Whats the difference between normal Marvel and Ultimate Marvel?
In late 2000, Marvel felt that the complicated continuity on their core titles was posing a significant barrier to new readers that they hoped to gain following the success of the X-Men movie and the upcoming Spider-Man film. However, they couldn’t throw away all that continuity without pissing off their current readers. As a solution, they created the Ultimate universe. Starting with Spider-Man, they gave the character a completely fresh start. They put Peter Parker as a high school student set it in the present day, and then started the story from square 1. It proved to be extremely popular, and Marvel has since made Ultimate versions of the X-Men, the Avengers (called The Ultimates), the Fantastic Four, and Daredevil. While the Ultimate versions of the characters generally go down the same paths as their original versions – these books are intended as accessible retellings, not re-imaginings – they sometimes diverge from the original stories in significant ways.
