This article has been updated since its publication.
Via Entertainment Weekly, Marvel have announced “Ultimate Invasion,” a four-issue series by writer Jonathan Hickman and artist Bryan Hitch, that will see the return of Earth-1610, aka the Ultimate Marvel Universe. The comic revolves around the Maker, Reed Richards’s evil Ultimate variant, who decides to bring about his world’s “grand return,” forcing the Illuminati to reunite “to stop him from his plans to destroy — or perhaps rebuild — the universe, with Miles Morales at the center of it all!”
Hickman and Hitch are no strangers to the Ultimate universe: Hitch helped launch it by penciling “The Ultimates” in 2002, while Hickman penned several series (including 2011’s “Ultimates” series, which introduced Reed’s Maker persona), before effectively closing out the world with 2015’s “Secret Wars.” Hickman tells EW, “I think it’s fair to say that both Bryan and I have already put in our time doing Ultimate books, so when Marvel laid this project in front of us, we both knew there needed to be a good reason to revisit the idea of ‘Ultimate Comics’ beyond telling a cool story or just getting to work together, which is something we’ve been trying to do for years. So with that in mind, it couldn’t be replicating or revisiting what Bryan did in the original ‘Ultimates’ — creating a streamlined, modernized version that would eventually become the spine of the MCU — and it certainly couldn’t be what I did.”
As Hickman says, the Ultimate Marvel line was originally intended as a friendly setting for newcomers, free of the decades-long continuity of the main comics, which dissipated thanks to its own, wildly divergent continuity, as well as the decision to port over characters like Miles Morales (who originated in Brian Michael Bendis and Sara Pichelli’s “Ultimate Spider-Man” run), and the Samuel L. Jackson-inspired reinvention of Nick Fury into Earth-616. While Earth-1610 was revealed to still exist in books like “Spider-Men II,” it was no longer the setting for ongoing series either. Incidentally, in Donny Cates’s 2018-2021 “Venom” run, it was shown the Maker had taken over the universe, a loose end this series might resolve.
Hickman adds, “We [thought] the very idea of ‘Ultimate Comics’ needed to be inverted from what the original universe was. We wanted this to be something that could really only exist in the comic space: a new way of thinking about, and enjoying, a new version of the Marvel Universe. I’m pretty happy to say that it feels like we’ve accomplished those things and we’re very excited for everyone to get to read it.”
“Ultimate Invasion” #1 will be released on June 21, with a preview set to arrive beforehand in May 6’s “Free Comic Book Day 2023: Avengers/X-Men.”
