Nick Fury, classically depicted as a white career soldier who charmingly barked orders from behind a cigar, was now a black survivor of off-the-books intrigue in the Gulf War who had become a megalomaniacal spymaster.
Iron Man was an unrepentant alcoholic and high-class sexual predator whose battle-suit looked like it came straight out of the latest anime. The new Captain America was the most remarkable of them all. Gone was the kind and purehearted patriot of old; in his place stood a scowling, bullying, self-righteous, America-first warrior who longed for the moral binaries and clear-cut masculinity of the Second World War.
You think this letter on my head stands for France? In other words, this Captain America was a personification of the Bush-era American self-image. That characterization acts as one of the most brutally discomfiting critiques of American machismo ever told in superhero fiction. That politically motivated superheroism becomes more explicit as The Ultimates goes on, and it climaxes with an astoundingly violent commentary on American adventurism.
About midway through the saga, the team are dispatched to Iran in order to dismantle its military. They do so bloodlessly, but they make innocents into enemies. A reedy local boy named Abdul watches in horror as the American invaders do as they will with his country, then, in a frightening subversion of the classic Captain America origin story, joins a super-soldier program so he can become strong enough to stand up to the U.
That program turns out to be part of a covert effort by the governments of China, Russia, North Korea, and Syria to build their own superpowered coalition of the willing. They call themselves the Liberators and they attempt to fight the Iraq War in reverse, enacting regime change in a belligerent and unchecked Land of the Brave. The Ultimates defeat the Liberators, but their victory during a battle in Washington, D. Even worse, they have no idea they are supervillains. When The Ultimates debuted, the question of metahuman motivation was only really relevant for the niche market of comic-book readers.
Today, superhero fiction is one of the most lucrative genres in global entertainment. Sadly, we have yet to see a big-budget superhero movie that bothers to portray spandex-clad adventuring in a way that makes a viewer squirm and think hard about why, exactly, they keep coming to these movies.
Even The Ultimates got defanged when it, in modified form, went to the box office. He also deleted all the big questions. As is true in its predecessors and successors in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, any mistakes the protagonists make are either the result of temporary deception or are absolvable moral stumbles on the path toward a better future.
The Avengers is a wonderful movie, one of the best of the Superhero Boom. Along with numerous allies and S. During a meeting, in which Susan Storm informed S. The Ultimates barely escaped, but Captain America decided to be left behind in order to stop the villains, although he was defeated.
While Reed Richards was remolding the world to his shape, Thor faced the Hulk and was defeated, and Hawkeye unsuccessfully tried to rescue Captain America, only to be defeated by Kang.
Stark started working, in one of his secret warehouses, on a way to stop Richards, Anthony unsuccessfully tried to remove an encrypted code from Stark's armors, and Tony created a gauntlet to control the Power Gem.
Stark was attacked by Quicksilver, who came to collect the latest discovery of the Dark Ultimates, that one of the remaining gems was inside Tony Stark's brain. Trons were trying to reach the Earth's core in order to acquire the final gem. Richards finally got the penultimate gem, and left Tony Stark to die. Tron in order to use it to free the captive Ultimates from the Negative Zone. The Ultimates finally confronted an out-numbered Reed Richards along with the Howling Commandos , but the Maker's cavalry arrived in the form of Kang wielding the final gem, who also revealed herself as being the Susan Storm from a near future.
Tony first used the gems to revive his corpse and transfer his consciousness back to his body. When he was about to face Richards, an immense flux of energy echoed through time and space and the Gems were destroyed.
Kang stated that what she tried to prevent just happened, and she left stating she would try to go back further in time. Unknown to them, the flux of energy had brought a powerful being known as Galactus from another universe to this one, and it started approaching Earth. When Galactus finally arrived to Earth, he appeared in New Jersey and destroyed it. They were easily overpowered by him as Iron Man performed some readings on Galactus' energy signature and discovered it wasn't from this universe.
Iron Man discovered the entity came from the same universe a Peter Parker temporarily came from months ago , Earth The Ultimates decided to use a portal recovered from a visitor from Earth to go there and ask for help to their Reed Richards , as suggested by the visitor. Before they could decide who would go, Reed Richards appeared and recommended to put their differences aside and let him go, as he could access to the other Richards' files in case he wasn't available to help them at the moment.
Both heroes managed to arrive to Earth, extract the information needed and return. After accidentally revealing themselves to Galactus, the cosmic being started approaching the Triskelion. To give S. Captain America directed the jet towards Galactus' face and was last seen abandoning it before it crashed, however his fate remain unknown. However, Thor was also left stranded in the Negative Zone as he had to push Galactus in order for the cosmic entity to enter to the portal against its will, but the Earth was ultimately saved.
In the wake of the near-destruction of Earth, and finding himself without Thor or Captain America, Stark decided to disband the Ultimates. But Spider-Woman and other young heroes continued the legacy of this team in the form of the Young Ultimates.
Following the destruction of the entirety of Earth, [15] the original members of the Ultimates Captain America, Giant-Man, Hulk, Iron Man, and Wasp were brought back to life by the Maker when he rewrote the Multiverse in order to merge all realities into one to help Eternity fight the First Firmament. Eventually, the members of both teams realized they shouldn't be fighting each other and confronted the Maker, who proceeded to kill Captain America for disobeying his commands.
After defeating the Maker, the teams worked together to help Eternity gain the strength to finally defeat the First Firmament. Following that, the remaining members of the Ultimates decided to travel the Multiverse to hunt down the Maker.
Since then, Earth had been returned in its entirety. The Ultimates, or at least a portion of them, returned to their native universe. They were seen assisting Spider-Man apprehend the Green Goblin.
Marvel Database Explore. Connect With Us Discord Twitter. Achievements Leaderboard List of Badges. Explore Wikis Community Central. Register Don't have an account? Ultimates Earth View source. History Talk 2. Do you like this video? Play Sound. Underestimate us. We've fought invasions and monsters, vampires and clones.
And we've always won. In the weird internal logic of The Ultimates , it makes perfect sense. Ultimate Wasp is a tricky character to place on this list. On the one hand, the portrayal of her character is done right, but the treatment of her character is completely wrong. In the Ultimate Universe, Janet Van Dyne is an exceptionally smart woman with mutant powers that allow her to shrink to the size of a wasp.
Coming at a very turbulent time in American history, The Ultimates is a direct response to the rise of the War on Terror, and positions the superheroes in a world governed by superpowers reeling from the destruction of the World Trade Center.
By making them such damaged individuals, it feels like a definite statement about not only who has the power in this world, but who we elect to be trusted with that power.
At their core, The Avengers are at their best when they're big, bold and colorful. The Avengers movies, and the entire MCU, in fact, got around this by embracing the fun.
Right from the start, Marvel Studios leaned into the colorful, out of this world adventures of the heroes in a way that felt proud to be part of the legacy. The Ultimates, meanwhile, almost feels ashamed of its roots, toning down the more outlandish aspects of the characters in favor of more gritty interpretations. The Ultimates may have done so in a way that pinned the book to a specific time and place in history, but the series modernized the team and made them relevant to a current audience.
The combination of modern technology, real-world aesthetics and brand new continuity meant that the maximum amount of new fans could discover what it is that makes these heroes great in the first place. For a lot of readers, that up to date, relevant feel turned them into lifelong comic book fans. You can add Black Widow to the list of Marvel heroes who were treated poorly in the Ultimate Universe.
Things started out well for her, heading up the black ops Ultimates team until a more acceptable public persona could be faked so that she could join the A-Team, getting engaged to Iron Man in the process.
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