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The Ultimate universe ends (again) with June 24's Ultimate Universe: Finale #1, but for many, it did back in March with Ultimate Spider-Man #24, the final issue of the Marvel line's flagship series. Writer Jonathan Hickman, artist Marco Checchetto, and others successfully rewrote the story of Spider-Man by going to the one place Marvel Comics has been hesitant to go for decades, but the one place fans, from back in the '90s to present day, with the Spider-Verse movies, have been hoping they would: Peter Parker as a happily married father.

But there was another surprising thing Marvel Comics did with the 2024 - 2026 Ultimate Spider-Man run that even those within Marvel were surprised about: letting it end, naturally.

"I've been at Marvel a long time, and I've never seen us do what we're doing, which is end a book that is selling well and a line that is selling well," Hickman told Popverse back in late 2025. "But I understand the decision because we, generally speaking, don’t do discrete units of books. We don't do stuff that's pre-built to be a collection, and [Marvel President Dan] Buckley and all those guys looked at it, and they were like, ‘Look, we think we're really proud of this entire Ultimate line.’"

Related: Marvel won't decide the legacy of the Ultimate Marvel reboot, fans will, according to Endgame writer Deniz Camp

"I think it's one of those things where everybody just looked at it, and they were like, ‘We feel like we can sell these books forever, if we don't do the thing that we normally do,'" Hickman continued. "I thought it was a really, really gutsy decision. I kind of love it. I kind of love it because it's not what we normally do. And I think it's the right decision. Just, I was surprised at the time. I was shocked at the time because it's not what Marvel normally does, and I love it when we throw curveballs at the audience and at the market. And we should do more exciting, different things, not less."

It looks like that gamble is paying off, as the modern Ultimate Spider-Man run is doing something that has been hard for any modern Marvel comic in recent memory to do: succeed beyond being a temporary bestseller to becoming an evergreen series that will continue to sell well on its own, with a definitive ending and without the ups and downs of a longer running series to skew opinion of it.

According to sales data from roughly 85% of the U.S. book market collated by Circana (and shared first with ICv2), Ultimate Spider-Man is maturing to become the closest thing Marvel Comics has had to an evergreen modern series that sells in perpetuity, and not just as a temporary bestseller when initially released or when tied to a movie or TV series release.

Related: Inside the "gutsy decision" by Marvel to kill the Ultimate Marvel imprint, and why they were worried continuing it would be wrong

Marvel Comics' Ultimate Spider-Man Vol. 1: Married with Children TPB has sold over 50,000 print collections in the U.S. market (that's a market value of roughly $1 million) since its debut in September 2024, according to this sales data. And looking at month-by-month figures, it doesn't peak and fade; it becomes a relatively steady seller for Marvel, with spikes such as in July 2025 (when the series was announced to be ending) and December 2025 (a usual holiday season bump for perennial titles), maturing now to what appears to be a rough average of a minimum of 1,500 new copies sold per month.

(And remember, this is print collection sales in the U.S.; this doesn't count non-U.S. sales, digital sales, and single-issue sales.)

This is an anomaly in how a Marvel Comics collected edition usually fairs when collected and going on the booktrade market; the only other books with sustained success in the past two years in the U.S. booktrade market has been (in order): the Marvel Premier edition of Daredevil: Born Again, and to a lesser degree, the collection of 2015's Secret Wars (also written by Hickman).

This continued sales velocity for Ultimate Spider-Man continues beyond just the first volume, with the second volume doing a respectable 43% of Vol. 1's sales, with similar numbers for subsequent volumes.

Most modern superhero comics collections have a strong launch month, then a rapid 60-to-80% decline thereafter, and in many cases disappear from public sales charts completely. However, 2024-2026's Ultimate Spider-Man bucks that trend, with a strong launch, followed by strong holiday performance, strong performance of follow-up volumes, and most importantly, a sustained demand for it beyond its initial 3-6 month release period. That more closely aligns with the long-term performance of successful manga series recently, such as Jujutsu Kaisen, Gachiakuta, Dandadan, and The Summer Hikaru Died, and also what DC has done over the years as well.

"Where the guys across the street [DC Comics] have done a fantastic job over the decades is taking those institutions and every once in a while looking at it through a very different prism," Hickman told Popverse in 2025. "And you get what is a standalone evergreen book like Superman: Red Son or something like that, right, where you're not shitting on the character, you're not destroying the character, you're just saying, you know, it's a glorified ‘What If…?’ story. But it's done in such a way, and it's done as a complete thought."

"... I'm excited that Marvel is starting to do a little bit more of that, and I'm 100% on board for it, even if it means that the books have to end earlier than sometimes people would want," Hickman added.

Marvel's most reliable superhero has proven he can do a whole lot more than just 'whatever a spider can.' Swing into Spidey's history with Popverse's...

• Best Spider-Man comic books 
• The best Spider-Mans (or is it Spider-Men?)
• Spider-Man movie watch order
• Spider-Man's actors, ranked
• The best Spider-Man suits
• and the Spider-verse explained!

Just watch out for that radioactive blood.