Ultimate X-Men celebrates twenty-five issues, and that means we get a double-sized ending for "Hellfire & Brimstone."

Somewhat like Grant Morrison on New X-Men, Millar seems to be retreating from strict story-arc structures in favour of a more open-ended approach.  Although this is the final part of a five-part storyline, it doesn't really feel like a self-contained story.  As I'd suspected, the three parallel threads - the Phoenix plot, the Savage Land plot, and the Brotherhood plot - never really come together, either in terms of narrative or theme.  In fact, only one of them really gets resolved here.  The Savage Land plot is semi-forgotten, and the Brotherhood move on to their next arc rather than really resolving anything.

Which is not to say that this issue doesn't work, it's just not the end of a storyline.  It is, however, the end of this phase of the Phoenix storyline, and Millar does have some interesting ideas which improve on the original story.

One weakness of the original Dark Phoenix Saga is that it's a story of two halves.  The Hellfire Club try to take over Jean and inadvertantly trigger Dark Phoenix; Dark Phoenix goes on to do cosmic stuff.  Structurally, it's a bit odd for the villains of the first half to have no real interest in Phoenix at all.  Millar's solution is to make the Hellfire Club into a quasi-Masonic organisation whose Inner Circle are actually trying to turn Jean into Phoenix in order to bring back their god.  Quite a good idea, really.

He also wrongfoots longtime readers quite effectively by having the Phoenix force - if indeed it exists, because the possibility of Jean hallucinating is left open - as a neutral force.  So after the Hellfire Club succeed in raising it to possess Jean, she calmly turns round and splatters them against the wall.  Aside from being a cute scene in its own right, it also derails the plot from the original Phoenix story entirely, and opens up more possibilities.

On the down side, there's a pretty glaring plot problem here.  Last issue Millar helpfully pointed out that the Hellfire Club had made sure Xavier never got anywhere near anyone who knew the truth about their scheme, in order to explain away how he had failed to notice their ulterior motives.  This issue Xavier spends the evening in a building filled with such people, and completely fails to notice that they're planning to kill him.  Given the fairly relaxed approach Millar's X-Men have shown to telepathic ethics, it's rather hard to imagine that he wouldn't have picked up on a little thing like this.  In fact, one of the Hellfire Club's henchmen raises pretty much the same question - never draw attention to the plot holes if there isn't a convincing explanation ready.  I think the idea is supposed to be that Jean is blocking him, but I don't find that remotely persuasive. He'd notice, surely.

Adam Kubert returns on art, although despite having skipped two issues, he's still only doing breakdowns.  And storyline or not, this trade paperback is going to look bizarre shifting from Kubert to Kaare Andrews and back.  Nonetheless, this month's art is good, with some excellent layouts in the Phoenix sequences, not to mention the closing return of Magneto.

Flawed, but the good bits are strong enough to carry it.

Rating: A-

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