Ultimate Fantastic Four / Ultimate X-Men Annual #1 (Marvel – Coleite / Pokaski / Basaldua)
A group of X-Men from the future come back in time to try and assassinate the Fantastic Four—attempting to prevent the events of Ultimatum from ever happening. Who are these warriors from the future and what role will they play in the shocking scenario to follow?
This was one of the books I was really looking forward to this week. Taking a page out of the Heroes playbook, these two annuals set up a dark future in the Ultimate books, also a prelude to the Ultimatum event coming up, and characters traveled back int time to try to stop the event from happening. The earlier annual (Ultimate X-men/FF) set up the problem and this issue was the resolution. This is the classic example of an author being able to write two thirds of a really good book.
The details are rushed and sporadic. The plot is throw at the reader rather than being laid out Future Reed “cured” Ben of being the Thing,ends up taking away his own powers and Scott Summers… Reed then hides out in N-Zone pretending to be Nihil to gain support of the residents there, Scott takes over the role of Captain America, Ben gets Iron-Manesque armor and Sue becomes a fascist dictator… obviously that would happen!
I am generalizing here, but it was sort of a 2 hour movie cut down to thirty five minutes by an editor
who likes action sequences much more than character development apparently. Most of the cast seemed to be fairly one dimensional and in some cases not even in step with how we have come to know them… Future Ben and Namor getting along, present Reed being obtuse in scientific situations, Logan listening and taking orders… once again, I applaud the Ultimate creative teams for trying to get h the UMU out of the rut and back on track, but this fell flat.
Ultimatum is supposedly meant to shake everything up again, well I hope it works better than this two-parter!
Issue grade: C
