How does an established franchise relaunch itself to appeal to an audience whose taste has evolved? The secret history of the ultimate Marvel traces the success of the new series to a Hail Mary maneuver, an experiment: A reboot is a delicate thing. When a once-profitable franchise of characters becomes stale, outdated, or overly complex, there will always be voices calling for the slate to be wiped clean: to take the characters back to their basics, retell their origin stories, make them contemporary. But all too often, those rebooting efforts are laughable, pandering failures. Ultimate Marvel was the rare exception.... Read more →