by the Your Mom's Basement Staff

Ultimatizing! Ultimaxing! Ultimatastic! Marvel has huge plans for its Ultimate line in the next year and Your Mom's Basement was there to hear it!

Let's start with Saturday's "Ultimate Avengers" panel where attendees were treated to a first glimpse of the first in a series of direct to DVD animated movies from Lions Gate and Marvel. It's important to state off the bat that these films are meant for comic fans and as long as comic fans buy then, Lions Gate plans to keep making them.

The first two quarterly released films will be "The Ultimates". With both films roughly following the first "season" of the comic. The third film will be Iron Man. But it will not be Ultimate Iron Man. It will instead be the regular Marvel universe Iron Man's origin story. In fact, there will be no overarching continuity between the animated films.

So what can fans expect from "Ultimate Avengers"? Honestly... I'm not sure. They plan to follow the storylines closely but it also seems like they'll be taking out anything controversial. There will be no real world politics. No George W. Bush. Also there were hints that there would be no domestic abuse between Giant Man and the Wasp for fear audience would then abandon the Giant Man character. Apparently Cap still fights Giant Man though, so he must still do something worthy of an ass kicking. And the presenters were also clear that the films would focus on Captain America and his story, so I worry that means we won't get as much about Iron Man or Thor.

The films will be roughly 85 minutes long and the first one will end with a drawn out fight between the Ultimates and the Hulk. The audience was then presented with test footage of that fight and... well... this reviewer seems to be in the minority... but I was largely unimpressed. It looked more "Mangaverse" than "Ultimates". And while I suppose that can be a good thing for some... it just didn't feel right to me.

But what about the books, you say? Well, Saturday also brought us a panel just on Marvel's plan for the Ultimate comics line and what we heard was quite exciting:

After the current gang war storyline concludes in Ultimate Spider-Man Spider-Man will face off against Ultimate Omega Red as Bendis apparently has a love of bad 90s characters.

There will be another Ultimate Iron Man series with a big name artist to be announced.

Ultimate Extinction will apparently have the "coolest thing you've ever seen" in it.

Leinil Yu will join Marvel for Ultimate Hulk vs. Wolverine. The writer is still unannounced. but Quesada said something interesting about the writer while at the podium. He said the writer's "name is lost to me." Which elicited laughs from the other panelists and made this reporter wonder a bit about what he had exactly said as it wasn't that funny in and of itself. Could it have been a hint? And if it was, could it mean that Marvel has gotten someone from the television show "Lost" as their writer? Both series creator J.J. Abrams and series writer Javier Grillo-Marxuach have ties to comics... In the series we will learn many new things about Ultimate Hulk's powers which apparently are not the same as the regular Hulk's.

In 2006 Bendis and Bagley will break the record of 103 consecutive issues by the same creative team. And in 2006 we can also expect "Ultimate Invasion" from Bendis and a "superstar" artist.

There will be an Ultimates 3. No announcement on the creative team. But you have to think you don't bring Jeph Loeb and Joe Madureira on board and have them do Spider-Ham, now do you? Also Quesada was asked about the "Pre-Ultimate Universe" Ultimate Universe book that was hinted years ago to possibly be Marvel Boy and said that idea had been dropped.