Ultimate Fantastic Four / X-Men is the second half of the storyline which began in last month's Ultimate X-Men / Fantastic Four one-shot.  Of course, the cover just calls it Ultimate X-4 #2, but that's not how Marvel solicited it, so we'll go with their stupidly convoluted naming system.  If they're thinking this'll fool the retailers into ordering the story as if it were two first issues, then they probably shouldn't get their hopes up.

In most circumstances this would be a pleasantly entertaining fill-in story.  But it gets a little more importance this week from the news that writer Mike Carey is going to take over on X-Men in the summer.  Personally, I'm all for that.  Much as I enjoy Peter Milligan's work, X-Men is the wrong book to get the best out of him, and his style is wrong for their audience.  Mike Carey may be best known for his Vertigo work too, but he's demonstrated much more flexibility.  He really can write mainstream, as opposed to just toning down his normal style.

That said, Ultimate Fantastic Four / X-Men is not really the best example of that.  It's perfectly okay, but it has the distinct feel of a story that has one big idea in mind, and spends the rest of the issue tapdancing furiously to fill the pages.  To be fair, the big idea is a good solid idea, straight from the classic superhero playbook. Rhona Burchill, the Ultimate Mad Thinker, has stolen Cerebro, so Reed Richards defeats her by enhancing her new telepathic abilities and overpowering her with empathy.  Straight out of the Silver Age, but nicely handled, and a good finish.

The rest, though, is mainly just characters running around squabbling to fill space.  There's a cute idea about Kitty being attracted to Reed (who's the same age as her in this world), and Sue getting jealous, but otherwise it's much what you'd expect.  And for some reason, the story has been topped and tailed with new pages by Leinil Francis Yu, suggesting some sort of last-minute rewrite.

It's decent, but it doesn't live up to the promise of the first issue.

Rating: B-

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