It's time for a new creative team on Ultimate X-Men, as Robert Kirkman and Tom Raney take over.

I had considerable reservations when Marvel announced this duo.  Not so much about Tom Raney - he's not the flashiest artist in the world, but he's a very solid storyteller, and likely to be a good fit for this book.  But Robert Kirkman's Marvel output so far has been alarmingly erratic, certainly not living up to the standards set by his independent efforts.  This has the potential to go horribly wrong.

Overall, though, the book settles down into an enjoyable start.  There's no drastic shift of tone from the Vaughan / Immonen run.  Like them, Kirkman and Raney are approaching this as an old-school superhero team book.  As a completely free-standing X-Men title, Ultimate X-Men has one major advantage over the others - you can play them as a close-knit team rather than a sprawling organisation.  It's a much stronger concept this way.

Basically, the story comes down to the X-Men taking a night off and going about their personal business.  And good god, there's a lot of material in here.  Shadowcat just wanders off to guest star in a Spider-Man story, which is lucky, because there's no room for her.  Scott and Jean go to the cinema so she can pester him about not being spontaneous enough.  Ororo and Logan blunder into a Sabretooth storyline, and to be fair, this version of the character remains relatively underexplored.  We haven't even seen him in a couple of years.

Peter and Kurt visit Alison in hospital - and it's nice to see that her storyline isn't just being forgotten by the incoming creators.  Kirkman is running with the established concept that Kurt is deeply uncomfortable about the news that Colossus is gay.  In fact, they're pushing Kurt about as far into homophobia as they can without crossing the line from "uncomfortable" into "hostile."  We all know this is heading to a storyline where Kurt learns a Valuable Lesson and accepts Peter, so fair enough.

Bobby and Rogue spend the night in and end up snogging.  This all seems a bit forced, to put it midly, and the mechanics are less than convincing.  Seriously, if she blows up Bobby's clothes using Gambit's powers... er, isn't that going to hurt like hell?  Oh, and they've quietly dropped the idea that Rogue can't touch people, which seems an odd thing to quietly delete given that it's a central premise of the template character.  Not sure I see the point there.

And Professor X has dinner with Ultimate Lilandra Neramani, who I suppose had to come along in the end.  She's claiming to be the head of a new religion offering replacement funding, after SHIELD cut the X-Men off last issue.  Obviously, it's one of those storylines where the added dimension comes from knowing that the original character was nothing like this, and wondering whether Lilandra's hiding something or whether it's truly a drastic overhaul.  To be honest, I don't think the Shi'ar stuff has ever fitted comfortably with the X-Men's themes and I'd have been quite happy never to see it in this book.  So if Kirkman's going for the drastic revision, so much the better.

Oh, and there's some guy wandering around a mansion looking for his dead parents.

So there's an insane amount of plot crammed into this issue.  In these days where you can usually condense the whole story into a sentence, it's rather nice to see a book like this.  Not only is it the exact opposite in terms of content, but it's very nicely paced - it doesn't feel cramped.

There are irritants here that take the shine of the book.  The Bobby/Rogue stuff doesn't convince, and Kurt's German accent must be abandoned at once.  ("Has anyvaan seen the Professor?") Overall, though, a better start than I'd expected.

 Rating: A-

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