There are some wild things happening in the Marvel multiverse lately. Heroes are returning , but not in the way we remember them, and the world is wrong. Very wrong.
That, at least, is what's going down in the new Ultimate Marvel line of comics, which has so far been uniformly excellent.
A brief primer for those of you who might not understand what's going on with Ultimate Marvel: this is a new universe which has been twisted and distorted by a villain called The Maker (an evil alternate version of Reed Richards).
The Maker has built a new universe in which its iconic heroes never had their origins, and is instead ruled by a shadowy cabal of villains. Fate ultimately intervenes, however, and heroes like Spider-Man and The Avengers are given their powers and told they need to fix this broken world.
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It's top stuff, honestly. A Spider-Man who doesn't get his powers until he's already married with kids makes for a hugely different kind of hero, and just wait until you see who the Ultimate universe's Doctor Doom is.
As the Ultimate Universe comes to the end of its first year, we're finally meeting a new version of one of Marvel's biggest players: Nick Fury.
As reported by ComicBook, Chris Condon and Alessandro Cappuccio's Ultimate Universe: One Year In one-shot will show us what role Nick Fury plays in this new world, although it's too soon to tell whether he's friend or foe.
Interestingly, this Fury more closely resembles the original Marvel Comics version of the character rather than the first Ultimate Universe Nick Fury, which would prove to be the template for the most well-known version of the character: played in the MCU by Samuel L. Jackson.
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Preview pages appear to show Fury working with The Maker to round up heroes and meet with his cabal of villains, though Fury's reputation as one of the most successful spies of all time could suggest he's playing double agent here. We'll have to wait and see.
“With Ultimate Universe: One Year In, my goals were simple: Create an entryway for new readers into the Ultimate Universe; reward longtime readers, especially those who have wanted more connective tissue between the Ultimate books; AND set the stage for the next year of stories, as we build towards the return of the Maker,” Camp told ComicBook.
“All this while telling a complete and satisfying one-issue story from the bad guys’ point of view! It’s going to be dark, it’s going to be kind of cruel, and, thanks to Jonas Scharf, it’s going to be beautiful.”