Ultimate X-Men starts a new story arc, this time undertaking the difficult task of revamping Longshot for the Ultimate universe.

What's so difficult about Longshot?  Well, for one thing, the Ultimate X-Men don't do other dimensions.  They've only just begun to come on the scene in Ultimate Fantastic Four.  One of the great strengths of the Ultimate imprint is that, because there's only one book per concept, they've actually managed to keep them pretty focussed.  The Ultimate X-Men do mutants and they do prejudice.  They don't do parodic alternate worlds.

Besides, Longshot and Mojo never really belonged in the X-Men mythos.  They were created by Ann Nocenti and Art Adams for the Longshot miniseries in 1985.  Chris Claremont then shoehorned them into the X-Men, for no terribly obvious reason other than that he liked them, and he happened to be writing the X-Men at the time.  Claremont also turned Mojo into a media-themed villain, which wasn't really the point in the original miniseries; he was more of an all-round lunatic.

So Longshot and Mojo require a bit of an overhaul to fit into the Ultimate Universe.  Of course, as we saw with Mr Sinister and Fenris, Brian K Vaughan is more than happy to reinvent a character from scratch.  And that's what we get here.  Mojo is now human, albeit an obese albino.  Longshot is a mutant.  And both are tied to Ultimate Genosha - introduced as simply a country with rabid anti-mutant attitudes which outlawed all mutants several years ago.  Longshot has been falsely (well, presumably falsely) accused of murdering a Genoshan politician and is on deathrow.  However, media mogul Mojo has talked the Genoshans into letting him use mutants as prey in a reality TV show.  You can see where this is heading, can't you?

Of course, it's The Running Man.  The characters even point out that it's The Running Man, as if it wasn't blatant enough already.  Still, The Running Man was made in 1987.  Sci-fi has been doing reality TV for decades, going back at least to Year of the Sex Olympics in 1968..  It becomes more and more topical as technology improves, allowing humanity to live down to cynics' lowest expectations.  It's a perfectly valid idea, and oddly enough, I can just about buy the nutcases on Genosha making this relatively low-tech version of the show.  There's some great dialogue between Mojo and Major Domo (a bloke in a suit, naturally), as we establish that Mojo is a morally bankrupt nut who's only concerned with quality storytelling.  Major Domo seems relatively decent in comparison - he thinks it's tasteless to drag out Longshot's death.  Not because he cares about Longshot, but because it'll distress the relatives of the human he supposedly killed.  That's a nice touch.

Meanwhile, Xavier packs a bunch of X-Men off to try and rescue Longshot - not by breaking him out, but by proving him innocent.  Not everyone's impressed by this approach, setting up some interesting internal conflicts.

A new arc means another new artist.  This time it's Stuart Immonen, a solid choice for the material.  He's just cartoony enough to let us buy into the manifestly absurd premise, but his people and his body language keep things looking real.  The opening sequence with Longshot outwitting yet another hunter in the jungle (the bozo raises a machete into the air and, of course, gets struck by lightning) is a beautiful piece of storytelling.

This will probably be a little too over the top for some tastes, but the creators have done an admirable job of dragging this out-of-place character more into synch with the demands of the X-Men mythos, simply by jettisoning the bits that were totally incongruous and replacing them with something that fits.

 Rating: B+

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