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ULTIMATE X-MEN #9 (Best of the Week!)
"Return to Weapon X Part Three: No Safe Haven"
Highly Recommended (10/10)
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Marvel Comics
Writer: Mark Millar
Pencils: Tom Raney
Inks: Scott Hanna
Colors: Transparency Digital
Letters: Comicraft
Editor: Mark Powers
Price: $2.25 US/$3.50 CAN |
The X-Men aren't even in the first half of this book, and I didn't care at all, because instead we get Millar writing (and Raney drawing) scenes of super-heroic espionage that echo the best of Raney's work on Stormwatch or Ellis's Bond/Fury archetype in Planetary. High action, nifty gadgets and attitude, this is everything Fury wanted to be and wasn't. Then you get to the second half of the book, with an interesting view of the mutants assimilating into Weapon X (it's not what you'll expect) and you realize that this may just be the best issue of Ultimate X-Men yet. Something about this book seems to bring out the best in creators, whether it's Millar's always-stylish writing or Raney doing the best work he's done since he wowed me on Stormwatch.
The Nick Fury in the Ultimate titles is
quite different from the mainline Marvel Universe. He's black, for one thing,
and doesn't seem old enough to have been in World War II. He's also more of a
field agent than SHIELD director, and his gadgets are the modern-day equivalents
of the wild 60s tech that Kirby and Steranko gave him. His opening sequence is a
lot of fun, from the casual arrogance he displays enroute to the stunning array
of gadgets and skills he uses while infiltrating the enemy stronghold. The
storytelling is incredible; it reads like James Bond directed by John Woo with
Industrial Light and Magic doing the special effects.
However, as impressed as I am with that, I
was even more happy with the indoctrination that has taken place at Weapon X.
Rather than giving us the prisoners gnashing their teeth and crying about how
they're stuck and what has happened, we've got them halfway giving in by going
on missions and halfway retaining their confidence, particularly with Cyclops.
In Millar's hand, this is not the boring stiff that we often get in the main
books, but someone whose confidence is borderline lunacy, but someone you can't
help believing in. I also enjoyed seeing the interaction between the previous
Weapon X recruits and the current ones, as they argue mutant philosophy in
between experiments and torture.
This book has been compared to The Authority in style, but really it may be better than that book. Millar is playing with 40 years' worth of established characters and history without the negative constraints that comes with that, and so these characters have more resonance than the new creations and "homages" in The Authority. In addition, he combines
characterization and widescreen action in equal measure as the book moves on,
with scenes such as the one between Jean and Nightcrawler or Wraith's off-handed
"poor man's Wolverine" comment to Sabretooth serving to flesh out the characters
or at least make the reader chuckle.
Raney is in fine form here as well, demonstrating the skill that I haven't seen since his early work on Stormwatch. Gruesome visuals of what's going on at
Weapon X, terrific work on the strange visuals of Nightcrawler or the modified
Beast and high-action scenes like the jetpack flights of "Beta team" are all
exceptional work. And there are nice little visual details, such as the glowing
tattoos on the wrists of the Weapon X team or Sabretooth's necklace of human
ears, that help to establish the atmosphere.
I honestly didn't think Ultimate X-Men could get much bigger and more exciting
than giant mutant-hunting robots and an army of evil mutants, but Millar has
topped himself with this second arc. I can't wait to see how it winds up, and
I've got a lot of curiosity about arc number three.
Email Randy Lander comments about this review. |
