Ultimate X-Men #83 is billed as the second part of "The Underneath."  In fact, structurally this book is shifting back to the old open-ended format of an ongoing series. 

The main story, featuring the Ultimate Universe's version of the Morlocks, is indeed a two-parter.  But the subplot of Bishop recruiting his new X-Men, which takes up most of the book, is on its own schedule.  As written, this makes rather more sense as two issues of an ongoing storyline.  I'm rather glad to see books backing off from absolutely rigid story arcs.  There's a powerful need to structure stories so that the collected editions make sense, but that doesn't preclude a serial format.

As for the actual story, Ultimate X-Men still feels like a book which is just ticking over.  And that's strange, because it's currently doing a storyline where Professor X is dead, Cyclops has shut down the team in favour of running a normal school, and Bishop is recruiting a new squad.  That's a pretty big shake-up.  Yet somehow it still feels as if Ultimate X-Men is just going about its business and filling its pages.  Perhaps it's because of the impression that the writers are working their way through a checklist of existing concepts that they need to reinvent - this year, Bishop and the Morlocks.

The Morlocks' story is basically a retread of the original concept from the mid-80s, which isn't a criticism.  They're still a group of ugly mutants hiding in the tunnels, and they're still paranoid about outsiders.  Sunder has been cast as their leader, which makes a certain degree of sense; it allows Callisto to come to the fore in future stories as the Morlocks' spokesman, without the baggage of her starting off as a villain.  Her 180 degree turn to become a friend of the X-Men always seemed a little bit forced, and this tweak minimises that problem.

Ultimately, though, it's just a serviceable retread of the idea.  The big new twist is to put Nightcrawler in charge of the Morlocks, but the way he's written here doesn't ring true.  Kirkman went to some lengths to set up Nightcrawler as dangerously unstable in his earlier issues, but now he's merely troubled again.  At the same time, he's going around breaking opponents' necks - something that nobody expresses much concern about.  (And since the opponent in question is superhumanly strong, you have to wonder how Kurt's able to do it, or anything close to it, in the first place.)

The recruitment scenes for the new X-Men team work better, though, and that storyline is still holding my interest.  Overall, it's an okay issue, but that's as far as it goes.

Rating: B

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