How you feel about Ultimate War #4 will depend on what you're looking for.  If you wanted an actual story that resolves anything, you may be disappointed.  Ultimate War doesn't really have a plot; it's a four-month build up to a huge fight scene in the final issue, the result of which serves to advance the plot of Ultimate X-Men, but otherwise, to resolve nothing.  Taken as a storyline in its own right, the miniseries is unsatisfying.

If, on the other hand, you were just looking for a big fight between the Ultimates and the X-Men, you will be very happy with this.  I'd had reservations that Chris Bachalo's frequently cluttered artwork wouldn't be up to this sort of thing, but he turns in a surprisingly good piece of work.  Millar's plot helps, laying out the action so that Bachalo isn't called upon simply to draw a big fight between a ton of characters; it's more focussed and directed than that.

As fight scenes go, this is very well constructed.  The obvious problem with the X-Men in fights is that they have two telepaths on the team and therefore they ought to win against virtually everyone.  Millar's solution is to knock out the telepaths from the start and leave the X-Men with the objective of trying to get Xavier out of the range of the telepathic mufflers so that they can win.  It gives the fight scene a shape beyond merely two teams pummelling one another into the ground.

But for all that it's a good fight scene, it remains ultimately a fight scene, and one with an inconclusive ending at that.  Whether that really merited a four issue miniseries is open to question.

Rating: B

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