The founding

At the time of Ultima-Java's founding, the website didn't yet exist. It was just a forum with a home page, and the intent in the future to add a website with comic hosting capabilities. At the time it wasn't even called Ultima-Java: Creative Media, that came some years later - at the time we were just Ultima-Java.

The name Ultima-Java comes from the name of a spell in the UJverse, which is the ultimate magic of destruction. It actually comes from a misreading of the spell Gravija from Final Fantasy VIII. When I first saw it, I read it as Gravijava. As my character Andy Frogman was originally created to exist within a Final Fantasy based world, I expanded the levels of magic from the basic three (eg. Fire, Fira, and Firaga) to include -ja (Firaja) as the fourth level, and -java as the fifth level (Firajava). Ultima-Java (original Ultimajava) came from the idea of levelling up what was already considered to be the most powerful Final Fantasy spell, Ultima. As the forum was used for RPs, Ultimajava became an in universe moderation tool, as it was designed to be overpowered and unbeatable and could be used to end conflict without breaking continuity.

When we founded the Ultima-Java website, we were already planning a comic, as we had all come from another forum that was sprite art and web comic focused. This original comic was sprite based, and followed on directly from the drama that had us leave the previous group. This comic was only ever posted on the forum, and is sadly entirely lost.

The comic that would later be called Universe 2, was the second continuity. We acknowledged that the character in the series had baggage, but wanted to leave the details of the drama behind. This comic would begin uploading in August of 2006, with a series of six micro-chapters, starting with "Prologue" which showed Andy Frogman establishing the Ultima-Java Coffee Shop in a pocket dimension between universes.

Universe 2

The reason for the continuity reboot between Universe 2 and History, was mostly because of internal creative differences, confounded by a necessity to grow the website.

The official founders of the website were myself, Emily and Steven, but we also had a number of other core members in the creative team, each of which had avatar characters that appeared in the comics. It was my intention, and I made it clear from the start that I wanted to eventually sell the comics, at very least in order to try to help pay for site upkeep.

The last page of that comic released on December 11th, 2006. At that point we had finished with six, three-page, micro-chapters, focusing on each of the six main characters, and were half way through releasing the chapter titled "From There....", when tensions broke out. Additionally, I had completed scripting of chapter 3 "...To Here!" which would finalise the introduction of the characters and the set up for the rest of the series.

I had brought up the topic of selling the comics again, but this time it was met with pushback. Two of the core members were dead against selling printed copies. Even though the intent to sell was there from the start, we were basically kids, we had no idea about the business side of things and we didn't have contracts. This put me in a bind.

We'd had multiple issues with the server up to this point, we'd migrated the website to a different host earlier in the year and the site just didn't feel like it functioned properly after that. I'd done a lot of work to get it to run properly. Additionally, even though we didn't have a huge amount of activity, it was more than the basic hosting plan was designed for, and with an image heavy website we needed to go to a higher priced plan, or move again. i also wanted to hire someone to help me optimise the site and/or help me move it to another cheaper host. I simply couldn't manage it all on my own, and couldn't afford to continue without monetary support.

There were tensions for the better part of a month as discussions dragged on, but with two people outright denying my ability to monetise the comic, I realised I only had one choice: to reorganise the creative team. Understandably, the other members weren't happy about this decision, and one would go on to categorise my decision as a "agree with me or you're fired" situation, which couldn't be further from the truth.

On January 9th I released a statement in the form of text in an image, posted it on the comics page, and took down all the previously released pages. While I don't recall exactly what was in the statement, it was talking about the state of the server, the creative impasse we'd reached and that we had to keep moving forward.

In 2008, edited versions of this comic would be uploaded to the site under the title Ultima-Java: Universe 2. The edits removed introductions of characters that were no longer within our right to use, and changed characters that appeared in subsequent pages to characters we did have permission to use. The intention was to complete the "From there... to here!" storyline, and continue with new chapters that introduced grander concepts of the multiverse, and recontextualize similar concepts already mentioned.

Unfortunately, in 2009 when we reached the end of the edited run, production of this comic ceased due to life getting in the way and would never be picked up again.

History

This version of the creative team was completely stripped back. I was the writer and editor, Emily as the artist and Steven as the assistant writer. Most of the previous creative team remained however, as members of my moderation team on the forum.

I didn't want to simply delete everything though, so we moved the previous Ultima-Java comic to the forums and renamed it "The Golden Age".

With a reboot necessary, I immediately got to work on reworking the scripts I'd already written for Ultima-Java, and writing a new first chapter. Usually, I like to write a whole chapter and make sure it all tied together, but I was in a rush, I didn't want to have too big of a disruption in the release schedule, and so I wrote the first few pages quickly, and gave myself time to properly develop the rest of the chapter.

On January 24th, 2007 the cover image for Ultima-Java: History released, and page 1 was released a week later on the 30th.

In this continuity, we released three complete chapters of the Prologue storyline, "First Step to a Thousand Miles", "Tip Of A Quill", "The Call Of Chaos" and we got most of the way through the fourth Chapter "A Deviant Cause" in the first half of 2009, which is where this comic went onto a prolonged hiatus largely due to a lot of personal changes in our lives (I moved to Australia, I married Emily, I was dealing with visa issues, was having difficulty finding a job... all that jazz). Ultimately it became easier to focus on smaller projects and History took a back seat.

History would eventually be restarted in 2010 and Chapter 4 "A Deviant Cause" would be completed, and the next story arc "The Winding Path" would begin with chapter 1 "Learning Curve" following right after it. However, updates of History would be slow through 2011, and more reliance was put onto a quicker to produce comics strip series called "Inbetweenees". July saw what would be the final update of the History story, leaving the series unfinished, as the website pivoted in a different direction.

Other Ultima-Java comics

Komewnitees was originally a very simple strip project that was written about members of the forum community. The idea being that Emily would produce irregular strips about the happenings on the forum, as through they were people chatting in the Universe 2 coffee shop. This was basically treated as a soft continuation of the U-2 continuity.

This comic itself would then get a soft reboot and turned entirely into a community driven comic. Working like a five word story project, a member would produce a comic strip, and then another member would produce a follow up comic, and so on, continuing until a story was told. This was very popular and a lot of people - people who didn't consider themselves to be artists - joined in anyway.

It was a resounding success and drew a lot of people to the forums.

Ultima-Java: Spotlight was similar in some ways to the original take of Komewnitees, these would be comics written by myself, in soft continuity with the History universe, of versions of forum members avatar characters.

The first one was done by competition, and the winner was a user named Mauve Mage. I redesigned the character and Mauve Mage wrote a story which I edited into a comic script, all of which was finally approved by Mauve Mage. Rather than Emily working on this, I was the artist - and this would turn out to be the biggest problem with this series. I started to procrastinate, as I felt the quality was not good enough I ultimately did not like my art. I was planning on handing the project to Emily, but in the end the project was unceremoniously dropped after my move to Australia.

There were three other scripts in planning at this point, and I wanted to try to revive it later, but never ended up doing so. This is probably my biggest regret.

Ultima-Java Tales was an announced, but unreleased series, written by myself and Steven, with Kevin as the artist. Tales would see side stories directly related to the the events of the main History comic. Due to the massive delay in the release of History in 2010, Tales was also put on hiatus as it was meant to release at the end of "A Deviant Cause". The script for the first chapter which would feature Andy and Gibbo as members of a vigilante group called The Deviants was instead reworked into the second storyarc of History "The Winding Path". The term Ultima-Java Tales would be dropped, and instead a series called The Deviants started development with Kevin at the helm. However, due to other commitments Kevin would become less involved in the creative side of Ultima-Java.

This story was written but not scripted, and plans were made to rework the events of The Deviants into the chapters following "Learning Curve".

Other comics

Emily had been working on developing a comic strip series called If You Believe, which she would start irregularly uploading to the forums. In 2008 (I think), I would make a separate upload page for her to post the comic to the site. This was the beginning of the transition to Ultima-Java: Creative Media.

In 2010, Emily would start a filler comic for days when the main comic was unable to be posted, this series was called Inbetweenees, and consisted of the creative team of myself, Emily, Steven and Kevin interacting with the characters of the comic.

In 2008, one of our forum members Kevin Gibson had a comic he had started posting called Over The Edge, and I asked if he wanted to host on the main site. The discussion was really smooth, Kevin would then go on to not only be a contributor but a moderator and even joined the primary creative team, and his character Gibbo would appear in Ultima-Java: History - "The Winding Path Ch1 - Learning Curve" with the intention of him being a regular reoccurring member of the cast of a follow up series called The Deviants.

Another comic called Legend Of Setar by Mutation was added to the site for a time. UJ and Mutation parted on not so great terms and their comic was removed in August 28th, 2009.

Ultima-Jave: Creative Media

In January 2009, I made the decision to rebrand Ultima-Java to Ultima-Java: Creative Media to batter reflect the growth we were experiencing with members and creative content. This would then be revealed in March with the site redesign.

After

I was always better at writing than art. While art was Emily's domain, she was finding herself less and less motivated with the stress of work, and some personal issues we were dealing with at the time. Steven was still active on the forums, however he felt his creativity had dried up. Emily and I both found it easier to just write, and we found a lot of inspiration from character reviewers online, like the members of That Guy With The Glasses.

On the forums we more regularly talked and wrote reviews about comics, and with the release of DC Comics "New 52" Emily, myself and friend of ours George Shannon, started work on a project called "Whatever Happened To The DC Universe?". In this project we first reviewed all of the Number 1 issues, then the first story arcs, and finally Wave 2. This was a damn intense project, updating almost daily, with three reviews per update, from three different perspectives, the new comer (George), the casual reader (Emily) and the comic veteran (me).

This series was very successful, and over time other members would join our review group.

Eventually the website would pivot to reviews of entertainment media, and would grow to ten members, including Plague Doc, Professor Badger, Funky Panda, Harmonica Jay, Silence Dais, The Comic Archivist and Mr Kettleman, as well as a number of casual members like CinnaAtHeart and Maxi Skittlez.

Towards the end of 2013, Ultima-Java made it's last stand.

With so many new people involved in content creation, it was decided that we would move away from the name Ultima-Java, a term that was uniquely personal to me, in order to make a site that was by everyone, for everyone. We called the new website Badly Productions. The domain name ultima-java.com was then reused as the URL for the Ultima-Java forums specifically, until it too was phased out into the Badly Forums.

Today

A lot of things have happened between then and now. Not going to lie, it's been an incredibly rocky decade. A lot of starts and stops. A lot of taking risks that failed. If I could go back though, there would be very few things that would actually change, I might do things slightly differently, but the steps would be the same. I kinda wish I'd started doing gamign content a lot sooner. Gaming has always been the closest to my heart, and I feel like I might have been more motivated, and more established now if I'd started that sooner.

Most recently, I started streaming in 2021 under the name AneurynPlays (an-eye-rin), but have been on hiatus since a flood in my office took away my ability to stream for 6 months, and getting back to it has been more complicated than necessary. I will be returning to streaming very soon.

Ultima-Java, or more specifically the UJverse has never really died for me though. I still work on the world building to this day and one day hope to return to that world in a creative way, whether through writings, comics or even video games. A lot of the stories would require an overhaul, and I have no intention of using self insert characters in any future stories, but there's not a 0% possibility that the UJverse could return in the future.

Emily and I are still married, and she is still drawing, she does work for streamers and is still my personal artist.

Steven has mostly dropped off the internet, I saw him in 2019 when I returned to the UK, but speaking to him is rare.

Anyway...

That's a lot to go through, if there's anything else you wish to know, like specifics about the comics, and their plots, or need me to explain anything further, please feel free to ask. I'll be checking this page for the next week or so, after that feel free to find me on Twitter (AneurynPlays) or shoot me an email.

I can also provide a number of images if you wish, but you'll have to email me for those so I can message them to you directly.

Thanks again for maintaining this, there were some rough times, a lot of the development of the website and the comic has been motivated by drama, frustration, and loss. Too much loss. none the less, it's very nostalgic for me. So thank you for keeping it alive.