First, a quick scheduling note: I know it’s weird that there’s no book in between the last set of graphic novels and this one, but I’m about to be off the grid for a couple of weeks, and I both didn’t want to start a new book yet when I know I’ll be taking a couple with me and especially didn’t want to take any of these out into the wild, so, here we are. (Also, nobody at all was actually asking this question, but on the off chance one person was? This paragraph is dedicated to you, hero!)

So, anyway, Reservation X? Although it opens with a completely out of left field premise that in the aftermath of America’s eight-way civil war, the new President has a cure for the formula that was used to create so many mutants over the past few decades, it quickly becomes the first story since mutants became outlawed that actually feels kind of like it’s the X-Men again. See, Kitty Pryde (the de facto leader of the remnant of mutantkind who did not opt for the cure) is offered a chunk of desolate land where her people can form their own sovereign nation[1], and where they must find a way to live in a world that once again almost accepts them as, y’know, people while dealing with internal power struggles and external threats and resentments and also still The City, which you will mostly not remember is where all the new mutants in the SEAR reside and where Jean Grey is still hanging out.

What struck me most about the book, aside from my footnote just now, is how every moment of the story felt like it was building toward the same schism between Charles Xavier and Erik Lensherr that marked the birth of mutantkind the first time around. Hopefully that does not sound to you and will not be treated by the authors and editors as trite, because in my opinion it’s nice to see some kind of familiar order imposed on the Ultimate universe. They won me over on Miles Morales, and now the X-Men has mostly stopped being a muddled, sprawling hash of a storyline too. I dig it!

[1] Um, wow. How did it take until I was reviewing this book to realize that the Ultimate mutants have been the Jews since like 2009? (Plausibly longer.)

The perplexing thing about Ultimate Iron Man is how really well he’s written in the Ultimates (and in any guest role he performs in other comics, usually Spider-Man), yet how mediocrely he’s written on any of the few occasions he gets his own title.[1] Continuing this trend (and the trend of really generic collection names) is Ultimate Comics Iron Man, in which Tony learns that a Chinese conglomerate calling itself the Mandarin is in the midst of a decidedly hostile takeover of Stark International.

It’s by no means a bad story, and in fact the “romantic” subplot is basically great. But it’s telling that I had to grasp for the preceding sentence, instead of working to try to hold back discussion fodder in case of spoilers. Oh, okay, I should also add that the Demon in a Bottle callback in the run’s unmentioned title is probably quite clever, a nice parallel but with 2013’s Tony being addicted to heroism instead of liquor, but since I haven’t actually read Demon in a Bottle yet, this seems like the kind of parallel I’m not qualified to confirm.

But man, mostly I’m just grateful to Robert Downey Jr. for showing me that at least someone can do Tony Stark right.

[1] Armor Wars was an exception, though not a bright shining one.

The latest Ultimate crossover event was pretty exciting to read, but will I think be hard to review. Every story affected the others, but every story distinctly belonged to its own group and had its own thematic resonance, none of which the other stories were involved in. Which is to say, it was truly a crossover instead of just a big event affecting everyone. I’m not sure the Ultimate universe has done that before, not really.

Also, man, I feel like there are a lot of spoilers down there. I’m trying not to, but it’s basically impossible to say anything useful without a few, especially for events in recent books. Also, this turned more into my thoughts on the state of the universe in general than on the story told in particular, which I guess was inevitable considering the subject matter? Either way, if you’re leery of spoilers, catch up to issue 18 of each line first (or this book, obvs), is the best I can recommend.

I’ll take them in order, mostly because that is the order of scope reduction, and the title is nothing if not sweeping and grandiose. Divided We Fall, United We Stand is both an accurate description of the situation in the United States and a spoiler for how things will turn out (although, in keeping with the darkness that has fallen over the Ultimate universe since Magneto’s Ultimatum, I have not expected things to turn out as happy as all that in quite some time). And the Ultimates’ section of the story, which is mostly focused on the until-recently absent Captain America, is about the big battles in the wake of the country’s collapse. Because, see, the Sentinels have taken over the Southwest on a mutant extermination spree, and several other states have splintered off as they realized that the government was ineffective and also had been nuked. In addition to being big and sweeping, it is also (like Captain America, really) fairly unsubtle, so I will leave him to his explosions and big shocking events and move on to the mutants.

So, Kitty Pryde, right? It’s weird, because she and maybe Rogue are big important characters to me in the Ultimate universe, and yet (as of December, 1978) I still have yet to meet them in mainstream continuity. Therefore, uniquely in this experiment, their new incarnations will impact how I see the originals instead of the other way around. And I’ve got to say, I am a really big fan of Kitty Pryde right now. I can’t say for certain, but I expect this to be an unpopular decision from the other direction. I think it’s mainly that, for all that mutants have been at the core of everything that’s happened in the last few years (well, except the oddness with Reed Richards), almost nobody in the mutant storyline has been the least bit sympathetic. Karen Grant is an enigma, Quicksilver is a puppet, Wolverine Mark 2 hasn’t done anything meaningful yet, and Storm has not evidenced the least bit of agency. So a natural born leader who wants to go out and make a difference, and better still, seems capable of it? Yeah, that’s what this plot has needed for a good long while. The only downside is that her story should have been spread out over a couple more issues instead of being shoehorned into the deadline set by the main plotline over in the Ultimates.

Side note that fits here as well as anywhere: one of the absolutely strangest things about the Ultimate universe is how insignificant the Fantastic Four are. Even back when they were an existing concern, they were bit players outside of the Galactus story, and now that they’ve disbanded, it’s like people don’t even know who they are. When I compare that to mainstream Marvel, and especially the year plus break-up of the team that occurred across 1978 and how each individual was still really popular in the public eye regardless? It’s almost confusing, and certainly indicates how divergent the Ultimate story has become.

And, lastly, Spider-Man. I’m glad to see that Aunt May is still one of the best characters in Ultimate Marveldom, I’m glad to see Mary Jane at all, I want to see more of Jessica Drew now that they seem on the verge of making her interesting again in a way she hasn’t been since she stopped interacting with Peter. None of that really has to do with Miles Morales, of course, but that’s because they were all at the fringes of his story, which I don’t want to get into all that much. I guess the short version of it is this: just like the X-Men, a little more time should have been spent here, because this is the first new take on the death of Ben Parker and the power/responsibility shtick in fifty years, and Bendis did a pretty good job; but I think if he’d had a little more time to spread his wings and a little less necessity to shoehorn that into this crossover, he would have done an amazing job instead.

Okay. That was a lot of words.

I’m about to read a large crossover event in the current greatly-reduced-in-size Ultimate Universe, and it turns out that 3/4 of the current Spider-Man book (cleverly titled “Volume 3“) is also in the crossover book. Why they released a crossover book for the X-Men and Ultimates but then still let Spider-Man be published separately was a mystery to me, and now that I’ve read the opening section that isn’t in said crossover book, the solution to that mystery seems to be “publishing mistake”.

Because, seriously, the two issues I am reviewing are solely about wrapping up the Prowler and Scorpion plotlines from Volume 2. Not only did they belong there thematically, but they also made for one hell of a cliffhanger! It’s hard to review this any better, because it’s so short that I can only get into spoiler territory, so let me just say this: you know how I was intrigued by the “dark uncle” mirror that Miles is facing? I cannot really imagine a more impactful moral resolution to that mirror than the one I was presented with, and I am once again really looking forward to what comes next.

Oh, also, the thing where every time I read one of these books, I’m caught up in missing Peter Parker too much to appreciate Miles’ story for what it is? I guess that has ended! Either it was the year off or Spider-Men bringing the two characters face to face or me reading three different Peter Parker books in 1978 continuity, but whatever it is, I’m settled. So that’s nice!

Remember back when Mysterio finally showed up in the Ultimate universe, and Spider-Man (still Peter Parker at the time) did… well, something to defeat him? As you can see, I don’t precisely remember either. Whatever it actually was, Ultimate Mysterio ended up in regular Marvel continuity, just long enough to toss regular, 30-something Peter Parker into the Ultimate universe, where he confronts all kinds of unexpected new realities, such as his own death and its attendant fame, not to mention newcomer Miles Morales.

Then other things happen, but really the premise is enough. I think what I got out of this book, and not only because quite a few of the characters in the book got it too, was catharsis. I have, quite a number of times, complained about what was done in this series a few years ago. Maybe what I’ve really needed to swallow those complaints is a sense of closure. Maybe I’m just finally ready to move on and accept the world as it is. Whatever the case, this was a good bookend on Ultimate Peter Parker’s life, and I’m glad the story got told.

Also, though: it’s time to stop squandering Mary Jane. She should ought to be part of the story again, somehow, if only so that the last time I ever see her (and this is true at least twice over!) isn’t steeped in insurmountable misery, forever. Girl deserves better.

It’s time to admit that I’m a little bit lost on the whole Ultimate universe thing. First, there’s Spider-Man, which is consistently good, and I’ve had nearly a year to not think about it, so I’ll probably get over my ongoing objections. So that’s not so bad. Then there’s the Ultimates, which has amped everything up to 12 or 13, in keeping with the story they’re telling, don’t get me wrong, but since I still don’t think I liked that story, it is making me unfairly feel like the amped-upness of it contains the soullessness of a Michael Bay action piece.

Meanwhile, X-Men has just left me confused. The funny thing is, I didn’t entirely know I was confused during the first book until reflecting back on this one. They’ve done a good job of foreshadowing and playing it coy, and the confusion is not on the part of the writers. (Except for so far as, now that I know I’ve been confused, I’m still confused. But I’m assuming this is an artifact of another recycled regular-Marvel to Ultimate-Marvel storyline; if so, this is not a real complaint.[1]) But between the double- and triple-covert actions taking place, the four completely unrelated storylines that are only finally coming together a little bit, the other shoe of the whole “Mutants were created by the U.S. government while still trying to make that elusive super-soldier formula work right” reveal having taken so damned long to drop, and, let’s be honest, the large span of time since I last read these books[2], yeah. I’m at sea here.

On the bright side, the big “reveal” at the climax of volume 2 leads me to believe we’re in the home stretch toward resolving things and getting on to whatever comes next. Or possibly nothing will come next? My upcoming reading list, at least as portrayed by Amazon, is pretty sparse right now.

[1] Okay, it’s sort of a real complaint. If your big reveal is only a reveal to people who have read 50 years of comics (as opposed to my paltry 16), then yes, you will be leaving your new readers confused as to how that reveal is so momentous. I mean, it answered some of my confusion, it did, but it was also a scene between two characters I do not recognize, and that’s… problematic.
[2] Which are supposed to be monthly, remember. Well, the individual issues, but still, they’re supposed to happen in much closer proximity to each other than I give them even in the best of times.
[3] If I remembered how to diagram sentences, I would diagram a couple of these as punishment to myself for putting you the reader through trying to parse them sensibly, and perhaps I would learn to not do it as often. Pity I can’t remember how to diagram sentences.

I have previously pointed out that the current Ultimates run has been turning the dial to 11, and I think that has been true of the Ultimate series[1] in general since pretty much Magneto’s Ultimatum and on forward. Even the most laid-back of the current storylines, surrounding Spider-Man, has had a major character death in the not-too-distant past. Meanwhile, this particular episode has reached a conclusion of sorts, although not without multiple devastating nuclear strikes and a more-divergent-than-usual final outcome. And I’ll admit, however much I may have complained that the Ultimate line is working a little too hard to achieve the appearance of a full-throttle, all stories have major consequences! approach to things, it is nice to not be familiar with what’s coming next like I used to be during the first decade of that run.

As far as the current conclusion, I’m hopeful that something useful will finally be made of the main villain, whose identity I have been trying to keep quiet over the last few reviews; as things stand currently, all I have is a question mark about whether I’m expected to believe his beef with humanity (and the Ultimates in particular) is as straight-forward as it seems[2] and a smaller question mark as to what precisely occurred in his final scene of the book. Also, Tony Stark? Still cool.

[1] There is a definite downside, Marvel of ten years ago, in having one letter to distinguish between your current world-building / imprint and a team of heroes that reside within that world. I’m a little amazed I haven’t complained about this before.
[2] Because yes, I will be extremely disappointed if the most powerful Ultimate Comics villain since Galactus is only a villain because he was feeling butt-hurt and didn’t get over himself. That right there is a massive character shift with no provided explanation. (Ironically, if this were regular Marvel, I would completely believe it. That guy has always been a dick.)