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Ultimate X-Men, Vol. 19: Absolute Power (2008)

by Aron E. Coleite(Favorite Author)

3.77 of 5 Votes: 3

ISBN

0785129448 (ISBN13: 9780785129448)

languge

English

genre

Fantasy

publisher

Marvel

series

Ultimate X-Men trade paperbacks

review 1: Stuff I Read – Ultimate X-Men 95-98Well Kirkman has left, and with him has also flown pretty much everything that made his X-Men more interesting than most previous iterations of the team. First and mainly, the characters are changed immediately. Psylocke, Pyro, and Toad are basically all gone and Nightcrawler and Colossus are back despite it not really being in keeping with their characters. It’s like this writer tries in this one issue to undo everything that Kirkman managed to achieve in his rather long tenure. Professor X, giving up on that whole making the world a better place thing from just an issue previous, is off somewhere and doesn’t really seem to care much as the school is attacked by the Ultimate Alpha Flight. Throw on top of that the further craziness ... moreof the story itself, which centers around a mutant drug called Boost, an idea lifted from the Morrison era of New X-Men. That means it has to be good, right? Wrong. Where Kirkman set things up for the long haul, this story seems to be just a chaotic mess of ideas and scenes that don’t so much work together as they do vomit noisily all over the pages.I mean, the central idea seems to be that Colossus has, ever since he was recruited, abused this drug that has only shown up in the very recent past. Apparently Russia is ahead of the curve and Colossus managed to smuggle a couple of years worth of the stuff into the U.S. That is the pill that the writer is asking us to swallow. Wait, it’s a suppository? Oh, well, that makes more sense. It is completely ridiculous even as far as retcons go. Some try to explain some inconsistency, but this story puts that inconsistency into the story. Let’s forget that Colossus has never shown the signs of drug abuse, or that he has been around easily the most powerful four or five telepaths in the world. No, it’s just convenient to whatever it is that passes for a story in this arc. And so all hopped up on Boost, Colossus, Rogue, Dazzler, Angel, Nightcrawler, and Cyclops all head off to stomp on Alpha Flight while the rest of the X-Men try to stop all sides. Even Jean Grey is there. Yes, after she went completely Phoenix and disappeared into deep space, she is just back without any explanation.And really that is about it. Along the way Norhtstar is crippled and Moira turns out to be behind the evil. Oh, and Professor X helped create the drug and knew Wolverine back then too. This arc just sort of aborts itself along until the inevitable end where everyone is clean again and they can move on without consequence. The only real interesting story element is with Cyclops, and we see the differences here between the core universe character and this one. We see what might happen to him if he hadn’t had Jean there to prop him up, and what he would do if given the chance to be able to let go without fear. It is the sole interesting part of this story, and is not enough to save it from being far and away the worst arc of the series to date. Which is sad, because the end of the series is right around the bend, and this is not the way to go.Really it just teaches how now to do something. If something could be said for Millar’s run it would be that Mutants are new and better than humanity. Change is good. Bendis, in his brief time, seemed more to say that humans and mutants were the same, and that thinking that just because you have powers you are better is a bad thing. Vaughan really only said that teenagers like drama. Kirkman, by the end, said that mutants are capable of greater change than humans but they are limiting themselves by not escaping human definitions. As near as I can tell this new arc only tries to combine the very worst from these previous runs. Teenagers like drama but they are also better than humans and can do anything without fear of reprisal. It is just a bad story, and a bad message for an X-Men book. I would have hoped with all the different inspirations to take the Ultimate line wouldn’t be so full of bad X-Men stories. But here we are. At the end of the day I just can’t find much of anything redeemable about this story, and give it a 4/10.
review 2: I won't lie - this arc was kind of stupid. It felt like something that would have been written in the 80s during the peak of the "Just Say No" anti-drug campaign. Also, everything about this story felt forced and sudden: Alpha Flight's attack on the X-Mansion; the reveal that half the X-Men were using a form of mutant steroids called "Banshee" (it took me a bit to realize that the stupid looking, giant hawk creature is the roid version of Angel). Anyway, I came away from this mostly annoyed. This is why they need to just stick with one writer for these titles, kind of like how Brian Michael Bendis has been penning Ultimate Spider-man for years (but damned if that book isn't consistently awesome). The art work was decent though! less

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