Board Thread:Questions and Answers/@comment-86191-20161025174807/@comment-61022-20161026180443

KalKent wrote: 9/11 never happened, according to where the World Trade Center-towers are still standing.

Did it though? Does someone specifically point out the Twin Towers and recognizes that they are the original buildings and are still standing?

If not, then I wouldn't say that the appearance of the Twin Towers in Spider-Men is an indication that 9/11 did or did not happen. The Ultimate Universe, like Earth-616 and other realities in the multiverse operate on a Sliding Timescale.

Although there has been 15 years of Ultimate Universe publications only about 3.5/4 years of time passed in the Ultimate Universe between Ultimate Spider-Man #1 and Secret Wars #1.

So from today, the Ultimate Universe's "Modern Age" happened around 2012ish. When the calendar rolls over to 2017 it'll be 2013 is and continues to move forward. That's because it continues to move forward. At the present time from Ultimate Spider-Man #1 the sliding timescale would dictate that if 9/11 did happen it would have been 11 years prior (and moving backward with each passing year) Which is a significant gap between when the historical event happened (That being 9/11) and how the Timescale pushes the Modern Age of the Ultimate Universe (Ultimate Spider-Man #1) forward.

(It has to operate on a Sliding Timescale because Miles was introduced in 2011 as a teenager who is, I'm guessing, around 15-16 years old and if time moved normally in the Ultimate Universe we'd be looking at Miles being in his early 20s now. If anything, he has probably aged roughly a year since his first appearance)

Just because nobody has mentioned 9/11 or the destruction of the Twin Towers doesn't mean it did or did not happen. The fact that there are twin towers standing in Spider-Men #1 (is this acknowledged even?)

Even then, any reference to 9/11 or the depiction of which building is standing at One World Trade Center should now be considered a topical reference in any "modern age" story because it's been over 15 years. It's not a current reference and the transition from the attacks, and the reconstruction at Ground Zero took so long to reference it in the present tense or as something that happened "recently" ages the character and circumvents the timescale.

Unless there is specific reference anything could have happened. 9/11 not happening is just as likely as it actually happening and instead of building the Freedom Tower they just built a similar set of Twin Towers.

Without a specific reference the fact that there are two towers standing in that story doesn't really confirm or deny anything. Remember, this is a universe where New York City regularly suffers serious structural damage and a lot of buildings are reconstructed as they were before instead of being outright replaced.