Customer Reviews

Ultimate X-Men Vol. 5: Ultimate War

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

You would think that a showdown between the Ultimate X-Men and the Ultimates (the Nuevo Avengers) would offer an epic battle, but instead "Ultimate War" is pretty much a holding action. This trade paperback which is Volume 5 in the "Ultimate X-Men" series collects the four issue mini-series, which follows up on the conclusion of Volume 4 "Hellfire & Brimstone" where Magneto remembers himself and prepares to put humanity in its proper place. In the wake of the revelation that the Mutant Master of Magnetism was not killed and that Charles Xavier had lied about Magneto's true fate, the X-Men join the Brotherhood of Mutants on the government's hit list and the Ultimates are sent to bring them down.

Of course the lineups of the two groups is substantially different from the first time they fought in "The Avengers" #53, with Captain America, Iron Man, Thor and the Black Widow added on one side and Wolverine, Storm, and Colossus on the other. More importantly, it takes the Ultimates until issue #4 to track down the X-Men, although the Ultimates do get to tangle with Magneto when Daddy Dearest comes looking for Pietro and Wanda (I do hope that Magneto really is their father this time around because that would be a pretty good change from the first time through the Marvel Universe). Writer Mark Millar and artist Chris Bachalo reduce the "war" to a series of one-on-one battles: Iron Man vs. Colossus, Thor vs. Storm, Captain America vs. Wolverine, and the Wasp vs. Professor X. The problem is that they all take place in one issue, which means we only get a couple of pages for each confrontation. To quote Xander: "Big overture, little show."

The biggest problem with "Ultimate War" is that the mini-series is hamstrung from the beginning: not much can actually happen because the big showdown with Magneto has to be with the X-Men. The end effect is not a complete reset to where we started, but its is close all things considered. There are also some implications for down the road, such as when Captain America recalls Wolverine as Corporal James Howlett of the 1st Canadian Parachute Battalion (of all of the new and improved Marvel Superheroes in this Ultimate book the one I like the most is Cap; the living legend is now much more of a pragmatist than an idealist, which makes perfect sense for somebody who fought Hitler and the Nazis during World War II). Consequently, it is not like you can skip this without being at something of a disadvantage when the story continues in "The Ultimate X-Men," which is precisely the point of such mini-series.

The showdown between the X-Men and the Ultimates in this 4-parter has been commonly terms as lackluste, but I actually enjoy it very much. The sypnosis has already been discussed in other reviews, so I'm just going add some other points that I thought were interesting. I particularly find the choice of "who vs who" very well done. Storm vs Thor, for example, was a clear indication for the weather girl vs the God of Thunder. Colossus taking on Ironman pits a man of steel against another. Also, the pace of the story was good enough to sustain interest in an other weak plot. A highly recommended read.

[This review comprises this book, and its sequel, The Return of the King, Ultimate X-men Volume 6, both of which are combined in the hardcover UXM Vol 3. The three stars are for "Ultimate War". "Return of the King gets one star, which equals two for the double volume hardcover!]


In what is surely the worst episode of Mark Millar's career, this book concludes his overblown, bombastic, silly, and nonsensical interpretation of the X-men. Previous volumes established the pattern: take familiar storylines from X-men history, and reinterpret/bowdlerize them in the most jacked-up, brainless "blockbuster" style, while erasing any trace of believable motivation, likeable characterizion, realistic dialog, and credible plotting. Add liberal doses of absurd and ridiculous military/industrial/political/presidential politics and intrigue that have absolutely no connection with reality, nor are they any credible exaggeration of reality.

Mr Millar is completely capable of works of super-hero genius. Read his brilliant "Marvel Knights Spider-Man" or "Wolverine: Enemy of the State" or "Civil War"--they are the some of the best Marvel Comics of the past 10 years. They feature huge-scale action, intrigue, excess, and yes, sometimes characterizations that are a little more smarmy than we are used to seeing in Marvel comics, but it all works.

Ultimate X-Men literally seems like something he farmed out to an understudy. Some apprentice teenager who he hired under the table to do his work for him. There is just nothing here to like. The characters are all stupid, or insane, or jerks, or just lacking in sensible motivation. The characters' powers are off the charts and ridiculous. The dialog is so over-the-top, everyone is constantly yelling at each other and spouting maniacal nonsense, or spicing their speech with military/espionage-poseur BS:

Nick Fury: "With Xavier down, that cult of his is just a bunch of TERRIFIED KIDS running around with the might of the U.S. MILITARY MACHINE on their tail." (word emphasis from the original!)

"The US military machine"?? That is so corny and ridiculous. But those kinds of lines are on every page. Everyone talks like that! Everyone tries to sound like they are too cool for school. But it doesn't work. They just sound like badly-written characters created by someone who's only knowledge of the world comes from watching Michael Bay movies.


On to the specifics about the stories in this volume. The first arc, "Ultimate War", deals with the Ultimates vs Magneto vs the X-Men. The characters of Magneto, Prof Xavier, Nick Fury, and Captain America are the main ones here. And they are completely annoying. Every line they spout is overblown with stupid braggadocio. The clash of wills between Magneto and Xavier is absurd. They are supposed to be the two poles to which mutants are supposed to gravitate, but their ideologies are so ridiculous and stupid that nobody could possibly fall for their BS. We've now had to slog through 35+ issues of Xavier and Magneto delivering interminable sermons. Their characters never behave or develop in credible ways. They simply brood, strut, spout crazy-talk, and order people around.

At one point, Xavier asks Jean Grey whether he's ever given her reason to doubt his judgment in the past, and she says no. That is absurd! Every story arc has featured his misjudgements--from brainwashing Magneto, to leaving his family and allowing his son to grow up crazy and kill hundreds of people, to being suckered in by the Hellfire Club-- everything Xavier has done on Millar's run has been disastrous. Yet everyone still acts like he's god, including himself! That's just bad writing: inexplicable character motivation and behavior.

In this Ultimate War arc, there are some pretty cool battles between the X-men and the Ultimates. The characters' powers and abilities play off interestingly against each other. The art by Chris Bachalo is generally excellent, one complaint being the fact that the art is so densely packed onto the page that you frequently have to work to figure out what is happening in the action sequences.

[This section discusses the next volume "The Return of the King", UXM vol 6]

In the last half of the book, we have the final confrontation with Magneto, as he attempts to kill off the world's population by reversing the Earth's magnetic poles. There's a parallel plot in which Cyclops lies dying, dropped to the bottom of a gorge by Wolverine, who was trying to get him out the way in order to get with Jean Grey. Um, what? That is just stupid. It is not believable. It is also not believable that Cyclops would survive for days at the bottom of this gorge by eating bugs, then get rescued by Magneto's goons, then get completely healed by spending one day in a bed at Magneto's floating sanctuary. And it is certainly not believable that he would then take Wolverine back on the team at the end, with everything honkey-dorey.

The characters' powers are jacked up to the maximum as usual, so the battles and conflicts lack jeopardy. In one completely ridiculous situation, Magneto destabilizes the reactor of a nuclear power plant...so Jean Grey telekineticaly cuts out that section of the Earth's crust and flies it into outer space. Uh, WTF??? Stupid.

Xavier's relationship with Nick Fury continues to develop, in similarly ridiculous ways. Finally, in the last issue reprinted here, we are treated to yet another multi-page blab-fest when Xavier visists Magneto in prison. Haven't we all had enough of these two and their endless clash of wills? Especially as presented by this writer, the relationship between the two is simply devoid of nuance and utterly tiresome.

The good news is that this is the last of Millar's UXM. Next up, Brian Bendis and David Finch jump start a new direction for the book with a brilliant 12-issue run. Then, in volume 5, Brian K Vaughan and a roster of excellent artists truly take this book to the heights. If you've read this far, stick with this series, because it gets so much better.

This book is cool, because in the other x-men graphic novels you don't get as much fighting as here. Also you get great characters like: Cap. America, Thor, Hawkeye, Iron Man, and a reference to The Huk. So I'd reccommend it for the price, since it is the cheappest Ultimate X-men graphic novel, even though the story is pretty simple and it doesn't end in the volume, you have to continue in vol.6, The Return of the King.

I stopped reading the X-Men about 20 years ago and I've been trying to do some catching up since last month (thank God for issue review/synopses websites). I'd already been warned that the "Ultimate" version was much more cynical & nasty than the original version, but this volume reprinting "Ultimate War" 1-4 had some nice panels of Prof. X in it, so I bought it anyway. Nastier? Oh, yes. The implications of what Magneto does to Quicksilver made me cringe. The body count after the destruction of the Brooklyn Bridge seemed horrifying enough -- wasn't too thrilled to learn it was little more than half of what the Brotherhood was aiming for. Saw the X-2 movie with one of my sisters and she sneered afterwards that Prof. X should have killed Magneto in the 1st movie, but he's too much of a Goody Two-Shoes. I repeated this to a friend and we had quite a discussion about it. His position was that superheroes don't kill and there's no justification for killing Magneto on the basis that he *might* kill again. I played Devil's Advocate and argued that by letting Magneto live, any subsequent murders Mr. Magnet commits would be partially Prof. X's responsibility. This volume plays out that argument. Prof. X lied and claimed he killed Magneto when he just brainwashed him. Mistake?

This Magneto is proposing that the regular humans' fate will be either slavery, fuel, or food. Charming. Also stupid, since normal humans are still the biggest source of mutants.

If you find the Magneto-Prof. X relationship fascinating, as I do, there are some pages here that should make the volume worth your while. For all Magneto claims that Xavier is too far gone (in loving humans) to join the Brotherhood, he makes the "charismatic cripple" [his words, not mine], another offer at the end. Magneto wondering aloud how Xavier maintains his "saint-like reputation" is sourly amusing since I've read that in this series, it was Magneto who paralyzed Xavier.

My biggest objection to Xavier's portrayal in this volume is his overconfidence. Unless he was planning a real trap within a fake trap, the good professor acts like a twit instead of a genius when he sets up the meeting with Magneto. I'm not a genius and I knew better. Stupid, stupid, stupid!

Having Jean pick up on what Wolverine did about Scott was pretty good. Iceman's talk with his father was bleak. Liked the Wasp's little chat with Jean's dad. The panels mentioning what the Hulk did when he escaped -- GAK! The X-Men's complaint that the Ninja Assassin fight simulation kick-boxing sequence cross-references Hebrew ideology gets a cute payoff during the fight issue. Oh, if you don't know what "Zyklon B" is, it was used to gas concentration camp victims to death during World War II.

If all you want is action, you'll probably be disappointed. If you like characterization as well as action, pick it up.

This was a great comic X-Men vs. Ultimates first of all my two favorite characters Colossus and Wolverine were awesome. Colossus beat up iron for a little and then beat up Thor. And wolverine just killed every one in his path. The only thing i really wanted to see was Capn America vs. Wolverine. INsted all the action ends with Capn america playing a mind trick on wolverine then shooting him with a machine gun. Where is the hand to hand combat even though the better fighter is wolverine that would be great stuff ending is awful though

Vol 5 Ultimate War isn't a bad book, but there's really not a lot of action in the story. This book sets the reader up for the next vol in the Ultimate X-Men line, Return of the King, which is by far the better of the two stories.

In Ultimate War Magneto makes somewhat of a triumphant return to the stories after he was thought to have been killed by the X-Men. Magneto and the brotherhood start thier terror by blowing up a bridge killing innocent victims. Naturally, the Ultimates feel like they need to stop Magneto from causing any more destruction, so the ultimates launch a mutant hunt, in which they also target members of the X-Men who have recently gone into hiding due to past events.

There's way more dialogue in this book than action, but that wasn't totally a bad thing as it did build character development, yet there really wasn't anything in the book to justify calling it a war. It should've been titled Ultimate Witch Hunt. this was a pretty decent read, but it's not the best crossover in the Ultimate universe. I would recommend this only to the hardcore Ultimate fans.

this was a decent experience, Millar finally does something worth reading since Return of Weapon X arc and 1 year of terrible stories. what bothers me is the shortness of the battles such as Storm vs Thor which 2 pages and Colossus vs Thor all of a sudden lasted 10 minutes and Wasp wasn't even used at all. But other than that there is really nothing to complain about the story. the worst thing here is though the art, no offense to Chris Bachalo but his art is just terrible thank god this is the last time we ever see him.

"Ultimate X-Men, v.5: Ultimate War" (TPB)
written by Mark Millar, illustrated by Chris Bachalo
(Marvel Comics, 2005)
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A nice, solid story wherein Ultimate Magneto emerges from his last defeat, mad as can be and ready to tromple the human race into the mud. The story pits the government-backed Ultimates against the now-hunted X-Men, and while Professor X spends most of the time hiding the team from the watchful eye of Nick Fury and his crew, the crossover slugfest at the end is pretty satisfying.

Some showdowns could have merited more time -- Colossus stops Iron Man dead in his tracks, but we never see what happens after that; moments later Iron Man is scooping up a different target. Also, there is some sort of a smackdown between Colossus and Thor, but all we see is one panel where Thor is off-balance, and then someone else zaps Colossus. Regardless, I found this to be a pretty satisfying installment... Bachalo's depiction of Magneto is particularly fun, and all of the Ultimates are properly fetishized, particularly Captain America. This volume ends in a cliffhanger, so be sure you pick up v.6 as well! (Joe Sixpack, ReadThatAgain book reviews)

While it doesn't seem to be a true all-out battle between the Ultimates and the Ultimate X-men, it was very entertaining nonetheless. When Magneto shows up again after being declared dead by the X-men, the president assumes the worse and dispatches the Ultimates to find the X-men and arrest them. Not surprisingly, they run into serious problems, as the X-men manage to hold them off, and, if not beat them, stop them in more than a few ways. My biggest beef with this story is that the ramifications were never followed up on. The next time they meet, it's like all is forgiven and the X-men are heroes to everyone. So even though I liked it, I found that part to be a little hollow.