Ultimate X-Men #47 is the second issue by the Reload creative team of Brian Vaughan and Brandon Peterson. 

Of course, as I said last month, this book only seems to be in Reload on a technicality - it's not really been pushed as one of the major events, and it's been presented more as a title that's getting a caretaker creative team for a few months until the Singer issues.  Even so, it's good to see Brian Vaughan being rewarded for his work on Mystique and Runaways with a prominent assignment, and you don't get much more prominent than a top ten title.

Team books are generally supposed to be difficult creatures to write.  There are just so many characters to keep track of, and not all that much space to do it in.  But having already cut his teeth on the enormous cast of Runaways - name all the parents' first names and win a prize - Vaughan seems comfortable with the format.  Every character gets their moment in the sun, and Vaughan keeps the character arcs simmering gently in the background. 

It's something that doesn't seem to happen so often on team books these days, where characters frequently seem to disappear off the radar for entire arcs - no doubt because it's nigh impossible to keep track of all the characters while writing in the fashionable "decompressed" style.  The plot isn't exactly racing forward in this issue either, but nor could you really call it decompressed.  There's plenty of material being crammed in - it's just mostly character material, as Scott squirms around trying to impose his authority on the team, Xavier panics about the prospect of getting another team member killed, or Nightcrawler acts as a sounding board for Storm's change of style (in a nicely written scene which plays off a couple of minor past events so that Kurt isn't just a character chosen at random).

Brandon Peterson's art is growing on me.  The style isn't entirely to my taste - everyone looks a little too wiry.  But his acting's pretty good, and he does a good job with the subtler character moments.  His Nightcrawler and Wolverine are particularly good versions (Wolverine benefits enormously from the loss of that stylised hairstyle), and I really like the revised character design for Sinister.

It becomes a little clearer this issue why Mr Sinister's name has been kept around when, at first glance, he seems to have been changed beyond recognition.  He's still being credited for the Ultimate universe's version of the Mutant Massacre, and more to the point, he's still got the ties to Apocalypse.  Of course, the character's still been drastically revised - this version is little more than a servile flunky, at least going on what we've seen so far.  Then again, he might be faking.  You never know.  That's one of the odd things about the Ultimate Universe - you can never be quite sure whether the writers are referencing events from the mainstream universe, or whether they're just changing things into something entirely separate.

Still, this is a good, enjoyable issue, pacing the story nicely and finding something for all the characters to do.  For the first time in a while, we actually have a clean sweep of good X-books.

 Rating: A-

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