10 Things You Need To Know About Marvel's Secret Wars Retcon

3. The Ultimate Line Had To Die

Sadly, as cool as the Ultimate line started off being, it's been running on fumes for a long time. The Ultimates €“ their Avengers €“ began as a satire of celebrity culture by Mark Millar and Bryan Hitch. Ultimate X-Men was edgy and explored the mutant thing in a different light. Ultimate Spider-Man provided some of the best wall crawling adventures in a good long while, but again in a different way. Then Jeph Loeb wrote Ultimatum, a miniseries that killed off the majority of those characters €“ including Spider-Man €“ and many of them in unecessarily gory ways, like Blob from X-Men biting the head off of the Wasp from Ultimates. That was supposed to provide a soft reboot, but the line never recovered. Miles Morales continuted to provide strong sales, but a rejigged Ultimate FF, X-Men and Ultimates all fell totally flat. Miles is the only thing worth saving, and he can't have a line all to himself, so a big part of Secret Wars is just about bringing him into the straight Marvel Universe and killing off the rest of the Ultimate books for good. It's probably for the best, but it's kind of a shame.