Written by: Peach Momoko
Art by: Peach Momoko
Colors by: Peach Momoko
Letters by: VC’s Travis Lanham
Cover art by: Peach Momoko (cover A)
Cover price: $4.99
Release date: June 12, 2024
Ultimate X-Men #4 follows an incident where Hisako is attacked by a fellow student who suspects she knows something about the recent suicides. Meanwhile, Surge enters the story.
Is Ultimate X-Men #4 Good?
When last we left Armor and Maystorm in Ultimate X-Men #3, readers got a peek into the moment when Maystorm’s powers first manifested during a violent argument with her strangely stoic father. The issue concluded with the two mutants encountering Nico Minoru, the magic-wielding member of the Runaways on Earth-616.
In Ultimate X-Men #4, Hisako and Mei complete their final exams for the school year. On the rainy motorcycle ride home, Hisako notices a strange yet familiar boy glaring at her nearby. The boy confronts Hisako about other boys who’ve killed themselves after Tsubasa’s suicide, and the boy believes Hisako is either involved in their deaths or knows something about them.
When Hisako tries to speed away, her motorcycle gets tripped up. When she looks at the bike to figure out what happened, she sees the disturbing image of Tsubasa’s head caught in the bike wheel. Suddenly, the boy who confronted her spawns the dark tendrils of the shadow figure haunting Hisako since day one.
Hisako spawns her armor and charges the shadow figure on her motorcycle. Both parties survive the collision, but the shadow figure forces the boy to cut his own throat.
Hisako doesn’t notice nearby onlookers snapping photos and filming videos of the incident with Hisako in full armor mode. Mei arrives to tend to her friend, and she conjures a small but powerful lightning storm to drive people back and short out all their phones.
The issue ends with a blue-haired girl on a nearby balcony who captures a bit of Mei’s lightning and keeps her phone intact to upload a video of Hisako’s armor to the Internet. The blue-haired girl is presumably Noriko Ashida, aka Surge.
What’s great about Ultimate X-Men #4? One of the down points of this series to date has been the casual pace and lack of interconnectivity with any of the other Ultimate titles. Thankfully, Peach Momoko picks up the pace and widens the cast of mutant characters to at least suggest the mutant-dom of Earth-6160 is much bigger than anyone expected, which makes the idea of a team-up more conceivable.
What’s great about Ultimate X-Men #4? Momoko has yet to establish a story that fits within Jonathan Hickman’s creation and explain how or why mutants are possible. If the Maker created an entire universe in his own image and prevented the origin stories of any superhero who could oppose him, why would he allow the X-Gene unchecked into the humanity he created?
Further, Momoko’s tone may be fine in isolation as a Horror Manga, but it’s wildly inconsistent with the rest of the Earth-6160 stories and moves at a snail’s pace in comparison. If the idea here is that the mutants will find each other and eventually form a team to join the fight against the Maker in 18 months, Momoko has a very long way to go, not enough time to get there at this pace, and has no clear path to integration.
About The Reviewer: Gabriel Hernandez is the Publisher & EIC of ComicalOpinions.com, a comics review site dedicated to indie, small, and mid-sized publishers.
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Final Thoughts
Ultimate X-Men #4 is a tighter, more action-packed script compared to the previous issues, but Peach Momoko’s plot continues to meander in casual directions and is tonally and structurally inconsistent with the rest of the Ultimate universe. If the goal is the build up the Ultimate version of the X-Men in time to join the fight against the Maker in 18 months, Momoko’s corner of Earth-6160 is severely at risk of getting left behind.
6/10
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