Writer: Mark Millar Artists: Andy Kubert (p), Danny Miki (I)
Publisher: Marvel Comics
Plot: The book opens on a stormy night off the coast of Muir Island where we see an armed party board a drifting ship, but once aboard they find the crew of this vessel is dead. However, there is one living creature lurking among the dead, and we see it is an entity that is able to jump from body to body, and this sequence ends with one of the boarding party becoming the next host. We then look in on the X-Men who have joined Xavier on his book tour, and Xavier has sent his students around the city of London, where they have been assigned to use their powers to perform a good deed. As Storm & Jean stop an IRA bomber, we see Wolverine, Colossus & Iceman bust up a drug ring. However, the Beast & Cyclops manage to earn the top grade on this assignment, as they stop a band of muggers, and actually follow through to ensure that these men are longer a threat to society. However, after Xavier delivers a question/answer session with the media the team discovers that Colossus has taken off on some unknown mission. However, a phone call to Xavier from Muir Island will likely have Xavier cutting short the world tour.
Comments: The action heavy opening arcs didn't allow for many character moments, but Mark Millar seems to have overcome this hurdle on this arc, by breaking the team up into smaller groups. The opening conversation between Jean & Storm made for a interesting look at the classic Scott/Jean/Logan triangle that is making its presence felt in these pages. The scene involving Iceman's conversation with his worried mother is also a cute sequence, with Wolverine's disastrous attempt at help being particularly amusing. I also enjoyed the banter between the Beast & Scott, though Scott does seem to have lost that jaded edge that made him so interesting in the opening arc. However, the highlight of the issue would have to be the sequence where the press-conference is being given, and we see the hostile reaction that the X-Men faced is nicely paralleled by the hostile questions that are being directed Xavier's way by the media. In the end this issue did more to develop the X-Men cast than we saw in the entire opening year.
The original battle with Proteus stands up as one of my favorite arcs from the Claremont/Byrne run on Uncanny X-Men, so having it reimagined in these pages has left me quite excited. The basic idea of his jumping from host to host looks to be still around for this second kick at the can, and while John Byrne's art is what made the reality warping gimmick so much fun the first time round, I doubt Adam Kubert would have much trouble putting his own spin on this power, if Proteus possesses it in the Ultimate Universe. I did notice that Colossus' mysterious departure does effectively remove the rather dramatic finish the first one sported, but given the harsher edge the Ultimate versions of the X-Men have, it wouldn't have the same impact, so it's best that Mark Miller is going to have to come up with a new means of taking Proteus out. In any event, the introduction to the Ultimate version of Proteus is pretty nicely done, as the scene on the boat is quite chilling, and it does look like the X-Men are in for a rough time.
Adam Kubert turns in a very solid effort this month, as the opening sequence on the boat has a nice horror movie atmosphere to it, as the group boards the vessel & finds it littered with dead bodies. The husk like appearance of the bodies also added a chilling mood to this sequence. We then move on to the X-Men in London, and this section opens with a marvelous cityscape shot of the city, that even neatly captures the idea that Big Ben was damaged during to opening arc. The following sequence where we see Storm & Jean race around the city on rollarbaldes conveys a nice sense of speed. The scene in the dance club is pretty nice use of lighting & smoke, and we also get another nice little nod of the head to continuity as we see Captain America's return from the dead is touched upon with a little background detail. The press-conference sequence also does a pretty fair job conveying the anger of the crowd, and the resolve of the X-Men not to lose their cool. The final page also has a nice little detail that suggests where Moria McTaggert might have met Xavier.
Final Word: A pretty entertaining issue as we're given a chilling introduction to the Ultimate version of Proteus, and this is followed up by some nice characterization for the X-Men as we see Mark Millar has the team carry out a school assignment on the streets of London. Now the speech that Xavier gives to the students explaining why the Beast & Cyclops actions were more productive was a bit unconvincing, as Xavier dismisses the stopping a bomber & the quashing of a drug ring a bit too easily. However, the book does handle the idea of blind hatred quite nicely during the press conference, as Xavier's allowed to deliver some solid answers to some fairly loaded questions. In the end though this was largely a setup issue for the crisis on Muir Island, and to this end the book does manage to deliver a very strong sense of impending danger for the young team.
