Ultimate X-Men, Vol. 8: New Mutants

Ultimate X-Men (Collected Editions) #8

by Brian Michael Bendis (Writer), David Finch

Karma, Havok, Polaris, and Dazzler become a part of a new class of mutants selected by the President of the United States and the mysterious Emma Frost after the President decides that Professor Charles Xavier is becoming a problem.

Collecting: Ultimate X-Men 40-45

Genres: Comics, Graphic Novels, Marvel, X Men, Superheroes, Comic Book, Graphic Novels Comics

144 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 2004

About the author

A comic book writer and erstwhile artist. He has won critical acclaim (including five Eisner Awards) and is one of the most successful writers working in mainstream comics. For over eight years Bendis’s books have consistently sat in the top five best sellers on the nationwide comic and graphic novel sales charts.

Though he started as a writer and artist of independent noir fiction series, he shot to stardom as a writer of Marvel Comics' superhero books, particularly Ultimate Spider-Man.

Bendis first entered the comic world with the "Jinx" line of crime comics in 1995. This line has spawned the graphic novels Goldfish, Fire, Jinx, Torso (with Marc Andreyko), and Total Sell Out. Bendis is writing the film version of Jinx for Universal Pictures with Oscar-winner Charlize Theron attached to star and produce.

Bendis’s other projects include the Harvey, Eisner, and Eagle Award-nominated Powers (with Michael Avon Oeming) originally from Image Comics, now published by Marvel's new creator-owned imprint Icon Comics, and the Hollywood tell-all Fortune and Glory from Oni Press, both of which received an "A" from Entertainment Weekly.

Bendis is one of the premiere architects of Marvel's "Ultimate" line: comics specifically created for the new generation of comic readers. He has written every issue of Ultimate Spider-Man since its best-selling launch, and has also written for Ultimate Fantastic Four and Ultimate X-Men, as well as every issue of Ultimate Marvel Team-Up, Ultimate Origin and Ultimate Six.

Brian is currently helming a renaissance for Marvel’s AVENGERS franchise by writing both New Avengers and Mighty Avengers along with the successful ‘event’ projects House Of M, Secret War, and this summer’s Secret Invasion.

He has also previously done work on Daredevil, Alias, and The Pulse.

Reviews

[Bookwraiths · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another great story arc with a good mixture of poignant moments, exciting fights, and interpersonal relationships. Art is still amazing as well.

[James DeSantis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bendis keeps the momentum going with another really good volume for Ultimate X-Men.

This time we have Emma frost enter the picture. FAR different from the version we got in the regular 616, this one wants so start her own club of Mutants, but more for peace than fighting. Beast is all trying to figure out what to do with his life. Wolverine is dealing with more internal issues as always. And Angel comes on the scene, and him and Storm have a special bond right from the get-go. Oh also there is a issue where Wolverine has to some some shady shit to protect mutants and it's amazing with a lot of emotion.

Overall, this is a really solid volume. I really loved the intimate moments with the characters. Especially storm and Angel, or beast and Xavier, Cyclops and Jean and so on. All worked well together. Also some big plot progression with major deaths happening in this volume. I think Bendis on this title did wonders, sad he's leaving next volume, but he did well here.

A 4 out of 5.

[Samantha · Rating 4 out of 5]

Other than Archie Comics this was my first experience of a graphic novel and it occurred rather recently. After reading this I felt I had been missing out since I enjoyed the experience so much but instead of pouting over years I could have been read graphic novels I can celebrate having discovered new and fun material to explore. This was also my first taste and experience with the X-Men mythology. Needless to say I would like to read more. I found comfort and relevance from this story. More and more mutants are arising with new and different powers talents and gifts. The president attempts to blend the mutants with the general public to create peace and harmony amongst all the people for there is much racism or mutantism from the general public towards the mutants and visa versa but the attempt was not carried out and failed rather miserably which was rather disappointing. The story didn't end there I just don't have the next book in the series. :-)

[Sesana · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the first volume of Ultimate X-Men, by any writer, that I would call great. It's the best, tightest, and most interesting story yet, which probably couldn't be done in the 616 universe, and it builds off everything that has gone before. Remember how the X-Men have basically become the official mutant foot soldiers of the US government? Yeah, not a popular move. The official response is to set up a separate, vaguely competing team, with vague goals that are aimed more towards education in some way and less towards combat. That it isn't explicitly laid out exactly how this team will be different from Xavier's doesn't really matter, because the unofficial response is much more deadly. There's a sense that much of what's gone before has built to this point, though it obviously hasn't been. It's simply a fitting direction to take the book, with some very high stakes and the sort of big changes that really could only be done in the Ultimate universe.

[Jason · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great plot. Once again Bendis delivers wonderful action with great character work. Half a chapter was a simple conversation between Storm and Angel about being mutants and the burdens that brought. These small character moments were often too small or glossed over in prior volumes and it is nice to see the new creative team unafraid to slow down the plot to remind readers of the stakes.

[Ekenedilichukwu Ikegwuani · Rating 4 out of 5]

i like that this takes the series in a brand new direction. everything was going too well for the team for awhile but this opens up new possibilities

[Bethany · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 stars

[Shane Stanis · Rating 3 out of 5]

My Ultimate Year #10

Read for Emma Frost! And government baddies. And Bendis Banter.

[Angel · Rating 4 out of 5]

See my blog note on it:

http://gypsylibrarian.blogspot.com/20...

[Sarah · Rating 2 out of 5]

Just not as much fun as the Millar volumes. Not really worth reading past volume 6 honestly.

[Jameson · Rating 1 out of 5]

Awful, awful crap. Pretty, but awful.

Just a few of the many things I don’t love about Bendis’s Ultimately Shitty Shitty X-Men:

-All of Bendis’s ticks, of course. People complain about Claremont but at least his wordy prose flows well. He has a sense of rhythm. Bendis’s hesitant speech patterns and repetitious dialogue echoes are obnoxious. There’s a reason why scripted dialogue isn’t patterned after real life dialogue: because it’s aggravating to read. “Hank left? He left. Hank left? He did. You’re telling me Hank actually, like, left? The school? That’s exactly what I’m—what? You’re saying Hank left?” I’m surprised everybody didn’t leave! The above is not an actual quote. But this is (Fury is telling the X-Men about another group of mutants, a group which includes Cyclops’s brother):

“And, I believe, your brother.”
“Whose brother?”
“Your brother.”
“My brother?”
“Your brother, Alex.”
“My brother is doing what?”
“He is one of the President’s new mutants.”
“My brother is doing what?”
“Yes.”

Now, some people will read the above exchange and think “genius!” And that’s a goddam tragedy. Goddam, I’d take All Star Goddam Batman over this goddam junk!


-One more Bendis staple and why he’s especially terrible on team books: character wallpaper. Most of his characters serve no purpose except to stand in the background like they’re in a line-up. Already we have Rogue and Nightcrawler joining the team and we get practically nothing from them except Rogue calling Nightcrawler a devil in one very stupid and pointless scene. So you know nothing could possibly be gained by adding Karma, the White Queen, Havok, Polaris, Angel, etc, etc. If anything the wallpaper will just look busier.

-Storm gets nothing to do for 6 issues then she gets a speech lampshading how much of a cypher she is— she whines that nobody knows the real Storm. Bendis does the old “staple a random hobby onto a blank slate character” trick and we find out Storm writes. She’s very passionate about it. Not sure if she even wants to publish. She just likes to write. OKAY, THAT’S STORM SORTED. BLEND BACK IN WITH THE WALLPAPER, DEARIE.

-Actually Storm does get a little more to do when Bendis kills her ex-boyfriend he gives her a few panels of angrily throwing lightning. At least we were spared a spate of “think pieces” about women in refrigerators if the genders were reversed. Bendis should never be allowed to kill characters since he doesn’t know how to use them properly anyway, by the way. His Beast was so dumb.

-One issue is a complete abortion of a superhero comic book: a new mutant has a power that vaporizes anyone within a specific radius and Xavier sends Wolverine to kill him. The X-Men don’t even try to extract the kid to an island and help him control his powers or anything. Stupid as hell. And not original. Very fan fiction-y, too.

-Ultimate Dazzler…. Please refer to that one J Jonah Jameson laughing meme. She’s in a gutterpunk band. And she spits. She’s abrasive. Oh, good lord.

-Besides the awful character “work” and bad dramedy crap, Bendis does his best to deliver a superhero plot. In between new character intros we get a bunch of government silhouettes planning to undermine the President and go after mutants without permission. It all culminates in one sentinel attacking the mutants. They pretty much take it down right away but not before Beast somehow gets killed.

So Bendis wrote a 6 issue Marvel Team-Up story, followed by 6 issues of introducing a bunch of random characters without doing much of anything with them. That’s his contribution to the Ultimate X-Men. He really is the naked emperor. At best he has “cute” moments between characters but that’s not enough. If he could tell an actual story with a real plot with interesting developments and characters, sure—I’ll take some cute moments. But for whatever reason the cute moments are enough for a lot of people.

[Jedhua · Rating 3 out of 5]

Book Info: This collection contains Ultimate X-Men issues #40-45.


ABSOLUTE RATING: {3/5 stars}

STANDARDIZED RATING: <3/5 stars>




As the title would imply, this volume of Ultimate X-Men introduces some new mutants into mix, including Angel, Dazzler, and Polaris, among others. Here, Bendis sets out to tackle some serious philosophical questions, as well as examine the political and social climate surrounding the existence of mutants.

Emotionally, the X-Men go through a lot in this book, and Bendis takes the opportunity to try and develop them and their personal struggles. Honestly though, I've seen him do better characterization (and deeper, more meaningful writing), and it didn't seem as if he was really putting his heart into his work. In terms of the page count, Bendis appears to have omitted an issue's worth of material (i.e. about 24 pages) from this volume, which may have made it more difficult for him to accomplish what he set out to. But ironically enough, even though it was the final two issues that cut corners the most – both by reducing page count and including several pages with almost no dialogue – they were two of the most enjoyable ones. The last of the strongest issues was #41, which, from what I can tell, most people saw to be the clear highlight of the book. While I might (somewhat) agree with that evaluation, I did feel like it was at times clumsily written and slightly tedious, so it fell short of achieving maximum emotional impact. (This point is further discussed in the postscript below.)

Postscript:


Up until page 11 of issue #41, things were going great. My main concern comes with the exchange the nameless mutant kid had with Logan. When Logan first enters the dark cave to talk, the kid screams: "You're gonna die if you don't get outta here!!" This seems to indicate that he already knows (or at least strongly suspects) that he has been the direct cause of the deaths of his family and neighbors. But then Bendis goes right ahead and wastes much of the next two pages on the kid coming to terms with the fact that he's a mutant after Logan tells him so. First off, it bothers me a little that the kid hadn't already considered that possibility. But even if he was too distraught to draw that conclusion, I would think it would be the least of his problems, so I don't get why he was so devastated to hear that. Besides, and in light of what I've said, I hope you would agree that there are far better ways to utilize these two pages.

Since the kid would understandably be overwhelmed by recent events, I think maybe Logan should have been the one to do almost all of the talking. And his statements should have been more philosophical and heartfelt – perhaps said in the context of his own personal feelings about living with the painful knowledge that he himself has been the cause of death and suffering to many others through the years. This would have made it so that, by the end, readers would have better appreciated the personal toll it took on Logan, and walked away with a deeper insight into his character.

In my opinion, Bendis wasted far too much precious time being characteristically redundant, and included too many silent panels which he probably thought would add a necessary dramatic edge. One of the few things this second half did well – and it's a subtle point – was that it brought up interesting questions about why exactly Logan was really there in that cave, and how he found the kid. Because if you know anything about Charles Xavier, you know that he would be extremely unlikely to have ordered and/or authorized such a brutal method to handle a burgeoning young mutant. I guess it's possible Jean Grey could have used Cerebro to find the kid, but I don't see her hiding that from the Professor, and I don't get why Logan would bother to tell the kid it was Xavier. Although all this is explained in the very next issue, I didn't see the emotional fallout of this act on Logan's psyche, which was particularly unsatisfying since Bendis and Hitch didn't show much discomfort when or while the act was being taken.

See below for my comments concerning a few specific pages/panels:


["Get outta town?" Really, Bendis? *That's* what you're going to write for a kid so profoundly shocked and devastated by what he had done? Horrible word choice, plain and simple.]


[(Page one of two showing the kid's realization that he's a mutant.) Essentially, Logan had to verify *three* times (via simple cut-and-paste, one word panels) after initially telling the boy what he really was.]


[(Page two of two showing the kid's realization that he's a mutant.) "All I do is kill? My mutant power is I kill everything around me? That's what I do? I kill?" Once or twice probably would have done it, don'tcha think?]


[The biggest "loser?" Why "loser?" What the fuck does *that* have do with anything? Why not "killer" or "murderer?" More awkward writing, it seems...]


[(This page comes right after the one where the kid says that he "can't live with [what he had done]," which is the image right before the previous one.) This was, by far, the best use of semi-silent panels in the whole issue. In fact, it was quite impressive by any comic's standards. I thought it to be a very clever way of darkly implying what Logan was there to do, without spoiling the moment by explicitly saying it.]

[Nate Deprey · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bendis takes over this series and is really Bendis at his best here. The few pages Dazzler has is the type of iconic reboot that I wish there were more of in the ultimate universe and managed to side step the character's disco and roller skates history while still paying tribute to her majestic first appearance a lifetime ago during the Dark Phoenix Saga.
On the whole this was a pleasant surprise right from the title where I thought New Mutants was going to be the integration of those early Claremont characters but what we get instead is an interesting mix of old and new that takes the series in a whole new direction. Additionally, the stand alone Wolverine story half way through the collection is probably the best and most touchingly tragic issue in the series thus far.

[Brian Rosenberger · Rating 3 out of 5]

This arc introduces 17 yr old Warren Worthington to the Ultimates universe, who proves to be very popular with Kitty and Storm. He arrives at the school no shirts, no shoes, but all blonde beefcake.
Issue 41. Next a standalone story involving Wolverine and a new mutant whose powers are just now manifesting. Great story. Bleak ending. Buy the trade for this story alone.
The US President, due to the above story, has concerns with mutants. Enter Emma Frost and her “New Mutants,” consisting of Dazzler, Karma, Havok, and Polaris. Dazzler I found to be the most interesting in contrast to her 616 counterpart.
Enter a Sentinel. Enter a surprise death. So ends the arc. To be continued.

[JP · Rating 3 out of 5]

Full review / all my reviews available on my blog

Things have been rough for the X-Men, what with the whole Magneto thing (again) and anti-Mutant feelings running high. So of course what do we need? More mutants!

Angel. Emma Frost. Dazzler. Alex Summers.

It’s cool to see so many new (old) faces and shake up the status quo.

We’ll just have to see what’s next.

Nothing particularly special about this volume but also not terrible.

Onward!

[Krishnakumar Mohanasundaram · Rating 4 out of 5]

The plotlines develop fairly. In this arc, we see a new set of mutants being made the face of mutant population by the President - trying to stay away from the X-men.

Meanwhile, a sinister group of people, who had orchestrated the attack on the Wolverine, are revealed to be top management under the president and who firmly believes that Professor X is manipulating the President's decision. When they try to assassinate the whole game and the President altogether, the X-men make themselves ready for whatever it is to come.

[Jim · Rating 3 out of 5]

Perhaps not the strongest in the series, more like a bridge perhaps to other stories. I had to wait forever to get a copy, as this volume was oddly absent from the libraries and comic stores. Still, I like the art and the story wasn't bad, just seemed to meander a bit. I do sometimes get tired of the constant shifts of allegiance. The Beast is so much younger and unsure of himself in these tellings than the movie versions. and, sadly, this week the world lost Stan Lee. RIP.

[Noah · Rating 4 out of 5]

What a wonderful mess of events. The characters keep getting more interesting, and their relationships are constantly being tested. Some scenes had me going "no way they just did that", and the visualizations are simple to piece together as a moving picture. Despite losing members, new members seem to keep the series fresh, and I'm excited to see them working together, hopefully with resolved alliances and romantic relationships.

[Marloges · Rating 4 out of 5]

The only Ultimate X-Men volume written by Bendis. I really enjoyed this one! There are quite a few new Mutants that got introduced, the storyline with Emma Frost made a lot of sense and the ending really hit the mark.

My personal highlights were probably the appearance of Angel and the second chapter, which was a self-contained side-story with a very messed up ending... One of the most emotional X-Men chapters I've read. Great stuff.

[Julio RGuez · Rating 3 out of 5]

Bendis solo era un autor de paso, de transición, que cierra aquí su segundo arco para dejar paso al siguiente autor (ojo cuidao quién es). También aprovecha para introducir mutantes que aún no habían salido, Dazzler, Alex Summers, Emma Frost, Polaris, Domino, Angel; y profundiza en la situación mutante bajo el amparo de shield.
Bastante bien escrito, se nota la tensión en la calma que tiene este arco hasta que al final llega la tormenta.

[Christian · Rating 4 out of 5]

The government is getting twitchy about having Xavier as the face of mutant relations, so they decide to start a mutant team that would be led by an ex of Xavier's, Emma Frost.

This is really good. It could have been great, but the actual formation of the New Mutants is rushed to the point of not actually meeting any of them. But it's still really good. It could have just used 2-4 more issues.

I'm sad to see Bendis go already, but Vaughan is a pretty reliable writer to hand it off to.

[Shannon Appelcline · Rating 4 out of 5]

New Mutants (40-45). Bendis makes up for his uneven first volume by really diving into the politics that led to the Weapon X attack in the previous story and playing them out on the largest stage possible. One of the most shocking events in the Ultimate X run combined with several interesting new mutants (just like it says on the tin) all around make this a solid volume ... just in time for Bendis to head off into the sunset after his year-long run [4+/5].

[Adam · Rating 4 out of 5]

Though I'm reading these slower due to time constraints I'm still very much enjoying this series. Continues to be solid writing/dialogue and great artwork. I also enjoy the various complicated social themes they bring up and the multiple ways they convey them (with storytelling, artwork, etc.). A great series that I'm happy to continue reading!

[Iva · Rating 4 out of 5]

Чим далі, тим більше дивуюсь, з якого біса яппідліьок більше від решти супергероїки полюбляв Х-Менів та збирав до прочитання усі випуски без огляду на серії та світи (через що деякий час мав схиблене уявлення про таймлайн та співвідно��ення сюжетів)
Нині більшість конфліктів у серії виглядають дуже надуманими
Це все ще весело, звісно, але сприймається геть інакше

[Rangga Sukmawijaya · Rating 4 out of 5]

Di tengah panasnya suhu politik Gedung Putih berkaitan dengan kebijakan Presiden mengenai mutan, muncul mutan-mutan baru di jagat Ultimate X-Men. Angel, Dazzler, Emma Frost, Karma, dan Havok adalah beberapa mutan yang kini ikut menghiasi serial ini.

[Chris Borror · Rating 5 out of 5]

This 144 page volume contains Ultimate X-Men issues 40-45. This is where the book was really on fire and is exactly why it was outselling the main Marvel 616 Universe by a wide margin. People forget how good this series was for years. I recommend this volume!

[Thomas Hetherington · Rating 3 out of 5]

More of the same really...

[Caleb Abel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another home run for Bendis. One of the darkest and best single issues of X-Men I've ever read right in the middle too.

[Richard Howlett · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another great volume, Bendis' writing on the book is far superior to Millar's, it's a shame he only did 2 volumes!

[Kimberley · Rating 3 out of 5]

i am sad about hank dying,, he was literally the dumbest person alive but i loved him :(