Marvel has announced the return of Ultimate Spider-Man in 2024, with a reboot of the comic that began the whole Ultimate Universe back in 2000. The perfect title to begin Marvel’s new version of the Ultimate Universe in earnest, the new book sports a killer creative team and promises to once again reimagine Spider-Man for the modern day, bringing a contemporary relevance to the classic characters fans know and love.
The superstar creative team of writer Jonathan Hickman and artist Marco Checchetto will be creating this new version of Ultimate Spider-Man, releasing January 2024.
Revealing the book on X (formerly Twitter), Marvel Entertainment announced that more info will be coming at their Next Big Thing panel at New York Comic Con on October 14. With Hickman as the main architect on this new universe, and Checchetto coming off a landmark run of Daredevil with Chip Zdarsky, this is the perfect team to reimagine Ultimate Spider-Man for a new generation.
Ultimate Spider-Man Launched a Universe & Debuted Miles Morales
The original Ultimate Spider-Man was the first comic of Marvel’s Ultimate Universe, published in 2000. Written by then-newcomer Brian Michael Bendis and drawn by Mark Bagley, Ultimate Spider-Man vol 1 #1 imagined what the Marvel Universe would look like if it started in the present of 2000, and the book, and the whole Ultimate Universe, quickly became a runaway success. Under Bendis, Ultimate Spider-Man was a flagship title for the Ultimate Universe throughout its original tenure, introducing huge characters like Miles Morales and remaining ever-popular up until the destruction of its universe in 2015 with the mega-event Secret Wars, also written by Jonathan Hickman.
Hickman Is the Architect of New Ultimate Universe
Jonathan Hickman’s most recent Marvel work is Ultimate Invasion, a four-issue miniseries with Bryan Hitch created with the express purpose of building a new Ultimate Universe, seemingly the newly introduced Earth 6160. This will be followed by Ultimate Universe #1, a one-shot written by Hickman with art by Stefano Caselli releasing November, setting up new Ultimate Universe titles, of which Ultimate Spider-Man is the first announced. Hickman is no stranger to the Ultimate Universe, having written for the original version with Ultimate Comics: Ultimates and Ultimate Thor, before becoming the architect of that universe’s destruction in 2015’s Secret Wars.
Is the New Spider-Man Peter Parker?
One of the biggest questions is how this new book will be different from the old Ultimate Spider-Man. Ultimate Invasion #1 (written by Hickman, penciled by Hitch, inked by Andrew Currie, colored by Alex Sinclair and lettered by Joe Caramagna) ends with the Maker, the evil Reed Richards of the original Ultimate Universe, using time travel to prevent Earth 6160’s Peter Parker from ever being bitten by a radioactive spider. Will the new incarnation of Spidey even be Peter, then? Will it be a version of his original Ultimate successor in Miles Morales? Or will this new Ultimate Spider-Man debut a totally new Ultimate Spider-Man for a new generation?
