Marvel Comics experimented with a reboot with rebooting about twenty years ago, when they introduced the Ultimate Comics universe. This gave Marvel the opportunity of introducing new readers to classic characters without the cumbersome weight of decades of continuity. For a while, it worked but then came the 2009 crossover event, Ultimatum.
The event effectively ended the experiment, by killing off major characters and destroying the Ultimate world as fans knew it. The story was highly criticized for its violence, gore, and indulgence in pure spectacle over storytelling. Though some good things came out of Ultimate Comics, many disturbing moments linger from Ultimatum.
10 Angel Eaten By Sabretooth
The 1990s was an era of extremes for Marvel, and the legacy of those characters and comics is on full display in Ultimatum. The bloody and indiscriminate deaths pile up quickly, including the vicious murder of X-Man Angel by Sabretooth, who generally tends to do terrible things to Wolverine. Sabretooth begins eating Angel after breaking his neck with his boot. The horror of the scene only escalates when Sabretooth is then immediately killed himself with a dart in the eye by Hawkeye.
9 The Freezing Of Latveria
Ultimatum is not just a story of personal destruction, but worldwide devastation. One of the first major calamities of the story occurs when the entire country of Latveria, home of the greatest villain in the Marvel Universe, Doctor Doom, is frozen. Magneto has reversed the Earth's poles in revenge for the deaths of his children—the Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver. The resulting climate change freezes everything and everyone in Latveria on the spot, including civilians caught in the open when temperatures plummeted.
8 Death Of Wolverine
Magneto's reign of destruction in the storyline is truly horrendous. One of his most vicious acts occurs when he completely destroys Wolverine. Wolverine's healing factor generally makes him immune to even catastrophic injury, such as when Magneto ripped the adamantium off his skeleton in the Fatal Attractions crossover event, but not this time. Magneto utterly destroys Wolverine from the inside out, preventing his body from healing itself. There's really nothing left of him.
7 Dormammu Kills Doctor Strange
The ambition of the story seems to have been to basically kill off every major character in the most destructive fashion. That trend continues with Doctor Strange. As part of the wider story of Ultimatum, Doctor Strange faces off against his classic rival, Dormammu, after Strange's home is destroyed.
In issue #4 of Ultimatum, Dormammu constricts around Strange's body so tightly he explodes his head into a bloody pulp. It's a needlessly gory and gratuitous death emblematic of the entire storyline.
6 Thing Murders Dr. Doom
The deaths don't stop there. In fact, over twenty different major Marvel characters meet their end in the story and one of the biggest is Doctor Doom. He is killed by the Thing, who crushes his head in his rocky hand. The Thing ultimately kills Doctor Doom out of retribution for his role in the cataclysmic story; Doom is responsible for the death of the Scarlet Witch. This would eventually be retconned, with Doom being alive in the Ultimate universe and with Thing having killed a decoy.
5 Death Of Cyclops
The consequences of Doom's actions reverberate through the entire Ultimate universe. Her brother, Quicksilver, assassinates the leader of the X-Men, Cyclops. His death comes at the end of the story when he publically announces that the federal government demands all mutants turn themselves in or be killed. Quicksilver kills him, after he is revealed to be alive after previously being believed to be dead. Quicksilver vows to carry on his father's legacy, though there isn't much left to destroy.
4 Magneto Kills Professor X
Magneto and Professor X are the classic opposing forces within the world of mutants. Often they work together, as they do currently in the Dawn of X era. In Ultimatum, their complicated story ends with Magneto brutally killing his former friend by breaking his neck. The death of Charles Xavier in another timeline made a hero out of Magneto in the Age of Apocalypse story, but here it only makes him a monster. There was really nowhere to go for Magneto after this or really the Ultimate universe for that matter.
3 Destruction Of Manhattan
The storyline begins with one of the most devastating attacks in comic book history. Magneto's reversal of the poles sets off a massive tidal wave. The tsunami deluges Manhattan, causing unimaginable death and destruction. Many heroes die in this disaster, including Beast, Nightcrawler, and Daredevil.
The wave in and of itself might have lent the story some value if things had ended there. The Ultimate universe was a place for the comics to do things the regular Marvel Earth-616 simply couldn't. But the death and violence only escalated from there.
2 Giant-Man Eats The Blob
Like Angel and Sabretooth, shocking, violent events cascade in Ultimatum. Two of the worst follow each other. Hank Pym seeks out Janet Van Dyne, only to find her dead, with the Blob eating her corpse. Hank Pym goes into a rage, turns into Giant-Man, and bites the head off of the Blob. It's a terrible moment and almost lost in the horror of what directly preceded it. Hank Pym himself is later killed by a clone of Multiple Man, Jamie Madrox, transformed into a suicide-bomber by Magneto.
1 Blob Eats The Wasp
The Blob is absolutely one of the most dangerous members of the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants. But his actions in Ultimatum are truly grotesque. Yellowjacket finds the Blob eating the corpse of Janet Van Dyne, known as the Wasp, in the aftermath of the Ultimatum Wave. It's a truly disgusting sight and a low point in a series of lows for the entire comic book. The untethered gore and violence of the scene forever ranks Ultimatum as one of the worst Marvel event books of the 21st century.
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