Here we are already, at the end of the first trade paperback. \u00a0Doesn’t time fly when you’re\u00a0bi-weekly? \u00a0I didn’t immediately pick up on this being the break point, because\u00a0it’s not\u00a0particularly\u00a0defined as a\u00a0story arc. \u00a0This seems to be coming back into fashion again;\u00a0issues #4 to 6 seem largely concerned with getting some pieces into play so that they can be used in future issues.<\/p>\n
Cullen Bunn’s task in getting his book up and running\u00a0can’t\u00a0have been helped by the fact that the next issue starts a\u00a0Secret Empire<\/em> tie-in,\u00a0which feels like it’s doomed to wind up as a pointless\u00a0and unwelcome diversion. \u00a0That might explain why\u00a0we have two stories here that seem too busy introducing new\u00a0elements to actually tell\u00a0much of a story with them.<\/p>\n Issues #4-5 see the X-Men investigating a strange mutant signal in Colorado, where it turns out that somebody weird with claws has been fighting the Wendigo. \u00a0A local deputy gets a lot of panel time, but she doesn’t actually\u00a0do<\/em> a great deal – from the look of it, her job here is to trade exposition and provide some sort of grounding to what would otherwise be some costumed people trudging around a forest. \u00a0At any rate, the somebody with claws turns out to be Jimmy Hudson, the son of Ultimate Wolverine, and he’s an amnesiac.<\/p>\n The X-Men do actually recognise him, because Bendis took them to the Ultimate Universe once before, but then a bunch of other Ultimate refugees show up, billed as the New Marauders. \u00a0They’re a random bunch – Ultimate Quicksilver is reasonably prominent, but I bet you’d forgotten there was an Ultimate version of Armor, and I’d never even heard of Mach-II or the Guardian. \u00a0Issue #5 is basically a huge fight scene, in the course of which we establish that these guys\u00a0all\u00a0somehow\u00a0wound up\u00a0on our Earth during\u00a0Secret Wars<\/em> and they’ve all conveniently lost their memory as a result. \u00a0And they’re now being used as henchmen by Miss Sinister, from the Mike Carey run.<\/p>\n This\u00a0is the sort of story which is less than the sum of its parts. \u00a0And\u00a0many of those parts are good. \u00a0It’s a pleasant change to\u00a0see an extended fight scene\u00a0which has had some thought put into the details. \u00a0There are plenty of neat character moments dotted along the way. \u00a0And\u00a0Julian Lopez’s art is very good – he’s doing great work on making the X-Men look like teenagers and establishing a strong sense of place for all his locations. \u00a0I hope we’ll get a lot more from him.<\/p>\n But the big picture is “they find Jimmy Hudson, there’s a big inconclusive fight, and they take him home to join the cast”. \u00a0I have a nagging feeling this two-parter\u00a0was hoping to get by on the momentum of bringing out the Ultimate characters. \u00a0But it’s been a long time since the Ultimate imprint was any sort of\u00a0a big deal – it got axed for a reason. \u00a0And\u00a0the likes of Jimmy Hudson come from\u00a0its tail end, after\u00a0Ultimatum<\/em>\u00a0wrecked\u00a0any goodwill that readers had for\u00a0Ultimate X-Men<\/em>. \u00a0Jimmy himself isn’t an especially\u00a0compelling character here; confused amnesiacs rarely are, but he’s still a bit of a void at the centre of the story.<\/p>\n Issue #6 is a single issue story in Madripoor which seems to be squeezing in the set-up for something else altogether. \u00a0We’re\u00a0 six issues into the run and only now are we really getting\u00a0around to doing anything with\u00a0the location. \u00a0A lot of writers\u00a0seem to treat Madripoor as some sort of lawless criminal underworld “governed” by supervillains. \u00a0Bunn seems to be going back to the “Uptown” and “Lowtown” division which Chris Claremont used to play up, and\u00a0what we get is something that feels like a basically\u00a0normal\u00a0modern city with unusually high levels of inequality.<\/p>\n The story has Jean, Hank and Jimmy\u00a0enjoying a street parade when they go after some MGH dealers and wins up crossing paths with a\u00a0local supergroup, the Raksha. \u00a0From the look of it, these guys are going to be sticking around as supporting characters, presumably to be the outside influence on the team that stops them falling too firmly under Magneto’s influence. \u00a0At the moment, they’re\u00a0your standard brutal\u00a0vigilantes\u00a0defined\u00a0mainly by gimmick powers, but there’s something there to work with. \u00a0On the one hand, they\u00a0keep the X-Men in touch with Lowtown (while Magneto is accommodating them in relative luxury); on the other hand, they’re thuggish enough that\u00a0the team\u00a0are\u00a0still likely to\u00a0treat them with some caution. \u00a0And, hey, new\u00a0regular characters. \u00a0That’s always welcome.<\/p>\n This issue has two credited pencillers, Ray-Anthony Height and Ram\u00f3n Bachs, which sounds a bit rushed for a single issue story. \u00a0There are some\u00a0awkward bits in the opening pages,\u00a0but it does\u00a0pick up once it gets to the streets;\u00a0the carnival atmosphere comes across well.<\/p>\n Mainly, though,\u00a0this is three issues of setting up\u00a0the pieces for\u00a0stories we presumably won’t get to until issue #10. \u00a0Within that limitation, it’s done pretty well – the art on issues #4-5 is really very nice – but\u00a0it feels like we haven’t got to the substance of it yet.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Here we are already, at the end of the first trade paperback. \u00a0Doesn’t time fly when you’re\u00a0bi-weekly? \u00a0I didn’t immediately pick up on this being the break point, because\u00a0it’s not\u00a0particularly\u00a0defined as a\u00a0story arc. \u00a0This seems to be coming back into fashion again;\u00a0issues #4 to 6 seem largely concerned with getting some pieces into play so […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3830","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-x-axis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3830","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3830"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3830\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3831,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3830\/revisions\/3831"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3830"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3830"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3830"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}