Despite a small (and rather sad) contingency of Marvel people at this year’s Chicago Comic-Con (you may know this as Wizard World Chicago), there are still a couple of Marvel panels to report on. The first of which happened on Friday afternoon – the Marvel Ultimate Panel – involving news and discussion of the Marvel Ultimate Comics line. In attendance were Jim McCann, Marvel’s PR guru, Lauren Sankovitch, Associate editor (formerly with the Ultimate line), Mark Paniccia, Ultimate line editor, and Mark Millar, writer of many Ultimate books and co-creator of the Ultimate Universe.

The panel started a little late, as Millar walked in and said that he was “taking a poo”. To which McCann replied that they are only 3 minutes late, like many of their books. This pretty much set the tone for the rest of the panel, which was as much filled with witty banter as with actual news on the Ultimate U.

As the laughter died down, McCann said that this is the first panel where they can actually talk about a lot of the Ultimate stuff, now that Ultimatum #5 has finally shipped. The first book coming out with be, as many of you know, Ultimate Comics Spider-Man this Wednesday. Paniccia said that these are his favorite books and Sankovitch said that they are resetting the bar even higher now after Ultimatum. The panel members said look for some huge surprises in Spider-Man from the very first issue. There was also a general praise for David LaFuente’s art on the book.

Millar, apparently sad that he didn’t get to talk for 5 minutes, chimed in that the next panel is going to have 20 minutes of footage from the Kick-Ass movie, to the general approval of the crowd.

McCann fliped to a slide of a really amazing looking Ultimate Mysterio, which Sankovitch described as “mean, bad and dresses really nice”. Paniccia said that Bendis is building up Mysterio to be the big Ultimate Spider-Man villain. We also learned that this Mysterio image is one of the villain variants that all of the Ultimate #1′s will have.

We then got a little discussion on Ultimate Comics Armor Wars, which is being written by Warren Ellis and drawn by Steve Kurth. Paniccia described the book as “total Warren Ellis craziness” and that there will be a new surprise villain. Armor Wars is a mini-series involving Iron Man.

Millar finally got to talk about Ultimate Comics Avengers. He joked that Ultimates was the best 5 years and 26 issues of his life. We were shown an image of the Ultimate Red Skull variant that Mike posted last night, by artist Lenil Yu. Millar explained that Ultimate Red Skull is Captain America’s illegitimate son from WWII and quickly adds that “this happens in Scotland all the time” to a fit of laughter by the whole room. Millar continued his joking about Ultimate Red Skull, saying that he has “daddy issues” and that “you get to see Cap’s penis in issue 2″. After McCann said that this has not gone to printer yet, Millar added “I drew it in myself”. There was much joking about Millar flying around the country, visiting comic shops and drawing Cap’s penis in every issue. It was all really silly, but no one was bothered by it.

Millar went on to describe how they will be switching artists on each arc of Avengers to keep them schedule, since Millar likes to work with slow artists.

We were shown an image of Ultimate Wasp with a caption saying “Isn’t she dead?”, to which Millar quickly added “no one told me she was dead”. Apparently, there is going to be a new Wasp and along with the new Wasp, Millar is creating a new War Machine, a new character called The Spider and a character that is supposed to be Bruce Banner’s teacher and mentor.

With this, the floor was opened up for questions.

The first question was about how Millar felt about Jeph Loeb destroying the universe that he and Brian Michael Bendis Bendis helped create. Millar said that he loved Ultimatum and thought that “it had mad energy”. He also added that he would have hated if someone came in and just copied his and Bendis’ style, so he is glad someone did something completely different.

A fan asked why there are 2 books dealing with the Ultimates, Ultimates and Ultimate Avengers. Millar stated that Avengers is about the black ops team of the Ultimates–as shown in issue 2 of Ultimates–whereas Ultimates is about the “day team”. He continued on saying that the 3rd arc is going to have Blade and Ghost Rider as well, so he gets to play with a lot more characters. He basically has free reign to use any of the Ultimate characters.

Next, a fan asked if there were any plans to go back to X-Men or Fantastic Four. After some long pauses and much whispering among the panel members, Millar finally said “I don’t know anything about that”.

A fan then asked how Millar is going to treat Ultimate Spider-Man. “I’d like to treat him quite badly. I’d like to fuck with his continuity”, joked Millar. He also described Ultimate Spider-Man as “Bendis with hair”, when talking about how much the character means to Bendis. He then, in seriousness, said that Spider-Man is only in Ultimate Avengers for one arc, but he is not quite what he seems. Spider-Man will be in the 3rd arc.

Another fan asked if there are plans for exclusive Ultimate titles to be released digitally. McCann says “not for Ultimate but announcements this weekend for more digital exclusives.”

On a question about the lineup for Ultimate Avengers, Millar said the core lineup will be Captain America, Hawkeye, Iron Man, Wasp and Nick Fury.

Then, McCann starts to give Millar a hard time for swearing throughout the panel, since there is a little kid sitting right in the front row. Millar says she’ll have to learn sometime, to which McCann quips that she’ll “be cursing in Scottish.”

A concerned fan asked what is going to happen to the other books, such as X-Men and Fantastic Four. Answer is that you gotta read the books and that Ultimatum was necessary so that people understand that anything can happen in the Ultimate universe.

Millar then starts talking about how Bendis is excited about creating new characters that don’t have a counterpart in the main Marvel universe. He also said that he, Bendis and Jeph Loeb (who is writing the ‘Day Team’ Ultimates title) are trying to outdo each other. Millar went on to say that he is creating an ex-wife for Nick Fury, the before-mentioned mentor to Bruce Banner and Iron Man’s brother–the polar opposite of Tony Stark. Millar also said that he’ll be fleshing out the characters from his Ultimates run a lot more, diving deeper into their back stories.

A fan asked that if the sales are good, will they restart Ultimate X-Men or Ultimate Fantastic Four? McCann asked for a round of applause of who would like to see each of these books. X-Men recieved more applause. Millar then said “ever heard of Alan Moore?”, to which McCann quickly tells everyone not to write down. We’ll assume that was another Millar joke. [I don't! -Mike]

The typical frugal fan asks about the $3.99 price tag and Millar responded with “if kids can afford drugs, they can afford $3.99″. McCann delivered the more serious answer, saying that he can’t discuss the pricing of the Ultimate line but that in many cases the $3.99 price tag is around to keep good titles (he cites The Incredible Hercules) at $2.99. Millar jokes that the price increase goes to Bendis and him getting more cash.

A fan then thanks Millar for being here and tells him that him being at the same con 2 years ago made that experience memorable. Millar joked that he “tried to be gentile with you, but you still called the cops”.

Another fan asks if there will be an Ultimate Civil War given some mentions to ‘registering heroes’. Millar replied “that’s a great idea. Civil War sold really well”. Millar then started giving tons of praise to Ultimate Hulk Vs. Wolverine, for some reason.

When asked why he kept Thor as a god, Millar said that he wanted to do a realistic interpretation of unrealistic characters. He began to talk about how that’s the way comics in the 60s were done and he wanted to get back to that.

Millar made sure to mention that we’ll get the entire origin of Red Skull in Ultimate Avengers #2.

A fan asked, “Will there be a continuation of Cyclops being shot in the head at the end of Ultimatum?” Lauren Sankovitch answered that most of it will be dealt with in Ultimate Spider-Man and everything that happened in Ultimatum did happen and will be referenced. There is no retconning going on.

“How dead are the dead ultimate characters?” They are dead dead. Millar says “all the good ones are still there”.

When asked how Nick Fury got back from the Supreme universe, Sankovitch said that it was dealt with in issue 4 of Ultimatum.

Millar was asked about “ultimate cosmic” stuff and he explained that there are no plans for any ultimate cosmic stuff. Wolverine is dead dead and that will be addressed in Ultimate X-Men Requiem.

All of Millar’s ideas for Blade are going into Ultimate Avengers.

When asked about Nick Fury’s healing factor, Millar said he will be ignoring it, but not contradicting it.

A fan wanted to know if they planned to do anything more with Ultimate Carol Danvers. Millar answered that right now, she’s just the head of S.H.I.E.L.D. but some fun stuff coming with the return of Nick Fury. Millar then chimes in saying that it doesn’t mean it’s not possible. A few more jokes here and there and the panel then started to break up.

Stay tuned for more panel coverage on DestroyTheCyb.org as we continue to cover Chicago Comic-Con all weekend.