Marvel Universe "Ending"!?!

fredzilla

According to their Twitter account...

"The Marvel Universe as you know it is done. The Ultimate Universe ans you know it is done." - @TomBrevoort #SecretWarsLive

(...and Secret Wars press conference)

MacGillicutty

http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=58625

TheOriginalGMan

Spoiler alert?

luke52

Wow! A lot going on at Marvel today!

fredzilla

TheOriginalGMan said:

Spoiler alert?

Why? Were there any specifics listed that I don't see? You don't have to click on the link.

David_D

From the coverage of the press conference (and I guess spoiler warning, but I don't think hype, solicitation, or trailers = spoilers. Spoilers are more like talking about things that actually happen in the work. So... publicity and hype warning?)

It sounds like all the universes "end" so that there is the big, amalgamated "Battleworld" that combines all the universes.

Elsiebub

"The Marvel Universe as you know it is done."

Keywords: "...AS YOU KNOW IT..."

Another variation of "... AND THINGS WILL NEVER BE THE SAME!"

After Battleworld we'll just get a somewhat rejigged 616. They're not tossing out all that continuity.

Ultimate Universe might be done, though. Finally. Mercifully.

TheOriginalGMan

fredzilla said:

TheOriginalGMan said:

Spoiler alert?

Why? Were there any specifics listed that I don't see? You don't have to click on the link.

Was supposed to be tongue in cheek. Appears I was too cute by half.

playdohsrepublic

Elsiebub said:

"The Marvel Universe as you know it is done."

Keywords: "...AS YOU KNOW IT..."

Another variation of "... AND THINGS WILL NEVER BE THE SAME!"

After Battleworld we'll just get a somewhat rejigged 616. They're not tossing out all that continuity.

Ultimate Universe might be done, though. Finally. Mercifully.

Its housecleaning. They get to throw out anything and everything they don't want, bring back things people want, leave it as close to previous continuity as possible. Also it allows them to put the Ultimate Universe to bed, while salvaging Miles Morales.

Or it could all be hyperbole and minus 1 or 2 small changes that will be retconned in a year or two anyway, nothing changes.

I think it's 50/50.

Chuck_Melville

So, basically, this is Crisis On Infinite Earths... but on Marvel.

Matt

playdohsrepublic said:

Elsiebub said:

"The Marvel Universe as you know it is done."

Keywords: "...AS YOU KNOW IT..."

Another variation of "... AND THINGS WILL NEVER BE THE SAME!"

After Battleworld we'll just get a somewhat rejigged 616. They're not tossing out all that continuity.

Ultimate Universe might be done, though. Finally. Mercifully.

Its housecleaning. They get to throw out anything and everything they don't want, bring back things people want, leave it as close to previous continuity as possible. Also it allows them to put the Ultimate Universe to bed, while salvaging Miles Morales.

Or it could all be hyperbole and minus 1 or 2 small changes that will be retconned in a year or two anyway, nothing changes.

I think it's 50/50.

That's a lot of work to salvage Miles Morales.

M

matchkitJOHN

If done right it could be a nice jumping back on point for people like me.

playdohsrepublic

Matt said:

playdohsrepublic said:

Elsiebub said:

"The Marvel Universe as you know it is done."

Keywords: "...AS YOU KNOW IT..."

Another variation of "... AND THINGS WILL NEVER BE THE SAME!"

After Battleworld we'll just get a somewhat rejigged 616. They're not tossing out all that continuity.

Ultimate Universe might be done, though. Finally. Mercifully.

Its housecleaning. They get to throw out anything and everything they don't want, bring back things people want, leave it as close to previous continuity as possible. Also it allows them to put the Ultimate Universe to bed, while salvaging Miles Morales.

Or it could all be hyperbole and minus 1 or 2 small changes that will be retconned in a year or two anyway, nothing changes.

I think it's 50/50.

That's a lot of work to salvage Miles Morales.

M

I dont think that's the primary objective, the housecleaning/rejiggering is. But cutting the Ultimate line is long overdue, kept on life support because Ultimate Spider-Man has an audience. Now they can keep Miles Morales and cut the dead weight he's tied to. It's more of a bonus.

luke52

I think I'm going to have some hard decisions to make with my pull list soon. This from Marvel and the aftermath to Convergence at DC is surely going to bring plenty of interesting books come May/June time. Where will my money? Currently mainly DC, but I think things will change.

jaydee74

I'm curious to see what we get when this is all done. How will Miles' past mesh with the 616 Peter Parker's? Should be interesting. There's a bunch of things I'm curious to see how it will all come together into some kind of cohesive Universe. Hopefully it will work for them. I can imagine this will be a great jumping-on point for new readers although as always, it will be a great jumping-off point.

TheOriginalGMan

Excuse my ignorance, but is the "Ultimate" universe kind of like Marvel's version of Earth-2 or something?

jaydee74

I guess sort of. The Ultimate Universe was Marvel's way of sort of re-doing a lot of their characters for a younger audience. If I'm not mistaken, it started with Bendis and Mark Bagley doing Ultimate Spider-Man and went from there. I think it's been around for like 15 years now and they have had big hits like Ultimate Spider-Man and other titles that haven't been so great.

SolitaireRose

So, here it is….and I think, tentatively, this could be a good thing. They have been building to it for a while, and as someone who has followed Hickman’s stuff at Marvel, he has REALLY dropped in a lot of clues and foreshadowing all the way back to Secret Warriors.

And, because we’re comics fans, I am going to speculate:

Worlds will live, worlds will die and nothing will ever be the same. ^_^

Marvel can start fresh with new #1s, meaning a “New 52” like sales explosion…and Marvel is a LOT better at getting publicity than DC’s team, so expect something like when the New 52 started, only bigger. If I were a comic shop, I’d be starting my ad buys NOW and saving money for radio, TV and cable stuff. Star Wars #1 has shown that there’s a hell of a lot of clout for a Marvel promo push.

I can see some of the characters from the Ultimate Universe taking the place of the ones in the Marvel Universe…and the Ultimate Universe is done. Sales have been terrible since Jeph Loeb screwed it all up with Ultimatum, and the three attempts to revive it have fallen flat. It’s a shame, because at one time, I liked the Ultimate Universe books much more than their main universe counterparts.

This will probably straighten out the time travel stuff, give them a “hypertime” like way of getting out of past continuity screw-ups and generally tidy up a 50 year old fictional universe.

I hope they don’t start everything fresh…and by that I mean, Fantastic Four #1 starting with their origin, and the old stories are retold. DC struggled with that in their early New 52 books, and now has a LOT of revamped origins to communicate and the Secret Origins book ran out of steam rapidly. The Justice League starting with them coming together, but Batman having been around for 5 years made it rough reading for continuity folks.

Since this has been in the works for a few years, and Marvel editorial is good about this stuff, we probably won’t get things like Morrison’s Batman or Geoff Johns Green Lantern type messes where a story continues through a reboot/revamp.

Will this be another creator shuffle like was done when Bendis left Avengers?

This could be why they are taking some big chances like Captain America getting old, Tony Stark staying inverted, Namor dying, the X-Men time travel stuff and everything else. When they knew they were hitting the reset button on Spider-Man, they did the stuff like exposing his secret identity…and they’ve known they were doing this since at LEAST the start of Marvel Now, IMHO, since Hickman’s Avengers run has been all about this.

Me, I’m excited about it. It feels like a BIG story and one that has a lot of interesting moving parts. Marvel is also much better at this sort of thing than DC because their editorial works together much better than DC’s. I’m also looking forward to what DC does after Convergence, as the word is that they are moving to more creator based work rather than editorially driven work. This fall could be a very exciting time to be a super-hero comic book fan. Add to that all of the big names going to Image to do creator owned work….

WetRats

Matt said:

That's a lot of work to salvage Miles Morales.

M

He's worth it.

Matt

WetRats said:

Matt said:

That's a lot of work to salvage Miles Morales.

M

He's worth it.

There's only one Spider-man; Ben Reilly...or was he the clone...or was he original who thought he was the clone....or a clone of a clone...

M

WetRats

I'm more interested in the end result than I am in the big, over-the-top, break-everything-before-we-fix-it event.

If it turns out to be amazingly well-done, I'll happily read some trades after the fact.

Same with whatever happens at DC post-Convergence.

I have long since reached the Event Event Horizon.

SolitaireRose

TheOriginalGMan said:

Excuse my ignorance, but is the "Ultimate" universe kind of like Marvel's version of Earth-2 or something?

The Ultimate Universe was created as an easy entrance point for the people who wanted to start reading Marvel books. At the time, the trade situation at Marvel was a NIGHTMARE…and Joe Quesada was brought in as Editor in Chief to fix it. Remember that when the first X-Men movie came out, the X-Men were still in 90’s neverending story mode, they had next to no entry level trades available, and when Fox paid Marvel for a X-Men story in TV Guide (which sold MILLIONS of copies back then), Marvel editorial submitted an 8 page story that was utterly unreadable unless you’d been reading the comic for the last few years.

So, Quesada came in, and with Bill Jemas, they developed a line of books (Ultimate) that would run 6 – 7 issue story arcs, be new reader friendly and mirror the movies more closely.

Then, they screwed it up.

Chuck_Melville

matchkitJOHN said:

If done right it could be a nice jumping back on point for people like me.

Or, alternatively, a jumping off point. I remember Onslaught, and that I walked away from Marvel for several years after that.

WetRats

Chuck_Melville said:

matchkitJOHN said:

If done right it could be a nice jumping back on point for people like me.

Or, alternatively, a jumping off point. I remember Onslaught, and that I walked away from Marvel for several years after that.

As the only Big 2 books I'm getting at this point* are the undoubtedly-doomed Silver Surfer, the eventual last issue of Hawkeye, the utterly-out-of continuity Miracleman reprints and the why-isn't-this-an-Image-book Astro City, there's really nowhere for me to jump but on or aside.


*Not counting trades.

Hex

SolitaireRose said:

Tony Stark staying inverted, Namor dying

These two recent outcomes from Axis were big indicators (to me) that the reset button is coming. There is no way that Marvel is going to kill off Namor - one its longest running foundation characters - (for any length of time), and Tony's current situation is deja vu of the 90's Crossing debacle that left us with Teen Tony. That mess required the Onslaught and Heroes Return reset to bring Iron Man back to his former glory.

Brack

By the sounds of things so far, it's the universes that are ending, not necessarily the characters from those universes or their histories.

I suspect in the end, the new universe (or should that be New Universe?) that emerges will be a varied soft to hard reboot depending on the characters. Seems unlikely they'll radically change the background of characters with recently launched titles like Squirrel Girl or Howard the Duck, but some longer running titles certainly could use a continuity spring clean.

WetRats

I'd be surprised if they altered either Ms. or Captain Marvel very much.

compsolut

WetRats said:

As the only Big 2 books I'm getting at this point* are the undoubtedly-doomed Silver Surfer

This is one of my biggest fears. Silver Surfer being the main one. I am so digging this book from the story to the art. It is such a great book (coming from someone who has never read Silver Surfer before this volume) that cancelling/changing direction in it might very well drive me away from buying this as well as other Marvel titles. Will it ever be possible to let some super heroes stay in their own series, essentially out of the Marvel Universe, and be pulled in by other titles as needed, without impacting their own namesake titles?

Torchsong

Marvel is doing Crisis on Infinite Earths aka Secret Wars.
DC is doing Secret Wars aka Convergence.

Everything old is new again.

WetRats

compsolut said:

WetRats said:

As the only Big 2 books I'm getting at this point* are the undoubtedly-doomed Silver Surfer

This is one of my biggest fears. Silver Surfer being the main one. I am so digging this book from the story to the art. It is such a great book (coming from someone who has never read Silver Surfer before this volume) that cancelling/changing direction in it might very well drive me away from buying this as well as other Marvel titles. Will it ever be possible to let some super heroes stay in their own series, essentially out of the Marvel Universe, and be pulled in by other titles as needed, without impacting their own namesake titles?

If it would sell well enough, sure.

But sadly, it seems that the farther a title is removed from the event/big picture structure, the less it sells.

Dammit.

OTOH, I also feel that books like this could do much better with a well-conceived marketing approach. Every member of the Bowtie & Fez Brigade, for instance, should be reading this.

Brack

Torchsong said:

Marvel is doing Crisis on Infinite Earths aka Secret Wars.
DC is doing Secret Wars aka Convergence.

Everything old is new again.

To be fair, Hickman has been doing Crisis on Infinite Earths for the past 2 years of Avengers and New Avengers. Secret Wars seems to be what happens after the heroes fail to stop the "Crisis". And since Time Runs Out started, the Doom thread in that story has very much hinted that what happens next as being related to the original Secret Wars.