It's innevitable in a comic universe that some titles end up as a little 'disconnected' from other titles, in terms of continuity...recent examples in the Marvel Universe include Magneto destroying Manhattan in New X-Men, and Kang conquering the Earth in Avengers. But the situation in the Ultimates universe has achieved absolute and complete discontinuity. That is, AFAIK no Ultimates title is currently compatible with any other Ultimates title without some serious imagination on the part of the readers...or future retroactive continuity surgery.

Spoilers follow:

Ultimate Spiderman: The current storyline is a crossover with (some) of the Ultimate X-Men, taking place on the 'living island' of Krakoa. They are the subject of a 'worldwide' TV broadcast of a battle with Deadpool and his cybernetic cronies.

Ultimate X-Men: They are sort of 'between arcs', except that Professor X and Jean Grey are making a deal with the Shiar Cult, and the X-men are having 'date night' or a school dance at Emma Frost's Chicago school...along with the Brotherhood.

The Ultimates: America has been invaded and conquered by a coalition of other nations and their super-powered flunkies.

Ultimate Fantastic Four: They almost get a free pass, since they are in an alternate reality now that they have fooled with the time stream....except that in

Ultimate Extinction: Reed Richards is working on one of several possible anti-Gah Lak Tus strategies, as is Professor X and (a very non-Phoenix) Jean Grey. No sign of powerhouses like Victor von Damme, Magneto, or Thor. Considering the Fantastic Four's has already faced an inter-dimensional zombie menace, as well as the Annihilus problem (in their own book) I'm non-plussed about their participation here.

Ultimate Hulk v. Ultimate Wolverine: I gave up on this so I have no idea how this is going to get shoe-horned into continuity.

Ultimate Iron Man: I only included this because I don't know if this series is still ongoing, its another that I gave up on early.

Yeah they need to get back on the same page. Although in Ultimates they did kind of off-panel "shoehorn in" the whereabout of the FF and the X-men. It was weak though.

One of the big selling points of the Ultimate line is it's cohesiveness. If they get all stupids about it and make mini-series for no good reason it will water down the line and return it to being just another blah comic series. When my wife pointed me in the direction of the Ultimate line back when I quit comics that was a big selling point. That an the fact that nobody was safe and anybody could die and would stay dead.

Hoping for a turnaround and that they get serious about some FF stories. I did like the Namor arc.

I think Ultimate Extinction really throws a bone in the Ultimate gears. But if Marvel was willing to try to piece together a good time table of the order of stuff happening in the Ultimate Marvel universe, that'd be very helpful. But Quesada is so anti-continuity if approached on the subject he'll just throw it aside and say it doesn't matter.

thats what i love about ultimate u, each series is in its own little circle

theres an absence of space and time in the collective plot, and that would confuse a new reader i suppose, but i like it since it means more freedom to the writer. personally, i think millar is the best thing that happenened to marvel, but if u try to make everyhting congruent and fit it would take away form the creative freedom.

i think ultimate x men sucks, ultimate spiderman is getting dumb, I absolutely love ff and ultimates, dont read hulk/wolverine, ironman was good but i think it should end, utimate extiction is good but they need to make it longer so they get the whole story done well... it doesnt seem to be going anywhere, we just need ultimate cosmos with all the cosmic guys (writen by: mark millar or jim starlin)

I think really the only one that screwes the pooch is Ultimates. The others can go together fine, but in Ultimates 1 event spans 5 issues, and months. Thor is taken out in Ultimates and there he is in second installment of Ultimate Extinction a month later. Even back when Ultimate War and Ultimate Six were out they didn;t make any sense with the time frame of the Ultimates book. Just Spidey, FF and X-Men would be fine in all of these crossovers except for the Ultimates. I barely count Wolverine/Hulk cause who knows when that is supposed to take place, and its really now different than in 616 with having Wolverine in 8 places at once.

Well as I understand it, Ultimate Extinction is VERY LATE. Ultimates 2 takes place AFTER Extinction. Ultimates takes forever to finish a story. Spiderman can sometimes get 3 issues out in a month.

I don't know how the Extinction ends, but I do hope they mention the Invasion/destruction of America in Spiderman SOMETIME.

The REALLY bad one was Ultimate Marvel Team up. This had Spideys first meeting with the FF, Elektra, Black Widow, etc. These are disregarded as soon as they happened

I forgot all about UMT-U.

And now who is following who?

The books are geared for the no-attention span MTV generation. Does it suprise you that they are difficult to piece together?

That is the secondary reason I don't read any Ultimate title. The primary one being that most of the stories I read about 10-15 years ago, just updated for the same short attention span croud.

Ultimate clone-saga anyone?

I read all the Ultimates titles.

Ultimate Spiderman is far more readable than the current slew of Spidey titles.
'Spiderman: The Other' anyone?

How about Ultimate X-men? Its unhindered by 40+ years of awful continuity (not to mention it has the appeal of not being written by Clairmont.)


You've got a real mad on for "remakes" dontcha?

What about 'Batman Begins'? 'Dawn of the Dead', 'Superman Returns' and every Friday the 13th movie?

Why is one kind of remake ok, but another isn't?

I like that the Ultimates line is unhindered by continutiy. It allows me to enjoy them without having to see something spit in the face of something that we've seen before.

So far, the only title I can't get into is Ultimate Spider-man. I don't care for Spider-man, in the Ultimate Universe. I don't like how Bendis writes him. Other than that, the Ultimate titles rock the casbah!

Come on. Comic books don't all take place at the same time. One series has an arc that spans months, the other takes 12 issues to tell a 2-day story. They don't have to match up THAT closely.

It's when one book completely contradicts the facts of what's already happened (Re: Current Black Panther series, current Storm miniseries) that I get extremely bent out of shape. THAT is discontinuity.

Yeah, all things considered the Ultimate world isn't THAT bad. The only thing that bugs me is NY getting trashed at that level, of course I can'tremember if they mentioned when the Hulk trashed it in other books.

Wait a minute, Yeah they did make a comment when the Wrecking crew/Damage control was cleaning up a Spiderman fight. So scratch that

They had a few glitches with the Fantastic Four before they started their own series, but a few lines don't bug me much. and the MTU issue was pure crapp anyway.

Everything these people do don't need to be mentioned, Nor does every crossover. the current Spidey/X-men thing isn't any problem for me at all. As long as they don't include dead people

Personally I think the NY invasion should have been a crossover like Extinction or something. THIS should affect everyone. UNLESS at the end of the story everything is magically forgotten, then it's not worth the effort.

Ultimate Spiderman: This arc could happen within one day. You see, this happened before in Ultimate X-Men, and I'm pretty sure they mention that.

Ultimate X-Men: Kirkman has to write the book until Singer can make his big Magneto Arc. It's just downtime.

The Ultimates: They mentioned what happened to the other big teams, and I'm positive Millar or someone said that they'd bring it up in the other Ultimate Books...AFTER IT CONCLUDES.

Ultimate Fantastic Four: They almost get a free pass, since they are in an alternate reality now that they have fooled with the time stream....except that in

Ultimate Extinction: Takes place BEFORE ULTIMATES 2, THE CURRENT ARC OF ULTIMATE FF, SPIDEY, AND X-MEN.

Ultimate Hulk v. Ultimate Wolverine: They mention this arc in Ultimate X-Men.

Ultimate Iron Man: Dude, this story has NOTHING TO DO WITH WHAT IS HAPPENING CURRENTLY. IT is a prequel.

Maybe if you actually understood what was going on, you'd be able to see that there is A LOT of continuity.

Actually, PN is very right on. As I think more, I also remember the whole Ultimate Nightmare-Ultimate Extinction being mentioned in both Ultimate X-Men and Ultimate Wolvie vs Hulk. Both Wolverine and Professor X have discussions with Fury and it's brought up. IIRC.