I hate to write a review when I have nothing good to say about what I'm reviewing, but I just reviewed the second issue, I'll review the third one only out of inertia.

Man! Did I really just read 20 pages? This issue felt like a short preview. This just keeps happening. They simply refuse to give you more bang for your buck. Why can't I get a single issue that doesn't feel empty and incomplete?

Other technical issues? Well, there's no use in complaining again about the dialogue, it is what it is. Unrealistic, simplistic and uninspired.

This issue is primarily about the backstory of Mei Igarashi, and I found that story very unpleasant to read. I don't want to read a "Marvel" comic book about a middle school girl living in a toxic household environment. That just sucks. But, is it a well-told story? You tell me...

Apparently their powers have something to do with the "Shadow King", I don't know how that will play out. Also, the "Shadow King" was Mei's neighbor, I'm telling you, a small town. Here's where it gets funny, unintentionally funny. Mei's powers manifested a night when her family's conflicts reached a critical point, the situation depicted is really serious, the attitude of Mei's dad is really wrong, so it's very unfortunate that the expression of Mei's mom is so cartoony and laughable. Inconsistent. What happened next is really dark, Mei was slapped by her dad, and that's what triggered her. Immediately after her display of mutant power, Mei's hair and eyes turned silver, the mom was naturally shocked, but, what did her dad say?

"I don't need punks like you in my house. Get out."

What can I say, I cracked up. I bet Momoko didn't intend to make me laugh there, but she did, so that's a problem.  

I mean... What the heck? Mister, you don't care that the girl just created a literal storm under your ceiling and that her hair and eyes just changed in an instant? Apparently, he doesn't give a damn. He doesn't care if the kid is a mutant, or a witch, or whatever, he is just fed up with her.

By the way, where has Mei been living for the past months? I wish I knew.

I have more questions: Why was the wound in her arm so important? I don't get it. I bet there is a reason for it and that Momoko knows what that reason is, but she failed to tell me. Also, why was the scratch literally burning? That's how it looks.

After leaving behind Mei's story without answering the questions that should have never been raised (where does Mei live now? where?!), the issue is somehow just a couple of pages away from "ending", that's when Nico Minoru and a couple of weird, probably mutant, little girls make their debut.

Yes, Nico Minoru. "Why is she here?", because she is japanese, I guess. "Is she a mutant?", well, she shouldn't be. "What did she do in this issue?", not much, she used her period as an awkward excuse to not play dodgeball.

Holy menstruation! That's actually something I do expect from "Marvel" these days. Jeez.

Also, Nico Minoru knows that Hisako and Mei are mutants and she probably knows more, so she will be the character that does exposition in the future. 

Professor X? Pfff... why? We have Nico Minoru... and her psychic parents. Like, for real.

That's it. To be continued...

Yeah, the series will continue (at least for a while), but I don't think my reviews of it will.


See you when "From the ashes" comes out. Maybe something good comes out of that mess, but I wouldn't hold my breath.



PS: You know what? Maybe I'll check out the 4th issue of this X-Men series that is actually not an X-Men series, just to see what's the deal of that japanese teenage version of Rogue that shows up in the cover. more

Last time I said this was a well-crafted comic book, a good story that deserves a bad rate rate because it is called "Ultimate X-Men" while not presenting anything that resembles the X-Men in the least. I said that if the book wasn't called "Ultimate X-Men" it would be good.

Are we on the same page? The first issue was a bad X-Men comic book, but not a bad comic book technically speaking.

This second issue is not good in any sense.

So uninspired and lackluster that I thought it didn't deserve a review. But I still think about this thing so I'll review it just to get my thoughts of it out of my system for good.

The pacing is really bad. This feels more like an interlude than a full chapter. Nothing intrinsically wrong with interludes, it's acceptable to slow down sometimes, but the SECOND issue is way too early in the series to run out of gas. It's a turn-off for the readers. It's no good.

After reading it I felt like I didn't read anything. The decompression here is so bad that even though a couple of things did happen, it feels like nothing really happenened.

The dialogue is also deficient, the interactions between Hisako and Mei are very unrealistic, more on that later.

Turns out he bad guy of the series is not a ghost nor a demon, it's the Shadow King... well, at least it's supposed to be the Shadow King, yes, that fat japanese high school kid is supposed to be the Shadow King... and that notion pisses me off.

Whatever. The plot is that the Shadow King gave Hisako a note with the address of an abandoned building, before going there Hisako met Mei for the first time and they decided to go explore the place together.

Before encountering one of the shadows there, nothing happened, nothing other than bad dialogue. Those pages should have been used to flesh out the characters, but it seems like Peach Momoko doesn't know how to do that. Mei telling Hisako she is like a super hero is so out of place.

"A super hero fighting a mysterious shadow..."

Nope. That's not dialogue. That's a conversation you were having with yourself, Momoko, at the time of writng the scene, you didn't have the wit to put anything else on that panel so you put your exact thoughts with no filter.

I just hate that. I really hate when the characters don't have a voice, when it's actually the writer talking directly to the audience through the characters with no type of filter.
It's just lazy and wrong if you, as a writer, disguise as dialogue between characters (that are not narrators) the conversations you have with yourself.

What happened after the evil shadow faded? Did Mei accompany Hisako to her house or did they go their separate ways immediately afterward? Did they say goodbye without knowing if they would see each other again? What happened? NOBODY KNOWS.

A mystery! But they found each other again the next day in high school, I see it's a small town. Oh, waht a coincidence! They were assigned to the same classroom.

But wait a second... Are you telling me that they hadn't really introduced each other until that meeting at school... even though they spent hours together the previous afternoon and shared a moment of great emotional tension when fighting the evil shadow? Sorry, I don't believe it.

Also, something feels off about Mei, I don't like the vibes I'm getting from her... I mean she doesn't have any natural human reaction to anything...

"Did you see the morning news?" (3 d*ad kids) "That's crazy!"

Sorry, girl, are you excited?!

I don't know, man. Hisako didn't find Mei, Mei found her, twice, like if she was looking for her... and Mei knows about her accident, I know that was in the news but she identified her too easily, isn't that weird? And she was very impetuous when it came to asking Hisako for her number at school... too impetuous... It feels like Mei is obsessed with Hisako. Mei certainly wants something from her and we don't really know what that really is... is it just friendship?

We also have to remember that Hisako is going through the trauma of losing her best friend, she doesn't have any other friends, she is emotionally vulnerable.
Mei has given her attention, Mei has validated her by calling her a super hero, and Mei gave her a short, affectionate nickname (Hi-chan) immediately after knowing her full name.

You know what this looks like? It doesn't look like friendship, you know what I'm saying? I'd say Hisako is in danger.

To end the review, there's one other thing I have to say. Friendship is not the only thing Peach Momoko apparently doesn't know how it looks like, she also had a hard time picturing introspective dialogue:

"I wonder if I'm cursed and going to die too."

My goodness! That fell so flat!

In good faith, Ms. Momoko, do yourself a favor and read old Frank Miller stuff, that's how introspective dialogue is supposed to look like.


Conclusion: This series is a waste of time.

Not only it doesn't even intend to meet any expectations of X-Men fans, it is objectively deficient and inconsistent. more

This issue is way better than the last two. This issue makes the other two look like previews. Hickman shouldn't have waited so long to deliver this.
 
But don't get me wrong, I still feel cheated. Maybe the story is getting back on track but that doesn't change the fact that they advertised the series as "What if Peter Parker didn't get his powers until adulthood?" and presented instead a version of Spider-Man with a background so different that hardly resembles the character we know as "Peter Parker".

However, it's good that after 2 lackluster issues, the story finally seems compelling. With good editorial direction this would be gold, but sadly, that's not the case.

I stand by what I said before: The story would be much better if Tony Stark had exposed Peter to new circumstances in which he obtained the powers without him knowing. This issue proves me right.


[SPOILERS]

It is implied here that Harry Osborn, the Green Goblin, is involved with Tony Stark. If Hickman was planning on having Harry do exposition to Peter anyway, wouldn't it have been better if Peter didn't know anything at all about the origin of his powers instead of having chosen them???


Also...

"he's extremely photogenic and, to me, seems to be a much more compelling --and dare I say charming-- character. A real man of the people... Just an opinion."

WHAT? Since when does Peter flatter himself so much? "Kinda defeats the whole anonymous superhero thing", you know? It's not funny, it makes him look dumb. 

"Stakeout time. Always wanted to do one of these. Not exactly sure how but I can figure it out..."

I'm telling you. DUMB!

"...if you can't play nice, maybe you shouldn't play at all!"

Cheesy but OK, I do think that's something Spider-Man would say.

"I haven't actually caught anyone before. What should I do?

"Mister, how old are you? Sigh. The sole purpose of that line is to open the door for Harry (the true competent hero of the story as ironic as it may seem) to do more exposition.

"(...) it is cool." 

Meaning: "Duh! My costume is so cool!" "I'm so cool!" "Look at me!" "I'm a cool superhero!"
MY GOODNESS! Peter is so out of character!

Bullseye also speaks way more than he should, way too much exposition, and I don't think a psycho like him would describe himself the way he does here:
"A killer loose in the world. An actual predator in the wild."
Nah. That's more like the way another character would describe him (someone like a cop or a detective), doubtedly the way he would describe himself. Hickman should have left it at "I'm a predator" or "I'm a hunter, and you're my prey".

Mary Jane is still bland and, although there is some competent dialogue, most of the dialogue is still clumsy, and (as you can see) there are also times when Hickman tries to be funny but, in my opinion, he's not. more

Nothing here makes sense.

The main issue is that we are seeing a mature man playing with his new super powers as if he were a teenager, I mean, do you want him to be mature or not?

I will elaborate later why the story doesn't make sense at all, but first, there are some of the same technical issues the previous one had:

The "bros" relationship between Jonah and Ben feels weird but I won't complain about it, what I did find annoying was the dialogue about the 25 years of cofee, that page was completely pointless. I guess Hickman wanted to get some casual dialogue like the "Royale with Cheese" scene from Pulp Fiction, but the result feels so unnatural that it seems like it was written by an AI, that must be insulting to any writer but I'm sorry, bad dialogue is bad dialogue. It serves no purpose. A good editor would have altered that. (I'm going to repeat that several times, get used to it.)

Marco Checchetto is one of the best artists working at Marvel right now, but someone has to tell him that's not what a one-eyed man looks like, or that he should at least have consistency, how is it possible that in one panel the guy has a scar and in the next panel he doesn't. Maybe he didn't notice the scar was missing, but a good editor would have. Checchetto, next time just draw a patch.

Now, let's talk about the story:

I love the Shocker and I hate when writers make a joke out of him, that's not the case here and I appreciate it, the problem is that by making the Shocker kind of cool, Hickman turned Spider-Man into the joke.

Seriously, Peter Parker should be a smart guy, sometimes silly but always smart, here, the Shocker easily outsmarted him TWICE. It's not believable at all. Peter is not even a kid here, he is a grown man, why was he fooled so easily TWICE?

I get it. This guy is not a smart guy.

Peter's IQ isn't the only inconsistent thing here. I mean it when I say that the story doesn't make sense.

At the beginning of the issue, Peter's son (Richard) tells his little sister (May) that the masked man on the front page is not real, that it is probably photoshop or CGI, and Peter pretends he doesn't know anything, but a few pages later Jameson says that Peter Parker was the one who took the photograph of the mysterious man, so Richard was accusing his father of photoshop... WHAT THE HECK?

Wouldn't it have been better if the son showed enthusiasm and curiosity about the story his father was covering? Jeez.

And Peter Parker now is having "existencial questions", now he thinks that maybe it was a bad idea to do what the hologram of a stranger accused of terrorism proposed to him. OF COURSE IT WAS A BAD IDEA! And now he is in search of some meaning. Dude, you're married to a wonderful woman and have two children to raise, that's your friggin meaning. Maybe you were supposed to become a superhero, but you didn't, the world changed, your life changed and your responsibilities changed.

The story would have been MUCH BETTER if Tony Stark had exposed Peter to new circumstances where he was bitten by the spider without him knowing, the fact that Peter willingly chose the powers makes no sense. A scenario in which Peter obtains powers without wanting it and that, instead of making him happy, causes him frustration as he sees how his entire life loses balance would be much more believable, in this scenario Peter would have to choose to sacrifice his lifestyle to become Spider-Man not because he wants to but because he has to, later in the series he would find out that it was not fate but Stark and that would cause an interesting conflict in which Peter would blame Tony for ruining his life.

But no, no one told Hickman that his argument was stupid. Marvel urgently needs a good editor.

Also, Mary Jane here is as plain of a character and one-dimensional as she could be. more

My main criticism is that this is not "X-Men", this is something else that borrows the "X-Men" title. I don't like that.

I have read many X-Men stories, and, in my opinion, Peach Momoko can't bring to the table the type of story that I expect from a book with the title "X-Men". If the book is called "ULTIMATE X-MEN", that doesn't help her case.

Ultimate:

noun

1. the best achievable or imaginable of its kind.

2. a final or fundamental fact or principle.

A book called "Ultimate X-Men" should be an attempt to present all the elements that make the X-Men great in a single place, but there is none of that here. This is something else.

And that's to be expected from someone who has no attachment whatsoever to the franchise, someone who barely appreciates it.

"I wasn't too familiar with X-Men before researching them when I was creating Demon Days and now, Ultimate X-Men"

That's what Peach Momoko said in her interview with AIPT. Her words. Not mine. Hers.

Of course I already knew that before reading the interview, but it is good to have confirmation.

Screen Rant also interviewed her and I also found something interesting there:

"Editor's Note: Peach Momoko’s answers were translated from Japanese with the help of her husband and manager, Yo Mutsu, and have been lightly edited with permission for clarity and perspective."

That mean she doesn't speak english?

Why does she even bother to work with Marvel Comics? She is clearly popular, she could publish this story in her native language elsewhere in a more suitable format and I bet she would get better paychecks. The money is not in Marvel right now, nor in DC, the money is in the manga, she should take advantage of that. I don't understand why she chooses to work at Marvel, it's clearly not because of attachment to the franchise.


Whatever.

The story itself is quite compelling and it's very well told, I think Momoko is very talented. This is good japanese storytelling, the only reason why this is not manga is because it reads from left to right like the american comics (manga reads from right to left).

When this was announced I thought that, despite I think this was a wasted opportunity for Marvel, maybe I would enjoy it because I like Armor. And I did enjoy it while I was reading it, but not because of Armor, that Joss Whedon character is not quite here, Hisako could have any other name and the story would work. This book could have any other title that is not "X-Men" and the story would work. This story doesn't need to be set in a Marvel Universe.

That is my complaint.

THIS IS NOT X-MEN. Why? Because the X-Men are a team of heroic mutants formed by Charles Xavier with the purpose of protecting a world that hates and fears them. No matter what universe it is, that's what the X-Men are meant to be. The team is called "X-Men" because of Xavier. The team represents the dream of Charles Xavier of peaceful coexistence between mutants and the rest of humanity.

Here there is NONE OF THAT. There is no Xavier. There is not even a team here. There is no X-Men in a book called "Ultimate X-Men".

Maybe there will be a team at some point in the series, but if there will be, why don't you show me that first and save this story for an origin issue later in the series?

This comic is very well crafted, it looks like it will be a good supernatural story in the japanese tradition. I still don't quite get what happened exactly to Hisako's friend (he was bullied so I suppose he took his own life) but my only real technical complaint would be that this type of story would work better in another format, a larger format, a graphic novel format (like manga).

This is a good comic book, but it is not a good X-MEN comic book. Nothing here resembles the X-Men, not even taking into account that this is a different universe.

The X-Men movies were clearly different from the comics, but they were good (of course I'm talking about only the first two) because they had all the recognizable elements of the franchise.

That's not the case here. Peach Momoko is not trying to include any of the recognizable elements, she's doing her own thing, which would be fine if she wasn't borrowing the "X-Men" title. It's just not right to use an established IP as a platform to present something completely different, it's deceptive.

The X-Men is an established brand, that means the public already has an expectation that the book must meet in order for it to sell, but Peach Momoko is not even trying to meet any expectation, because she doesn't want to write an X-Men story, she wants to write a story about high school girls fighting ghosts (or demons) using their newfound pseudo-magical powers.

It looks like a interesting story, but it doesn't matter how good it is because it's disrespecting the costumers by giving them something they did not pay for.

I have no doubt Peach Momoko is very capable of telling good stories, but she is not capable of writing good X-Men stories simply because she clearly has no interest in doing so.

Not even Hisako's powers have a slight resemblance to the X-Men lore, here they look more like a magical thing than a genetic accident.

If this wasn't called "Ultimate X-Men" it would be good, but it is called "Ultimate X-Men" while not presenting anything that resembles the X-Men, so, thumbs down. more

It seems like the best artwork Marvel has to offer right now is in the Ultimate Universe, but I can't say the same for the stories.

I don't get the point of this particular book.

Supposedly, in this universe the Maker build, he deprived the Marvel heroes from the circumstances that created them, their origins, so that they would no longer represent a threat to his designs, Tony Stark found out about it and now he is doing the impossible to fix what the Maker did and retrieve the original destiny of this universe.

That's the whole concept behind this new line of comics, but here it seems like the Maker did nothing to prevent T'Challa from becoming the Black Panther and protector of Wakanda.

It doesn't make sense. AT ALL.

In Earth-616, T'Challa is the leader of a world power with advanced technology, an Avenger and a member of the Illuminati, the Maker should have considered him one of the major potential threats to his reality, but the T'Challa of Earth-6160 is not only alive, he is not imprisoned, he is already king of Wakanda and the Black Panther, and Wakanda is still a secret nation.

Why did the Maker allow this?

It doesn't look like Tony Stark already helped T'Challa.

Maybe there will be an explanation for the plot hole at some point, but I don't know, and that leads me to my other problem with this comic:

I don't want to wait until the sixth issue to see if I like the story, the first issue, the first chapter, should be the one that sells me the series, instead this made me go like "Well, maybe this will lead to something interesting", I hate that feeling. These books are not cheap, you know.


SPOILERS AHEAD!!!

Why was T'Challa already king of Wakanda if his father was still alive? What kind of monarchy is that?

Also, what was the writer trying to tell me with the dialogue between T'Challa and Okoye at the beginning?

He, the King, doesn't want his wife, the Queen, to call him "My King" because they "are equals"... What?!

What does one thing have to do with the other?

If I was a King I would like it if my wife called me "My King" and I would call her "My Queen".

I don't get it.

Okoye looked very sad when she was talking about how the people would traditionally see her as less important than the King (a weird topic to discuss in the morning, if you ask me)... was she complaining about... THE PATRIARCHY???

"Traditions must change"

Whoa! That came out of nowhere. I don't like the agenda I'm seeing here.

Anyway, if T'Challa and Okoye are married, why do they sleep in separate beds?


Killmonger looks cool and surprisingly heroic, speaking of surprises, Ororo Munroe is his girlfriend and I kinda like it... but what's going on with her haircut? She's supposed to look like a goddess, not like that. Of all the haircuts Storm has displayed throughout the years, this has to be the worst.

I also don't like Okoye's haircut, that's not the look of a Queen, if she had her head completely shaved that would be better and more ceremonial than that haircut.

Enough of haircuts. I didn't like the "ending".

Why did they have to show us the dead and burnt body of T'Chaka?

It wasn't necessary to show it, but they did and I think the resulting panel is unintentionally funny, that drawing is like:

OOOOOH I'M BURNIIIIN!!!

And Black Panther staring at it like: Damn!

A little anticlimactic.

"Our enemy calls themselves: Moon Knight"

This is teasing that there would be a face-off between Black Panther and a Moon Knight, but, although I enjoy a good old fight between Marvel heroes, that also came out of nowhere, there was no real setup for that.

That is my review. Cool artwork, questionable story. more

This was really disappointing.

This new Ultimate Spider-Man series is far from what it promised. I expected more from Hickman, A LOT more.

It seems like Marvel just can't do Spider-Man right anymore.

Let's leave the story aside for a moment, this book has many flaws technically speaking. The lack of good editors at Marvel is more than evident here.

The dialogue feels clunky and clumsy, it's like Hickman doesn't know how to write mundane situations or anything that isn't science fiction.

The pacing is also very bad. A lot of decompression. This was boring. The extra pages are just filler.

It would have been better and much more exciting if the book began with a splash page of Spider-Man already in action and throughout the book they had told us through flashbacks how we got to that point. That's how things were done before.

Instead we got a Spider-Man book with no Spider-Man in it. Now let's talk about the story:

They sold the series as "what if Peter never got his powers?" (a question that Dan Slott had already answered but is still interesting enough for other writers to explore with other approaches), but the changes in the character here go far beyond simply not having been bitten by the spider, to the point where I feel like this is a different character. This IS NOT Peter Parker.

Stating that Peter not only knew his parents but was raised by them until he was 15 was a terrible mistake, they have terribly distorted the family dynamic with his Uncle Ben and Aunt May who should be his real nuclear family and not his extended family.

Speaking of, Uncle Ben shouldn't be alive either because the crook would have shot him whether Peter became Spider-Man or not.

And how does this "Peter Parker" become Spider-Man or why? That's the main problem of this thing.

"A family man jaded of his ordinary life, one night finds a hologram that tells him he could be a superhero..."

I think I've seen this before... in a Pixar movie.

Whatever.

Peter Parker was willing to give up his perfect life just to feel excitement again. "Power and responsibility" huh?

What would Earth-616 Peter think of this guy?

Yes, Peter Parker is married to Mary Jane, that's nice, that's what we have wanted for a long time. I should feel pleased, right? Well, I'm not. If you think that will be enough to manipulate me into telling myself that this book is good, you are wrong. I didn't fall for Renew Your Vows, I'm not falling for this.

The Spider-Marriage isn't enough to sell me a Spider-Man book because the Spider-Marriage alone isn't enough to make a good Spider-Man story.

The marriage to MJ is here, but the rest of the elements that make Spider-Man "amazing" ARE NOT. more