Just the two X-books this week, which is the sort of level I like to see.  Two or three is just about sensible, given the number of different characters Marvel have got to play with.  Of course, next week we're back to the usual deluge.  But I digress.

Ultimate X-Men #49 ties up Brian Vaughan's first arc.  One of the interesting things about the Ultimate books is that so long as you deliver a story which works on its own terms, you can also have fun toying with audience expectations.  The Ultimate Universe's history is drastically different from the Marvel Universe, but there's still an expectation that characters will have clear similarities to their parent incarnations - otherwise, why use them at all?

Sinister has received a huge overhaul in this storyline, turning him from a rather camp mad scientist  (I've always imagined him with a lisp, for some reason) into a nutcase with a gun.  As in the original stories, Sinister clearly believes that he's working for Apocalypse, but Vaughan has left it neatly unclear whether Apocalypse even exists at all.  We get a clear shot of him for the first time in this issue , but it could still be another hallucination.

The result is an arc that works perfectly well as an action story in its own right, but also benefits from the entertainment value of seeing Vaughan mutilate the original characters into something rather weird.  Generously, he's left clear back doors for future writers to move closer to the original incarnation - Sinister turns out to be a scientist who went nuts after experimenting on himself, leaving the way open to restore him to a full-blown "mad scientist" persona without too many problems.  I hope they don't, though.  The original Mr Sinister is a confused and ill-thought out character, prone to tediously inscrutable plans.  This version is substantially a different guy, but much more interesting to read about.

Most of the issue is Sinister running around the Mansion trying to shoot people, but there's a lot of mileage in the gun-toting psycho outmatching half the team.  And you've got to admire his simple, straightforward plan of shoving Xavier down the stairs.  Beats ray guns any day.

Brandon Peterson's art is really growing on me as the arc goes on.  Everyone looks a lot less scrawny now, and while his Dazzler is a little shaky, he's done a great job with most of the team.  Future artists probably won't thank him for covering Sinister's arm with those fiddly little tattoos (though even Peterson isn't drawing them consistently), but it's a good character design.

A fun little storyline, with added "where are they going with this" entertainment value for existing readers that doesn't detract from anyone's enjoyment of the plot.  That's the balance that works best on these titles.

 Rating: A

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