Contains Spoilers for Ultimate Invasion #2!
Summary
- The evil Reed Richards, known as the Maker, has taken his stretching powers to a new level by turning them into a body horror healing factor.
- The Maker has utilized time travel to become the ruler of a reality similar to the Ultimate Universe, but heroes from the future attempt to kill him to save their own timeline.
- The Maker's distorted appearance, with his head destroyed, reflects his inner ugliness and sets him apart from humanity, while avoiding an ableist metaphor.
Reed Richards’ stretching powers are amazing, but his evil counterpart, the Maker, has now pushed them further by turning them into a body horror healing factor. The Maker has pushed his body and powers to their limit, and, in doing so, has sured anything done by mainstream Reed.
A Reed Richards without morality is a Reed Richards without limits — for both good and ill. Mostly for ill, as seen in Ultimate Invasion #2 by Jonathan Hickman, Bryan Hitch, Andrew Currie, Alex Sinclair, and Joe Caramagna. In this issue, the Maker — who is the evil Reed Richards of Earth-1610, AKA the Ultimate Universe — reveals that he’s moved his own brain and other vital organs to different parts of his body so that even the destruction of part of his head isn’t fatal.
In addition, the Maker also appears to have given himself a low-level healing factor, which will eventually heal the injury.
The Maker's Newest Plot is a Time Travel Classic
Having stolen tech from mainline Earth-616's Illuminati, the Maker has transformed Earth-6160, a reality similar to the Ultimate Universe, by using time travel to make himself its ruler in all but name. However, the heroes of this world’s future are using this same trick against the Maker, attempting to kill him in the present to "kill" their own timeline. Only the Maker’s redistribution of his own brain saves him after their first temporal assassination attempt. However, this power isn’t perfect. While the Maker does survive his head injury, he claims that it’s given him brain damage and partial amnesia.
The Maker’s redistribution of his brain is actually the exact opposite of another of his powers. As first explained in Ultimate Fantastic Four #26 by Mark Millar, Greg Land, Matt Ryan, Justin Ponsor, Laura Martin, and Chris Eliopoulos, Reed can stretch his brain to make himself smarter. The Maker’s helmet is such an odd shape to accommodate for how he’s permanently expanded his brain’s size. As shown by his brain expansion and his healing, the Maker takes Reed’s existing stretching powers and pushes them to an inhuman extreme. This raises whether mainstream Reed could do the same. There’s no definitive answer, since the exact differences between their powersets aren’t clear, and The Maker has also likely augmented his power beyond its natural limit.
Like the best body horror, The Maker’s outward appearance — having his head destroyed — only mirrors his inner ugliness. While physically setting himself apart from humanity, he metaphorically does the same through his actions. The Maker’s face previously featured prominent facial burns that represented essentially the same idea, but that came with a problem: facial burns occur in the real world, making the "inner-horror matching outer-horror" metaphor ableist. Ultimate Invasion #2 fixes this, since there’s no real-world counterpart to having half one's head missing — like this Reed Richards does.
Check out Ultimate Invasion #2, available now from Marvel Comics!
