Letting it all hang out.

So Marvel unleashed its “Ultimate” Universe in 2000/2001, starting with Ultimate Spider-Man and Ultimate X-Men, partially out of a need to have some “new reader friendly” material on the stands too imposed by the deep continuity in the regular Marvel Universe. Also, a collapsed comics market and Marvel being on the verge of “going away” for good probably helped push along any desperate ideas to keep them afloat. Whatever the reason, the Ultimate books came out, giving fresh starts to their properties separate from the still-ongoing Marvel Universe proper…until they became just as convoluted as the mainline universe and purpose successfully defeated. But it ran a long time, and made lots of money and had a strong readership, and “the sweet taste of success attracts many tongues, as no one but me says, and DC was trying to figure out how to get some of that Ultimate scratch. First they tried with their “All-Star” line in the mid-2000s, with All-Star Batman and Robin the Boy Wonder and…