The stakes were high when Chris Condon and Alessandro Cappuccio's Ultimate Wolverine series began in 2024. After all, the Wolverine from Marvel Comics' Earth-616 is the best there is at what he does. Now, as the Ultimate Universe winds down in early 2026, it's a bittersweet time for both the creators and fans of Marvel's Ultimate Universe. While the Ultimate Universe has been a hit commercially and critically, all good things must come to a close. It's a decision that Ultimate Wolverine writer Chris Condon understands, and ultimately believes is a "wise" one. 

I interviewed Chris Condon about what went into crafting this particular version of Wolverine, who has both elements of the iconic X-Man from the mainline Marvel Universe and The Winter Soldier. Read on to learn all about it. 

Popverse: So it's great to talk with you today, Chris. I feel like this is such a dynamic time, even if it's a bit bittersweet. How do you feel about your Ultimate book and the Ultimate line ending completely despite all the commercial success and critical success that it's had?

Chris Condon: Well, I want to start with saying that I think that it's fantastic that the whole experiment is coming to a satisfying conclusion, because I think in comics, there's this push, often, to just keep things going when they're selling well. And I think that it's maybe unexpected, but I think that it's a wise choice at the end of the day, I think that it's gonna be looked at in the future as a smart choice to have a satisfying conclusion that, you know, we're not just stringing people along, just continuing books because we want to just sell them. But we are telling a story, and every story has an end. And I think that that's kind of a thing that you don't really have in comics that often. So it's kind of nice to do it here to deal with a successful series of books like this too.

In terms of my book, I mean, I'm so just over the moon with how the book has done, what we've been able to do with the book and to have the collaborators that I've had. And especially Alessandro Cappuccio, who has just been such an amazing partner in this book. Every single time I get artwork in the inbox, it blows me away. Everything that I've written, you know, it doesn't just meet my expectations of what I was going to get, it actually exceeds it, and that's not always the case in comics.

You have a lot of collaborators who work on a lot of books. Sometimes you're not going to get something back then that is necessarily what you envisioned. And Alessandro delivers what I envisioned and more. And so I can't be complimentary enough about his work on the book. I think the fact that we were put together on this book, it's one of the great collaborations of my career at this point. And I'm very pleased with the book, I'm so happy with how the book has sold and that readers are enjoying it. And I love the characters, I really can't wait to get to spend more time with the characters. I have another script to do next month and then unfortunately we'll have to say 'sayonara,' but I'm so looking forward to getting to spend a little bit more time with these characters in this universe.

For sure. And so going along with this idea of having a start and end to the universe, and telling one unified story that way, would you return if the Ultimate Universe were ever to restart or get rebooted again? And would you have anything in mind if that were to happen?

You know, I don't have anything in mind, but I think that I would be open to it, absolutely. And the idea of, you know, what could happen with these characters? Would it be the same exact characters? What would happen? I don't know. But yeah, I don't have anything planned. But I think that if the powers that be wanted it, I would definitely get to thinking about it! 

For sure. And so when did know definitively that it was gonna be the end of the Ultimate Universe? And did that affect any of your final scripts?

Not really, so way that - I don't know exactly when I learned, but it probably was late summer. They told me that it was all going to be ending and I was always under the impression at first that we were going to be a 12 issue series, and then we got an extension to go alongside [Ultimate] Endgame. So I always knew that my book was going to have an end. I didn't necessarily know that it was going to be, you know, whether it could have gone for more issues or whether that was the end of everything, I didn't know.

But not coming from my perspective, I always kind of had an ending in mind. And then when we did get the extension I still had the ending that I wanted to do in issue #12 and then we're doing additional stories. So I sort of look at the four additional issues as a sort of coda spinning out of the decisions and events of issues 11 and 12 of Ultimate Wolverine. And that it didn't affect that ending. But the four issues that come after certainly were affected by that decision.

For sure. And so you know, taking kind of a larger look on your whole series like you know it's Ultimate Wolverine is very much about people's capability to change within themselves and within like the present moment, what did you? Want people to take away most from your contributions to the ultimate universe?

I wanted them to have the coolest Wolverine book [laughs]. That was really my concept from the start. I'm a Wolverine fan. And I love the character. I love many of the books and, coming at it from this perspective, and there's been so many great Wolverine books, what else can you bring to it? And that's kind of always the thought that I have to deal with and that idea that I have to process as I'm going into whatever both of them doing next. To think about, well, what do I have to say? What do I wanna do? And I've said this few times, but the title 'Ultimate Wolverine' obviously denotes the universe that it's in 6160. But in my mind when I got offered this book, I thought of it from the perspective of, let me make this the ultimate Wolverine book, to the best of my abilities at least.

Knowing that Alessandro is going to be the artist on it. I felt like, 'Okay, we're in good hands.' I absolutely loved his artwork on Moon Knight. Yeah, that was my thought process. Okay, well, what can we do to make this the ultimate Wolverine book? And, you know, to some extent, there is the Ultimate X-Men book, of course. But there were a lot of the main players from the traditional X-Men and 616 that were not in that book. So they gave me the leeway to use any of those characters that we wanted to. And coming at it from the perspective of, okay, let me do this as like sort of an action-forward horror tinged thing.

Right.

So I kind of always came at it from that perspective because I always thought that was the aspect of the character that I always liked.

For sure. And that certainly came through. You've got snow, you've got this wooded landscape. And I remember there's this one panel that Alessandro drew where he's carrying a bunch of decapitated heads. And I thought he was carrying them with his claws like shish kebabs. When I first saw them, I was like, 'Oh, that would be so crazy.' But then I was like, 'Oh, no, he's just holding them.' But, I almost feel like there's kind of that visual gag there where that wouldn't be too far out of the question. And why not?

Why not? I will put that in the next one [laughs]. 

And speaking of things that feel quintessentially Logan, that fastball special that's in the second issue with Colossus: were you just absolutely, like, champing at the bit to draw one and were you just like, 'Oh, what's the most like, gut-punching way for me to invert this?'

Yeah, I mean, I'm not drawing anything but, drawing from, yeah. I felt like it was just a great opportunity to get to explore what you normally wouldn't get to explore. Certainly, Colossus and Wolverine going at it, that's exciting. So why not?

So was it Alessandro, who came up with the conceit of like having Colossus throw Wolverine in the middle of a fight?

'Colossus throw Wolverine in the middle of-' which are you referring to specifically?

So they're having an argument. And then Colossus just kind of throws him across the room.

Ohh yeah, that's I think that's in issue 2, yeah. No, I mean that was in the script for sure. That was in the script. But yeah, I mean at the end of the day, everything that I do is gonna be black and white. And you know, it's just words on a page. It doesn't have life breathed into it yet. But yeah, what Alessandro does is he breathes life into the work. And it works because of him, you know, he's able to bring in the impact and to really bring this thing to life. And it truly feels that way to me, especially in that issue.

I think that that issue - specifically issue #2 had some really great, great action, some great horror beats. I thought that even in the beginning of that issue with The Maker showing up, I felt like that was a really excellently executed horror sequence. And I felt like Alessandro just, I think that he just absolutely gets that. And he just knocked out of the park. Yeah, all of the stuff that you see in the book is, it's all in the script, but it's all like I said, it's black and white. It's not alive until the artist touches their pen to paper, or their digital pen to paper. 

For sure. 

Sorry, I didn't remember. 

It's okay! I mean, you've written a lot of issues. And we as fans, we bring unique attention to specific moments. But you're moving at a much faster pace than we are.

It's a lot of issues.

There are so many gut-wrenching character deaths in this book. Did you have one that brought you the most pain to write, or did you not feel any pain? I'm not judging either way.

[Laughs].

But I was just curious!

It's kind of funny because we kill two people in issue 1. And then we don't kill anybody else until issue 8. But because of what we did in issue 1, everybody says that we kill so many people [laughs].

So there has been this span of time where nobody's died, but everybody feels like everybody can die because of what we did in issue 1. So it's a really interesting thing to watch and to read, but I think that that's good because I do think you want stakes. And that was why we made the decision that we made in issue 1. I didn't know, necessarily, if they're gonna let me do it and then [editor] Wil [Moss] said, 'Yeah, we can do it.'

But it was absolutely wrenching. I love these characters, you know. Nightcrawler specifically was a tough one, but I thought we gave him a worthy death when we gave him some cool action before he kicked the bucket, you know. This is, you know, spoiler territory, but it's also the first issue, and it's been out for nearly a year at this point. But that was a tough one to write because I love that character, but I felt like not only with the pages that Alessandro drew, but also in the back matter, I put that piece of back matter in the prayer for Logan because I wanted that moment to feel genuine and feel not like it was just for shock value. I guess partly it was not shock value necessarily, but we did need to show people that this isn't 616, this is a different universe. And the things here that happen here have stakes. I wanted this to feel like anything could happen, anybody could die at any point. 

Violence has a cause and effect. And we're seeing it play out in real time. These people aren't coming back. And I think that that's a pretty weighty thing, you know. But it's not something you typically see in comics. I mean, how many times have characters died and come back and died and come back and died and come back? But in this, we just wanted to play it where there's sort of a real-world impact, you know.

Absolutely. Well, you guys nailed it. 

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