Ultimate Marvel’s Gimmick Has Become Its Biggest Weakness

Ultimate Marvel‘s return was the biggest comic news story of 2023. Since then, it’s had its rise and fall — the fall mostly caused by DC’s Absolute line — but it definitely has its fans still. Books like Ultimate X-Men, Ultimate Spider-Man, The Ultimates, Ultimate Wolverine, and Ultimate Black Panther are doing a great job telling their stories, even if they aren’t the bestselling comics around anymore. The new Ultimate books use a variety of ideas and plots to inform their universe, and one of these has helped define the books in the eyes of fans. Unlike most comics, each issue of the Ultimate books takes place a month after the one before it.

From the beginning, this was an interesting gimmick that was very different from any other comic out there. The entire point of it was to create a countdown to the return of the Maker, leading to the line’s finale in Ultimate Endgame. At first, the gimmick gave the books their own flavor, but as time went on, it’s become one of the biggest problems with the comics. With Ultimate Marvel on the way to its end, it’s time to realize that this gimmick has hurt the books more than it helped.

The Ultimate Universe’s Gimmick Limits the Drama of the Books

The Ultimate books were beloved from the beginning, and the once a month gimmick was part of that. Each book would show the events of the month it was in, all leading up to the return of the Maker. It was a very different way to tell a comic story, because it nullified one of the most important parts of comics — the cliffhanger. Cliffhanger endings are what made people come back to read a comic, month after month. The issues would end with huge moments and this would make the reader want to read the next issue. It was an extremely important part of the experience.

The new Ultimate books still ended with cliffhangers, but had to do the resolution differently. Most of the time, the next issue didn’t open up immediately after the last issue, so creators had to find a new way to resolve the cliffhanger. Some of the books did it well; The Ultimates for example, and the first four issues of Ultimate Wolverine. However, there were a lot of times when it just didn’t really feel right for the story being told. As much as I love Ultimate X-Men and Ultimate Spider-Man, these two books were the egregious offenders of this, and it showed just how weak the gimmick was.

The first time that I felt it was a big problem was Ultimate Spider-Man #11-13. These were the issues that dealt with Spider-Man and Green Goblin being trapped in the Savage Land by Kraven over the span of several months. Each issue ended on a cliffhanger and then picked up weeks later. This was a huge problem with the book, as it stretched credulity. Kraven not killing the two of them in the weeks they were in the Savage Land didn’t make any sense. As comic readers, we often have to deal with this sort of thing — like how villains used death traps instead of just shooting heroes in the head — but the Ultimate books broke even that. In a world controlled by villains, someone would have made Kraven kill them and not play with his food, as it were.

Every time you read an Ultimate book that ends on a cliffhanger, you know you aren’t going to get see the next moment, and it hurts the books a lot, in my opinion. It makes every cliffhanger ending less important, because we know that for the most part, those endings aren’t all that important. We know that nothing is going to happen to a main character in the interim between issues. Comics already have a problem with establishing stakes — since we know that major characters usually aren’t going to die — and each issue taking place in one month makes this even worse.

Gimmicks Do More Damage than Good

Gimmicks can be cool sometimes, but historically, they always become a huge problem in the comic industry. Look at the gimmick covers of the ’90s; sure, they looked cool and caught the eye, but everyone started to overuse them, and they helped lead to the collector bubble bursting. Variant covers can be pretty cool, but when a random issue of a book has multiple covers, it’s just kind of dumb. Blind bags are a big gimmick nowadays, and they’re also more disappointing than awesome.

Ultimate Marvel already had a cool gimmick; it’s an all-new version of the Marvel Universe with a villain in charge of everything. That’s not even the only gimmick; the two-year time period until the Maker shows up was also a gimmick. I understand the idea behind using the books like a countdown and what they were trying do. However, looking at the way the various creators used it, this idea hurt the comics a lot. Ultimate Marvel has lost a lot of its shine, especially in the second year, and the real time gimmick has showed how weak it is.

What do you think of Ultimate Marvel’s once a month gimmick? Leave a comment in the comment section below and join the conversation on the ComicBook Forums!

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