Saturday Splash Page #63

 

"Fin," in Ultimate X-Men Annual #1, by Brian K. Vaughn (writer), Tom Raney (penciler), Scott Hanna (inker), Gina Going-Raney (colorist), Chris Eliopoulos (letterer)

All the issues of Ultimate X-Men I still own - all three of them - involve Gambit. Which is odd, considering I have very little use for the version in the Marvel Universe. There was some discussion of Gambit in the comments section for the 400th episode of Jay and Miles X-Plain the X-Men, and I noted there that Gambit seemed very cool to me when I first saw him. The exploding playing cards, the bo staff (Donatello was admittedly my least favorite Ninja Turtle, but that didn't mean he wasn't cool), and hey! Rogue liked Gambit, and Rogue was cool. I was not yet aware that Rogue's taste in men was worse than her luck in parental figures.

But then it turns out Gambit's been married this whole time, and that seemed kind of sleazy. The longer he was around, the less he seemed a "charming thief", and more a "two-faced conman", jerking Rogue around while flirting with anything he laid eyes upon.

No doubt aided by the fact he only appeared in maybe a half-dozen issues, the Ultimate Universe version didn't go that route. The story we looked at last week, he's kind of a low-level hustler, living on the street, able to use his powers for some flashy tricks to win pocket change or a phone number from a pretty lady, but that's about it. He's nice enough to try to protect an orphaned girl, and to recognize when he's at the limits of what he can do.

Brian K. Vaughn brought him back, a fair bit closer to his Marvel namesake, and he and Rogue took off to be high-class thieves together. Which brings us to this comic, where a successful heist is interrupted by the Juggernaut, who was pals with Rogue when they were in Weapon X. Gambit ends up dying dropping an entire construction site on Juggy's skull, and Rogue absorbs his powers and mind when she kisses him as he dies.

Far as I know, nobody brought him back before the Ultimate Universe got wiped out by Secret Wars (although I read Jonathan Hickman might be bringing it back), so he never got the chance to diverge too far from the cocky guy enjoying stealing stuff with his girlfriend. No Thieves Guild and Assassins Guild stuff, no Belladonna or any of that mess. Sometimes simpler is better.

Saturday Splash Page #62

"Denial," in Ultimate X-Men #13, by Chuck Austen (writer), Essad Ribic (penciler), Livesay (inker), J.D. Smith (colorist), Sharpefont (letterer)

Welcome to Ultimate March! The Ultimate Universe was, I believe, pitched as a way to get new readers. Take the known characters, but strip out the decades of continuity and sometimes contradictory backstory. Get them back to a base state, hand them to "hot" creative teams to update the origins and characterizations, make them more "mature", and presumably appealing to readers.

It started with Ultimate Spider-Man, which we'll get to in due course, but for now, let's look at Ultimate X-Men, which started under Mark Millar and Adam Kubert. Some things remained much the same. Millar kept Xavier and Magneto on opposing sides, and kept the sides much the same. Mutants live peacefully among humans, or mutants rule/exterminate humans. This version of Magneto was just a little more openly hateful with his language (probably fairly close to Morrison's "mad old bastard" characterization), while Xavier was more openly dodgy with his telepathy.

Millar changed Weapon X from a program that experimented on mutants to one that mostly took them as-is and used them as expendable weapons. Send them out to kill, maim or steal. If they die, who cares. Don't bother with wiping their minds or implanting false memories, because they're not going to ever leave alive. Later writers, Brian K. Vaughn and Robert Kirkman mostly, spent some time on the emotional and mental trauma teenagers that went through that would carry. Teenagers making bad, rash, and melodramatic romantic decisions, among other things. Between Millar and BKV was Bendis, and other than some arc drawn by David Finch that started with Wolverine getting shot up in a diner, then teaming up with Spider-Man and maybe Daredevil, I couldn't tell you a thing that happened. Maybe some religious cult calling itself the Shi'ar approached Jean about being the current host for the Phoenix?

I feel like I enjoyed Vaughn's run best, maybe the parts with Mr. Sinister and the Fenris oddly enough, but not enough for any of it to stick in the collection. The only issues of the ongoing I still have are this two-parter by Chuck Austen and Essad Ribic about Gambit trying to protect a young girl whose parents were killed by Hammerhead, now a bent cop rather than a mobster.

That last sentence is not one I would have ever expected to type.

I don't know that the idea behind the Ultimate Universe worked. The books suffered the same slow attrition of sales as the regular Marvel Universe, eventually only propped up by the latest introduction of the Ultimate version of a Marvel character. It's Dazzler, but she's an alcoholic punk rocker! I gave up on this book when Kirkman brought in Cable, and it turned out he was Wolverine from the future.

Well, DC Isn't Using Young Justice, So Why Not?

So the cover for the upcoming Ultimate Spider-Man issue showed Magneto with Spidey, Iceman, and Liz (Ultimate Firestar, I guess) charging towards him. I'd really like to see those three, plus Kitty and the Human Torch all trying to throw down with Mister Master of Magnetism to stop him from, I presume, getting his hooks into Liz. I have to say, given Liz' expressed feelings about mutants (assuming she is a mutant, and not the result of genetic tinkering like Sandman or Electro), Mags is going to have a hard sell, trying to convince her to hook up with his mutant supremacist group.

Magneto: Join our noble cause of destroying humanity.
Liz: No! Mutants are gross freaks!
M: *blinks* But you are a mutant, child.
L: Ugh, don't remind me. It's so awful, my life is over.
M: *takes deep breath, squeezes stress reduction ball*

That would probably go for some time, given the writer involved, but I'd hope for at least one panel of Magneto looking flabbergasted at Liz' dislike of her current situation.

If that's what Magneto's going to be up to, as opposed to, say, trying to attack the Triskelion after the damage it sustained during Norman Osborn's most recent escape. Per Ultimate X-Men, one of his followers (Mastermind?) is stuck there, posing as him, and maybe Magneto wouldn't see any reason to leave him stuck there any longer.

But I think it would be kind of nice to see a group of teenage heroes trying to take on what is presumably the greatest villain on Ultimate Earth these days. Remember, Dr. Doom is in the Zombieverse, Osborn's dead (still a little surprised over that ending), Fury is on trial in the Supreme Powerverse, Kingpin's under arrest, and Apocalypse hasn't done anything yet. Other than Magneto and maybe Ultimate Namor, the cupboards are a little bare for serious baddies in the Ultimate Universe. Hmm, maybe it's time for Shocker to up his game a little. There opening is there, if he could just stop losing so easily.

Anyway, I think the battle of those five teen heroes against the big bad would be fun, given the different powers involved, and with all the interpersonal relationships between the good guys. And perhaps Kong or Mary Jane (or both) could play some sort of pivotal role.

I really just want some sort of grand "dogpile on the villain" story, I think. It would be a nice change of pace for Spider-Man, since he's frequently outnumbered, or in the middle of some mess where there are dozen different people involved, and either they're all on separate teams, or they keep switching allegiances (I'm thinking of that fight with Spidey, Shang-Chi, Iron Fist, Moon Knight, Elektra, Hammerhead, and the Black Cat, with the cops outside just waiting for somebody to shoot. That was a crazy fun fight, though). This time he'd actually have numbers on his side, and it wouldn't be seemingly incompetent SHIELD agents for once. Whoo!

Again, A Wandering Post

So I'll start at the beginning. I've decided to part ways with Ultimate X-Men. I read the issue that came out last week, and despite all the potentially interesting developments, I was left cold. I did some thinking about that, and concluded that I don't really expect the ending to live up to the build-up. It's a problem I seem to be having with Kirkman's run on UXM. The reveal of who Cable appears to be hooked me, but for some reason the big fight scene between the X-Men and Cable's Wild Pack, culminating in Xavier's apparent death didn't work for me.

It isn't a new problem though, so maybe it's me. It was the one problem I had with Paul Jenkins' run on Peter Parker: Spider-Man. He'd do a multi-issue arc, building up the tension and the stakes, we'd get to the end and... blah. The endings weren't bad, they worked pretty well, didn't bollix up any characters, but they felt flat after everything that had led up to that point. So yeah, maybe it's me. I wonder if on a deeper level, the endless hype has affected me to where I expect that every arc really will produce some deep and awesome change (which I will probably not approve of), and when the arc only rearranges the board a little, to try and introduce some new ideas to build on later, I'm disappointed somehow.

It could possibly be my awareness of the impermanence of changes to comic characters in general. Sure Wolverine left the X-Men to find out about himself, but he'll be back eventually. They all come back eventually (in my head I'm trying to say that in the creepiest voice possible. No idea why).

Hmm, either possibility suggests I'm growing jaded in my later years. Well, Iron Fist is coming out this week (about time!), so that should bolster my spirits, don't you think?

Mistake Or Mistruth

To put it simply, Kitty's stated reason for leaving Xavier's school in Ultimate Spider-Man doesn't jive with the events as we saw them in Ultimate X-Men. In USM, Kitty says the school was getting crowded, and Xavier was displeased with her for demanding he wipe Aunt May's mind of "Peter is Spider-Man" knowledge, so she transferred. In UXM, we've seen that Kitty's been thinking about leaving for at least a couple of issues (spanning a few days), and that Xavier's death has made her realize that being in life-or-death struggles for mutants isn't really what she wants. She came to Xavier's to learn control of her powers, she can control them, so she's leaving.

Sadly, my first feeling on reading Kitty's explanation in USM was disappointment. I thought, 'Darn it Bendis, Kitty just explained her reasons in Ultimate X-Men last month! Pay attention!' I know most of the books in the Ultimate Universe just do as they please, which is probably a good thing, since I wouldn't want other writers to have to pay attention to Ultimates. But I kind of liked that USM and UXM seemed to at least keep in touch. So, a seeming continuity gaffe was disheartening.

Then I thought about it a little more. Does Peter know Xavier is dead? He wasn't at the funeral, and given the hectic pace of his life, it's possible he's missed the news broadcasts about it. So, perhaps Kitty's not being totally straightforward with Peter. It could be payback for Peter going back to MJ, but that doesn't really seem to fit. So why?

In USM, the last time we see Kitty and Xavier interact, Kitty's telling Xavier she hates him because he won't go to bat for her, because taking people's memories is wrong (though I could swear Xavier has done that kind of stuff to people before. They were evil people I suppose, so that makes it okay, maybe?). So I figure that it was shortly after that disagreement when Xavier bites the dust (pending current events in Ultimate X-Men). So Kitty feels guilty. Things between the two of them didn't end on a positive note, and now she's feeling remorse over that. So she changes the story to where she left, but Xavier is still alive, which means they could patch things up again someday down the line.

Personally, I'd much rather go with that line of thinking, rather than "once again Marvel books can't keep their stories straight", so I will. Good for me.

Not That Old Trick Again

So, did Xavier's "death" in Ultimate X-Men this week remind anyone else of Reed Richards "death" in Fantastic Four back in the '90s?

The desperate villain, the hero making it so easy (Reed because he took Doom's hand, Xavier giving Cable the target he wanted), boom, apparent death?

I suppose it's Kirkman being polite. If someone else down the line really wants to use Charles Xavier they've got a ready made trapdoor built in. Cable clearly seems to have teleported away (if Wolverine's to be believed), and all we've got is a skeleton, which for all we know Cable could have brought with him from the future (from when Xavier dies decades from now).

I will say, I'm curious to see how these X-Men, mostly teenagers, react to his death, so I'm hoping Xavier stays dead for awhile. Of course, I was genuinely surprised and interested when they offed the Beast, but I think I just saw a cover solicitation with him on it, so it looks like the Ultimateverse is starting to have the dead rise. Must be the work of those Fantastic Four zombies.

Convolution Confounds, Concerns CalvinPitt

I'd actually been planning this post since last weekend. It was going to be about why I'd dropped Ultimate X-Men. I was going to wax on (and on, and on, as I tend to do) about my important revelation. That being that I felt I read my various titles expecting certain things, and I'd come to the conclusion that I had no expectations for Ultimate X-Men. And if I have no expectations, no things I really want to see, why buy it?

Surprisingly, a book with a Michael Turner cover and Cable helped me to understand myself. I realized what I like about Ultimate X-Men: it's the X-Men, in a simpler way. Please holds the "Well duh!" for later.

When I look at Marvel X-continuity, it's a series of characters going one way, then the other, then back to the original, then back that first direction and so on. It weighs things down an awful lot.

Look at Jean Grey. First she was Marvel Girl, fledgling telepath/telekinetic. Then she was housing the Phoenix force and saved the universe. Then she went evil and threatened the universe. Then she died. Then we find out that was just the Phoenix Force impersonating Jean, and Jean's been in a cocoon the whole time. Now she's back, and just a telekinetic. Then telepathy reenters the equation. Then the Phoenix force shows up again. And I'm sure I missed a half-dozen other twists-turns in there. And the X-universe always seems to tail back into that Phoenix/Jean stuff, like it's a black hole and the X-writers' imaginations can't escape it's pull.

And really, you could say the same of the whole "Days of Future Past" scenario. I mean, it was good idea initially, but it's been seen too many times. Too many people fleeing the dystopian future that never seems to get much better, no matter how hard anyone tries.

With Ultimate X-Men, it was all starting over, which - I know - was the whole point of the Ultimate Universe. And so far, so good. Yes, they introduced the Phoenix, and yes, I screamed in horror and abandoned the book for that recent three issue arc which revisited it. But really, it's still ambiguous. Jean could be crazy, she could be housing an ancient and powerful force trapped within the core of their planet, like a Celestial Egg from that Earth X stuff. We don't know yet, and even if they do commit, that would be OK, if they don't start the cycle of reversing and retconning and so on.

We were discussing at the store how Ultimate Cable is probably a signal of "Ultimate Days of Future Past", which again, is not a bad thing in and of itself, as long as they go with something other than "Well, here's yet another person from the future who will fail to actually change things." Just off the top of my head, have people actively fleeing the future in droves (yeah, I know South Park did that, but I think we could get a better story out of it here). What's Nick Fury going to do about that? What's Reed Richards going to come up with to stop it? Would they stop it, or would they try to hoard future tech to continue Fury's plan of world domination?

What? That's what Nick Fury is up to.

So anyway, an opportunity to avoid tiring repetition and confusion is what drew me to the book, and with a little luck, it'll continue that and everything will be OK!

Yeah, I don't really believe it either, but what the hell.