When the Ultimate Marvel Universe was launched in 2000, the regular Marvel Universe was a highly problematic place. Quality of the product and sales were both down. Company President Bill Jemas and editor-in-chief Joe Quesada The idea of the new line was to enable a whole new wave of creators to tell stories completely free of the decades of continuity and editorial missteps that now hobbled the mainline universe and the creators working on it.
Well, eight years have passed and now the mini-universe which has grown in both books and characters, is now saddled with continuity of its own, which, in my opinion, has not been very well-managed. From a core universe of three books, Ultimates, Ultimate Spider-Man, and Ultimate X-Men, the line has expanded into four regular books including Ultimate Fantastic Four and a whole slew of miniseries. Of the two creators who launched the books, only Brian Michael Bendis remains, with the likes of Mark Millar, Adam Kubert, Mark Bagley, and Bryan Hitch having moved on to other things.
While he remains the writer on Ultimate Spider-Man, Bendis himself, along with Millar, is now one of the pillars on which the mainstream Marvel Universe now stands. (Incidentally, Bendis can claim the sole distinction of having the only comic book published in the 2000s to have gone for over 40 issues with sales in excess of 100,000 units, namely New Avengers.) Morever, because Bendis and Millar have moved over to the mainstream Marvel U, they've bought their "edgy, hip and relevant" sensibilities with them, and as a result the Marvel Universe has taken on a lot of the characteristics that used to be unique to the Ultimate universe with events like Civil War and now Secret Invasion. Sales are good, and even fan reaction to the latest miniseries, so it's clear that the Marvel Universe is a much healthier place than it was when Jemas and Quesada created Ultimate Marvel.
Going back to Ultimate Marvel, it appears, from a creative standpoint, to have taken a nosedive. The line's flagship title, The Ultimates, has, in the hands of new series writer Jeph Loeb, gone from wall-to-wall action interspersed with scathing political commentary to a pastiche of its former self with absolutely infantile dialogue (think of the worst of the 1960s dialogue mixed with the worst of the Rob Liefeld-era Image Comics dialogue, and that's now how the characters talk), gratuitous and meaningless guest appearances by such grossly overexposed characters as Spider-Man, Venom and, of course, Wolverine, and next to no respect for anything that has previously been established. Worst of all, it appears that Quesada is now putting the fate of the line in Loeb's hands, as indicated by some recent solicitations that shows that Loeb is writing several of the line's annuals in addition to the planned miniseries Ultimatum, which is meant to revitalize the line. Sales of Ultimate X-Men and Ultimate Fantastic Four, once right up there with the big boys, are barely blips on the radar, and Ultimate Spider-Man, even though it still has founding creator Bendis on board, isn't much better off.
It seems to me like the Ultimate Marvel U has served its purpose of generating interest in Marvel characters again in time for the release of their movies, as was the case with Spider-Man and the X-Men. The unofficially dubbed "616" or mainline Marvel universe is now as healthy as a horse, while Ultimate U has gone from looking like the "New Year Infant" to the "Outgoing Year Old Man" in its nine-year run. The Ultimates is the only title that seems to have any real durability at the top end of the sales charts, and it really seems to have very little left that make it any more "edgy" and "relevant" to readers than the mainline Marvel Universe. I'm sure the question on the minds of Marvel fans is what exactly the company's long-term plan for the line is.
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