The superhero’s origin defines that hero. It determines what kind of hero they will become and the future life-or-death decisions they will make. The comic book team of writer Jeph Loeb and artist Tim Sale has practically made a living retelling the origins of some of DC’s greatest icons like Superman and Batman. Many...
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Matt Murdock grew up an outcast, bullied constantly, while tending his alcoholic father, a retired prizefighter caught in too deep with the mob. After his father’s murder, Matt was left to his own devices, surviving by instinct. When he hits thirteen, however, he is accidentally blinded. Just when it seems he’s beaten, Matt is...
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A blank canvas of desert. Suddenly, six figures appear out of nowhere, one by one. As each introduces him or her self, it is revealed that they are all X-Men, but each is from a different reality. A mysterious figure known as a Time Broker shows up, and reveals why they have been brought...
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Continuing the tale of the Exiles, the group finds themselves in the wilderness of Canada, facing off against a Hulk gone mad. Meeting up with the Canadian mutant force known as Alpha Flight, led by Wolverine, they discover that their mission is to protect the lives of their would-be teammates, which means bringing down...
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When last we heard from the group of “unhinged from time” X-Men known as the Exiles, they had been forced to abandon a teammate in a coma after a battle with Galactus, and taken on the new member, Sasquatch. Now, set down on an Earth where mutants are imprisoned from birth, they meet the...
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Normally I would be hard pressed to say anything bad about something written by Brian Michael Bendis, but apparently I’ve just found the exception that proves the rule. This is not to say that Ultimate Fantastic Four was bad, it just lacked spark. In Marvel’s continuing line of Ultimate Universe stories this volume establishes...
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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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