SuperSearnold - Comic Book Reviews

Greetings from your friendly neighborhood Searnold [Shár- Nŭhld]. Today is Friday, October 24th, 2008. Welcome to my comic book review blog - thanks for tuning in. Are you interested in a comic book but not sure you want to shell out the cash? Let me know and I’ll review it for you - letting you know if it’s worth your hard earned money!

Today’s Issue:
Ultimate X-Men/ Ultimate Fantastic Four Annual #1 and Ultimate Fantastic Four/ Ultimate X-Men Annual #1. These are two extra-large annuals that go together to create a single story written by Aron Coleite (Heroes, Ultimate X-Men) and Joe Pokaski (Heroes, Ultimate Fantastic Four) with art by an assortment of talent: Dan Panosian, Mark Brooks, Danny Miki, Troy Hubbs, Brandon Peterson, and Eric Nguyen. They take place in Marvel’s Ultimate Universe, right before the upcoming Ultimatum event. (They also take place AFTER Ultimatum - it’ll make sense in a second.)

Premise:
20 years from now, a future version of the X-Men have come back in time to kill Reed Richards because they blame him for the terrible future they live in. They can’t seem to kill him, so they kidnap him into the future, and the Fantastic Four enlist the aide of the current X-Men to go into the future and get him back.

Awesome Parts:
I’ll be honest - I did not enjoy these comic books. I like the idea of a time travel story, but everything that could have been a positive point was executed poorly. I did like seeing that Kitty has learned new ways to use her powers. I like that the scenes in the future had different artists than the scenes in the past - that was a nice touch. Oh - and I like the direction they took future Ben Grimm (The Thing). That was cool. In fact, since I’m going to be recommending against these comics, I have no problem giving this tiny minor spoiler - because it was the best part of the book. Ben decides to team up with his past self against the team he’s on in the future. I felt like that was the natural thing for him to do. That, in fact, was one of the few moments in the entire two issues that I felt someone acted true to character.

Un-Awesome Parts:
I have so much to say - where do I even begin? Let’s start with the premise. Reed Richards accidentally creates a device that leads to a dystopian future? Sounds like Earth X to me. X-Men from the future come back in time to prevent a dystopian future where mutants are hunted and captured or killed? Sounds like Days of Future Past to me. I know the Ultimate Universe derives its creative inspiration from the Marvel Universe, but these stories were just too similar. They were also chaotic and confusing. And I don’t mean because of the time travel. They jumped around a lot from place to place, with different groups of people in different places, and in general it was just hard to follow. I got the basic ideas, but I didn’t feel like I got to see any of the stories unraveling. We saw the conflict, cut to another scene, cut back and the conflict is resolved. Hey - you know what cutting back and forth between too many characters sounds like? Heroes! What a coincidence that this story was crafted by two Heroes scribes.
Also similar to Heroes, characters don’t seem to act logically. They tend to act how they need to act for the story - not how these people would actually act. For example, they had Ben flirting with Liz in order to set up something that happens in the future. I could tell that the thought process went like this: “We have this cool situation in the future. Well, we should do something in the past to set it up.” I have a problem with that sort of thinking because it makes characters act unnaturally. I did not buy the flirting scenes as coming naturally out of Ben’s character. There were also multiple surprise allegiance shifts that had NO set up. The readers were just as surprised as the characters. While surprise can be a fun convention, when you don’t give any sort of set up, allegience shifts feel completely out of character. So then you have to go into a whole expository explanation about why I was pretending to go along with you so that I could really accomplish my own goals… Blah blah blah - boring.
One of the things I normally like about time travel stories are seeing the possibilites of what characters might become in the future. In Heroes, Aron and Joe did this quite well. But I didn’t find the future situations in this story interesting. For example, there’s an army of Wolverine Sentinels - that just felt weird. Sue has gone through some MAJOR changes, which I just didn’t buy. They say that these changes were brought about by the upcoming Ultimatum - but that means that Ultimatum isn’t actually going to be “the end” of the Ultimate Universe, as they have been hyping. There had also better be a damn good reason why the characters inside the universe refer to the event as “Ultimatum”.
Two other minor issues. The future characters don’t really look much older. Kitty looks maybe 20-ish, not 36. The only character who looks aged is Sue, and she is the identical spitting image of her mother. I thought she WAS her mother for awhile. Finally, just a general trap that a lot of time travel stories fall into. They come back in time and have decided (generally against character) that murder is the only way to save the future. Seriously guys - you just came back in time 20 years. You’ve got a while to settle your differences. Why must you IMMEDIATELY go for the killing thing? Can’t we talk this out?

My Recommendation:
I know I already spoiled this - but no - I do not recommend these issues. They just weren’t written well. Because they mostly take place in the future, you won’t be missing anything if you skip them. So please, save yourself $8 and pass on these Annuals.

That’s all for today. As always - thanks for reading - see you next time. And don’t forget to let me know if there are any comic books you’d like me to review for you - I take requests!
-Searnold, SuperSearnold@yahoo.com