Ah jeez. Remember in Ultimate Fallout when Kitty Pryde, Bobby and Johnny vowed to live together in the Morlock Tunnels and never, ever, ever try to be super-heroes ever agai..whups that’s over.

I didn’t read the first Ult X-Men series all the way to the end, having gotten bored and dropped the book years before, but I kind of enjoyed Ultimate X despite it’s scheduling issues. I wasn’t super impressed with Hickman’s new Ultimates or Hawkeye launches, but had hopes in this issue after reading last week’s Ultimate Comics Spider-Man #1. Would UltCom X-Men live up to that, or would I be disappointed? Rest assured, dear readers of reviews of books you read, this issue was pretty snazzy. From the brutal and heart-wrenching start, this was a blast! It was, throughout, an engaging and suspenseful read.

It’s recently gotten out that Homo Superior aren’t a naturally occurring evolutionary jump for mankind, as we were lead to believe, but were the result of America futzing around with human DNA (see Ultimate Origin for further deets.) We get all our necessary exposition, ingeniously, in the form of a White House Press Event. The news is out and the American populace are less than pleased, and rioting has begun, as well as Mutant Containment Camps. We get to see how everyone is reacting to this, including Karen Grant and her team of X-babies, (I love that Jean is still going under that identity, btw.) Nick Fury, the President and of course, Kitty and Co.

Paco Medina does a fantastic job slappin’ down the graphite. I wasn’t really aware of him as such until his work on the X-Men title recently (the nonsense with the vampires, which was actually kind of fun), but he’s grown as an artist even since then. His style is cartoony without going overboard, which would negatively affect the dramatic beats, I think, but he nails everything perfectly. His hands could use a little work here and there though. Sometimes they look like something out of John Carpenter’s The Thing. Wow, this is my second Thing reference this week. Sorry, I just re-watched it last night. Classic film. Oh, stream of consciousness writing style, when will you end? Where was I? Oh right. Medina: good.

Actually, this issue: Good. ‘Nuff said.