Somewhere along the line Ultimate X-Men became a soap opera. A good, well written, very pretty soap opera in which I am deeply invested, but a soap opera nonetheless. To recap . . . Storm is still grieving and goth and hitting on Wolverine. Rogue has been kidnapped by some unscrupulous incestuous business tycoons...
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The X-Men made their first appearance in the 1960’s. In the intervening four decades the X-Men mythos has been reinvented any number of times. However, the central message of tolerance and the struggle for acceptance that the X-Men represent remains unchanged and relevant. Ultimate X-Men is the latest incarnation of the series, updating the...
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This second volume in the ongoing Ultimate X-Men series introduces a second round of familiar characters. Nightcrawler, Rogue, Juggernaut and Sabertooth join the cast as unwilling members of the Weapon X project. Weapon X is a strike force of mutants run by the very human Colonel Waith, who takes perverse pleasure in experiments on...
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This is the third volume of the Ultimate X-Men series and despite the stunning portrait of Wolverine on the cover the real focus of this story arc is Professor Xavier. We begin to see the long term impact of the Professor’s decision to not kill Magneto instead installing a memory block, while allowing the...
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This is the fourth volume in the ongoing Ultimate X-Men series. It addresses one of the questions that has always bothered me about this particular series – what do the parents say when their kids get hurt when they’re off doing X-Men stuff? In the course of the last volume Bobby Drake (Iceman) is...
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In the previous volume Cyclops, Wolverine and Shadowcat were all dispatched off to the Savage Land to investigate some mysterious and suspicious goings-on. Now Wolverine and Shadowcat have returned, but sans Cyclops, and without a particularly good explanation as to why. Jean exercising her new powers accuses Wolverine of killing Scott in order to...
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This is the final story arc written by Mark Millar (Brian Michael Bendis of Ultimate Spiderman is taking over for the next volume). Millar starts by providing some further back story to the Xavier/Magneto friendship and subsequent falling out. We gain some insight into the evolution of Magnetos’s goal for mutants, and the development...
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Marvel loves its crossovers. Whether you love them or not tends to depend on whether you have any connection to the universes they are combining. This is one of the more successful crossovers, at least for me, because I like both the X-Men and Spiderman with a little bit of Daredevil thrown in at...
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This volume of Ultimate X-Men introduces Warren Worthington, later known by his X-name of Angel. Warren’s arrival at the Xavier Institute with his highly visible and dramatic mutation of angel wings tests the acceptance and understanding of even the Xavier Institute attendees. His story in this volume is one of coming to accept who...
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The traumatic and shocking events at the end of the last volume have had a lasting effect on all the students at the Xavier Institute, but none more so than Storm. In the midst of their grief and anger the X-Men are called on to face a serial killer who is targeting young mutants...
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