User blog comment:StanLee4Ever/Ultimatum Ultimate Marvel/@comment-4651179-20130915030641

Ultimatum was truly a mess.

Like an IGN reviewer said: "Reading Ultimatum is like having your older brother root through your toy box. He takes out all your favorite toys and proceeds to smash them together. Maybe he forces G.I. Joe and He-Man to kiss passionately. Maybe he ties a string of firecrackers to the whole lot and watches them explode. Imagine all that trauma. What else can you do but run downstairs and tell Mom? Only in this case, imagine Mom pats older brother on the head and rewards him for a job well done. Then she looks over to you and demands four bucks for all your trouble. That is what reading Ultimatum is like."

Ultimatum was like a bad '90s comic, bad characterization, over-sexualized females, dark and gritty art, and gore. A lot of gore.

The Ultimate Universe begun as a retold Marvel Universe, it had original stories, reinvented stories, and a lot of potential. I haven't read a lot of Ultimate Fantastic Four or Ultimate X-Men, but surely the problem of this universe wasn't Ultimate Spider-Man or The Ultimates. I heard the Ultimate Universe begun losing its track, and apparently stopped being the more-accessible-for-new-readers.

So Marvel apparently just decided to give the job to revitalize this universe to a creator who was never involved with it: Jeph Loeb. And he decided to show how much he didn't know about the Ultimate Universe, beginning with The Ultimates 3, were we could see how:
 * With no explanation, Valkyrie was now not only a super-powered hero, but also a member of the Ultimates and Thor's girlfriend.
 * Thor became just a carbon copy of his Earth-616. If you expected to see a pacifist hero with a weird hammer and normal language, prepare to find yourself with the Shakespearean hungry-for-battle Thor, who also now wielded a regular Mjolnir.
 * He ignored the fact that Tony already recovered from the death of Black Widow in the final pages of The Ultimates 2. Now he's suddenly an alcoholic sighing for Natasha.
 * He also ignored the fact Venom not only never had his trademark white spider, but also was apparently a known villain. Because he appeared once in this universe, and fought Peter Parker in a pretty discret battle, and now Wasp sees him and she's like "Oh, that's Venom."
 * How he turned Hawkeye into a crazy man with suicide thoughts.
 * How he ignores the fact Doctor Doom was last seen trapped in a pararel universe full of zombies.
 * And the worst, how he turned Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch's strong brother-sister bond into incest. Because apparently two siblings can't love each other unless they want to f***.

But obviously there were other problems. The writting: some of the dialogues are inexplicably absurd, unecessary and out-of-character, not to mention the plot for this mini-series has more holes than a Swiss cheese. Some of them are "Why would Ultron kill Scarlet Witch if he felt Quicksilver was in his way, when he could've killed Quicksilver in the first place!?!?".

But this is a little bit way too Ultimates 3 rant than Ultimatum.

And now I'm going to talk about one problem (among the many) both mini-series shared: "Sex, violence and dark and gritty are extreme!". Joeph Loeb seems to not know how to make a book a little bit more realistic without adding sex and violence to it. Mark Millar perfectly managed to capture the essence of the real world into his The Ultimates with no need of continue sex and violence. In The Ultimates 3 and Ultimatum we see how Loeb has to constantly and unnecessarily add sex to it, we have to see shadowed images of Stark and Natasha having sex, we have to see shadows of Wanda and Pietro too, we also have to see over-sexualized characters (still part courtesy of Joe Madureira and David Finch), one scene in particular shows how Thor and Valkyrie are practising with their swords, and out of nowhere, she has to answer Thor's compliment with "You should see me in bed, Thor. Very verily".

The other problem is violence. Ultimatum is full of gore. We have Blob eating Wasp (or her corpse), Yellowjacket biting Blob's head off, Magneto snapping Xavier's head, Yellowjacket being blown up by Multiple Man's copies, Cyclops decapitating Magneto, Magneto forcing Iron Man and Cyclops to vaporize Wolverine, Captain America and Thor killing zombie warriors in Valhalla, Sabretooth eating Angel's wing and snapping his neck with a kick, Doctor Strange's head exploding, and Cyclops getting shot in the head are all the ones I can remember. So much and unecessary gore, because apparently eXtreme is realistic or something.

And Ultimatum also had characters out-of-character, incoherencies and many heroes doing many stupid things.

But the thing that bothers me most is that he killed a bunch of character just for them to be replaced with carbon copies. Replaced Angel with Guardian and Wolverine with a blond younger version of him, because itroducing Ultimate Daken or Ultimate X-23 would wasn't better, apparently.

But the worst of all? Is that Ultimatum was supposed to fix the Ultimate Universe, when it only alienated many of its readers and made it just another alternate universe instead of a reinvigorative new take.