Ultimate Universe (Earth-6160)Ultimates

When a great evil prevents Super Heroes from existing on Earth-6160, teenager Tony Stark, AKA Iron Lad, sets out to correct history and creates the Ultimates, a network of super-powered heroes to take their world back from a madman’s machinations.

Ultimates Assemble

A diabolical genius from another universe, Reed Richards, AKA The Maker, uses time travel to prevent Super Heroes from existing on Earth-6160, and creates a secret council of Super Villains, The Maker’s Council, to rule the world from the shadows. But when the Maker is trapped in a domed facility, the City, and locked away for two years—thanks to the efforts of inventor Howard Stark and Reed Richards, AKA Doom—Stark’s son, teenager Tony Stark, takes on the task of setting things right with the code name Iron Lad.

Tony teams up with a broken Reed, who insists on being called Doom, and creates “origin-boxes,” which contain all the ingredients necessary to create a hero. They send these boxes to prospective candidates, while recruiting some key individuals to their cause. Their first recruit is a Super-Soldier out of time and without a country, Steve Rogers, AKA Captain America. The next recruits include the deposed Asgardian God of Thunder and prison escapee Thor and his warden, the warrior goddess Sif. Together, they are the Ultimates, and they embark on recruiting a resistance network of heroes to fight back against the evil to prepare for the Maker’s return.

Team Roster

Teenager Tony Stark is a technocrat’s son who is bent on restoring his world’s heroes and leads the Ultimates. Tony works closely with a secretive and traumatized Doom and while they disagree over whether to use the Immortus Engine—a time machine—they ultimately have the same goal: to defeat the Maker. The larger roster works to restore heroes individually and sometimes as a group. The roster includes Jim Hammond, AKA the Human Torch, recently restored antique android, who killed Hitler; Janet Van Dyne, AKA Wasp, born for the Super Hero life; Lejori Joena Zakaria, AKA She-Hulk, protector of Gamma Island; Hank Pym, AKA Giant-Man, doesn’t believe in himself but growing to like himself; America Chavez, amnesiac temporal refugee; and Charli Ramsey, AKA Hawkeye, a young, scrappy Lakota tribe member who wields a stone age weapon with a high-tech twist.

Shadowy Super Villains

The Ultimates’ foremost foe is The Maker. While trapped, the Maker does not pose an immediate threat, but is responsible for changing everyone’s lives when he removed all possibility for Super Heroes on their world of Earth-6160. The Maker also establishes The Maker’s Council, a shadowy group that shapes the world’s history. The council includes Bruce Banner, AKA the Hulk, and by extension his Immortal Weapons, Henri Duggary, AKA Captain Britain, Emmanuel Da Costa, AKA Black King, Khonshu, Ra, Piotr Rasputin, Illyana Rasputin, AKA Magik, Arkady Rossovich, Kenuichio Harada, AKA Silver Samurai, Shiro Yoshida, AKA Sun Emperor, Aida, AKA Viper, and Obadiah Stane. The Maker’s Council frames the Ultimates for a terrorist attack on Manhattan that kills thousands of people.

Resistance Allies

The resistance network starts out with two members, Tony and Doom, and grows to 11 strong, despite setbacks like their potential heroes rejecting their prevented destiny or having accidents with the technology sent to them via the "origin-boxes."

The Guardians of the Galaxy from the 61st Century become fast allies to the Ultimates, thanks to their previous connection to America Chavez. Though America has no memories of them, she was a member of their team in the past.

Leaving a Mark

Iron Lad and Doom started the first iteration of the Ultimates, Ultimates 1.0, by using the Immortus Engine to go back in time and rescue Super-Soldier Steve Rogers, AKA Captain America, from the icy depths. By way of a technologically-advanced ship, Tony and Doom then traveled to Asgard, breaking the Asgardian god Thor out of prison. His warden, Sif, joined them on their journey. Though calling upon the Asgardians did not always mean they would show up. One such time, Tony, Doom, and Captain America visited Damage Control, one of a series of storehouses filled with indestructible corpses and never-worn super-costumes. While they walked around what was effectively a mass grave museum, H.A.N.D. agents attacked them. In the midst of the fight, Captain America, with a blast from Tony, lit a corpse on fire and it restored the ancient android Jim Hammond, AKA Human Torch, to life.

However, the Maker’s Council had other goals, and council member Captain Britain, confronted the team, severely wounding Thor but losing an eye to Iron Lad. The Council responded by launching an attack on New York City using Stark satellites, with the team barely escaping with their lives and framed as terrorists.

Thousands died in the attack and the Ultimates team was presumed dead to the world, but in actuality the small team absconded into the future, six months to be exact, secreted away in an off-the-books Stane/Stark corporate spy satellite. With the Immortus Engine time machine in their hands, Tony believed they could fix things by creating the Super Hero resistance network: the Ultimates Network. To recreate the world stolen from them, Tony suggested finding replacement Super Heroes, as Doom noted that the Maker likely killed the original heroes. Still, Doom agreed to build the Ultimate Network with him, albeit starting six months in the past. They worked for six days, designing super-identities, calculating the probability of heroism in prospective candidates, and weighing many other variables, preparing catalysts and calculating trajectories, and in between Tony cracked the ice that Captain America was trapped inside of, and brought him up to speed, including the fact that the United States broke up in 1969. 

Tony sent technology and heroic material in “origin-boxes” through time, back six months, to people to teach them of the heroes they were meant to become. When they looked out the window hoping to see their world teeming with Super Heroes but alas only one or two took hold, such as the middle-aged Peter Parker, who allowed himself to be bitten by a radioactive spider to become Spider-Man, and the imprisoned Carl Lucas “Luke” Cage, who uses his impenetrable skin and superhuman strength to protect his fellow inmates.

Expanding their roster to Ultimates 2.0, the Ultimates started recruiting some of their prospective heroes directly, such as Hank Pym and Janet Van Dyne, who were both bug exterminators. Though they were interrupted by Captain Britain, one of the Maker’s Inner Circle and his personal guard, the Black Crusade. A fight followed, and Janet accepted her destiny, taking up the Wasp’s suit and mantle. Hank hesitated, worried about the state of his mind but ultimately chose his mantle as well as Giant-Man, and then the newly formed Ultimates defeated the Black Crusade. 

The team soon faced off with Midas, a Super Villain in gilded Iron Man armor, a member of the Hellfire Club and pawn of The Maker’s Council, who had taken over the U.S. White House. The Ultimates soon discovered that Midas’ armor was powered by the cosmic powerhouse and amnesiac young woman named America Chavez, whom Midas held against her will. The team rescued her from the Council’s underbelly while the team’s other recruitment attempts failed as would-be heroes rejected the secret identities and double lives Tony’s “origin-boxes” offered. 

The Ultimates team soon visited Gamma Island, an experiment of the Maker’s Council member, Bruce Banner, AKA the Hulk, who had bombed the island with gamma radiation. There, they believe they found an army of Hulks, but in reality it was a village of gamma-irradiated people, who suffered greatly from exposure to the dangerous radiation. There were some, however, such as Lejori Joena Zakaria, who became strong from the radiation, and became a protector of the island known as She-Hulk. The Ultimates tried to convince She-Hulk to join them and leave the island, but She-Hulk refused at first, noting that Banner would never allow it. The group kept trying, and She-Hulk agreed to donate her strength in exchange for fixing their island and making it habitable again, like it was before Banner’s bombs. 

Captain America then attempted to recruit the unknown civilian who had taken up a discarded bow and arrow and was dressed in a Hawkeye costume. This mystery Hawkeye was found trying to blow up a Roxxon Energy Partners facility, where Captain America discovered the civilian was Charli Ramsey, a member of the Oglala band of the Lakota Nation. Ramsey fought Captain America until Roxxon’s mercenaries arrived to take them down, and they started fighting them off together. When they were victorious, Captain confirmed that Charli was indeed Hawkeye and invited him to join the Ultimates.

Seeing the Ultimates as a threat, the Hulk ambushed the network of Super Heroes. Doom managed to rescue them after a brutal defeat, but Tony was near dead and in critical condition. The Ultimates continued their mission and they were contacted by the Guardians of the Galaxy of the 61st Century, who were looking for America, their lost compatriot. The Guardians’ member Captain Marvel tried to restore America’s lost memories but it didn’t work and Starstalker, the Ultimate Good Boy, psychically sensed that all the Ultimates’ shared the same terrible dream: their deaths at the hands of the Hulk. So the Guardians explained that there was a catastrophe in time and Guardians were sent to investigate. No matter what they did, their universe died, leaving only a precious few Guardians left to find a reality that had replaced their own. The journey separated them from America, who landed inside a “hard time” period, one even inaccessible by their own time machine, and surmised that America’s powers pierced what they called the Unmaker’s barrier. Since America did not remember them, she remained committed to staying with the Ultimates. Though the Guardians warned about their doom, convinced that they would lose against the Unmaker, they left America with a temporal flare to call upon them when in great need.

Tony eventually awoke from his comatose state. But his body was beyond conventional healing, so he installed the Immortus Engine into his chest. While undergoing surgery, he followed the Ultimates’ missions remotely and found footage of the battle with the Hulk, which showed every Ultimates’ member dead, but no one had died. He demanded an explanation from Doom.