By the end of the 90s, Marvel's sales, as well as every other comic publisher at the time, plummeted (Riesman, 2015). Partially due to the speculator market and the intense glut of some series (as well as the declining quality across multiple publishers at that time), the drop from nearly a billion dollars in combined sales to just under 300 million led to a corporate restructuring and Marvel filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. The future was beginning to look very grim for the "House of Ideas" as what seemed like a never-ending wave of catastrophes struck one after the other, and it became very clear that something drastic had to be done. There needed to be a change that could shake things up and attract new readers.
The problem, identified by nearly anyone who had grown tired of reading comics at the time, wasn't just a dip in quality. There had been many ups and downs in the modern world of comic storytelling over the years. The dramatic drop in those 90s comics came from various sources, but none more prevalent than the need to acknowledge the 60 years of continuity built up since the first comics started printing (Riesman, 2015). Spider-Man had spent years dealing with the existential crisis of whether or not he was a clone (Check out multiple episodes of our show for more information on that), the X-Men had grown to the point that they had two separate groups of teenagers added as the younger class, and even Iron Man had died and been replaced by a teenage version of himself (Cronin, 2015).
This is where Bill Jemas stepped in to suggest a complete reboot of the Marvel line (Riesman, 2015). DC had already become wildly infamous for this sort of event as they've rebooted or reimagined their characters to clean house multiple times, but Marvel had never tried anything of this scale outside of the critical (though not entirely financial) failure of 1996's Heroes Reborn -which did very little to actually reboot the characters since it had just used this as an opportunity to get rid of some of the weirder elements like Tony Stark being replaced by his younger self (Donohoo, 2022). To build in an excuse for trying something so radical, Jemas and Editor-in-Chief Joe Quesada decided on creating an alternate universe known as the "Ultimate Universe" which would start with Ultimate Spider-Man (Riesman, 2015).
Shedding decades of continuity, and restoring the core premise of the Spider-Man character, Ultimate Spider-Man was a huge critical and financial success (Riesman, 2015). With more titles to follow in the same universe, it seemed Marvel had done the impossible and truly changed their fortune. As the years grew on, the Ultimate titles introduced new characters like Miles Morales and killed off mainstays like the Ultimate Peter Parker. But that's not before there was a mini-relaunch of the series with a brand new #1 so we now have two Ultimate Spider-Man #1s out there.
The second volume of Ultimate Spider-Man starts six months after a huge crossover event that was used as a means to clear out some of the characters that had caused some continuity issues (Ultimate Comics Spider-Man (2009) #1, 2009). The story was not well received by fans or critics and it's use of natural disasters in places like New York City actually means there are more pieces of continuity that are integral to understanding the world these characters inhabit.
This, unfortunately, brought about the same sort of problem the main Marvel comics had at the time, a long and confusing continuity that was continuing to be important for understanding the comics being published. Even the branding had changed at one point to Ultimate Comics and saw a relaunch of the Spider-Man title as Ultimate Comics: Spider-Man (Ultimate Comics Spider-Man (2011) #1, 2011). This meant that if you wanted to look for the first issue of Ultimate Spider-Man you had to first distinguish if that meant Ultimate Comics Spider-Man or Ultimate Spider-Man. To a casual fan, this is extremely confusing.
Actually, I lied to you. See how that says Ultimate Comics Spider-Man #1? That would make sense for the first issue of a series that is billed as part of the Ultimate Comics line, right? Well, actually, that 2nd volume of Ultimate Spider-Man I mentioned before was really the first issue in the Ultimate Comics line and this is just a relaunch of that! You wouldn't know it based on the cover because it only says "Ultimate Spider-Man" along the top! Go ahead and scroll back up to look. My citation for that book even states Ultimate Comics Spider-Man, but nobody ever reads the citations so you probably didn't even catch that when reading it the first time.
By this time there are so many confusing starting points and random pieces of universal lore that the supports were starting to crumble.
Thus, as all good things, the Ultimate Universe eventually aged and was laid to rest by 2015 (Riesman, 2015). The entire universe ended in a big galactic event and Miles Morales was rescued from the dying Earth and transplanted into Marvel's main continuity. All was right with the world.
This brings me to Ultimate Spider-Man #1 (no, not either of the three I had mentioned before). We now have a brand new Ultimate Universe with a brand new universal designation. The new Ultimate Universe is on Earth-6160. The old Ultimate Universe is on Earth-1610. Also, just for clarity, the main Marvel Universe is known as Earth-616.
From a marketing standpoint, I understand the desire to use an extremely popular brand (and one of the most popular alternate universe concepts) to promote a new alternate universe, but, I mean, can we just look at how this works with casual audiences? If I knew nothing other than I wanted to try a new comic book and I see a shiny new cover with a big numero uno slapped on the front and I picked it up, got invested, and tried to seek out more information - I would find lots and lots about a completely separate reality following a completely separate Peter Parker (or Miles Morales!).
I don't think it necessarily hurts the comic, but I also don't think it is doing Marvel any favors. This gets even more confusing when I start to look at how the Marvel movies tend to screw with the universal designations. We already know that the old Ultimate Universe was Earth-1610. That's the one where Peter died and Miles became Spider-Man and the whole universe ended. We got that. But if we were to take a look at the Spider-Verse movies, they clearly state that those movies take place in Earth-1610. Ok.
So that's a little funky. But, wait, I remember the Doctor Strange movie stating that the MCU takes place in Earth-616. That can't be right either because that's the main Marvel Universe. Hold on. I have to google this.
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Ok. So. Huh. According to Marvel.Fandom, which I acknowledge probably isn't going to be the best source in the world-but this is comics and, let's face it, most of the solutions to silly things like this come from the fans anyway, the Earth-1610 from the Spider-Verse movies is actually Earth-1610B. Also it seems that the MCU is actually Earth-199999 and all of the references to it being 616 are just wrong.
See, this is the point I was kind of making about the Ultimate Universe branding being used for this new alternate universe created by Jonathon Hickman. I love the concept, but I would prefer that we actually clean up some of the mess and not relive the same mistakes that have consistently been employed by comic publishers that cause confusion and drag down what is otherwise a fantastic idea. Marvel's 616 is still going strong, but the parts that are difficult to get through rely on having to either read multiple series to understand the full context of a story, or that rely on encyclopedic knowledge of the comics. If you're a fan of the movies or the TV shows and you want to get into your favorite characters through the comics, it's nearly impossible to be able to do so without a crash course in how these things are published. Let's say I love the X-Men and I want to check out X-Men #1. The first ever comic published with the X-Men is known as X-Men #1. That's great. Except somewhere down the line that book was rebranded as Uncanny X-Men and they decided to publish a new comic featuring the X-Men titled... X-Men. Now this second book featuring the X-Men is known as X-Men #1. So that makes the original X-Men Volume 1 #1 even though it later becomes Uncanny X-Men Volume 1. And if I want to look into the recent series? That's X-Men Volume 6 #1. This means that there have been six separate #1 issues of a book titled X-Men over the years.
Clearly people are getting into comics and are able to figure this out. The internet is obviously going to be a huge help in this regard as well, but the underlying point still stands. We are creating walls around the things that we love by what I can only imagine is a misguided desire to increase sales short term and general negligence on the part of those running some of these top publishers. We've seen what happens as gloat sets in and continuity becomes so hard to untangle from the stories we are trying to read. It's what spawned the original Ultimate Universe and it's what killed the Ultimate Universe.
Sources
Cronin, B. (2015, September 27). Remember to forget - that time Iron man turned evil, died and was replaced by his teen self. CBR. https://www.cbr.com/remember-to-forget-that-time-iron-man-turned-evil-died-and-was-replaced-by-his-teen-self/
Donohoo, T. (2022, October 2). Marvel's Heroes Reborn Doesn't Deserve All The Hate. CBR. https://www.cbr.com/heroes-reborn-liefeld-underrated-marvel-comics/
Riesman, A. J. (2015, May 26). The secret history of Ultimate Marvel, the experiment that changed superheroes forever. Vulture. https://www.vulture.com/2015/05/secret-history-of-ultimate-marvel.html
Ultimate Comics Spider-Man (2009) #1 | Comic Issues | Marvel. (2009, August 12). https://www.marvel.com/comics/issue/26854/ultimate_comics_spider-man_2009_1
Ultimate Comics Spider-Man (2011) #1 | Comic Issues | Marvel. (2011, September 14). https://www.marvel.com/comics/issue/38394/ultimate_comics_spider-man_2011_1
