Jemas contemplated blowing up the entire existing Marvel comics universe and starting from scratch. (DC Comics, which felt similarly encumbered by its own history, had done just that in 1985, on the company’s fiftieth anniversary, with Crisis on Infinite Earths.) He was dissuaded and went with a less radical option: a separate “Ultimate” line of Marvel Comics that would take the characters back to basics, telling the tales of their earliest days—but updated for modern readers—and focusing on the most popular characters and storylines in Marvel history.
