Robert Kirkman, who you may recall me lauding from the Walking Dead series, begins his run as the writer for Ultimate X-Men with Phoenix?, in which the X-Men take some time off. No, seriously. The first half of the book is pretty much a date night. I mean, it’s literally named that. So, anyway, most of what happens is character development rather than plot advancement, but I’m okay with that. The central question of the book, as you may be able to guess by combining the title with some small amount of X-Men knowledge, is “Is Jean Grey the Phoenix?” And it’s a pretty interesting question even if you are familiar, because the Ultimate Phoenix has always been different from standard continuity, at least from what I know of the latter. Other questions for the book include: “Which character is homophobic?”, “What’s all the weirdness with Wolverine lately?”, “Who is this new Magician guy and did Kirkman create him out of whole cloth to seem awesome?”[1] and, if you are like me and reading these books in the wrong order, “Why are there Ultimate Spider-Man spoilers, dammit?”

An additional question, if you are familiar with Kirkman, would be “Why is the dialogue so stilted and basically terrible?” Thankfully, that question is obviated by reality as of his second issue, which means I don’t have to claim this book is terrible. Which is nice, since I had only recently started to really like the series.

[1] I hope the answer is “No”, because the character is kind of annoying, however intentionally.