Ultimate Invasion #1

History

The project originated as a concept developed by Donny Cates, whose long Venom run had seeded the Maker's obsession with rebuilding his lost home universe; after Cates was sidelined by a severe car accident, Jonathan Hickman was brought in as the new writer and ultimately took the story in a substantially different direction, with Cates acknowledged via a special thanks credit in the first issue. Hickman and artist Bryan Hitch — whose earlier collaboration on The Ultimates had helped define the original imprint's look and feel — were announced in February 2023 via an Entertainment Weekly exclusive, with Hickman describing the new Ultimate Universe as an inversion of what the original had been. The first issue was published on June 21, 2023, with readers getting a preview scene weeks earlier in the Free Comic Book Day: Spider-Man/Venom #1, and the complete four-issue series was collected in a trade paperback edition in 2024.

Trivia · 8 facts

• Published June 21, 2023 (cover-dated August 2023) by Marvel Comics; written by Jonathan Hickman, penciled by Bryan Hitch, inked by Andrew Currie, colored by Alex Sinclair, lettered by VC's Joe Caramagna, and edited by Wil Moss.
• First issue of a four-part limited series that served as the direct launch vehicle for Marvel's new Ultimate Universe line, set on the newly designated Earth-6160.
• Contains the first comics appearance of the Earth-6160 version of Liz Allan, shown as a teenage classmate of Peter Parker at the moment the Maker intervenes to prevent the radioactive spider bite that would have made Parker Spider-Man.
• Presents the first in-story look at Earth-6160's older Peter Parker — an adult married to Mary Jane with children — whose existence as a non-superhero is one of the Maker's deliberate alterations to that timeline.
• The Illuminati of Earth-616 — Reed Richards, Black Panther, Iron Man, Doctor Strange, Namor, Professor X, and Black Bolt — reassemble to pursue the Maker after his escape from a Damage Control high-security facility, establishing this reconstituted team as the series' primary opposing force.
• Donny Cates, who originally conceived the project and planted seeds for it during his Venom run, received a special thanks credit in the issue after being replaced by Hickman following a car accident.
• The issue was preceded by a preview scene published in Free Comic Book Day: Spider-Man/Venom #1 (2023), which had a print run reported by Marvel at nearly 500,000 copies.
• The chapter title for issue #1 is 'Chapter One: Good Artists Copy,' a reference consistent with Hickman's signature approach of embedding thematic framing devices and data pages throughout his event comics.

Cast · 17 characters

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Variants (10)