In what seems like a lifetime now, it’s been ten years since the release ofMarvel’s The Avengers, a film that definitely didn’t change the landscape of media as we know it and made less money thanGigli. What was then considered the biggest gamble in Hollywood has since turned into the landmark of an industry-standard, paving the way for more superheroes and shared multiverses to either soar or crash at the box office. LikeBatman BeginsandIron Manbefore it, modern superhero fiction owes a lot toThe Avengers. And just like modern superhero stories (for better and worse),The Avengersowe a lot toThe Ultimates, the über-edgy Marvel miniseries that laid the groundwork for what the Marvel Cinematic Universe would eventually be.
The Ultimates, written byKick-AsscreatorMark Millarwith art byBryan Hitch, was that interesting breed of series that was as highly influential as it was culturally bleak and off-putting. Published from March 2002 to 2003, the series served as a wildly different and modern interpretation of earth’s mightiest heroes for the Ultimate Marvel Comics imprint, the then-popular alternate timeline that gave creators free rein on the characters they were given. The line was already considered a success for the company after they declared bankruptcy in 1996 thanks to the reception of books such as Millar’sUltimate X-Menand the more well-received run ofBrian Michael Bendis’Ultimate Spider-Man, andUltimateswould serve as the next big thing for this newer take on the Marvel universe to some very interesting results.
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When President George W. Bush (an actual character in the comic) approves a new superhuman defense squad to fight the growing risk of villainous threats, General Nick Fury sets out to recruit various heroes of the modern day (which largely resembles the Avengers lineup from the first aside obvious exceptions) to form this strike force as the Ultimates. Beyond the initial setup of the series,The Ultimatescan be seen as either two things: an offensive and dated action thriller about superheroes thatthinkthey’re doing the right thing, or a provocative and unrestrained commentary on the motivations behind peace-keeping and nationalism in a post-9/11 world; admittedly, sometimes it’s both at the same time.
This is a take on the Avengers where Captain America is shown as a smug, warmongering oorah-type, Iron Man as a chummy alcoholic with a death wish (which isn’t far off from the Iron Man we know today), and the Hulk as this raging cannibal filled with misogyny and bad gay jokes (the less said about the uncomfortable relationships between Giant-Man/Wasp, and later Scarlet Witch/Quicksilver, the better). For all their timely quips and intense displays of action, the actual Ultimates team is the superhero equivalent of the“We saved the city”meme, where it’s hard to balance whether they did more harm for the people they’re protecting than good.
That isn’t to say the series is not without merit. Looking back on the series, it’s easy to see what made it so popular at the time as well as what made it an integral resource for the development of the MCU. The Ultimates team served as a superhuman task force run by the government to prevent outside threats, the version of Nick Fury is literally modeled bySamuel L. Jackson(who’s referenced as a real character in the comic), and the role of the Chitauri alien race were all elements that were used as inspiration for the Avengers’ first big theatrical outing.
Other elements such as the Triskelion and the book’s themes surrounding government oversight were things that would probably result in films likeCaptain America: The Winter Soldierbeing lesser in quality had they not been properly considered. Lastly, Bryan Hitch’s art (possibly being the most iconic element from the series) had a cinematic quality that was simply unlike anything else in comics at the time, making the case for an Avengers movie to be made someday much more probable.The Ultimatesain’t perfect, but we wouldn’t have had the MCU as it stands today without it.
Even after a decade since it hit the silver screen,The Avengersstill stands as a textbook definition of a successful adaptation by taking what made Ultimates so good (and in some cases, so bad) and reshaping it to make the iconic iterations of earth’s mightiest heroes that mass audiences know and love today.
