Reports of the death of the Ultimate Universe may have been premature, as Marvel announced today that Jonathan Hickman and Bryan Hitch will spotlight the “other” Marvel Universe in a new four-issue miniseries titled Ultimate Invasion.
Ultimate Marvel, later called Ultimate Comics and sometimes referred to as the Ultimate Universe (designation 1610 in Marvel’s multiverse) launched back in 2000 with Ultimate Spider-Man, Ultimate X-Men, Ultimates and other more “modernized” versions of Marvel’s heroes. Top creators like Brian Michael Bendis, Mark Bagley, Mark Millar and Hitch himself created these alternate stories that went in different directions than their 616 counterparts. For instance, Ultimate Peter Parker died and was replaced by Miles Morales as Spider-Man, while Ultimate Reed Richards became The Maker, a villain who would go on to plague the regular 616.
The whole thing came to a close in 2015, when Hickman wrote Secret Wars and brought the Ultimate universe to an end — though some characters made their way to the 616.
“[Revisiting the idea of Ultimate Comics] couldn’t be replicating or revisiting what Bryan did in the original Ultimates—creating a streamlined, modernized version that would eventually become the spine of the MCU, and it certainly couldn’t be what I did, which was a final chapter of a pre-existing universe,” Hickman told Entertainment Weekly. “We also thought the very idea of Ultimate Comics needed to be inverted from what the original universe was—we wanted this to be something that could really only exist in the comic space: a new way of thinking about, and enjoying, a new version of the Marvel Universe. I’m pretty happy to say that it feels like we’ve accomplished those things and we’re very excited for everyone to get to read it.”
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