Ultimate X-Men begins the "Return of the King" storyline which, counting last issue's prologue, will clock in at a rather lengthy eight issues.  The penny is starting to drop that Ultimate War is simply a big excuse for the Ultimates and the X-Men to fight, given that Magneto is obviously going to be around for another six months as the main villain in this book.

Anyhow, Ultimate War is still ongoing, and for the second month running, Millar chooses to avoid interacting with it.  So rather than have the X-Men in two stories at once, or even worse embark an outright crossover with Ultimate War, here's another issue without the X-Men actually appearing.  Instead, the Brotherhood are stockpiling for the upcoming war, while the X-Men's supporting cast are battening down the hatches.

The supporting cast, in this case, means Moira MacTaggert in a hidden safehouse in Glasgow Central Station, and Nightcrawler trying to hook up with the X-Men.  Since we last saw him, Nightcrawler has somehow managed to teach himself fluent English from scratch, a glitch which Millar perhaps unwisely flags up.  Anyhow, it looks like Kurt is coming to join the main cast, which is convenient given that he's going to be in the next film.  Kurt seems to have undergone a rather sweeping change of personality since we last saw him, which is going to need a bit of smoothing over if it's going to work.

Most of the issue, though, is given over to Magneto and his Brotherhood preparing for the upcoming war.  Millar's Magneto may be a two-dimensional bastard, but at least he does it with relish.  In a rather nice touch, Magneto is anticipating a very nasty war indeed, so he's instructed the Brotherhood to go off and steal tons of valuable paintings and other cultural artefacts, in order to make sure they survive the war.  It doesn't really add much to Magneto's motivations, but I do like the idea of giving him some appreciation of the arts.  Yes, it's less than subtle to have Magneto build his headquarters as a duplicate of a Magritte, but it's still endearingly absurd in its way.

This issue is a bit of a time-marking exercise, let's be honest, but it does its job in adding a bit of colour to the story while it's waiting for the main cast to get back.

Rating: B

back | continue