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Last time in Ultimate X-Men, Brian
Vaughan and Stuart Immonen introduced Ultimate Longshot and
Ultimate Mojo. Both characters were drastically
overhauled, in a way which made them a much more natural part
of the X-Men's world.
This time, Arcade gets the same treatment.
It doesn't work as well.
Arcade is a weird character at the best of
times - a Marvel villain from the late seventies who acts more
like a refugee from Silver Age DC. With his absurd
70s-Vegas-meets-disco costume and ridiculous Murderworld
props, he was born to fight Adam West. It is something
of a mystery that he instead ended up fighting Wolverine.
He clearly calls for a bit of an overhaul unless you want to
play him for laughs - but then, isn't that kind of the point?
Arcade is a completely ridiculous character who shows
up very occasionally for some comic relief villainy, to
provide a breather from the angst.
What we get here is a half-hearted attempt
to give him a video-game theme (almost immediately forgotten
about), followed by Arcade as a gun-toting psycho. Worse
yet, Arcade is motivated by a desire for revenge after his
sister was killed by mutants. Motivated? Since
when is Arcade motivated by anything? He just likes
killing things!
Of course, it's the Ultimate universe and
the creators have virtually got a blank slate to radically
revise existing characters. It's not that they aren't
staying true to Arcade. But they've taken a memorably
goofy gimmick villain and turned him into... another bloke
with a gun. He's just nowhere near as interesting
Fortunately, while this is a disappointing
use of Arcade, it doesn't drag the story down. At least,
not if you take it on its own terms, without reference to
previous incarnations of the character. If you look at
it that way, it still works just fine as written, with
Longshot being hunted by yet another mercenary soldier.
There's plenty of good stuff with the X-Men
squabbling among themselves, and some nice visuals of the
Genoshan airport (completely normal and banal, but all the
locals are enthralled by the let's-kill-Longshot TV show).
Stuart Immonen really gets across the personalities, and his
action sequences are great.
So don't get me wrong, it's still a decent
issue. It's just... not really Arcade, you know?
Rating: B
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