The Ultimates

by Michael Jan Friedman

Published 1 January 2007
The Ultimates' supposedly impenetrable headquarters is breached by a mysterious, tech-powered quintet who claim to be from the future. These 'tomorrow men' -- or so they are dubbed by Fury -- say they have come to make 'minor' adjustments in the timeline in order to eliminate a terrible threat to their era. As time goes on, the Ultimates place more and more trust in the tomorrow men, until Tony Stark shocks everyone by exposing the visitors' true, horrific agenda. They come from the future all right, but not from OUR future. They come from a separate branch of the timeline, one where The Ultimates don't exist, and where, after his death, Stark's company has turned the world into a polluted, anarchy-ridden shambles. Their goal is to open a rift in time big enough to allow a privileged class -- their employers -- to emigrate to the twenty-first century and escape the depredations of their own time, crushing the twenty-first century's people to make room for their own.