One of the most interesting announcements coming out of New York Comic Con for this year was the return of Marvel’s Ultimate Universe.

The Ultimate Universe was conceived of in the early 2000’s, acting as an alternate, continuity-free version of the Marvel universe. This would allow new audiences seeing Spider-Man and the X-Men to have an easier-to-digest launching pad for getting into comics.

It was a massive success — giving us many of the templates of the versions of these characters that appeared in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but most notably, it's where the alternate Spider-Man beloved by millions, Miles Morales, debuted.

In 2015, recognizing that the Ultimate universe had gotten a bit too big for its britches, and that the books then on the shelves were a bit more accessible than they were decades earlier, Marvel merged the Ultimate universe with Marvel proper1 in the latest version of Secret Wars.

Lo and behold, the Ultimate Universe returns in 2024, this time architected by Jonathan Hickman who recently successfully relaunched the X-Men, and in a funny twist, wrote the version of *Secret Wars* that killed the Ultimate Universe in the first place.

The flagship book of this run is most definitely Ultimate Spider-Man, which marks the first time Hickman will be writing Peter Parker, and in a rather cool twist, gives us an aged-up, has-a-wife-and-kids version of the character. It’s very Peter B. Parker.

But wait!

Marvel today has added another twist with the reveal of the cover of Ultimate Spider-Man #2…which features a version of the Green Goblin that basically reads as “Legally Distinct Sam Raimi Green Goblin”.

I’m now wondering if this book is going to — much how the Spider-Verse movies have on film — be a mish-mash of multiple versions of the character’s history, with the intent being to find what the core of the character is.

With one of my favorite writers writing my favorite fictional character, I was already in for Ultimate Spider-Man. Now? I’m counting the days down to January.

  1. OK, they really just brought over Miles Morales and a weird version of Reed Richards. ?