel big. It doesn’t feel – not like it doesn’t matter, but as if there is no consequence. And the number of dropped plot threads is heinous at times. It feels muddied but if you want to read something, Ultimate Comics: Spider-man is the way to go.
