If the last several volumes of Ultimate X-Men had been bad, that would be one thing. I’ve seen them through bad stretches before, and if I do again, I’ll probably be able to work that out too. It happens. No, what’s so especially frustrating is that both the individual plots and the overarching one, finally brought to its climax in World War X, have been really quite good. Personal stories with high stakes, good interactions with the ongoing stories in the Ultimates, and the central mystery of why someone as powerful as Jean Grey has been so deftly used, or why she let herself be used, or why she’s turned so suddenly power hungry and maybe evil, plus also the mystery of which one of those it even is.

Except, and I say this with no opprobrium for the actual story of the battle between Jean Grey’s Tian and Kitty Pryde’s Utopia for the future (or the soul, if you’re feeling especially poetic) of mutantkind; that story was perfectly dandy and even pretty cool in places. Except: there’s no payoff. Not only do I still have no idea what made our Ms. Phoenix go off the deep end, there is really no hint that it was supposed to be hard to swallow.

Which renders the whole exercise not only frustrating, but at least a little bit retroactively pointless. Ugh. At least with Reed Richards, I know what happened. This is just bad characterization, going back basically all the way to right after the Ultimatum wave. Which means Jean Grey has been a plot-driven puppet for like four years. Ugh.

Which I guess I already said once before in that paragraph. But jeeze. Usually these are perfectly serviceable. Hell, I liked the whole stretch right up until the end, when I found out there wasn’t actually anything there, right? Okay. Done complaining.

Without this Cataclysm event coming up, I could see myself being extremely excited about the direction in which Bendis is taking Miles Morales’ story. …okay, that’s not fair. I still am excited about it, I just hate to see it get put on hold for a big giant event that he should by rights be at the fringes of (I mean, unless the earth is destroyed? That would change my opinion drastically and unpredictably), or even worse, get partially canceled / re-written. Perhaps what I am saying is, I wish Bendis was at the helm of the whole universe, so I could trust that this particular aspect won’t get railroaded somewhere dumb.

Anyway.

Stan Lee originally wrote this story (well, title) for issue 50 of Peter Parker’s run, published in 1967. Pete was tired of being Spider-Man because his life was always one terrible event after another, and something something Aunt May’s heart, and long story short, Marvel could not go more than 1/3 of the pages in any given comic without the hero being in costume, so you knew something would change his mind by early in issue 51. (In this case: Kingpin.) Bendis’ take on Spider-Man No More! is interesting to me for quite a few reasons, but chiefly because of the vast gulf of difference between Then and Now.

Miles went through a fairly major life event at the end of the previous book, as a result of which[1] he’s put away the uniform and the web slingers to resume a normal high school life. And then, boom, a year passes. A year! Because Miles, unlike non-Ultimate Peter Parker, knows how to commit to a decision.[2] Of course, it’s still a comic and the past always catches up with you, but unlike Stan Lee (however much I appreciate all that he’s done), this was handled thoughtfully, with false starts and denials before the inevitable outcome, and I do not feel that Miles is on a whiny pogo stick. I definitely think, as I already said back in that top paragraph, that he and Spider-Woman are on an excellent path with a lot of potential, and I hope I get to see how that turns out.

[1] I bet you could see this coming.
[2] Also because really a lot of events have been happening around the rest of the world, between mutant rights and new American civil wars and so on, and it’s nice to see that, if Miles is not going to be involved in those events, the editorial staff came up with a good way to explain why not. Plus, it’s good getting him a little bit older. Also, for those taking notes, this indicates that somewhere in the range of 2.5 to 3 years have passed since all the mutants and superheroes started appearing on the scene back in 2000-2001 when all this Ultimate folderol began. (Contrast: regular Marvel time, as checked against Peter Parker’s schooling process, has spent maybe 6 years of time between 1961 and 1979. So the scales actually match up pretty well!)

I’m very nearly caught up on Ultimate Marvel comics again, after my year-long hiatus to read about a shepherd with a sword. Which is really good timing, because The Ultimates: Disassembled makes a good go at tying up every loose end that has dangled since the Ultimatum[1], not to mention a few from the Gah Lak Tus incursion. Plus, the Fantastic Four are finally reunited?!

Unfortunately, it cleans up those loose ends in such a way that I’m still not sure if what’s been going on with Quicksilver for the past three years or so has all been this, or different authors pulling him in different directions. (See, I was going to say, “If you want to know what’s been up with Quicksilver, here you go!” Only, I’m still not completely positive I do know.) If you want to see another convoluted time travel story involving Kang the Conqueror? Cool, here it is! If you care about the Infinity Gauntlet[2], this is where you’d find the Ultimate version!

What is fortunate is that this felt like a story instead of the series of tickboxes I complained about for the last Ultimates outing. An exciting story, with more than a dollop of consequences, and a big albeit possibly premature glimpse at the upcoming, what are they calling it this time, Cataclysm I think? I’ll definitely take that. But I am kind of sad at implications that my excellent character analysis of Ultimate Reed Richards (available upon request in comments, if I haven’t already told you it in some other written or aural format) may have just been undone. Thanks a lot, Kang.

[1] If there’s one thing that does make me happy about there being a new massive crossover event that will kill off half the populace or more all over again, it’s that I can at least start referring back to a new dividing line between “then” and “now”.
[2] Plausibly, I will someday care about this.

If there’s one thing you can take for granted in any Marvel universe, it’s that while the mutants may have good days, they never, ever have good years. With this knowledge in hand, it was easy to predict how Natural Resources was going to go. Well, that and the knowledge that Kitty Pryde’s deal with POTUS has recently become her deal with the previous POTUS. And that’s before you take into account her array of other oppositions, foreign and domestic.

As spoilery as that whole paragraph feels, it’s all based on what has gone before. I have sincerely said almost nothing about the actual book in question. On the one hand, it’s really cool to see all kinds of plots coming together. Perhaps by the time I get through the next few books (one already published, two more out within the month), there will be almost no dangling threads at all, and I won’t feel like I’m wandering around lost and/or forgetful?

Ha ha, turns out that’s not speculation. The fourth future book is yet another comics-shattering event, after which I can expect another rebranding[1] and another contraction of what is being published. Well, sort of a contraction. It’s three titles, but since there are only three titles now (not counting one-shots), this may not count as anything especially impressive? Perhaps the goal is to have fewer one-shots. Due to there being that upcoming comics-shattering event, I will not reveal which titles are expected, since probably everyone not in them will be dead soon? (I have no proof, but Ultimatum is persuasive evidence as to how these things go.)

[1] Ultimate Comics NOW! The exclamation mark was not added by me, to be clear. Nor were the caps.

The cover blurb for Venom Wars talks about the measure of a hero being the quality of his enemies, and I do not disagree that Venom is one badass of an enemy. But it did make me realize that Bendis owes Miles Morales some new enemies of his own. Okay, the Prowler kind of counts, but I want to see enemies that have never existed in the Marvel universe before, just like Miles didn’t a few short years ago. Mind you, that has nothing to do with the matter at hand, it’s just a thing I’m thinking.

That said, there’s not a whole lot more to add here that wouldn’t be a spoiler. (And believe me, there are a few big spoilers available in this book.) Venom? Check. Lots of public and personal fallout from ace reporter Betty Brant’s determination to learn the identity of the new Spider-Man? Check. Continued respect for J. Jonah Jameson? Yep, although I kind of feel like he should drop back to the periphery unless he gets somehow directly involved in Miles’ life. Sudden turns of fate and plot hooks for the future and random hilarities? It’s a Spider-Man comic, so there’d better be!

Yep, that’s all I’ve got, basically.

So there was this big Civil War that happened in the Ultimate universe. I mean, not between superheroes, they just did that in mainstream, and boy howdy have I no idea when I’ll get there to see it. No, this was straight up a bunch of warring American factions as the country fell apart. Also, Hydra. (They’re a (let’s say) terrorist organization on American soil, fighting against, or for… something, I guess? At least in the ’60s, it was just plain old world domination. I have no clue what new Hydra actually wants, though. I don’t even know if that’s bad writing (probably[1]) or a clue about something I may learn someday.)

Anyway, there was a civil war. Thus, the next step, Reconstruction. Which basically consists of Captain America, in his new position, moving from crisis to crisis as Hydra, California, and other collections of basically terrible people try to take advantage of the still fragile situation for their own various, nefarious purposes. Other boxes being ticked off: the West Coast Avengers Ultimates, and Vision. You may think, no no, they already did the Vision, right? Someone disagreed that it was done on enough of a 1:1 correlation, is all I can say in answer. Well, unless I want to get impolite and say that someone thought it hadn’t been done derivatively enough? But that would make it sound like I hated this book, and I didn’t. I’m just very aware of its limitations.

Good news: the really bad idea of a job that Cap took? I think they’ve reset it back to status quo, so I’m hoping that fixes the rest of the problems by the time I read Volume Oh Good, We’re Back to 2 Again.

[1] In that they may just exist so someone can check off the “Did we use Hydra yet?” tickbox, and that someone failed to consider what specific goals / desires new Hydra should have. This book gives them a goal, but it is a reaction to something that happened after they were formed, so their original goal? Completely unknown to me.

I am really incredibly bad at reading this year. Perhaps I’ll be slightly better at moving? I’ve been pretty good at burning, and I’ve maintained my general high qualities of working and drinking, so at least I can point at where the time went? (Except the drinking, which usually includes reading, so I don’t know how to reconcile that part.)

The reason you care about all this is that I’ve been annoyed to be so close to caught up with the Ultimate Marvel series only to have it slip through my grasp again. But one is better than none, which brings me to Ultimate Wolverine: Legacies. I know what you’re thinking. Didn’t Wolverine die? So, no, it’s cool, they haven’t started bringing people back to life. It’s more like, y’know, legacies. Which is to say, Logan’s son Jimmy Hudson (who I’ve possibly mentioned once or twice before while I’ve read recent mutant events) is on a quest to learn more about his biological father, instigated by an unexpected underlying signal in the holographic message Logan left for him.

Then, you know, *bam*, plot. Including more from Quicksilver, who we have not seen in too long considering what he was up to the last time we saw him. So it’s nice to know things are still happening with that guy. Unlike Jean Grey, who no longer makes any sense to me whatsoever. (She wasn’t in the book, I’m just complaining.)