Marvel Banned This Superhero Team - But You Can Still Watch Their TV Show

The cutthroat world of comic books can end literal universes with one tactical purchase. This happened to Malibu Comics' Ultraverse when Marvel Comics purchased Malibu in 1994. Several Ultraverse titles still lingered on as relaunches that often featured some Marvel characters as well, but by 1996, Marvel decided to prune the alternate universe from its lineup, effectively ending the Ultraverse for good. Well, almost — one remnant of this universe still soldiers on and is currently available for streaming on Amazon's Prime Video.

"Ultraforce" is a one-season animated show featuring the Ultraverse's version of the Avengers or the Justice League. The series is a 13-episode look into the adventures of some of the Ultraverse's most prominent characters as they fight their deadliest enemies. It happened to debut during the franchise's Marvel era in 1995 and is a rare glimpse into a lost comic book universe. Now, you can check out the series yourself.

The Ultraverse technically still technically exists within the Marvel Comics multiverse as Earth-93060, but the publisher has chosen not to explore this world since canceling its titles in 1996. This may have had something to do with the fact that Marvel was never really interested in Malibu and its intellectual properties in the first place. Instead, the company simply stepped in to prevent its biggest competitor, DC Comics, from acquiring Malibu instead.

"The real reason that Marvel bought Malibu was to keep the company out of the hands of DC which had been negotiating to buy the company since April/May of 1994," Malibu co-founder and Ultraverse co-creator Tom Mason told Filing Cabinet of the Damned. He went on to confirm that while Marvel initially intended to keep Malibu alive, the company's own financial issues and the abysmal comic book market at the time soon made it clear that the Ultraverse's survival simply wasn't on the cards.

Since the situation played out this way, the Ultraverse remains a sleeping giant of comic book universes that may never see the light of day again (outside of watching the "UltraForce" animated series on Prime Video, that is), which is no doubt frustrating for fans of old-school Malibu stuff. Of course, should Malibu have survived and eventually joined the superhero movie wars, there's no telling whether it might have succeeded or simply joined the many cinematic universes that failed miserably. Still, at least Marvel has plenty of interesting Ultraverse stuff up its sleeve to turn to if people ever get bored with the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Before you dive into the peculiarities of "UltraForce," it's worth noting that the series features a character that, even by Ultraverse standards, is particularly unlikely to ever receive a Marvel resurrection. The co-creator of the Ultraverse's resident Superman/Shazam expy Prime is Gerard Jones. In 2017, he was arrested on suspicion of possessing and distributing child pornography, and in 2018, he received a six-year prison sentence for these crimes.

In a 2005 interview with Newsarama (via Wikipedia), Marvel's Joe Quesada hinted that one thing that has at least affected Ultraverse's resurrection is that the original creators would receive a cut of the sales. "There are rumors out there that it has to do with a certain percentage of sales that has to be doled out to the creative teams," he said, adding, "[I]t's not the reason why we have chosen not to go near these characters, there is a bigger one, but I really don't feel like it's my place to make that dirty laundry public."

While Jones, specifically, was never mentioned, and may not even be the "bigger" issue Quesada referred to, it's incredibly unlikely that Marvel would ever feature a character he helped create in the wake of his crimes, and doubly so if the company would have to actually pay him for it. As such, don't expect to see Prime any time soon in the future, even if the rest of the Ultraverse eventually does eventually manage to rise again.

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