Ultimately unimportant?
One thing sorely lacking from Marvel’s Ultimate line is the sense of a inclusive universe. Sure, Kitty Pryde is Spider-Man’s new girlfriend, and the Ultimates guest-starred in the last arc of Ultimate X-Men. But outside of those minor instances, every title seems to exist in it’s own vacuum. Shouldn’t the Ultimates be showing up just about any time a super-villain attacks on American soil, even if it’s one of Spider-Man’s enemies? Shouldn’t the Fantastic Four get a little help from Spider-Man every now and again? Hell, shouldn’t somebody acknowledge that the Fantastic Four even exist?
Marvel’s only tried a few times to crossover the titles. Ultimate Six was a Spider-Man mini-series disquised as a Spider-Man/Ultimates event. Ultimate War was an X-Men mini-series disguised as an X-Men/Ultimates event. Both fell sort of flat. The Ultimate X4 2-parter going on right now is anything but epic. And don’t get me started on the horrid Wolverine/Spider-Man arc in Ultimate X-Men.
The Ultimate Galactus trilogy seems to be Marvel’s big attempt at a Secret Wars-type mega-crossover for the Ultimate universe. But why should I think the Ultimate Galactus trilogy will be any different than the previous crossovers? The first two minis were hurt by massive delays. Half of the Ultimate Vision prequels were published in a title I don’t read. And it appears as though the story takes place before Ultimates 2, so you know nothing too terrible is going to happen.
Let’s face it, the Ultimate Universe has become a bit stagnant lately. The line has long since surpassed it’s freshness date. It needs a good solid kick in the pants to be exciting again. And no, Bryan Singer isn’t going to do it.
You could also bring up the fact that the incredibly huge events of The Ultimates 1 & 2 (a world-wide war with aliens and world war three) go pretty much unnoticed in the insulated worlds of the other Ultimate titles.
I’m apparently in the minority, because the general idea of characters not appearing in each other’s books doesn’t bother me too much. It’s giving each team / character time to develop, which is pretty important.
Going back and reading a lot of these Essential / Showcase collections, one of the first thing I noticed was how there wasn’t a lot of acknowledgement of other heroes. That’s specifically what made the team books special. If the Ultimate line did too much interaction between titles, someone would be making the argument that we might as well just have an Ultimate Universe comic that has everyone pop in now and there. It’s just not a very big universe yet, and any time you have a guest appearance, you’ve got about 50% of the Universe in one book.
I agree that the crossovers they have done have been a bit flat, and it is nice when huge, supposedly all-encompassing stories have implications. But that’s not an indictment of the Ultimate Universe.
There’s a problem with that assessment. I prefer when there aren’t huge crossovers all the time (mostly because they’re usually done on a whim and don’t seem based in what’s been going on). I’m not saying I’d like to see more interaction in the Ultimates world.
However, it’s pretty silly that these HUGE events are going on in some books and getting NO notice in other books. That makes it seem like it’s not really an Ultimates Universe. It’s just a bunch of disparate “What Ifs.”