Ultimate X-Men #100

This was such an exciting issue.  Coleite really pulled out all the stops to make this finale worth its weight, unlike Ult. FF's recent lackluster "you call that a final issue?"

The running inner monologue of Madrox gave the last scenes such power, because while the whole time you're thinking of him as the villain of the piece, in the end you realize you really were getting to know the poor, used patsy you encounter through Wolverine's eyes in the Savage Land, Magneto's brainwashed tool.

And the two-page spread where Rogue zaps a dupe and becomes a one-woman army would have made me whoop out loud if I hadn't been at work when I read it.

Back to Wolverine and Madrox in the Savage Land, there's the moment when he pulls out the actual comic book to shove in Madrox's face as proof of his misdeeds, and that's the kind of moment that you have to earn somehow, and in my opinion, this totally earned it, making what could easily be a silly moment a really, really cool one.  It pulled it off by using the characters perfectly throughout, putting each of them in the place their particular abilities and personalities would be most effective and expressive.

I am just entirely hating Ultimatum the book, but it's issues like this one (and like everything in USM still) that make it possible for me to actually like Ultimatum the event.  Unlike most of what's going on in Ultimatum itself, USM and this grand finale (in the true sense of that term) are taking the event seriously and giving its fallout real weight and above all, earning it.