I have observed with some degree of interest how I have changed the way I interact with shorter types of external stimuli, such as movies and graphic novels. By no means is it that they have fewer themes, nor ones that are necessarily smaller in scope; just that with the limited amount of time and space for presentation, the themes are usually more compact and immediate, which means that I not only have to be prepared to pay closer attention finding them, but that they also can require more ability to read between the lines. Like, with a 20-50 hour game or a 300-1000 page book, I can just let my mind wander and see what bubbles to the surface as I go, but in the couple of hours I spend on these shorter media, sometimes not treating it like a treasure hunt for nougaty thematic goodness means I won’t have anything to say when I get here.

And then there are stories like Sentinels, which are simultaneously so muddled and so scattered that I have no idea what just happened, try though I might. There are two and a half plots in progress, at least two timelines to keep track of, an inexplicably large number of drive-by characters who show up for one scene or issue only to vanish forever, and far more needless overt sexualization than I’ve seen anywhere in the Ultimate line before now.[1] In what I’m going to assume is the plot that matters, a new group of X-Men has formed in the wake of the original group’s disbandment to focus on the “school” aspect of Charles Xavier’s school for mutants in upstate New York, that disbandment coming in the wake of the events of the previous book. And said new group fights off the return of the mutant-hunting robot Sentinels, while the people at the school go off in search of underground mole mutants and deal with the ever-present portentous foreshadowing about Jean Grey’s fated transformation into the Phoenix. I think if they’d used the same amount of space to tell either story individually, it wouldn’t have felt rushed and full of annoyingly fast cuts between scenes that weren’t related by plot, theme, irony, or even art. I can’t help but feel like, in response to my recent thoughts that a series-level climax is drawing near, they suddenly found themselves out of time to tell the stories they had left and were forced to rush.[2]

Still, I shouldn’t complain too much. The use of a new artist for each of the 2.5 storylines means that at least I wasn’t stuck with the horrible first guy during any of the needless sexualization scenes.

[1] I mean, I’m kind of a fan of needless sexualization, but not when it takes me out of what ought by rights to be a good story.
[2] If so, I have no sympathy, because they could have used the space taken up by the worthless Magician storyline to tell these ones right.