The year is 2000 — Marvel is recovering from filing for bankruptcy and are trying
everything to stay alive.
Hot off the heels of Singer’s X-Men, but still a few years out from Raimi’s Spider-Man,
Marvel was feeling frisky.
Enter the Ultimate Universe — WHABAM a good nice baby bald boy came on the scene and made
an attempt to make comics relevant again while updating origins and providing a streamlined
solution for the influx of new readers that were soon to arrive.
From what it seemed, the Ultimate Universe was a hit!
Ultimate Spider-Man, which kicked off the Earth-1610 universe, was selling like hotcakes
and was received pretty well by new and old fans alike.
Most of the Ultimate books started off pretty solid.
Comics like Ultimate Fantastic Four showed a younger, arguably more interesting group
of heroes while others like Ultimate Team-Up had our headliner Spidey fighting crime with
some lesser players.
But soon, the cracks began to show, the cracks of an aging author trapped in the cold, endless
void of grief.
Almost all the books except Ultimate Spider-Man began to decline in quality which led up to
2009’s Ultimatum — which essentially boiled down to Jeph Loeb hatefucking the Ultimate
Universe.
Following stories like Civil War and Secret Invasion, the Classic Marvel books hit a renaissance,
so the Ultimate Universe’s fresh new flavor was becoming less of a desire.
People had grown used to the “hip new thing” that Ultimate brought them and were clamoring
for the classics again, something that would become a trend as the years progressed.
After this, the Ultimate Universe would struggle to retain relevance.
The line of Ultimate comics was dwindling, eventually only consisting of Ultimate Spider-Man
and ultimately dying off in 2015 with the huge summer blockbuster event Secret Wars.
The Ultimate Universe was an experiment — an experiment that will be remembered as being
largely successful at first, but dying off due to poor editorial and bad writing.
Now, let’s travel back from 2015 to 2014, Dan Slott’s huge crossover event, Spider-Verse,
is about to begin and with it a load of tie-ins.
One such tie-in was Edge of Spider-Verse, a 5-issue anthology series detailing the stories
of five alternate universe Spider-Men and -Women which would all play parts in the upcoming
crossover.
We had an edgy stealth boy, a cool robot, and, uh, this?
Nobody needed to see this.
In the second issue of the series we’re greeted by Gwen Stacy, the Spider-Woman of
Earth-65.
This universe and character was originally meant to be given the spotlight once, in this
issue, and then seen in the background of Spider-Verse proper.
Fans; however, changed this.
The reactions to Gwen’s character and design were baffling, there was a nearly unanimous
outcry for a “Spider-Gwen” series, to which Marvel quickly complied.
Dan Slott rewrote parts of Spider-Verse to more prominently feature Spider-Gwen while
Jason Latour and Robbi Rodriguez were hired on full-time to ship a monthly title starring
the character.
The book was an instant hit and, to be honest, it was a huge surprise that it didn’t immediately
get cancelled, knowing Marvel’s track record.
The neon concrete jungle of Earth-65 is perfectly captured by Rodriguez’s art with the spunk
and grit of Latour’s writing complimenting it nicely.
This comic was so good, in fact, that, unlike the Ultimate Universe, it survived the editorial
mandate following Secret Wars, which hit the reset button on Marvel’s extended multiverse
and aimed to stop telling stories in alternate realities.
Which sure sounds like a reboot, but APPARENTLY IT WASN’T!
The point is that the good stuff from universes like Earth-1610 were folded into “Prime
Earth” while the rest of it disappeared.
Earth-65, on the other hand, continued — uninterrupted.
This world then began to build and expand, just like the Ultimate Universe did, but with
one key difference: Spider-Gwen was its only title.
With a consistent creative team behind the comic, everything introduced in the pages
of Spider-Gwen felt cohesive to the Earth-65 “flavour.”
We saw the introduction of Captain America and the Falcon, a devious Kingpin version
of Matt Murdock, and even a reluctant Harry Osborn Lizard.
Earth-65 is Spider-Gwen’s playground, it is her universe, but at the same time, it
feels lived in and deep.
This is due to the expert writing and world building by Latour.
The slow build up and introduction of characters we know and love without making it feel hamfisted
and unoriginal.
With her rebrand to Ghost Spider leading to her appearance in Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse
and Gwen still being heavily tied-into Spider-related ongoings in the comics, there is no doubting
how big of an impact this one-off character has made.
The Ultimate Universe failed because it was spread too thin — it wasn’t given the
attention it deserved and eventually fizzled out, becoming a footnote in Marvel’s history.
Earth-65 is currently the same, just a seed of what could come.
Latour and Rodriguez’s run came to an end, yes, but, because of its unique art direction
and expert worldbuilding, I would not be surprised if we were still talking about Spider-Gwen
and her world many years down the line.
Thank you guys so much for watching this episode of The Show With Issues!
I hope you enjoyed sort of a return to form with this episode.
Anyway, be sure to watch the video YouTube is recommending next to me and I will see
you at some point in the future!
Bye bye!