Ultimate X-Men #85 (Discussion/Spoilers)

Ice

Ice

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First of all, any notice the new design on the cover for the X's on the sidebars? Is this new now or has it been going on for whatever issues? I like the new look of screws with the X's. It looks cool.



Anyways, getting on with the issue itself- it was pretty good. Not quite the best, but pretty good. Some of the dialogue was kinda eh...but not horrible; mainly with Wolverine at the beggining.

I liked having Karma make Pyro go with the MLF to see what's really going on within that group. I even believed it myself and was wondering why make Pyro join the X-Men if he was already deserting them. Heh.


I wish there was more done with Beast. By that I mean maybe a little more than him showing up hiding behind a tree at the Xavier mansion. But what I like about this is that the little teases that will lead up to his big reveal of not being dead will be good. Hopefully it's in a situation with the other guys being in the same place as Scott and the others, but don't know if that seems like a possibility. I hope we don't get much more teases of Beast coming back to the others. This isn't something that you can drag along for long really now that he's escaped.

The only thing about this issue that was bad- NO ICEMAN!!! :x



:p


Art was pretty good. Better than it has been for sure, IMO.


Overall, 3.5/5.
 
I did not like it. The dialogue was awful, particularly Wolverine's. There's way too much happening, but not in a good full experience type way, more in a totally confusing with no apparent point way.

The art is good though.
 
I'm rather back-and-forth on my opinion of Kirkman's run. On one hand, it's cool to see an original X-Men team.

Oh the other, I don't care. At all. None of the characters are interesting and the action is boring. I just can't find it within myself to enjoy this book as is.

Ah, well.
 
Ok, I just got this one and there's a problem with this.

In theory this should be about Sentinels and the first real victory that Bishop's new team can make. This is a perfectly good story to tell. But it's not that. This book had one cool thing going for it a few months back, Kirkman hinted at a ****load of cool stories just around the bend. He did that for three months straight and then did a bad Morlock story which progressed the cooler story of Bishop's New X-Men.

Now we get to the cooler story and....now we're hinting at Beast, Shadow King, and Phoenix again. This makes it 7 months in a row of moving forward all these stories....as slowly as possible.

Personally, I don't care about Shadow King or Phoenix so dragging these storylines out for this long is something that isn't all that grand to me. Beast's story was interesting in degrees. To me the stories I want to see involve Bishop's new team and a story or two of the X-Men at the school running it as a school.

By having all these stories moved forward at once...you end up robbing the current story of its power and focus. Kirkman did this in the Morlock story but I couldn't care about the Morlock story then.

Hints are great but these are not hints. We got brood-looking Shadow King minions appearing out of nowhere and freaking out Storm. We have a cheese cake Jean attacked by a flaming girl (although the Goblins fought it back so I guess they represent her sanity?). Beast breaks out and witnesses things.

...

It's supposed to be interesting but we're just getting snapshots here. A lot happens in this issue but we don't care because once your getting into one storyline Kirkman switches over to another storyline.

Look at this break down.

Pages 1-3 are the Beast/Legacy Virus storyline.
4-7 are the Sentinel/New X-Men storyline.
8 is the Shadow King storyline.
9-14 are the Sentinel/New X-Men storyline.
15-17 are the Phoenix storyline with two panels of the Beast/Legacy Virus storyline.
18-22 are the Sentinel/New X-Men storyline.

Clearly the focus is on the Sentinel and New X-Men storylines but by putting these other storylines in you take away from this story AND the other stories(which is bad since the Shadow King and Phoenix storylines are about the same: Hot Powerful Mutant Girl is possessed by some other force and they're seeing things which tell them to give in and putting them in the same issue shows this too damn much.)

I want to know more about the Beast and the Ultimate Legacy Virus, I truly do. However, by staling it like this by having Beast appear once in a while and do little things makes the story feel like it's not going anywhere; that it's spinning its wheels.

I mean, truly, I imagine the next arc should be Phoenix. We've had this storyline going since Mark Millar AND Kirkman's already done his little update on it. We've seen the Hellfire Club come back, Phoenix warn everyone that once Jean turns 20 it takes over, met the Shi'ar Church, seen Jean's birthday come and go, and we've had to deal with little hints and updates since Kirkman took over the book.

THE STORY IS READY! We have the foundation set for a big epic Phoenix story that GOES PLACES. The Phoenix storyline shows my fears about Kirkman's plans. That we'll get all these hints and once he starts focusing on one story...he'll divert it every other page to show us an upcoming arc and by doing so it'll drag on without any resolution.

I loved Aftermath and Cliffhangers because it showed me what's coming up...but I don't want that every month, every issue. I want a story which can hint or build to another arc...but not so bluntly and not so often.

We're supposed to be focusing on Sentinels which has a lot on its plate right now. We have the Twins and Trask working together...why? We have Pyro who's allegiance is now being called into question. We have the Mutant Liberation Front which is being hounded by the Sentinels and has some connection to Pyro (Pyro's in fact connected to the X-Men, the Mutant Liberation Front, and the Morlocks). We have Stryfe running around without an idea of what it is he's planning.

All of that is tied directly to the Sentinel storyline...PLEASE FOCUS ON THAT! There's a story in there! By progressing everything forward at the same time you get issues like this one where a lot happens...but it's a lot of little things. It's small movements forward without really doing anything in terms of story.

2/5.

Did I mention the Cheesecake Jean? It looks nice but...

EDIT:

Also, a lot of the Sentinel pages are just fighting...and only once is it a character moment. The rest of the time it's just Wolverine cutting off another Sentinel head. And speaking just on that fact, let's say I've never read a Sentinel story before and I've never seen Wolverine cut off Sentinel heads...it's still not good looking. It doesn't capture any awe in its reader. Wolverine doesn't really have a cool looking power. It's really just a guy with knives.
 
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Yeah...I don't know what to think about this book. It is by far the best Ultiamte book right now....but that's not saying much.

This issue (and a lot of the last arc) read like any old X-Men story. I hate X-Men stories. I liked that this didn't "feel" like an X-book...well, now it kind of does.

It just doesn't seem like it's going anywhere. Not that it's boring...but it kind of is boring.
 
E said:
Yeah...I don't know what to think about this book. It is by far the best Ultiamte book right now....but that's not saying much.

This issue (and a lot of the last arc) read like any old X-Men story. I hate X-Men stories. I liked that this didn't "feel" like an X-book...well, now it kind of does.

It just doesn't seem like it's going anywhere. Not that it's boring...but it kind of is boring.
Click to expand...

I totally get this. It's doing a lot of things but I think it's just too much happening at once. It should cut back to one maybe two storylines and focus on character to give the story weight. As it is now it's so much happening that you really couldn't care.

Take the Morlock story...you don't care about the Ultimate Morlocks, they were one sided characters who were completely uninteresting because they all sounded alike. We don't care about them so the whole story falls on its face.

He's doing that again with the twins and the one dimensional Mutant Liberation Front. But in the pages where Kirkman can develop their characters and make them into proper villains we either care for or hate...he spends his time progressing three other stories.

So it's not boring, there IS things happening and there IS a sense of direction...but it's kinda boring because outside of the core X-Men no one else sounds like real fleshed out characters anymore because we don't know them well.
 
Foolsfolly said:
I totally get this. It's doing a lot of things but I think it's just too much happening at once. It should cut back to one maybe two storylines and focus on character to give the story weight. As it is now it's so much happening that you really couldn't care.

Take the Morlock story...you don't care about the Ultimate Morlocks, they were one sided characters who were completely uninteresting because they all sounded alike. We don't care about them so the whole story falls on its face.

He's doing that again with the twins and the one dimensional Mutant Liberation Front. But in the pages where Kirkman can develop their characters and make them into proper villains we either care for or hate...he spends his time progressing three other stories.

So it's not boring, there IS things happening and there IS a sense of direction...but it's kinda boring because outside of the core X-Men no one else sounds like real fleshed out characters anymore because we don't know them well.
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That's exactly it - sort of like being overwhelmed by too much going on. Totally agreed.
 
And true with not knowing the characters, really. Psylocke and Pyro are relatively strangers and they are being integrated into a team of characters we may already know but Kirkman skips around the part where they get acquianted.
 
Thought it was a decent issue but I know the next one will be better !!

Liked the parts with Jean and the phoenix, its getting really interesting now !!

Not too sure of Ultimate Bishop I don't trust him yet !!

3/5
 
I'm just hoping that the Shadow King and Phoenix don't tie together.

What is going on with the King, anyway? First it started out as a play Storm was writing, and now it haunts dreams?
 
Goodwill said:
I'm just hoping that the Shadow King and Phoenix don't tie together.

What is going on with the King, anyway? First it started out as a play Storm was writing, and now it haunts dreams?
Click to expand...

Did you miss the part that she's writing the play because of the Shadow King haunting her dreams?
 
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