Ultimate X-Men #94 Review

ULTIMATE X-MEN #94
Written by Aron Coleite
Art by Mark Brooks

I'm as big a fan of Robert Kirkman as the next person and personally love his Walking Dead, Invincible and Ant-Man books, but thank god his reign of terror on the Ultimate X-Men title has ended. It's so refreshing to read this book and have it actually be, well, good again.

Coleite decides to use one of the newer and under utilized X-Men storylines for his debut arc in the form of MGH, Mutant Growth Hormone. They call it Banshee, officially, but Wolverine drops the MGH, among others, name of the drug to clue readers in on what it is.

While it's only his opening issue, I was more than impressed with his use of it and the characterizations he used for the team. Xavier was, surprisingly, missing the entire issue, but the rest of the team, and even some from Emma Frost's academy, are together playing baseball, a traditional X-Men past time.

Seemingly ignoring most of what Kirkman did, Jean Grey has returned to the team and refuses to explain or speak to Scott, or anyone, about what occured and I'm more than happy that he's ignoring that Pheonix / Apocalypse nonsense. There are still concerns about her power and instability, though.

During the baseball game, we get some reconcilliation between Colossus and Nightcrawler, who is no longer the homophobic pyschopath who ran away from the team, was disgusted at his best friend Colossus being gay and kidnapped Dazzler. Those still happened, but Coleite is doing his best to heal those wounds / retcon that mess.

This leads to the crux of the story, the introduction of Alpha Flight, who consist of some of the 616 version members, but with some nice redesign costumes and Jubilee(!), who is weilding some Boomer-like energy balls instead of the useless firework sparkles. They've arrived to reclaim one of their own from the X-Men. No, it's not the generic "let's retake Wolverine" story. It's actually for Northstar this time, who is Colossus' boyfriend and a member of Emma's school. Seems he ran away from the Canadian funded team and they want him back.

The Alpha Flight entry was fairly dynamic with Iceman, in ice form, shattering as he ran towards the team to warn them. It's okay, as he's humpty dumpty and Beast put him back together by the end of the issue, so he's not dead, but it was a nice addition to the Ultimate powers of Iceman. After this, they mop the floor with like 25 of the X-Men at the baseball game and make off with Northstar, but not before Colossus does his best to try and stop them.

We then get the in-fighting as the team decides what to do. Colossus is deadset on finding Northstar and Cyclops wants to think it through since they got their asses handed to them by five guys. Jean senses something wrong with Colossus and we get an extended flashback of his past and it's revealed he's the equivilent of a 50kg weakling and he can barely lift his own arm when his body is covered with his metal form. This lead the mafia to giving him Banshee to make him go all Mark McGuire and we get more clues as to just what Banshee does to people.

Cyclops is pissed Jean invaded his thoughts like that and Colossus is furious and actually attacked Jean before the fight was quickly broken up. This leads to the schism in the team with Colossus leading a secret mission to reclaim Northstar that consists of several X-Men, all pumped on Banshee, including Cyclops, Rogue, Nightcrawler and a few others, leaving in a Blackbird at the end of the issue.

Verdict - Must Read

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