If it wasn’t for the fact that I know the Ultimate Marvel universe has a sort of a time limit to it[1], I would be impressed by the new directions that have opened up as of the closing panels of the apparently appropriately named Apocalypse. The book closed up three separate Ultimate X-Men storylines in just five short issues. This has got to be some kind of record, I think.
First off, it closed down a Storm story that has thusfar been too anemic for me to mention, and in such an abrupt way that even if I had managed to care about it before, I would not now do so. (Thankfully, that was the bad part of the book; had the rest been even half as terrible, I would have had to work very hard to finish up.) After the lameness, though, the main event started, and it was a pretty decent main event, I must say. Remember a couple of books ago when that guy Cable came from a terrible future to stop it from ever happening? And so he hunted the streets of Los Angeles for Sarah Connor, until… okay, that’s not right at all. Anyway, he did what he did, and then over the next book, the differently-configured X-Men continued to work toward preventing that dark future. And now, finally, it all comes to a head! There are not so many revelations[2] as you might expect out of an eponymously apocalyptic event, but there are enough knock-down drag-out fights and casualties to make up for their lack. Plus, there’s also the conclusion of that third ongoing arc to deal with, which I will pretend not to explicitly reveal by saying only that it involves Jean Grey.
All of which goes back to what I was saying in the first place. If I did not know that there were only 1.5 books of Ultimate X-Men left, and then a giant question mark as to whether more will come afterwards, I would currently be very very excited by both the fact that so many old plotlines have been cleared away and especially by the manner in which it was done. It at least seems like there are really big things ahead for Marvel’s mutant populace.
[1] And, man, why is it consistently only the X-Men that make me think of this?
[2] haha
I don’t want to burst your ending bubble, but the ending is a lot less permanent than might have been imagined.
Well, agreed, but I also have not yet seen indications that X-Men have been added to the new Ultimate Comics line. I’m sure they will be *eventually*, just like everything else? But who knows?
It would be nice to see people besides Bendis and Millar starting to write new storylines instead of recapping old ones, too, I think, while I’m looking for uniponies. (Of course, I just bitched at Kirkman for his lame Magician character, but to be fair, it wasn’t that he went new, it was that he went new and I disliked it. Not the same!)