In 1939, Marvel Comics #1 featured some of the greatest pulp heroes of the Golden Age: The fiery Human Torch. The avenging Angel. The seafaring Namor the Sub-Mariner. The aquatic anti-hero and the original android avenger, Jim Hammond, joined another World War II-era legend — the star-spangled super-soldier Steve Rogers, Captain America — on the frontlines as the Invaders. The team included the Human Torch’s hot-headed sidekick, Toro, and Cap’s partner, Bucky Barnes.
Videos by ComicBook.com
That was the original Marvel Universe. When the villainous Reed Richards known as the Maker used time travel to rewrite the history of the new Ultimate Universe (Earth-6160), he created a world where the United States broke up in 1969. When Tony Stark, a.k.a. Iron Lad, and this world’s Reed, a.k.a. Doom, found Captain America entombed in ice, they set out to fix the world.
RELATED: Marvel’s New Ultimate Universe Makes a Powerful Change to Luke Cage’s Origins
Unthawed in 2024, Steve Rogers learned the history of the no-longer United States in The Ultimates #2. During the decades he spent in ice, the country became the North American Union and Regional Subsidiaries, and Captain America led the charge against Maker ally Midas — who had occupied the White House since the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963 — in a fight to free America from her capitalist conquerors.
The Ultimates went on to liberate Jim Hammond, the Human Torch, who fought alongside Captain America, Bucky, and Namor against the Nazis in the 1940s. This week’s Ultimates #10, from writer Deniz Camp and artist Juan Frigeri, reveals what became of Steve’s allies after World War II as Namor surfaces in the new Ultimate Universe.
Nazi super-soldier Johann Schmidt, the original Red Skull killed by Captain America more than 75 years earlier, inspired the Red Skulls, a Neo-Nazi movement of secessionists who appropriated the tactics and iconography of Frank Castle: The Punisher. (In the 1970s, the skull-clad former New York City police officer Frank Castle became a gun-toting vigilante in what was called “The Summer of Frank.”)
Captain America’s Ultimates storm Castletown, one of 23 militia towns across the North American Union, after learning they have connections to Nick Fury’s H.A.N.D. (Heroic Anomaly Neutralization Directorate), the S.H.I.E.L.D.-like organization controlled by the Maker and his Council to eliminate “terrorists” like the Ultimates.
As Captain America, Human Torch, Hawkeye, Wasp, and Giant-Man engage the Neo-Nazi Red Skulls wearing the Punisher’s skull, they encounter Grand Skull VI: the sixth masked mystery man to lead the Red Skulls. Human Torch and Captain America are enraged and horrified to find a taxidermied King Namor mounted to the wall like a trophy.
The Grand Skull explains that Namor was ousted from his throne by Attuma and then executed according to Atlantean law, with Namor’s body becoming a holy site for his former subjects. King Attuma had Namor exiled, and Grand Skull’s predecessor — a collector into big game hunting — had the idea to mount Namor’s corpse as a symbol.
Grand Skull sicks his army on the invaders, including his own super-soldier: John Walker, who is set aflame by the Human Torch and burned alive. Before he escapes, Grand Skull taunts Captain America: “I’m like you now, Cap. More than a man — I’m a symbol. And symbols don’t die. They just come back different.”
The Ultimates return Namor to the ocean in a burial at sea. “He was our brother, as much as any man in Arlington. But the ocean was his country. That’s where he belongs,” Steve says. “So now we give the sea back her king. May he inspire revolution, even in death.”
Later, Jim Hammond deduces Grand Skull’s identity: James Buchanan Barnes.
Ultimates #10 is now on sale from Marvel Comics. Tell us your thoughts on these shocking revelations in the comments below.
