I visited my friendly neighborhood library and picked up several items, including Ultimate Spider-Man: Death of Spider-Man Prelude. (Yeah, it happened a while ago, but any story you haven't read yet is new to you, right?)
This one includes Ultimate Spider-Man #15 and #150-155, which establishes that S.H.I.E.L.D. is getting fed up with cleaning up all the property damage that follows Spider-Man's battles. Director Carol Danvers calls in Captain America, Iron Man and Thor to counsel her on what to do about it. Captain America says Spider-Man is too young and ought to be shut down. Thor says Spider-Man is a natural warrior and has earned the right to continue. Iron Man is in the middle; he's young, but he's got potential. The decision is that Spider-Man must have training to continue on.
Anyway, we go from there to young Peter Parker's home life, with his Aunt May ... and Bobby (Iceman) Drake and Jonathan (Human Torch) Storm ... and Gwen Stacy, who all live together in one big house.
I know I;m going to regret hearing the answer, but ask I must: Why?
Why isn't Iceman (or, rather, Ultimate Iceman) with the (Ultimate) X-Men, and the (Ultimate) Human Torch with the (Ultimate) Fantastic Four? For Gwen, I know the answer -- at one point, she runs away to find her mother, who has remarried and essentially abandoned her, so Aunt May took her in. But the other two?
Please keep the answer simple ... it's too early in the week to overdose on the headache medicine.
Thanks.
Replies
IIRC, the Torch is there because the FF doesn't really exist anymore.
I think Bobby was there for similar reasons.
Randy Jackson said:
There's no Ultimate Fantastic Four or Ultimate X-Men?
Most of the X-Men were killed either during or after Magneto launched a major attack on humanity. The X-Men still existed, but both Bobby and Kitty were asked to leave because of their age afterwards.
The FF was similarly broken, although I don't think any of them died. Johnny and Sue's father was killed, and Johnny eventually chose to live with the others.
Okay, so I've followed Ultimate Spider-Man: Death of Spider-Man Prelude with Ultimate Spider-Man: Death of Spider-Man and Ultimate Spider-Man: Death of Spider-Man Fallout (I did read those earlier, but how can you read the beginning of the story and not read the ending?) and I'm still a bit confused about the state of affairs in the Ultimate Universe.
Specifically -- one of the stories in Fallout showed Ultimate Thor thinking warmly about Ultimate Spider-Man taking his place in Valhalla ... and the scene showed him joining Ultimate Cyclops and Ultimate Wolverine. They're dead, too?
Also: a different story showed Ultimate Bruce Banner in therapy, but the therapist is a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent who keeps his rage in check as imagines himself Hulking out ... but turning into the gray Hulk. But I was sure Ultimate Bruce Banner was dead; I did read the story where, after Ultimate Hulk went berserk and trashed Manhattan, S.H.I.E.L.D. left him on an warship in the middle of the ocean and set off a nuke. Did he survive that?
...Wasn't the whole ULTIMATE MARVEL TEAM-UP that existed early in the Ultimate loine's life decared out of continuiy/retconned comepletely away (despite having a HC complete collection) , f'rinstance , IIRC ?????????
It seems that the Ulti-line tends toward a somewhat - arbitrary - approach to continuity .
I kind of stopped paying much attention to it after early in the --- ULTIMATES 3??? - miniseries when it appeared that Ultimate Pietro and Wanda were having an incestuous relationship !!!!!!!!! Not that I was offended/" oh , okay , that's the last straw " , I just sort of dropped out after that .