Want to Start Reading Spider-Man or X-Men Comics? Go Ultimate!

Did you love the Spider-Man movies? Thought the X-Men movies were cool? Even liked the Fantastic Four movie? Did you want to read more about them, but were intimidated to start reading series that have been around for decades? Well Marvel Comics has a solution to your dilemma. Go Ultimate!

Marvel Comics a few years back realized that with all these new movies and all the publicity to their comics they needed an easy way for new readers to be able to start reading Marvel Comics. They knew that not many people would really want to start reading issues all the way from the 30's and work their way forward. So they came up with a solution. The Ultimate Universe.

The Ultimate Universe is a line of comics featuring new, updated versions of old Marvel favorites, including; Spider-Man, The X-Men, The Fantastic Four, The Avengers, and more.

It started in 2000 with the first Ultimate title, "Ultimate Spider-Man". This re-imagining of the Spider-Man character is great! It is one of the few superhero comics that I collect, and was my introduction to the world of comics. This version of Spider-Man is a character that is more in touch with today's teenagers. Peter Parker isn't a photographer for the Daily Bugle, he's the webmaster! Most of the changes are minimal so that anyone not obsessed with the original comic books won't notice, or at least won't care too much about the changes. The writing for this series is great, and right on the money, so any minor changes in the Spider-Man story really don't matter.

In addition to "Ultimate Spider-Man" another of my favorite Ultimate Universe titles is in fact "The Ultimates". This is the new re-imagining of The Avengers, the government super-hero group. The Avengers in the normal Marvel Comics line has gone through too many cast changes to count and would take weeks and probably months to read through the back issues to become up to date.

Old faces made new again. Ultimate versions of old favorites.

Credit: Bryan Hitch

Copyright: Marvel Comics Group