10 Comics You Loved As A Teen (But Should Never Return To)

3. Ultimate X-Men

Ultimate X-Men
Marvel Comics

The X-Men movies were occasionally brilliant, but no one was under any illusions as to what they thought of the comics. An active dig from Cyclops about 'yellow spandex' in the first film made that clear and more, but Marvel still saw an opportunity for their comics to hopefully benefit from Fox's movies. Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely's New X-Men comic gave the team black suits, but so too did Ultimate X-Men, a reimagining of Stan Lee and Jack Kirby's creations designed to modernise the group in line with how The Ultimates did with the Avengers a year earlier.

The Ultimate Universe was an exciting prospect at the beginning of the 2000s, but its success was limited in retrospect. The legacy of Brian Bendis' Ultimate Spider-Man goes without saying, while Mark Millar and Bryan Hitch's Ultimates would later form the visual template for the Marvel Cinematic Universe in later years. Both those comics were brilliant, but later efforts weren't so fortunate - particularly Ultimate X-Men.

Although Millar had succeeded in reimagining the Avengers in a post-9/11 era, his approach towards the X-Men was less compelling. Adorned in black suits, this new team didn't have an issue with killing, and the 'modernisation' really amounts to little more other than the fact they're more lethal and more cynical than their mainstream counterparts.

The end result is something really quite ugly, but back when it was cool to hate on colourful costumes and superheroes using non-lethal methods, Ultimate X-Men found a following when it probably shouldn't have.

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Content Producer/Presenter

WhatCulture's very own resident movie guy, Ewan has been working in the content creation biz for over 10 years now, having started as a freelance contributor to WhatCulture Gaming all the way back in 2015. After graduating with a First-Class Honours in History from Northumbria University in 2017 (where he won a prize for a totally killer dissertation on the Watergate years), Ewan took on the role of Comics Editor at WhatCulture and quickly developed WhatCulture Comics into one of the biggest superhero-focused channels on YouTube. He followed this with a brief hiatus at Screen Rant in 2021, where he worked across the Gaming and Film sections as a writer and editor, before returning to WhatCulture as a Senior Content Producer / Presenter in 2023. He started his own podcast, We Love Dad Movies, in 2022, and has contributed several written pieces to the Eisner-nominated comics website Shelfdust as well. In his current role, Ewan incorporates his love of cinema, comic books, and history into written pieces and video essays for WhatCulture's Film & TV channel, as well as WhatCulture Gaming and WhatCulture Horror, with a particular focus on nineties-era Dad Movies, old school Westerns, and Golden Age Hollywood Noir. John Carpenter is his fave, and he thinks Batman Beyond should never have been cancelled. If that's your vibe, you'll probably like his stuff.