TheSumOfGod said:
Do you think it has any staying power, that it will last as long as 616 already has, that one day our grandchildren will be picking up Ultimates 37 issue 1?
Personally, I think that a few years from now, when the Ultimate Universe will have become boring, when every 616 story will have been re-done and re-re-done, and sales will be dropping, they'll simply MERGE 616 and Ultimate continuities together in a "Crisis"-type event, and re-start Marvel all over again.
What do you think?
To be realistic and frank, Marvel rarely has a decent idea of what they want to do and where they see their company and characters headed in TWO years. 40-50 years is way beyond the tenure of anyone who was involved in creating Ultimate.
With that said, originally, Ultimate was supposed to offer a sort of "new" Marvel Universe for "new" fans, as well as give older ones a rejuvenated shot at the classic formulas, only revisioned to work better in the 21st century, and since it had no baring on the original, classic 616, it was like havin' cake and eating it too, yes? But then a few years passed and things that were a "hit" in Ultimate started leaking into Marvel. The best examples are:
1). Spider-Man's ability to keep his mask or his identity secret going from "mildly competant" to "careless teenage girl" level
2). SHIELD in 616 being mistaken and handled like another "extention" of the U.S. like it is in Ultimate, which it isn't, and Nick Fury being a completely unreasonable, almost Fascist figure, which he isn't.
Plus, after a few years Marvel tried "expanding" the line into other extentions, like they do with all franchises (SPIDER-MAN, X-MEN), and as predictable, the stuff that has merit flys, and everything else falls. After USM and UXM, you had UMTU, which flopped after a while. Then you had ULTIMATE ADVENTURES published out of an inside company dare than a need to tell a story (although I actually enjoyed it to some extent), which is a ******ed reason to publish ANYTHING. And then two stabs at ULTIMATE ELEKTRA & DAREDEVIL, which obviously didn't take because it'd have become an ongoing if it had. And then you have the random "Ultimate event" mini that has some story that intermingles 1-2 books at once for some grand plot, and these stories almost always aren't worth all the hype. The only two "extention" titles were ULTIMATES (and its sequal), which became a book so riddled by lateness that you almost forget it, since only about 3-4 issues are published a year, and ULTIMATE FANTASTIC FOUR, which thankfully was a worthwhile extention of the line because it added one of Marvel's original franchises to the universe.
More time passes, and Marvel realizes that they need to "rejuvenate" some characters for a new audience, and feel like retconning their entire history and start from scratch, with a more "modern" approach to their mythos. The logical place for that would be an Ultimate version, but since when did logic factor into Marvel editorial meetings? So you have relaunches like BLACK PANTHER (least the first arc or so) or STRANGE that bulldoze past the 616 stuff but aren't Ultimate, and so really have no use or value. The fact is that Marvel's editorially lost interest in Ultimate to some degree, especially since Ultimate "events" always suck and underperform, getting big name "Hollywood" talent like Brian Singer has been impossible, and naturally without "events", they only sell on "successful formula", a concept Marvel feels has no place in a modern market. So really the only reason Ultimate books have lasted this long is because they all still sell within the Top 20-30 every month (at least the ongoings do). Heck, they sometimes used to outsell their 616 counterpart titles by tens of thousands of issues before Marvel changed gears back to "event full of death and destruction a year, no downtime, repeat" from about 2004, which always lead to a short term surge in sales, but need extended "events" year after year to maintain. And here we are.
40-50 years is too long to predict. But in a way, the Ultimate formula is a formula that is rather "old school" but has done well in a modern day. Have a strong central idea and themes for characters, have a very small line of comics that are essential (nature takes care of the unfit titles), and rather than throw all your eggs into one basket with events, spread them out with high quality single titles. Marvel doesn't seem to want to do that with 616 comics anymore.
