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When Jonathan Hickman recreated Marvel’s Ultimate Universe — leading to his best-selling Ultimate Spider-Man series, as well as a raft of additional titles, including Peach Momoko’s Ultimate X-Men — he did so with a timeline built in: the antagonist of the entire universe, the Maker (an evil alternate reality Reed Richards), was locked out of reality for two years. The December marks the end of the first half of his exile… and the Ultimate Universe is well aware of what that means.

Coming in December is a one-off special issue written by Deniz Camp, who’s currently writing The Ultimates as part of the current imprint. Titled Ultimate Universe: One Year In, the issue — which will be illustrated by an artist whose identity will be revealed at a later date — sees what happens when those left in the world still loyal to the Maker decide to take action against the many superheroes who have emerged since his disappearance… leading to not just a number of storylines to be explored throughout the next 12 months of comic books set in the universe, but also the debut of two brand-new Ultimate versions of big-name Marvel characters.

The one-shot was announced during the Marvel Comics: Next Big Thing panel at San Diego Comic-Con 2024 on Friday afternoon, led by Marvel editor-in-chief CB Cebulski, although no-one on the panel was willing to identify just who those two big Marvel heroes were who were prepping for an Ultimate debut. So far, we’ve seen Ultimate versions of Spider-Man, Black Panther, the X-Men, and the Avengers (as The Ultimates)… but that leaves almost an entire universe to explore for future adaptation. Start your speculation engines to place bets on who we’re going to see in this one-shot release… but don’t be too surprised if they’re characters who have MCU versions already.

My money’s on Daredevil being one of them, at least. Let’s come back in December to see just how wrong I was.

Get a fuller San Diego Comic-Con experience with a full rundown of our SDCC 2024 stories, as well as all the big SDCC 2024 news, how to make the most out of San Diego Comic-Con, and the real burning question: how much does it actually cost to go to SDCC?