[#item_full_content] [[{“value”:”Jonathan Hickman built Marvel’s Ultimate Universe around a married Peter Parker with a family, and the first issue sold out three times in two months. DC answered within months with an Absolute Universe of its own. Marvel then shut its line down on a fixed date, while DC’s version is still running with no end in sight. The man who started it has a long record of building worlds and then leaving them, and the writer who wanted to keep going on the Marvel side was a different one.
Subscribe
A Married Peter Parker Moves Comics
The Ultimate Universe returned in February 2023 with Ultimate Invasion, written by Hickman and drawn by Bryan Hitch. That September Marvel announced Ultimate Spider-Man, drawn by Marco Checchetto, and the 2024 launch introduced a Peter Parker who is a husband and father. The first collected volume carries the title Married With Children.
Retailers could not keep it on shelves. Issue one sold out three times in two months and went to a fourth printing. In the weekly tracking of back-issue prices it took eight of the top ten spots, and the main cover’s aftermarket price jumped 340%. In point-of-sale data from more than 125 comic shops, it finished 2024 as the second-ranked issue by units. Issues one through twelve all placed in the year’s top fifty.
Marvel built a line around the book: The Ultimates, Ultimate X-Men, Ultimate Wolverine and Ultimate Black Panther. The Spider-Man series earned an Eisner nomination for Best Continuing Series in 2025.
DC Builds a Copy
DC announced its answer in the fall of 2024: an Absolute Universe, led by Absolute Batman from Scott Snyder and Nick Dragotta, with Absolute Wonder Woman and Absolute Superman beside it. The pitch matched Marvel’s, fresh versions of the icons with no continuity to study first. Absolute Batman #1 finished 2024 first by units in the same point-of-sale data, with Ultimate Spider-Man #1 second and Absolute Superman #1 third.
The sales have held. Orders for Absolute Batman #14 approached 200,000 in December 2025. Issue #24 reached 487,000 across all covers in September 2026, and Snyder has put the book’s sales near 500,000 an issue. The line keeps growing: Absolute Green Arrow and Absolute Catwoman arrived this year, and Absolute Catwoman #1 topped one retailer’s June sales chart. Absolute Martian Manhunter ended at twelve issues on a planned schedule.
The one visible gap is a creator break. Absolute Batman has no December issue. The main series pauses after #25 on October 28. A November special and a January issue on Barbara Gordon fill the space, and Snyder and Dragotta return in February with #27.
Marvel Pulls the Plug
At New York Comic Con in October 2025, Marvel announced that the Ultimate Universe would close with Ultimate Endgame #5 in April 2026. Hickman’s run on Ultimate Spider-Man was set at 24 issues, and the story that began in Ultimate Invasion carried a 24-month timeline. The line was still selling.
Hickman told an interviewer in December 2025 that the decision caught him off guard:
I’ve been at Marvel a long time, and I’ve never seen us do what we’re doing, which is end a book that is selling well and a line that is selling well. But I understand the decision because we, generally speaking, don’t do discrete units of books.
He went on:
I thought it was a really, really gutsy decision. I kind of love it.
On the NYCC panel, Marvel’s Dan Buckley recounted a conversation at a creative retreat:
We were at one of those creative retreats and I was sitting next to him, we’re just talking, and he’s like, ‘Well, we’re finishing our stories, then you could do that.’ I said, ‘No, you’re done.’
Buckley continued:
We’re not going to do this with the Marvel Universe. This is more about a group of creators getting together and saying, ‘This is what I see as a story, we want to have a beginning, a middle, and an end.’
Deniz Camp Brings the Politics
Deniz Camp was brought in and wrote The Ultimates from issue one in June 2024, alongside Hickman’s Spider-Man, and his book carried the line’s politics. The team was a global resistance network, volume two is titled All Power to the People, and his Ultimate Hawkeye is Charli Ramsey, an Oglala Lakota, Two-Spirit and non-binary character. Camp also wrote Ultimate Endgame and the Ultimates finale. Hickman’s book was the one about a family. Camp’s second volume carries a protest slogan for a title.
After the closing was announced, Camp answered speculation about why in a thread on social media:
It implies people are getting pushed out, which I don’t think is the case (from everything I’ve heard/everyone I’ve talked to). John just didn’t think Marvel would be bold enough to do this.
John is very supportive of, and excited for, this, I know that for sure.
John was ending his run at 24, that was always the case. He was done.
The only person who planned on continuing was me.
He also addressed the politics directly:
Not because the books are “too woke” (if it were that, they’d interfere with the writing of it, which they haven’t) or because the main line is jealous…
And he named the editor who told him: “Wil Moss came to me and said, hey, I think we’re going to end it.” In January he added: “I was planning on continuing on for a while, and then there was going to be like a new wave of books that launched.”
Nothing on the record describes a fight between the two writers. The record shows two writers with different plans for the same line: one finishing at issue 24, the other ready to keep going. Camp was also writing DC’s Absolute Martian Manhunter during this stretch, a book that ended at twelve issues. “We would have both liked to continue, and DC was very open to it, but they offered us something we couldn’t turn down and we couldn’t do both,” he said of that book.
Hickman Builds, Then Leaves
Hickman has built and walked away from worlds throughout his career. At Marvel he wrote Secret Warriors from 2009 to 2011 and Fantastic Four from 2009 to 2012. He took over Avengers and New Avengers in late 2012, wrote the Infinity event, and closed it all out with Secret Wars, which ended in 2016.
His Image books followed the same arc. The Manhattan Projects ran from 2012 to 2016. East of West, drawn by Dragotta, ran from 2013 to 2019. The Black Monday Murders stopped in 2018, with issues nine and ten solicited for 2019 and never released. The Dying and the Dead stopped at six of ten issues, and Frontier was cancelled in 2016.
He returned to Marvel in 2019 with House of X and Powers of X, which relaunched the X-Men line as the mutant nation of Krakoa. He announced his departure in August 2021 and signed a Substack deal the same month. Marvel brought him back for Ultimate Invasion in 2023, and G.O.D.S. followed. Ultimate Spider-Man ended in 2026 after 24 issues. His new book Midnight X-Men launched October 7 as part of Marvel’s Midnight Universe.
Marvel closed its best-selling new line on a fixed schedule, while DC is running its imitation with no end date and orders near 500,000. Which of those choices will look smarter in 2027?
Subscribe
Sign up for the Ayla Rin: Gateway to Doom Crowdfund, coming soon for great cosmic comic books with a cover by legendary Green Lantern artist, Ethan Van Sciver:”}]] 
Read More