THE CREATORS: Brian Bendis and David Finch on issues #40-45.  Brian Vaughan and Brandon Peterson on issues #46-49, and then Andy Kubert taking over on art for issues #50-53.

THE FILL-IN ARTIST COUNT: Zero, but then, they did change artist for every arc.

WHAT HAPPENED IN 2004: "New Mutants", introducing a ton of new characters and killing off the Beast; "The Tempest", with the Ultimate Mr Sinister; and "Cry Wolf", bringing back Ultimate Gambit.

Wasn't Bryan Singer meant to be doing an Ultimate X-Men arc at some point?  How long ago did they announce that now?  Supposedly it's still in the pipeline, as I recall, but there's no actual sign of it yet.

Which is all for the best, since Ultimate X-Men has had a rather good year.  Come to think of it, in terms of overall consistent quality throughout the year, it certainly rates ahead of Uncanny and X-Men.  And Astonishing wasn't actually around throughout the whole year.  So I guess it wins.

Brian Bendis' "New Mutants" arc is a strange beast, introducing a ton of new characters, far more than he could possibly deal with in the space available.  The trick with that sort of storyline is to make it feel like you're littering the landscape with interesting ideas rather than dead ends, and for the most part Bendis pulled that off.  Killing the Beast was a surprising decision, and the moment was slightly undermined by the certainty that, well, they surely couldn't do that.  But his reinventions of other major characters were fun - Dazzler as a Brody Dalle clone was a nice touch.

Brian Vaughan seemed a surprising choice to replace Bendis on such a high-profile book, considering that his most successful superhero work to date had been on the opening year of Mystique.  Oddly enough, despite this being a top ten title, he's still probably more associated with his Vertigo book, Y: The Last Man - no doubt because that's a more personal piece of writing.

Still, Vaughan surpassed expectations on this book, with an excellent storyline introducing the Ultimate version of Mr Sinister.  Sinister has always been a slightly problematic character, simply because he's so silly.  Vaughan's drastic overhaul is a virtual reinvention of the character, but with just enough ties to the original (more as plot echoes for readers who know the characters) to justify the name.  Vaughan's Sinister is a gun nut who's convinced that he's helping Apocalypse by killing mutants.  And maybe he is.  Or then again, perhaps he's just plain demented.  It's not entirely clear, but the idea that Ultimate Apocalypse might be a poor-quality tailor's dummy in a makeshift costume is very appealing.

"Cry Wolf", with the return of Gambit, wasn't so successful.  The set-up isn't entirely plausible, and you can see the strings being pulled into order to get Rogue and Gambit together as a couple, just like in the Marvel Universe.

All told, though, not a bad year for Ultimate X-Men.  Bendis and Vaughan have written a much more rounded book than Mark Millar was producing, and the characters finally feel more like people.  It's a deserved success.

back | continue