r/ultimatemarvel

Since "616" Peter Parker is suffering from radiation poisoning due to the physical laws of "Earth-1610" and possibly has months to live at the end of What If...? Secret Wars 2026. If this issue were to get picked up as a mini series, I'd have it that both Stark and Banner survive the Triskelion's destruction and either one work with Peter on a cure for his condition. Peter would reconnect with this universes Aunt May and ask her to contact her Peter Parker to see if he could help him.

Due to "Ultimate Peter Parker's" DNA being altered to the OZ enhanced spider, this would bring the opportunity for both Peter's to meet each other that we never got to see in the main comics. During the time of running tests, "616" Peter would connect with his counterpart and his Mary Jane and talked about the events they've been through their lives. I'd bring in Gwen Stacy as well where he tells her the truth on how he lost his Gwen Stacy to his Green Goblin years ago and was just glad that there's one universe where both of them are still alive together. To help "616" Peter, I'd start with purging his radioactivity before "Ultimate Peter" gives a blood transfusion. Before the proceeder "616 Peter" would tell his counterpart and his loved ones that even if he didn't survive the procedure, he'd be glad that he'd die surrounded with counterparts of the people he loved.

The procedure succeeds, and "616 Peter's" genetic code is stabilized by the OZ formula, and his body is entirely synchronized with the "Ultimate Universe". After some time, he returns to a more active role working with The Ultimates to rebuild the world.

What I love about Ultimate Kitty Pryde is that her characterization actually evolves with the world around her. She's not permanently stuck as the quirky, awkward teenage heroine archetype. The persecution of mutants, the loss of the X-Men, Spider-Man, and the events of Ultimatum force her to grow up. In a world without Professor X, Magneto, Wolverine, Cyclops, she eventually becomes someone willing to put herself on the line for other mutants, becoming the face of the dwindling mutant resistance and the leader of her reality's Utopia.

While I do see people praise Kitty for her role in Ult.
Spidey's cast, it feels like people rarely talk about what she becomes afterward, which is honestly a shame because her post-Ultimatum development is one of the most interesting parts of her Ultimate incarnation.

I have never understood why a common criticism of Millar's work in the Ultimates universe is that it argues the Iraq War was a net positive for America, when so much of his Ultimates material can instead be read as a critique of post-9/11 American consumerist culture, militarism, and the Bush administration.

The government is portrayed as extremely fascistic throughout the universe. Ultimate X-Men, for example, opens with a DoFP-style scenario in which the Sentinels, originally developed under the Clinton administration, are deployed by Bush. This ultimately leads to Bush being stripped and paraded on live television, hardly an unambiguous endorsement of his administration.

The first Ultimates series similarly critiques the logic of the military-industrial complex. When the team is initially established, there is no genuine threat for them to fight. Banner therefore engineers one by transforming himself into the Hulk and killing hundreds of people, because he believes the team needs to justify its existence and enormous expenditure of public money. The military apparatus effectively has to manufacture the conditions that justify its own continued existence. This mirrors the broader logic surrounding the Iraq War, particularly the presentation of intelligence concerning Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. Colin Powell's 2003 presentation to the United Nations Security Council became one of the major public justifications for the invasion, despite the subsequent failure to find the stockpiles that had been claimed. The war ultimately produced enormous financial costs, with estimates of the direct and immediate costs of military operations and war funding reaching hundreds of billions of dollars and, depending on methodology and what is included, into the trillions.

The critique becomes even clearer through the superhuman arms race. Nick Fury provides corporations such as Oscorp and Trask with information that allows them to reproduce the Super-Soldier Serum and his collaboration with the EU to create the European Initiative . Rather than making the world safer, this proliferation produces many of Spider-Man's villains and contributes to an escalating global arms race. The technology that is supposed to protect America therefore creates new threats that require even greater amounts of military power to contain. The military-industrial complex effectively reproduces the threats that it claims to be protecting America from.

The Liberators are the culmination of this idea. They are not simply moustache-twirling villains whose only motivation is hatred of America. They explicitly state that they do not want to kill civilians and that their targets are the American government and its military apparatus. Their justification is that America has attempted to impose its power and entrench itself in other countries, making the Liberators a kind of Global South mirror of the Ultimates themselves. Millar gives the reader enough context to understand their position, even if their methods are still portrayed as wrong. Thor, meanwhile, functions as an explicitly anti-war conscience within the Ultimates and repeatedly challenges the assumptions underlying American military intervention.

This creates a broader theme of imperial blowback, America develops increasingly powerful weapons in the name of security, deploys them abroad, creates enemies and encourages other countries to develop their own weapons in response, and then uses the resulting threats to justify further militarisation. The superhuman arms race therefore functions as an exaggerated metaphor for the security dilemma and the consequences of American foreign policy. He even takes this further in Ultimate Avengers where he shows how pro-Democracy protests can be used by the elites to destabilise countries for their own gain in Gregory Stark.

Most importantly, the story ultimately resolves this conflict by having the Ultimates become independent from the American government. They cease being simply an extension of American foreign policy and reject their role as state-controlled weapons.

Because of this, I think it is reductive to describe The Ultimates as an argument that the Iraq War was ultimately good for America. There is certainly an aesthetic fascination with American military power the Ultimates are deliberately presented as powerful, glamorous, and spectacular but that is very different from endorsing the political system that deploys them. The actual narrative repeatedly shows militarisation producing unintended consequences, creating new enemies, proliferating dangerous technology, and ultimately becoming something that even the superheroes themselves have to reject.

I'll just assume you already know about that scene in Ultimate Spider-Man that heavily implies Wolverine, in Spider-Mans body, tried to sleep with a teenage MJ.

My question is. What possibly could have motivated Bendis putting this in his comic?

My theory? Behind the scenes grievances.

Behind the scenes grievances at Marvel and DC comics have been the cause of many a boneheaded creative decision. From John Byrne having Superman and Big Barda make a sex tape to piss off Jack Kirby, to Joe Quesada's messy divorce infamously leading to One More Day.

I can't help but feel this may have been motivated by Bendis. Bendis and Millar both had VERY different ideas for the direction the ultimate universe should go. Because if you look at the state of Marvel at the time, there was a bit of a divide between them on what direction the Ultimate universe should go.

Millar wanted a more grounded, gritty and 'realistic' Marvel universe. The 'world outside your window' except what was outside your window was the real events of the 2000s, 9/11, the Iraq War, Bush bungling Hurricane katrina. That sort of thing. And to add that tone, the characters are more 'realistic' versions of who they are in the 616. With more flaws and issues than thr 616's more idealistic versions. Captain America is a man out of time, who still has some backwards opinions on race and gender politics. Thor is a god on earth, and accepts worship as one and changes the settings conception of religion. Hank Pym, who only hit his wife once in the 616 after having a bipolar episode, is written like a realistic a pill popping person with Bipolar disorder, who when he as an episode attempts to murder his wife.
He basically wanted to push the Ultimate Universe to do things you could never get away with in the 616.

Bendis on the other hand. Clearly wanted a more optimistic or at least less grim universe. He basically wanted a more refined version of the 616, with the decades of baggage, continuity, and thousands of characters trimmed down and refined. Basically the characters he loved distilled down to their essence. Which is obvious in Ultimate Spider-Man, which many people consider the best version of the character in the comics. Ultimate Spider-Man is still more or less the Peter Parker we know and love in the 616, just earlier in his career. The villains in the spider-Man side of the universe are still who they were in the comics. MJ is still MJ. Flash is still flash. Norman and the rest of the rogues are still mostly who they were in the 616.

He wanted a version of Marvel that was more accesible and streamlined. But still recognizeable.

This creative tension between the two of them would continue until Millar eventually left the Ultimate Univers, and Marvel to do his own thing with works like Kick-Ass and Kingsman. After which Millar

Also. It's clear Mark Millar has an affection for Logan/Wolverine. He's probably the only character in the Ultimate Universe he didn't have to exagerrate or make 'realistic' because he's already a gritty grounded character with a troubled past. Old Man Logan is still one of his best works. Ultimate Wolverine, is actually one of the better written characters in Ultimate X-Men.

So what could be a better way to troll a guy who you dislike the creative direction he's taking this new universe your building, than to mess with a character he actually cares about?

So this is pure speculation. But I can't help but believe Bendis felt Millar was going too far in places with the Ultimate Universe. Especially with the Ultimate X-Men, which could become very grim and serious at times. So he decided to 'get back' at him by making one of Millar's favorite characters do something 'grounded and realistic' that wouldn't be out of place in The Ultimates. To try to show how dumb the whole idea of making a character 'grounded and realistic' is. Considering other creators at Marvel at the time like Grant Morrison, didn't care for The Ultimates and the liberties it took with the characters, especially Captain America, who even to this day is decried as 'fascist and bigoted' for being writen like a realistic person from the 40s and not an idealistic paragon. It's likely Bendis shared the same opinion.

Basically it was him going. "It's not so fun when it's YOUR favorite character being portrayed as 'grounded gritty and realistic. Is it. Mark."

This just a theory though. Not sure if there's any actual meat to it, or if it's just me seeing connections where there are none. Maybe it was just a poorly thought out joke.

With Peter’s life on the line since being displaced to the “Ultimate Universe”, I feel that Peter should receive help from his Ultimate counterpart. Heck it should still happen for Earth-616 and Earth-1610 should Marvel revisit that universe. But for this book release, it should continue as a miniseries.

Peter not knowing about Matt's blindness is so funny.