Donny Cates recently tweeted in response to a fan that he'd be "so down." with rebooting the Ultimate Universe. Sounds like a bad idea to me personally, but I'm curious if presented with the opportunity: How would you reintroduce the X-Men from a clean slate in the Ultimate Universe? Would you riff on classic canon, modernize the story, or go rogue and distance your X-Men from what we know?

Eh.... I mean in the end it would still have to be Ultimate X-Men.

I'd pretty much do the same things they did for the first 4 or 5 arcs. Maybe even just have that as the background.

The thing is Ultimate X-Men was working right up until they started killing characters just to show how edgy they were because they could kill characters.

I think really just doing alot of what they were already doing character wise and giving them Ultimate versions of their enemies and of classic situations is basically all I would do.

Probably just start the series around Ultimatum, have that play out differently and then do something like a Deadly Genesis or shiar arc or something but down to earth.

no thanks, let's do something else

No thanks.

Hard pass.

Nah... I think they already confirmed there’s a new ultimate universe, forgot where I read that though.

I'm a bit torn on this....

On the one hand rebooting the Ultimate universe and the Ultimate Xmen works for me. I've been saying that a reboot is needed and this could be the way. I would actually be all for retelling some of the iconic stories but updating and modernizing them. (And by modernizing I don't mean changing a characters sexuality)

Along those lines of rebooting the Ultimate universe, something I've called for in the past and that still seems to linger in people's minds seems to be the question of why the Xmen and mutants in general are hated and feared while other superpowered individuals are celebrated and accepted. After the shenanigans of Age of Grey or whatever the current alternate universe mess is finished....it might not be the worst idea for the mutants to return but be cast into a separate universe. Make the Xmen and mutants the only superpowered individuals in the Ultimate universe and run with it. I know this is highly unlikely seeing that the rights are supposedly coming back but even a die-hard superfan of everything ever written concerning Xmen would have to admit that just like fictional New York in comics....the marvel universe is just becoming too crowded. Xmen is basically its own world anyway and most fans don't care to mix their peas and carrots, so let them have their own universe away from everyone else and filling the roles that they should. It might redefine and clear up some things.

Another thing I could see and get behind is the Ultimate Xmen just picking up where the Ultimate universe left off but with the Academy X students in the role of the Xmen. This gives them a place to shine separate from the main universe and where they actually could be grown up and not stuck as students.

On the other hand considering how things ended in the Ultimate universe and my distrust of the current crop of writers at Marvel who seem to pander to sjw's and push so called agendas, I'm not very optimistic that a reboot of the Ultimate universe would be satisfactory.

No. The Ultimate Universe was horrible and all of the characters sans maybe Cyclops were unlikable. The book would never have lasted as long as it did if it weren't an alternate retelling of a famous franchise that fans were familiar with. They also went with basically the lowest common denominator ideas when reinterpreting many character's origins. It was bad.

I also sit on the fence with this sometimes. If you had the X-men in their own universe the mutant metaphor would be a lot more sensible, of course, and then you could easily make the universe and its more abstract concepts more self contained and easier to follow, there is also so many mutants floating around, from the obvious to the obscure, that you could use to fill voids that would be left by Marvel characters that would not be present.

The issue I would have with it though is that I have enjoyed a lot of the more competent Avengers crossover stories over the years. I understand that the X-Men are not constantly crossing over throughout their history but when they have, there was usually really good material to be found in it. There is also the fact that many Avengers related ideas are sort of intrinsic to the X-Men, like Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch reforming and joining the team, Beast joining, Rogue getting her powers from Ms. Marvel etc. I also think that if mutants with super powers existed the government would likely fictionally implement some superhuman group to counter them...so, at the very least I would have some sort of group like the Ultimates, or The Avengers team from Age of X exist, although the latter was sort of more like psychotic assassins.

I'd be willing to compromise and just have the Avengers exist in some form, maybe similar to the MCU circa 2016 or so before they had all their properties when it was just some of the more practical characters. You could ditch characters like Fantastic Four seeing as they have always been sort of anachronistic anyways or have them be in a "Justice Society" like postion where they were heroes in the 60s, you could also ditch a lot of the other 2000 super heroes running around and just simplify it to maybe characters like Punisher and Daredevil operating as vigilantes and The Avengers being SHIELD affiliated super beings. The X-Men have never exactly had a whole lot to do with characters like Spider-Man, Inhumans or the F4 anyways.

@cattlebattle: Hmmmm. So then you would have a government team to counter the mutants? Would it be a play on something like the super soldiers program which created Captain America and maybe Wolverine?

I also pictured Age of X but with the Exonim sentinels

I say no to rebooting the Ultimate Universe. I say just follow the Iltimate Universe formula and simply make a new universe that lasts longer than a What-If or mini-series. Just let he ideas flow in a controlled fashion.

@hawk2916: Yeah, you could either go with something like the MCU Avengers, which are somewhat similar to the Ultimates, or with original characters that are sort of analogues for the more well known Avengers. I don't know, it feels like it would sort of make sense that the government has some sort of task force to quell mutant terrorists and such.

After the stunt X-Man just pulled and hate for mutants on the rise, although I think it would be an interesting change to remove them from Earth, I can't help thinking with mutants as a stand-in for racial inequality, that it might be perceived as segregation....unless they take some humans with them.

I do love a good space adventure. Why not rev up what's left of Utopia/Asteroid M and set off into the stars for a few years under the moniker Asteroid X? I don't even know how many mutants are left at this point. It was 198 but that was a rough estimate and there's been a resurgence and so many that were depowered have been repowered. Maybe 300-500 now? Xavier, Magneto, Jean, Cyclops, Storm and Wolverine unite as a High Council (until elections are held after a year's time) The enforcers of the law could be the Starjammers led by Havok. (or baby Cable or Bishop) There'd have to be a Danger Room, a sizeable garden area for Storm possibly with some wildlife from the Savage Land, a more secluded area for Morlocks to maintain their privacy if they prefer, and of course, education provided by headmaster Beast, power training by Rogue, hand to hand combat instruction by Psylocke and many other initial crew assignments that may or may not sit well with those assigned. I could go on and on here. X-Men + Star Trek = me in a happy puddle.

I really thought that was where Uncanny Avengers was gonna take us with the Apocalypse Twins. Mutants in space. I loved the idea in "What if? Infinity" where Cannonball lead the remnants of the X-Men. There was also a story in Guardians of the Galaxy where mutants escaped Earth in search of a new home and generation after generation, Wolverine's descendants ruled and became more and more ruthless.

Thing with alternate realities is, it's been done. We got witchbreed in 1602, detective comics in X-Men Noir, mutant descendants in GenNeXt, we've seen a myriad of dystopian and utopian timelines, Age of Apocalypse, House of M, Age of X, now Age of X-Man...is there a way to tell this story we haven't already heard?

@cattlebattle: Yeah that might be ok. Although having something like Xfactor be the government team to quell whoever the government deems terrorist might work well too and set up for interesting conflict. But the idea of some Avengers like in the MCU style is not bad. Especially if we keep Rogue's story with her taking Carol Danvers powers.

I even think there may be enough mutants not really and truly associated with the Xmen who could fill the role. I'm thinking of some like Vance Astrovik, Manifold, maybe even Firestar and Namorita, Cloak and Dagger (mutants or not?-i say yes) along with Scarlett Witch and Quicksilver, members of Alpa Flight.

@thunderscream: I think the separate aspect could be done though you bring up an interesting point. Having their own universe though could be easily seen as just that. At a certain point I think we have to disregard the overly sensitive and do what makes sense, you know logic over emotion. Because the crowd is very fickle lol.

I actually would like to see a story in space somewhat. I was a fan of the potential of the Xmen leaving earth when it was rumored as the direction that Remender was going before we ultimately ended up with Lemire's.... whatever that was. In fact a directiin I would love to see is for them to really explore rescuing Rachel from Ahab only to have her be even more determined to keep a separation between humans and mutants. She could use her hound abilities to hunt down newly emerging mutants and take them sometimes forcibly to Asteroid X as you call it. The ultimate plan of colonizing a planet or moon and it being only for mutants but dealing with issues like rebellion and uprising and dictatorship could be an interesting direction and could sustain the books for a good while. It certainly would set Rachel apart and open up room for newer types of stories. I'm thinking of the show Mars on I think NatGeo and how in efforts to colonize they ran into some of the same problems with politics and commercial industry as on Earth.

@hawk2916: Well, a lot of the more famous Avengers aren't even that far fetched in terms of powers. Captain America is a guy who was part of a experiment that gave him above normal human physicality, Iron Man is just smart guy in a robot suit that is becoming less and less fantastic as time goes on and more of a reality, Hawkeye and Widow are normal humans with expertise in certain disciplines, Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch are reformed terrorists....that's a whole team right there. Even the MCU/Ultimate version of Falcon is just a guy in a flight suit and characters like War Machine, Spider Woman, Winter Soldier, and Mockingbird are totally plausible.

If you followed the Ultimate version of Hulk that got his powers in an accident while trying to recreate Captain America's serum, even he is doable. If you are having aliens exist than Carol Danvers getting her powers via contact with them is possible as well.

@cattlebattle: Yeah I can agree with that.