Marvel Comics‘ current Ultimate Universe is the finest addition to the publisher’s lineup of series in years, and it has provided new readers and longtime fans alike with some of the boldest, most enticing tales featuring Marvel characters in decades. Although the Ultimate Universe features brand-new versions of Marvel’s most iconic characters, there are still quite a few pieces of context and canonical information that new readers might need, and that’s never been truer than with the new universe’s greatest villain — The Maker.
An evil alternate version of the Fantastic Four’s Reed Richards, the Maker is the man behind everything in the new Ultimate Universe, and with the alternate reality tales coming to an end soon with the upcoming Ultimate Endgame series, it seems appropriate for readers to refresh their knowledge of the Maker and his nefarious schemes. He has quickly become one of Marvel’s most exciting villains, and his ultimate plan will soon come to a head.
The Maker Comes From The Original Ultimate Universe
In the early 2000s, Marvel Comics first established the now-iconic Ultimate Universe. An alternate reality where some of the company’s most iconic and beloved heroes and villains have been reinterpreted for newer readers and a more streamlined storytelling experience, the original Ultimate Universe started off as a major success. In fact, Brian Michael Bendis and Mark Bagley’s Ultimate Spider-Man, arguably the most popular book from the universe, is one of the character’s most important ongoing runs, and remains a staple of its era.
In addition to Ultimate Spider-Man, the Ultimate Universe books included Ultimate X-Men, The Ultimates, and Ultimate Fantastic Four, a book that saw the introduction of Earth-1610’s version of Reed Richards, aka Mister Fantastic. Earth-1610’s Fantastic Four were younger and less emotionally stable than their mainline Marvel counterparts, but their stories were some of the Ultimate Universe’s most fascinating, and the characterization of the core four heroes was some of the freshest in the entire run of Ultimate books. The relationships between Reed Richards and his found family of heroic teammates were messy, complicated, and far less positive than Earth-616’s versions, but the team was still some of Earth’s greatest heroes.
The original Ultimate Universe certainly had its ups and downs in the years after its original kick-start, with stories like Ultimatum and Ultimates 3 ranking as some of the all-time worst Marvel comic book stories of all time. But there were also plenty of story beats and character arcs that made the universe worth exploring.
One of those was the Fantastic Four’s leader, Reed Richards, and his slow shift away from heroism and those that he was closest to, and towards pragmatic scientific research, futurism at all costs, and isolation. Earth-1610’s Reed Richards became increasingly isolated from his friends and family, and he continually let his genius and intellectual prowess get in the way of maintaining the most important relationships in his life.
Unlike his Earth-616 counterpart, who eventually was able to achieve a balance between being a loving family man and friend while still pushing his scientific mind to the furthest reaches of exploration, Earth-1610’s Reed became obsessed with his work, and things only got worse as the universe itself continued to crumble around him.
The Ultimate Universe Fell Into Tragedy and Despair
Ultimatum #1 cover showing Ultimate FF and their enemies.Image via Marvel Comics
Eventually, the events that constantly barraged the heroes and citizens of the Ultimate Universe became too much for Earth-1610’s Reed Richards. After the disbanding of the Fantastic Four, the dissolving of Reed’s relationship with Susan Storm, and an ever-growing sense that something was coming to destroy his world and only he could stop it, Reed Richards went mad.
Reed turned against the heroes of the Ultimate Universe, and, believing that he was the only one who could save the world and make it “perfect”, he murdered his family and started on a mission to do just that. During an intense showdown with his former Fantastic Four teammates, Reed’s face was permanently scarred by Johnny Storm, aka the Human Torch. Eventually, Reed returned to the spotlight as a fully formed supervillain under the guise of the Maker.
Continuing his goal of making a perfect world and protecting it from outside threats, the Maker formed the Children of Tomorrow, a group of genetically enhanced superhumans that obeyed his every wish and command. The Maker then created “the Dome”, a kind of base of operations for the Children of Tomorrow that operated outside of the normal confines of time. Inside the Maker’s Dome, time moved differently — slower. While only a few minutes passed in the real world, months would pass inside the Dome, allowing the Maker and his Children of Tomorrow to take on intense technological and scientific advancements in more compressed amounts of time.
As the Ultimate Universe’s existence came closer and closer to an end, the Maker’s plans and machinations came to a head, with him utilizing his technology to attack the governmental and societal structures of the Ultimate Universe. The Maker also continually suffered from a sense that an impending doom was coming, and he was eventually proven right. Jonathan Hickman’s brilliant slow-build that led into his 2015 Secret Wars miniseries perfectly brought the Ultimate Universe to a close in the wake of complete multiversal collapse, and only two survivors from Earth-1610 remained — the Maker and Miles Morales, aka Spider-Man.
The Maker Sought To Forge His Own Perfect World
In the wake of his original universe’s collapse and destruction, the Maker found himself pitted against the heroes of Earth-616, the mainline Marvel Universe. Coming to blows with heroes like Mister Fantastic, as well as other members of Marvel’s Illuminati, the Maker was imprisoned in a Damage Control facility in Chicago, where he seemingly began his plans for a brand-new Ultimate Universe. After utilizing genetic manipulation to escape the facility, the Maker began systematically stealing all of the technology and supplies he would need to bring about a brand-new world.
With the Illuminati hot on his tail, the Maker was able to use the combined technologies of heroes and societies like the Fantastic Four, the Mutants, the Inhumans, and the Atlanteans to forge a device that would allow him to travel to an alternate universe and not be tracked or followed. Knowing how dangerous he could be, the heroes of the Marvel Universe desperately attempted to stop him, but had no luck. In a moment of weakness, right before the Maker escaped to his own dimension, Earth-616’s Reed Richards even admitted that, if he had the chance, he would erase the Maker from existence.
This fact, along with the Maker’s own inherent madness, pushed his hatred to new heights and reinforced his goal of creating a new world in his image. After coming upon a brand-new universe that he could shape to fit his own schemes, the Maker set about perfecting it. In order to do this, he utilized time travel technology to go back in time and systematically stop any superheroes from ever coming to be. Stopping Peter Parker from being bitten by a radioactive spider, delaying the Fantastic Four from ever being blasted by cosmic rays, and imprisoning Thor and ascending Loki to the throne of Asgard was only the tip of the iceberg.
The Maker Was Delayed And Trapped For Twenty-Four Months
Image via Marvel Comics
After successfully manipulating the world in ways that would effectively allow him to hold power over all its inhabitants, the Maker found himself repeatedly attacked by forces traveling back in time from the future. With many inhabitants of the new Ultimate Universe not really understanding who the Maker truly is or where he truly came from, assumptions were that there would be some point where he was weaker in the past that they could take advantage of. If they could find him as a powerless child or wipe out his bloodline before his birth, they’d stop him. But it isn’t that easy.
Since the Maker comes from an alternate reality, there is no point in time that future forces could go back to take him out. They were forced to attack him while he was at the height of his power, and the resulting battle trapped the Maker, alongside the forces of the Ultimate Universe’s Kang, and other supporting characters like Howard Stark, in “the City”, a temporal hideaway much like the Maker’s previous Dome.
Previously, the Maker had been injured in a battle with Kang’s forces from the future, and his memory was damaged. While he was slowly healing, he needed outside help from other brilliant minds, and he brought this new world’s Reed Richards under his control as a twisted version of Doctor Doom. Once the Maker became trapped inside the City, Doom took the opportunity to find Tony Stark, aka Iron Lad, and form a plan to reverse the changes to the universe made by the Maker.
With only twenty-four months until the City’s opening and the Maker’s return, the newly-formed Ultimates team set about restoring the destinies and histories of the world that were taken away by the Maker. Thus became the bedrock of series like Ultimate Spider-Man and The Ultimates. Now, with only a short time before the Maker’s return in the upcoming Ultimate Endgame, his nefarious plans for a truly perfect world devoid of superheroics might become a reality. Or, if, in the face of insurmountable odds, the underdog heroes of the Ultimate Universe can defeat the Maker and his Children of Tomorrow, perhaps his ultimate plan will be stopped once and for all.
The Marvel official Poster features the name of the country in white in front of a red background.
First TV Show
the incredible hulk
First Episode Air Date
November 15, 1966