avengers age of ultron poster showing iron man, captain america and hulk
By
Shaun Corley
Published 18 minutes ago
Shaun Corley is a Staff Writer for ScreenRant, a position he has held for five years. While he enjoys many types of comics and graphic novels, he has a particular interest in the licensed Star Trek titles.
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The darkest world in Marvel’s multiverse is so NSFW, that Disney will go nowhere near it. The MCU is currently embroiled in the “Multiverse Saga,” which is barreling towards its conclusion in next year’s Avengers: Doomsday. Yet there is one Earth that is so dark, so twisted that the family-friendly Disney would balk at using it.
In 1995, Marvel published Ruins, a two-issue series written by Warren Ellis with art by Cliff Nielsen and Terese Nielsen. A dark counterpart to Marvels, Ruins is also told from Phil Sheldon’s perspective.
Set 10 years after The Fantastic Four’s debut, Phil is investigating a “world gone wrong” in which popular Marvel icons went down horrifying paths.
Marvel's Multiverse is Vast and Diverse
Marvel's What If? Concept Has Expanded Its Multiverse
Jane Foster appears as Thor in What If? Marvel Comics
While DC Comics may have leaned into its multiverse in more effective ways than Marvel, the latter cannot be discounted either. Beginning with Earth-616, where a majority of Marvel’s heroes live, the multiverse has grown over time, incorporating worlds such as Earth-S (home of the Squadron Supreme) and Earth-6160, the new Ultimate Universe.
Perhaps no one book better explored Marvel’s multiverse than What If? The book showed fans alternate takes on key events in Marvel history. With Uatu the Watcher as their guide, fans learned what would have happened had Captain America not been frozen after World War II and what might have happened had Uncle Ben lived.
The MCU has embraced the What If concept. Disney produced a two-season animated series that looked at the “road not taken” in the MCU. The show was popular with fans, and helped develop the MCU’s “Multiverse Saga” even further. What If? showed some gruesome worlds, but they had nothing on Ruins.
Ruins Was a Companion Piece to One of Marvel's Best Books of the 1990s
Whereas Marvels Celebrated the Publisher's History, Ruins Showed the Dark Side
alex ross art from marvels, showing Phil Sheldon photographing the avengers
In 1993, Marvel released a four-issue miniseries simply titled Marvels. Written by Kurt Busiek and featuring fully-painted art by Alex Ross, Marvels was a smash hit with fans and critics. Beginning in 1939, Marvels retold the history of the Marvel Universe through the eyes of an ordinary man: Phil Sheldon from The Daily Bugle.
The mixture of Ross’ bombastic art and Busiek’s down-to-Earth script made for an irresistible combo, and Marvel began digging around for similar ideas. Ruins was the dark opposite of Marvels. Even the art was grittier than Marvels. Whereas the latter was a celebration of Marvel’s history, Ruins was its funeral dirge.
Ruins is Dark, Bleak and Not for the Faint of Heart
Many Marvel Icons End Up Dead or Disfigured in Ruins
Ruins Cover 1
Ruins once again centered Phil Sheldon as its protagonist, but this time, instead of wide-eyed optimism, he is nearly a broken man. For the past ten years, Sheldon has been working on a book, charting all the maladies that have befallen humanity since the arrival of The Fantastic Four. Sheldon seems almost convinced larger forces are at work.
Through the course of Ruins’ two issues, fans witness one tragedy after another. Matt Murdock, who received his powers after pushing a man out of the way of a truck carrying radioactive sludge, simply died as a result of his injuries. He received no superpowers. Likewise, the gamma bomb turned Bruce Banner into a “living cancer.”
Ruins pulls no punches in depicting its horrors. Artists Cliff Nielsen and Terese Nielsen go in the opposite direction from Ross’ work on Marvels. Instead of a bright, colorful world, the Earth of Ruins is drab and gray. Sunny days are rare in the world of Ruins, both literally and metaphorically.
In the end, Sheldon never finds the answer he was looking for, as he dies at the end from a virus contracted from Peter Parker. His life’s work is scattered in the breeze in Ruins’ last pages, and the people around him seem not to even care. The book leaves it open-ended if there really was anything behind these atrocities.
Disney Will Most Likely Never Return to the World of Ruins
Ruins Is Way Too Dark for the Family-Friendly MCU
Ruins Cover 2
This adds up to a bleak picture of the Marvel Universe, one that Disney has gone nowhere near since starting up the MCU’s Multiverse Saga. While What If? has shown some disturbing realities, Ruins may be a bit too much. Disney typically goes for a “PG-13” rating on most MCU properties.
Yet Disney has also demonstrated a willingness to push the MCU’s envelope. Deadpool and Wolverine more than earned its R-rating, and the recent Marvel Zombies took the MCU to the extreme as well. Yet these all pale in comparison to the world Marvel created in Ruins, which would take an R (or TV-MA) rating to its limits.
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