Ultimate War is (sort of) the first crossover in the Ultimate universe, except that in keeping with the modern way of doing things, it's in a freestanding miniseries rather than alternating between issues of Ultimates and Ultimate X-Men.

Which is probably for the best, since Ultimates is running horribly late again, something painfully apparent from the fact that the Ultimates team here is a different roster from the one we last saw in the regular series.  Ah, scheduling.  I remember the days.

Ultimate X-Men, on the other hand, is more or less to schedule, and this series picks up from Ultimate X-Men #25, with Magneto leading his re-invigorating Brotherhood of Mutants in an attack on humanity.  There's no sign of the X-Men (in fact, they're not actually in this issue at all), so the Ultimates are brought in to face them.  Since they've never actually fought any supervillains before - unless you count reigning in their own demented members and associates - this will be a nice first for them.

It's been a while since I could get worked up about Chris Bachalo.  I loved his work back on Shade the Changing Man, and it's sort of been downhill ever since.  Action scenes have never been his strong point, and recent work such as Steampunk has been plagued by almost impenetrable storytelling.  Things are somewhat improved here - Bachalo does do an excellent job with the sense of scale of the Brotherhood's attacks, and his action sequences are relatively clear.  There are still some annoying glitches, though.  (That Spider-Man head in the snow on page 9 is supposed to be the doll head which was a minor compositional element on page 2 panel 3, but god knows how readers are supposed to pick up on that.  And so forth.)

This issue is largely about putting the Brotherhood over as a major threat, and given the current feelings about terrorism in the USA, that's not too difficult.  So the Brotherhood get to blow up a bridge, and much of the issue is devoted to aftermath.  Millar plays it a little more straight than Ultimates, which usually teeters on the verge of high camp (or just over it).  It's closer to a more subdued Ultimate X-Men.

By Millar's standards, this is a fairly straight superhero story.  Not bad, but it doesn't excite me.  There are some interesting ideas about the US government reacting to mutant terrorism with a policy of internment, but I long since learned to approach any politics in Mark Millar stories with extreme trepidation.  If he follows through on it, this could be interesting, but he tends not to.

Rating: B+

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