Drunken Comics Rage

Alright, if you're not sure exactly what this is, or why I'm reviewing a comic that's six years or more old, you can read all about it HERE. For the rest of you who know what the hell is going on, let's keep moving.

Today I popped in the Ultimate X-Men Complete Comic Book Collection #1-70. I'm actually a little excited to be reading them, even though I have great fears that this might end up dragging me back into buying comics. Something which I'm trying to avoid at the moment. I also don't have something to drink, which is just wrong according to the unwritten laws of this site, but it's noon and I'm technically "working" from home today, so cut me some slack. Of course you can now start the countdown on how long it will take before I write one of these after a bottle of wine or two, and it makes little to no sense at all.

Well, let's get started. You can click the link below for all the gory details.

 

First things first, the CD uses Adobe Acrobat to read, which is ok. I will admit that having to scroll up and down to read a page at any decent size is kind of a pain, but I was prepared for that. What does upset me a little is that they pretty much just flat out scanned in the whole comic, and slapped it on a CD. This means that after the cover, the first damn thing I see is an ad for some online game thing. You know, someone could have spent like 30 seconds in Photoshop, and cut that crap out. Maybe they left it in there for some legal reprint agreement, or because they feel it gives the fans the complete book, but I'm just going to go with "damn lazy" and move on.

I'm pretty much going to be writing as I read through the comic, instead of reading the thing and writing about it afterwards. The comic is shown over 27 pages, and laid out like you were reading the comic, so I'm just going to list them out as page one, page two, and so on.

Page 1  - Is this supposed to be Wolverine on the cover? He's got the claws, but looks like an idiot. Not a great start. 

Page 2 - Alright, first non-freaking-ad page is a picture of people, eh.

Page 3 - Two page spread of a bunch of Sentinels swooping down on the city. I suppose if you're going to start everything all over again, the Sentinels are a pretty good bad guy group to scrap with first.

Page 4 - Bunch of people getting zapped. I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that they were mutants that had no powers, or lame ones like, I don't know, Cypher. (Note: I'm pulling that name out of my deep memory of the New Mutant by that name. At least I think that was his name).

Page 5 - Ok, now we have the Sentinel confirming a mutant, and stepping on him like a bug.  I guess the Ultimate versions don't talk a lot either, and are more hardcore. I kind of miss the good old days when they ran around telling you and everyone else what they were doing all the time.

Page 6 - Ok, next two pages are supposed to be news footage.

What the hell kind of name for a news anchor is Boaz Eshelmen? Maybe it's an inside joke I'm not getting. 

Already see Magneto looking all evil, but I'll get there in a minute.

Ok, so there were "anti-human" bombings in New York and Washington by mutant terrorists. Again, apparently mutants with lame powers.

Looks like those bombings were done by The Brotherhood Of Mutants. Didn't they used to have "evil" in the title? I guess you'd probably leave that out if you could. Though they call Magneto the Master of Magnetism, which seems silly. Oh yeah, and they're a death cult. Which begs the question, if you're a death cult, why didn't you go all out and leave "evil" in your name?

Magneto gets his Homo-Superior rant going for a bit. Heard all that before about 20 years ago. 

And the news ends with a thing about all mutants being detained in six to eight weeks. Uh huh, tell that to the squished guy on page 5.

Page 7 - Looks like beast (human looking, non blue and furry) sitting at the bar. Of course, like all good stories, the one jerk in the bar hacks on him, and then turns to violence. Like that's not been done a thousand times

Page 8 - Beast gives the jerk a "FWAACKO" for being stupid. Then we get the Star Wars bar scene of the owner telling Beast to get out, and Beast tossing him some money. If he had actually said "Sorry for the mess" I might have stopped reading right here. A bathroom joke was thrown in there instead, I guess for the four year olds that read comics.

Outside the bar there's a red headed chick with a sports car. She knows who Hank is, and delivers another great joke about size 42 Reeboks. Hopefully those get better soon, or they just stop. I'm voting they just stop.

Page 9 - The red haired chick is now bailing Storm out of jail. I'm thinking that she must be Jean Grey, just with a haircut, and working the slut wear.

Well, it is Jean, and it looks like Storm and her shop at the same place for clothes. Not that I really mind, just pointing it out.

Page 10 - Two freaking pages of ads. Hell, they wouldn't have even had to do much to cut this.

Page 11 - So Colossus is a Russian gangster? Not all that excited about that change. Looks like they're making a deal for a nuke.

The deal goes bad, they whip out guns, start shooting, and Colossus goes all armored. Hopefully there's an ass-whuppin on the next page.

You have to think though, that this can't be the first time he's gone armored. He's a gangster. Bullets usually come with the job. Either he's been lucky and hasn't ever had to go all shiny, or the people trying to double cross him are stupid. 

Page 12 - One page of Colossus all armored up, and giving a one liner. Eh.

Page 13 - No ass-whuppins. What a waste. He should have at least thrown a car at someone.

Jean shows up and gives him some speech about him being alone, his cover blown. I guess he never did have to go all armored. I'm pretty sure as a gangster, I'd be armored all the time. Who's going to double cross the giant scary bulletproof metal guy that can bench press trucks? No one.

Then he turns human, and gets a hug from Jean. I might throw up at this point.

Page 14 - Now we have Cyclops addressing the team. There's sort of a roll call where everyone states their "code-name". Storm actually thinks the whole thing is a little silly.

Yesterday she was a car thief, and now she's standing around in black latex outfit worthy of a fetish ball, with gold metal boots and gloves, with a bunch of other people in the same sort of outfits, all to form a super group and go busting bad guys, and she thinks the code-name part is silly?

Beast doesn't like his name, and Jean calls herself Marvel Girl. Marvel Girl was always a poor choice in names.

Page 15 - Well, at least Beast gets the idea of black latex being odd.

Alright, the uniforms are supposed to block detection from the Sentinels. A good idea.

Strangely, the painting crew must also be mutants, and again have some lame powers. They don't seem too fazed by the fetish group wandering through the house, and the X-Men don't seem to worried about them either. Maybe after they pay them, Prof. X wipes their minds, and they just all wake up at home with extra cash. Their lame powers could also have to do something with paint I guess. If that's the case, too bad this wasn't a DC comic. They could have named themselves The Color Brigade or something substantially lame and all had equally stupid names like Fuchsia Lad, but I digress.

Well, looks like they are normal guys, and Prof. X just has them wacked out in some hypno thing. Nice to know he's screwing with the muggles. 

Page 16 - Big picture of Prof. X. He then goes on about how he no longer reads book, but just reads the minds of writers as they write them. How would that NOT be confusing? Also, it's creepy.

Page 17 - Ok, Storm is still hacking on the code-names. This puts her into the bitchy category for me.

Prof. X gives her some story about how it's some given name chosen to represent her powers and being baptized as a post-human, or some crap.

Look, I'm reading a comic book. I've accepted the idea that people can control the weather and shoot laser beams out of their eyes, that all women look like a Barbie Doll and like to show it off, and that they do it while running around in colorful costumes. I don't need the little wink-wink-nudge-nudge that the characters know it's a little silly too. Make with the beatings already.

More explanation of how Prof. and Magneto used to be buddies. Looks like Prof. X took a spear to the back, explaining the wheelchair. Now we get to hear about Cerebro.

Page 18 - Looks like they're now going after Bobby Drake, aka Iceman. Nice to see he's been bumped to the teen squad again like in the movie. I get that he's not the coolest character, but he was one of the original four I'm pretty sure. They could have at least made him an adult.

I was going to make a crack here about them running around in the black latex, with Xs on their outfits, and no one noticing. It's New York though, so I'm going to let it slide.

Page 19 - Aaaaaand the Sentinels show up. Well, at least we'll get some sort of a fight.

All the humans on the bus Drake was riding jump off, and the Sentinel fries the whole bus. Why Drake just sat there I have no idea. Beast saves him though.

Page 20 - Storm lights up two Sents with a lightning bolt, and then promptly passes out.

Page 21 - Beast gets two of the Sents to shoot each other. Looks like some sort of "don't shoot your buddy" software upgrade is needed.

Colossus throws a truck at a half dead one, and then promptly gets blasted. Cyclops give the Sentinel a little blast to get his attention.

Page 22 -  The Sent picks up Cyclops. Cyclops hits a button on his wrist, and his optic blast blows the Sents head off. Why the hell he didn't do that just a second ago when he shot him the first time, I have no idea.

The headless Sent starts wondering around toward all the normal folk. We see Iceman firing a blast.

Page 23 - The headless Sent gets turned into a big block of ice. The crowd then goes all lynch mob, and starts throwing things at our heroes. The X-Men take off.

Page 24 - We're now in the Savage Land where Magneto's base is. I'm sure this is where we get his plot to take over the world.

Looks like Toad is in the group, and now Mags knows that Prof. X is still alive.

Quicksilver is in the group. Looks like they put the original band of them together.

Aw, someone lost Magneto's nuclear weapon. He seems pissed.

Mags punishes the guy who lost the nuke by ripping his pace maker out. And here we have the "You failed me" scene where the big bad guy shows you how evil he is by killing a henchman.  Hopefully we have the "Put the hero in the slow death trap and explain your master plan to him" scene in the next comic to get all the cheesy clichés out of the way.

Page 25 - Scarlet Witch shows up. Looks like she gets to use here powers to mop up blood from the dead dude. Thanks Dad!

Magneto decides he needs to take out Prof. X and his merry band of mutants. Quicksilver offers, and Mags says that the good Prof would shut down his mind before he got halfway across the ocean. Which begs the question why he hasn't taken a boat trip and done it already, but hey, that would make for a short story I guess.

Now for the big finish, Wolverine is working for Mags, and he's going to go kill Prof. X. Not sure why Prof. X wouldn't see Wolverine coming, but I guess that question is left for the next comic.

Page 26&27 - More ads. Yeah, ok, tobacco is wacko. Thanks for that. Your rhyming skills are amazing.

 

Well, overall I wasn't impressed. The art wasn't that great, the story was pretty bland, and there were way to many over used cliched scenes. Hopefully it gets better.

Tune in soon for the recap of issue #2. I promise I'll have a drink in hand next time too. 

Filed under: 70 Issues of UXM, Ghostshark's Rants, Marvel Comics