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.)

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.