I haven't read any Marvel Ultimate but is this just a DC Ultimate reboot?
I don't think so. THAT was "Earth One," an imprint that was going to run in parallel reinventing the characters. Or "All-Star," which was kind of the same thing with looser continuity between titles.
This appears to be a disregarding of the 1986-1994-2004-2005-2006-2011 world of partial reboots in favor of a replica of the Silver Age. (Or, more likely, pushing "New Earth" to the background in favor of focusing on Earth 38b or whatever.)
Frankly, I don't think it's a terrible idea (and speaking to Phil's point), given that their existing audience is made up of dwindling old fogies like ourselves who they've been trying to keep buying through endless mega-events. A genuine fresh start might kill the embedded base, but looking at those sales numbers, that's probably not so bad.
I just wish they'd done it sooner, rather than suffering through the fifteen or so years of trickling half-reboots, leading to the Superboy-less Legion, the Hawkman, Power Girl, and Green Lantern contortions, and so forth. Also, doing it earlier would've meant no Jim Lee costumes...
I doubt it will discourage the pirates much who pride themselves on not only scanning them the day they come out but doing a 'superior' scan to anyone else. If they scans were somehow free maybe then they'd stop.
I don't mean the scanners, because they seem to do it for their own pleasure. I mean the downloaders, where I suspect a major factor is having to haul out to a comic shop half a week after "everybody else" has been talking about the story.
If DC is selling "0-Day" scans, then you can have them ready for your Wednesday morning commute, say, just like the pirated scans. Is that enough? Given an actual download, I'd much rather get a scan from the original art than some nameless consortium of scanners hiding behind pseudonyms.
My reaction? "Oh, good. It's been nearly a year and a half since the last Legion of Super-Heroes #1, we're due."
Ha! Very true.
The thing that struck me as oddest was seeing Aquaman referenced as one of the "A listers," and I've been an Aquaman fan since the mid-fifties. It looks like Dido and company are hoping if they say something loudly enough, someone might believe it. Well, perhaps when all of the re-reinventing is over, we'll finally have an Aquaman I recognize again.
To be fair, Jon, that's exactly what happened with the Martian Manhunter. In the early '80s, he was best remembered as "that green guy who showed up that time in JLA." Today, even the old-timers scream when he's not the "heart and soul of the League," an idea mainly from the '90s. Wildcat and the Red Tornado also climbed the ranks from obscurity or uselessness to at least B-Lister through repetition.
Only Aquaman and Wonder Woman seem resistant to that treatment. I think they can fix both, but it's going to require dropping the alien-ness and royalty spins on the characters. I think they both work best when they're basically cowboys, bringing "the American Way" to their particular corner of the world. King Aquaman has made for all the silly revisions that exist solely to figure out why a king would skip out on his country to fight crime in Gotham City.
But what I find most shocking is that, wiping the slate entirely clean, the best thing they could come up with is the 1958 JLA lineup (no Charlton, Fawcett, Quality, or Milestone characters) with none of the ethnic diversity they keep claiming they want to see among the A-Listers.