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By the standards of Mark Millar, at least,
Ultimate War is a surprisingly conventional piece of
writing. Obviously this miniseries is his take on the
old standby "two groups of heroes have a big fight because of
a misunderstanding", and the result is a relatively
straightforward take on that concept.
Millar's variation on the idea is that the
X-Men have backed themselves into a corner by telling everyone
that they'd killed Magneto, and now they're having a hell of a
time talking themselves out of it. Hence, big fight with
the Ultimates, who won't listen to them and have already
decided that the X-Men are in league with Magneto.
I'm not sure the plot here gives the
Ultimates enough reason to be quite this convinced that the
X-Men are in the wrong. Then again, in part that seems
to be the point. Millar has never been a writer who's
all that keen on government institutions, and his Ultimates
have no difficulty in jumping to unfounded conclusions or
deciding that the best way to deal with things is massive
infringements of civil liberties. This is a universe
where Captain America is entirely comfortable with the idea of
orbiting satellites tracking every mutant on Earth, as long as
it's being done by the good guys.
The set piece of this issue is Magneto
making an attack on the Ultimates' headquarters, for seemingly
no reason other than to give Wanda and Quicksilver a stern
reprimand. It's this sort of behaviour that makes the
Ultimate Magneto a rather two-dimensional character - for
god's sake, he couldn't run to killing a couple of superheroes
while he was there? Nonetheless, if he's going to be
melodramatic and evil, at least he goes for it wholeheartedly.
Bachalo's version of the character, basically a cape with a
helmet stuck on top, certainly works in that regard.
The visual storytelling is improved this
issue. There are still a couple of panels where Bachalo
positions key elements virtually off the page, but for the
most part the story flows much better this month.
Bachalo does a great version of the Ultimates, particularly
his incredibly smug Tony Stark.
When you get down to it, it's still just a
"hero fights hero over misunderstanding" plot, but it works
fairly well.
Rating: B+
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