Marvel’s Ultimates #1 Preview Assembles the Ultimate Avengers

Iron Lad, Doctor Doom, Sif, and Thor band together to restore lost heroes in The Ultimates #1.

June 2, 2024, 9:30pm

Ultimates… assemble!

Years ago, the Maker — a villainous Reed Richards from the original Ultimate Universe, Earth-1610 — used a time machine called the Immortus Engine to remake the world. In the new Ultimate Universe, Earth-6160, the Maker established his secret council of villains and systematically erased this world’s superheroes from existence. Howard Stark, a.k.a. Iron Man, managed to trap the imperator inside his future city in Latveria, giving his teenage son, Tony Stark, time to fix the world.

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As the armored Iron Lad, Tony assembled other heroes from an erased age — including Doctor Doom (Reed Richards of Earth-6160), the Asgardian god Thor, his warden, Sif, and a still-frozen Captain America — and escaped six months into the future after an attack by Captain Britain left Thor badly wounded. Meanwhile, the Maker’s Council commandeered a Stane/Stark satellite to destroy Stark Tower in New York, framing Tony for the terrorist attack that killed thousands.

The Ultimates #1 (2024) cover by Dike Ruan.

In Ultimates #1, which spins out of Jonathan Hickman’s Ultimate Universe #1 and is written by Deniz Camp (Children of the Vault) and drawn by Juan Frigeri (Invincible Iron Man), the Ultimates take refuge in their secret headquarters: an off-the-books Stane/Stark satellite. It’s there that the Ultimates plot to avenge the lost heroes before the Maker escapes the City in 18 months’ time.

“Their basic mission is tooverthrow the council and prepare the world for whatever is going toemerge from the Maker’s time-accelerated City in 18 months. To do thatthey plan to form an ‘Ultimates Resistance Network,’ the exactconcept/mechanics behind which will be spelled out in the first issue,” Camp exclusively told ComicBook when previewing the new series, which joins a lineup of revamped Ultimate titles that includes Ultimate Spider-Man, Ultimate Black Panther, and Ultimate X-Men. “Butwhat I can say is that every issue will be a complete, done-in-onestory, and almost every issue is going to introduce a new version of aclassic Marvel character. 18 months to build the Marvel Universe and free the world. No pressure.”

Marvel Comics has released new preview pages from the first issue, below, before it hits stands June 5.