I’m not sure what, if indeed anything, it indicates, but I find that the Ultimate X-Men volumes are the ones that make me remember that I really need to find a way to continue my thoroughly stalled read of of the original Marvel runs. Are the Ultimate X-Men the least divergent from their 1960s counterparts? If so, I don’t consider that a bad thing; the X-Men are still what I want most to read, supplanted only by Spider-Man after something like thirty years’ of combined comics reading from that era.

And in relatedly good news, New Mutants continues the UXM trend of ever-increasing quality. Despite the addition of several familiar faces from the original X-Men, the story returns to basics: mutant-human relations, the people trying to improve them, and the people trying to destroy them, complete with politicking and knock-down, drag-out fights. It really is a great gimmick. Mutation contains themes of racism, teenaged outsider feelings, and the religion/science dichotomy in one neat package. Plus, one shocking event may change everything I take for granted in the Ultimate universe!

But the best part of the book was a short one-off issue between a newly discovered mutant and Wolverine, in which we discover the length, breadth, and depth of Professor Charles Xavier’s commitment to permanent peace between homo superior and homo sapiens. I am pretty pleased by this revelation and what it says about the series.