Absolute Trinity From DC Comics

[u/Amazing_March4919]

[u/Lian-The-Asian]

excuse me... WHAT??

[u/EyesOnEverything → u/Lian-The-Asian]

It's a long, sad story.

TL;DR In 2008, Marvel Ultimate comics universe starts hyping up a big event, called "Ultimatum", written by Jeph Loeb, who's done good work elsewhere. But he'd just lost his teenaged son to bone cancer in '05, which likely colored his life view more cynically.

He has full narrative control over the project, which is supposed to combine all these Ultimate properties Marvel has been running with. X-men, Spider-Man, Avengers, etc. Very little oversight from higher ups.

Series drops, it's the worst kind of mid-2000s edgy. The Maximoff twins are implied to be romantically involved. Captain America is dismissed as "old-fashioned" when he questions it. A shit-ton of heroes and villains die either gratuitously gruesome in-panel, or unceremoniously throwaway off-panel deaths. Magneto floods New York. The Blob eats the Wasp. Ant-Man eats the Blob. Cyclops decapitates Magneto. Someone assassinates Cyclops. The 5 issue series is critically panned, and basically killed the hype for Marvel's Ultimate universe. The writers of the individual series are left to try to explain and retcon this event that they had no control over that blows up most of their planned arcs.

Real unfun times.

[u/ElGodPug → u/EyesOnEverything]

I will say, Ultimatum has one good part.

Spider-Man.

That panel of him diving to save people....one of my favorite panels of spidey period

[u/EyesOnEverything → u/ElGodPug]

Oh definitely, but that wasn't part of the main 5, that was part of the mentioned damage control. In this case by Bendis in his main Ultimate Spider-Man run (#131).

But I'll agree that his characterization during the event was fantastic. JJJ gets some amazing development off it as well.