Ah, now here's a book I always look forward to - Brian Bendis' Ultimate X-Men.  Just one more issue to go, after this.

And I have my doubts about where this book is going in the long term.  Bendis has set up an incredible amount of plot material in this run, and it's hard to see how he can possibly resolve it all satisfactorily in the time remaining.  But the future for this title consists of a fill-in run by Brian Vaughan and a movie tie-in, and when I read these issues, I can't shake the feeling that the potential in here is never going to be properly explored.

Honestly, I'm expecting the Singer issues to be a travesty, where they'll probably chuck everything out of the window and turn the book into a direct copy of the movie.  I may well be wrong on that, but that's what I'm bracing myself for.

Anyway.  Even within the fairly loose plot of this arc, Bendis finds himself struggling to resolve things.  The large volume of new characters have to be tied together somehow, and the plot device is that the X-Men are tipped off on a plan to assassinate the President while he's introducing Emma's new mutant team to the world.

This provides everyone with an excuse to get together, but the resulting scene is a little disappointing.  Emma and her team turn up in superhero costumes despite the fact that the big idea was meant to be precisely that they weren't superheroes, just normal mutants.  Alex, Xi'an and Karma don't get to talk at all (well, Alex gets a token line, but it doesn't really count).  It feels like Bendis has just packed the story with so much material that when everyone gets drawn together, half the characters have to stand off to the side and let the plot take over.

On the other hand, there's a great scene with Wolverine and Angel, who turns out to be a complete wimp and utterly useless in a fight.  And Bendis' dialogue skill turns what could have been a lifeless exposition scene between Fury and Xavier into something much more interesting.

It's still great fun, but the arc is frustrating in equal measure.  There's so much to be done with these characters, and it doesn't seem that the opportunity is there to see it through.

Irrelevant Cover Watch: The Beast, wearing an X-Man uniform, bounds around a mountain landscape.  On the plus side, the Beast is actually in this comic, and indeed features prominently in the cliffhanger.  On the minus side, he left the X-Men several months ago, and this issue features no mountains.  Three for three..

Rating: B+

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