It’s The End Of The World As We Know It: Marvel’s SDCC 2013 Ultimate Universe Panel

So yes: the Marvel Ultimate Universe panel, held on Friday, July 19th at the San Diego Comic-Con. I’ve mentioned it a few times over the past few days, not because there were any Earth-shattering revelations at the panel (you know, beyond the question as to whether the Ultimate Universe has any future at all beyond the next few months), but as an example of how difficult it can be to truly cover any of these panels direct from the convention. When you get back to the hotel from a long day on the floor, and you’re staring at four pages of handwritten notes, one bar of $15-a-night WiFi, and your eyes look like you’ve been on a three-day meth jag in a smoke-filled room, it’s hard to sit in front a a keyboard and whip together anything that makes any sense at all.

But from the comfort of the Crisis On Infinite Midlives Home Office, it seems, in my opinion, like the subtext of the panel is that Marvel intends to kick the living shit out of the Ultimate Universe for a while, blowing some stuff up really good, before either spiking the concept of the Ultimate Universe as a whole and somehow folding it into the 616, or at least finally and officially turning it into some kind of a defacto Earth 2 for the Marvel Universe, with people traveling back and forth just as often as they did in the DC Universe back in the 60s and 70s.

So in short: it looks like Marvel intends to totally fuck up the Ultimate Universe. Must be a year with a San Diego Comic-Con.

The panel was moderated by Marvel Senior Editor Nick Lowe, with panelists Senior Editor Steve Wacker, Editor-in-Chief Axel Alonso, Ultimate Comics Spider-Man writer Brian Michael Bendis, and former DC Comics I, Vampire writer and current Ultimates writer Joshua Hale Fialkov. And rather than starting with the impending massively explodo future of the Ultimate Universe, the panel started with upcoming events in Bendis’s Ultimate Spider-Man, because, after all, they had Bendis at a convention. The last time he was at SDCC was 2010, and for a while it seemed like the only way they’d get him to another one would be to drug his milk and sling his unconscious body onto a cargo plane like B. A. Baracus.

We are smack in the middle of the Spider-Man No More arc, where Miles has been out of costume for a year after seeing his mother die at the hands of Venom (“[Miles] needed an Uncle Ben moment,” Bendis said at the panel, proving that sometimes I am smarter and more observant than I look). He will be back in costume presently, having discovered that Roxxon has been modifying people into superhumans. “Yes, all corporations are evil,” Bendis said.

“We discover how many [superhumans] Roxxon has been accidentally – or purposely – creating,” Bendis said. And those superhumans will apparently include the Ultimate Universe version of Taskmaster, which Bendis said that people have been demanding for a while now.

Alonso chimed in to express his appreciation to fandom for embracing Miles Morales as Spider-Man in the Ultimate Universe. “[Miles] was such a gigantic chance for us,” Alonso said. But with that said, these are comic books, and no one really believes that Peter Parker is gonna stay dead, right? He’s gonna come back, right? Right? Yeah, no. “Peter Parker has passed away,” Bendis said. “He isn’t coming back. But… there is a 200th issue of Ultimate Comics Spider-Man coming out…”

After a brief mention of Ultimate Comics X-Men, written by Brian Wood (who Alonso described as “part of a list of top-tier artists… we’re thrilled.”), discussion moved to Fialkov’s The Ultimates, which will apparently be moving into more standard and big-actioned superhero fare than the recent spate of Hydra dinks fomenting civil war we saw in United We Stand. Fialkov said that Marvel Editorial told him, “Whatever you’ve ever wanted to do that no one would ever let you do? Do that.” And “that,” will apparently involved the Hulk. The Hulk armed with two Infinity Gauntlets. I’m sure that will work out swimmingly for everyone involved.

Further, Fialkov said that The Ultimates will soon be facing the Dark Ultimates, to be led by Reed Richards; Fialkov said that one of the first things he started clamoring for access to was the evil, Ultimate Universe version of Mr. Fantastic, citing the fight between Richards and Stark where, “Reed Richards won that battle by cutting off the top of Tony Stark’s head.”

But Hulks with cosmic powers and evil Ultimates are only the beginning of the giant wedgies the Ultimate Universe will be receiving through the remainder of 2013. And the big bad noise will start with Hunger, a miniseries featuring the initial incursion of the 616 version of Galactus to the Ultimate Universe, to be written by Fialkov with art by Leonard Kirk and released this month. And the idea to stick Galactus came from a dinner between Bendis and writer Matt Fraction, where Bendis asked, “What’s the craziest thing [that could show up in the Ultimate Universe? Doctor Doom? And [Fraction] just said, ‘Galactus.'”

The miniseries will apparently feature Galactus out in space, as, “Ultimate Kree are there, Chitauri are there,” Bendis said. And that series will lead to Galactus making his way to Earth, and the subsequent miniseries Cataclysm, written by Bendis with art by Bendis’s old Ultimate Spider-Man cohort, Mark Bagley. And this will be the one where the shit will really hit the fan, possibly up to and including the dissolution of the Ultimate Universe… something that it seems Marvel has been trying to accomplish since Ultimatum four years ago.

“[Cataclysm is a] very important chapter in the Ultimate Universe… starring everyone,” Bendis said. “[It] breaks down the barriers between the Marvel Universe and the Ultimate Universe.”

Bendis said that, as Galactus attacks, the heroes of the Ultimate Universe will learn more about the parallel 616 Universe, as they discover they don’t know how to kill Galactus. But even as they learn they can’t figure out a way to defeat him, they are unwilling to send him back to the Marvel Universe to let him wreak havoc there, so they need to decide if they are willing to sacrifice themselves to save the people of the 616.

“This is the biggest thing that has ever happened to the Ultimate Universe,” Bendis said. And not only that, Bendis said that he considers Cataclysm, due to its universe jumping conceits (although he said that the entirety of Cataclysm takes place from the point of view of the Ultimate Universe), as kind of a psychic sequel to last year’s Spider-Men… which kind of implies that we might get some kind of meeting between Miles Morales and the Doc Ock version of Spider-Man. In fact, this is just speculation, but it wouldn’t really surprise me at all if it isn’t Miles that finally makes the definitive connection that this Spider-Man isn’t Peter Parker.

But I gotta tell you: there were a lot of indications in this panel that Cataclysm might finally be the end of the Ultimate Universe as we know it. And one of those indications was the announcement of Mark Bagley’s involvement, which Bendis said was partially to commemorate his role in starting the Ultimate Universe with his work on the original run of Ultimate Spider-Man back in 2000 or so. And that kind of commemoration isn’t the kind of thing you make a note of on an odd anniversary if you intend for things to go on in a business as usual kinda way, you know what I mean?

But still and all, it’ll be nice to see Bagley working with Bendis again, after all the work they did together on Ultimate Spider-Man. “[Bagley] paid me the ultimate compliment [on Ultimate Spider-Man],” Bendis said, “He didn’t leave.” And even better, Bagley won’t be leaving Fantastic Four with Matt Fraction to make time for Cataclysm. “We think we worked it out,” Lowe said.

But here’s the deal: a lot of this sounds like good comics. Hell, Lee’s and Kirby’s original Galactus story is one of the classics of superhero comics, and while the Dark Avengers never did a whole hell of a lot for me in the 616 Universe, but I liked Fialkov’s work on I, Vampire, and his willingness to have a somewhat elastic view of good and evil in that book, to give his Dark Ultimates story a shot.

But good comics or not, Hunger and Cataclysm sound like the possible end of the Ultimate Universe, at least as we know it. Which, in its own way, is fine; the Ultimate Universe was born to be an entry point to the Marvel characters for non-comic readers, and the Marvel Studio movies kinda meet that role now… but if you’re a fan of having that alternate world where creators can screw around with Marvel characters without the consequences of messing up Marvel’s movie intellectual properties, well, it’s kind of a bummer.

Don’t believe me, or think I’m being reactionary? Well, toward the end of the panel, one fan asked the creators and editors point blank: “Will there be an Ultimates panel next year?” And after a pause, Bendis said, “You really should read Cataclysm.”