- Written by: Deniz Camp, Alex Paknadel
- Art by: Patrick Boutin, Phil Noto, Francesco Manna, Lee Ferguson, Javier Pulido
- Colors by: Federico Blee, Phil Noto, GURU-eFX, Erick Arciniega, Javier Pulido
- Letters by: VC’s Travis Lanham
- Cover art by: Ryan Stegman, Frank Martin
- Cover price: $5.99
- Release date: December 3, 2025
Ultimate Universe: Two Years In, by Marvel on 12/3/25, is a one-shot that promises cosmic scope and temporal urgency as the universe prepares for the Maker’s return, yet delivers a disjointed “anthology” that squanders both.
First Impressions
Opening with a failed attempt to restore reality through cosmic surgery is a bold narrative gambit, one that immediately places grief and high stakes at the story’s center. The death of Gary and Giraud in the first pages should resonate emotionally, yet the moment rushes past before readers can invest in these characters or understand their significance. This becomes a pattern for the entire issue: concepts arrive faster than emotional investment can follow.
Plot Analysis
The Guardians of the Galaxy from the 61st century, now scattered through time due to the Maker’s alterations to reality, continue their mission to locate 25,000 lost teammates. Captain Marvel leads a memorial service for Gary and Giraud, two Guardians who died attempting Star-Lord’s plan to separate the Maker’s twisted timeline from their original universe through “cosmic parabiosis.” Star-Lord, consumed by guilt, isolates himself and searches for another lost teammate, the Madrox.
The team travels to various time periods, finding displaced Guardians. They discover Ultron-82 in 2,000,000 BC, studying whether the Maker’s incursion damaged the past itself. In 13,000,000 BC, they search for Churnn, the Nova Prime, who has been deified by the Badoon civilization he encountered and whose teachings have been twisted into a cult promoting violence and sacrifice. The Guardians find only a skull and mockery of Churnn’s consciousness.
During their journey, the ship’s hope-powered engines(???) begin failing due to the crew’s mounting despair. They encounter Daredevil, actually a Beyonder whose senses were reduced from seven million to thirteen after saving a stellar nursery. Now calling himself “Daredevil, the Beyonder Without Fear,” he has become unhinged, attempting to preserve reality’s “best parts” inside a Cosmic Hyper-Cube by trapping civilizations, moments, and beings in stasis. He attacks the Guardians and uses his reality-warping powers to manipulate their thoughts, forcing them to view imprisonment as salvation. Captain Marvel eventually defeats him and releases everything he trapped, bringing the broken Beyonder back to the ship.
The Ultimate Nullifier, having studied “Abstract Chronomechanics,” concludes that the only way to save their timeline is to destroy the Maker’s universe entirely, a zero-sum solution that would erase “centillions of lives.” Captain Marvel refuses to authorize genocide. Just as tensions peak, a temporal flare activates, leading them to Earth in 4362 AD, where they find Ultron-82 (who now goes by Uatu) witnessing the Maker’s final conversion of all life into identical “Tomorrow People.” Ultron-82 reveals that the Maker’s changes had no retrocausal effect on the past, meaning history’s violence is inherent, not manufactured. She delivers a message from America Chavez proposing a new motto: “Save what you can.” Star-Lord then reveals he has been hosting the dying Madrox colony within his own body(???), allowing it to regenerate by using his biological resources. The Madrox is reborn, providing the crew with renewed hope, and they set off to rescue another Guardian, Cyttorex, who is tearing through the 30th century.
Detailed Critique
Writing
The writing suffers from severe pacing issues that undermine every narrative beat. Deniz Camp and Alex Paknadel cram what should be four or five individual stories into a single issue, resulting in a breakneck pace that prevents any sequence from breathing. The opening with Gary and Giraud’s deaths exemplifies this problem: readers are introduced to these characters and watch them die within three pages, eliminating any opportunity for emotional investment. The memorial service that follows feels obligatory rather than earned, as we have no relationship with the deceased.
The Daredevil sequence, illustrated by Javier Pulido, represents the comic’s most glaring misstep. Camp introduces an entirely new character, the Beyonder reimagined as Daredevil, complete with an elaborate backstory about reduced somatic senses and a hero’s sacrifice. This concept, which could anchor an entire miniseries, receives approximately five pages before Daredevil is defeated and relegated to a background patient. The dialogue during this sequence veers into overwrought territory. “You think I’m insane, but you can’t see what I see! There are things outside this reality, looking down on us! Hidden hands with unyielding demands!” This meta-commentary about editorial mandates and narrative constraints might work in a more contemplative story, but here it arrives, is acknowledged, and vanishes without impact.
The structure attempts to create thematic resonance between the various rescues and the overarching question of whether this timeline deserves salvation, but the connective tissue is too thin. The Churnn sequence, where the Nova Prime’s teachings have been corrupted into a death cult, should parallel Daredevil’s misguided preservation efforts. However, the comic moves so quickly that these parallels remain implicit rather than developed. The revelation about Star-Lord hosting the Madrox colony arrives with insufficient setup, transforming what should be a shocking character moment into an exposition dump with biological diagrams.
Art
The anthology structure requires five different art teams, and the resulting visual inconsistency fragments the reading experience. Patrick Boutin handles the opening cosmic sequences with appropriate grandeur, rendering the ten-dimensional superstring sutures and collapsing Galan Fields with abstract energy. Phil Noto provides the memorial service sequence with his characteristic painted style, which adds gravitas but feels oddly static for a story theoretically about forward momentum.
Javier Pulido’s work on the Daredevil sequence is the issue’s most contentious artistic choice. Pulido employs a highly stylized, geometric approach that emphasizes flat shapes and limited detail. His Daredevil moves through higher dimensions with angular precision, and the four-dimensional karate is depicted through overlapping figure placements and impossible body positions. While this artistic choice theoretically suits a reality-warping Beyonder, it creates a jarring tonal shift from the cosmic realism of earlier pages. The combat lacks weight and impact, with characters positioned in abstract space rather than grounded environments. When Captain Marvel defeats Daredevil by opening the Hyper-Cube, the climactic moment is rendered as simple geometric shapes rushing outward, which undersells the victory’s significance.
Lee Ferguson’s work on the Churnn sequence in 13,000,000 BC provides the issue’s most grounded visuals. The Badoon civilization feels genuinely alien yet comprehensible, with Ferguson clearly delineating the cult’s structure and the disturbing sacrifices. Francesco Manna handles the middle sequences competently but without distinction, maintaining visual clarity without adding memorable imagery.
The color work, divided among Federico Blee, Guru-eFX, and Erick Arciniega (with Pulido coloring his own pages), lacks cohesion. Blee’s cosmic blues and purples in the opening contrast sharply with Pulido’s flat, primary color choices in the Daredevil sequence, which then clash with Arciniega’s more naturalistic palette in the finale. The result feels less like an anthology and more like a comic struggling with its own identity.
Character Development
Captain Marvel receives the most consistent characterization, bearing the weight of leadership and hope in equal measure. Her internal monologues about forcing herself to dream of the lost future to power the ship’s engines provide the issue’s emotional anchor. The scene where she leaves Ultron-82 in the distant past, acknowledging “I have missed you most of all,” carries genuine weight. However, even Captain Marvel suffers from the compressed storytelling. Her relationship with America Chavez is referenced repeatedly but never shown, making the emotional beats land with less force than intended.
Star-Lord’s guilt-driven isolation could provide compelling drama, but he vanishes for most of the issue, reappearing only for the Madrox reveal. The Ultimate Nullifier’s descent into nihilistic pragmatism, concluding that genocide is the only solution, arrives without sufficient buildup. Earlier issues presumably established this character’s worldview, but within this single comic, the leap from “save everything” to “destroy centillions of lives” feels unearned.
The Daredevil/Beyonder represents the issue’s most frustrating missed opportunity. Camp provides this character with a genuinely tragic backstory: an omnipotent being who sacrificed his senses to save others, then chose to serve reality despite his disability, only to break when faced with inevitable destruction. This is a complete character arc compressed into five pages, which means none of it resonates. We meet him already insane, watch him articulate his philosophy, see him defeated, and move on. There is no time to understand his perspective or feel the tragedy of his fall.
Originality & Concept Execution
The core concept, future heroes scattered through time trying to prevent reality’s destruction, offers potential. The individual set pieces contain interesting ideas: a Nova Corps member deified into a false god, a Beyonder reimagined as Daredevil, a philosophical debate about whether a “sick” timeline deserves euthanasia. However, the execution transforms these concepts into a checklist of moments rather than a cohesive narrative.
The most original element, the ship powered by hope that literally slows when despair takes hold, functions as an effective metaphor for the team’s psychological state. This would work better if the comic allowed time to explore this despair. Instead, characters articulate their hopelessness, the engines stall, and the plot immediately provides a solution.
The promised connection to “the impending return of the Maker in a few months” is functionally absent. The Maker is mentioned in dialogue and appears in one panel during the 4362 AD sequence, but the issue provides no setup, no foreshadowing, no tension regarding his return. For a comic explicitly positioned as a checkpoint for the Ultimate Universe line, this represents a significant failure. Readers finish the issue with no clearer understanding of the Maker’s plans or the stakes of his return than they had before.
Positives
When the comic briefly pauses, it demonstrates the creative team’s capabilities. The two-page spread of Captain Marvel alone in her quarters, visualizing the lost future to keep the engines running, successfully conveys both her determination and her loneliness. The visual of her imagining “sky after sky thronged with heroes” while holding a memory of America Chavez provides a genuine emotional beat that the rest of the issue desperately needs more of.
Ultron-82’s reveal as “Uatu” in the far future, combined with her conclusion that history’s violence is inherent rather than imposed, offers genuine philosophical weight. The idea that restoring their “perfect” future would only delay inevitable decay challenges the simplistic “restore the timeline” motivation. This could anchor a thought-provoking narrative about accepting imperfection and fighting anyway, which is precisely what the amended motto “save what you can” suggests.
The final page, with the Guardians setting off to rescue Cyttorex while acknowledging “this is not our sky, these are not our stars, but we will fight for them all the same,” provides a resonant thesis statement. The problem is that the preceding pages haven’t earned this moment of clarity.
Negatives
The Daredevil sequence epitomizes the comic’s failures. Camp and Pulido introduce a genuinely compelling character concept, the Beyonder Without Fear, and immediately squander it. This should be the issue’s centerpiece, a disturbing encounter with a broken god whose solution to cosmic despair is to trap existence in amber. Instead, it’s a mid-issue detour resolved in pages. Pulido’s art, while stylistically interesting in isolation, actively works against the sequence’s dramatic potential. The abstract, geometric approach renders the combat incomprehensible and drains the emotional stakes. When Daredevil is defeated and Captain Marvel opens the Hyper-Cube, the moment should be triumphant. Instead, it’s simply over, another box checked before moving to the next plot point.
Camp’s writing during this sequence reveals a fundamental misunderstanding of how to deploy meta-commentary. Having Daredevil rant about “hidden hands with unyielding demands” is the comic pointing at its own constraints rather than working within or against them meaningfully. This breaks immersion without providing insight.
The complete absence of meaningful Maker setup is inexcusable for a comic explicitly titled “Two Years In” and positioned as a line-wide checkpoint. The Maker appears for a single panel, and his “conversion” of humanity into Tomorrow People occurs in the background of one scene. There is no explanation of his methodology, no hint at his return, no escalation of threat. For readers trying to understand where this Universe is headed, this comic provides nothing.
The rushed plot transforms potentially affecting moments into hollow gestures. Churnn’s rescue should be tragic, the corruption of his teachings a pointed commentary on how easily ideals become weapons. Instead, he’s nullified, literally rendered thoughtless, and carried away. Gary and Giraud’s deaths should catalyze the team’s crisis, but we never knew them, so their loss registers intellectually rather than emotionally. Star-Lord’s guilt should be palpable, but he’s absent for most of the issue, reducing his arc to a reveal in the final pages.
About The Reviewer: Gabriel Hernandez is the Publisher & EIC of ComicalOpinions.com, a comics review site dedicated to indie, small, and mid-sized publishers.Follow @ComicalOpinions on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter
The Scorecard
Writing Quality (Clarity & Pacing): [1.5/4]
Art Quality (Execution & Synergy): [2/4]
Value (Originality & Entertainment): [1/2]
Final Verdict
Ultimate Universe: Two Years In reads like detailed notes for a compelling story rather than the story itself. Camp and Paknadel demonstrate they understand the thematic territory, exploring philosophical questions about hope and preservation, yet the anthology structure and compressed page count transform these elements into a rushed summary of events that should unfold across multiple issues. The Daredevil sequence, which should be a haunting centerpiece about the dangers of preservation without growth, instead becomes an awkward detour featuring incomprehensible action and half-developed philosophy, with Pulido’s stylized art actively undermining the sequence’s dramatic stakes. Most damningly, for a comic positioned as a two-year checkpoint for the Ultimate Universe, it provides virtually no setup for the Maker’s return or clarity about the line’s direction.
4.5/10
We hope you found this article interesting. Come back for more reviews, previews, and opinions on comics, and don’t forget to follow us on social media:
Connect With Us Here: Weird Science DC Comics / Weird Science Marvel Comics
If you’re interested in this creator’s works, remember to let your Local Comic Shop know to find more of their work for you. They would appreciate the call, and so would we.
Click here to find your Local Comic Shop: www.ComicShopLocator.com
As an Amazon Associate, we earn revenue from qualifying purchases to help fund this site. Links to Blu-Rays, DVDs, Books, Movies, and more contained in this article are affiliate links. Please consider purchasing if you find something interesting, and thank you for your support.
Weird Science Marvel Comics 