I haven’t read one of these in like a week. Sometimes it’s like that. But I’m back, even though I never left. Let’s see if we can get into it. Laura Martin & Richard Isanove are suddenly coloring this month. Spider-Man slowly wakes up to find himself restrained in a vehicle with the assorted X-Men. When Deadpool notices, he has his man zap him unconscious again. The last thing he hears is “take off that stupid mask.”
Our man is very happy to discover he still has his webshooters on, and manages to make a web thing to land on, though he somehow loses a shoe in the process. He sees the others falling and finding ways to survive, but then an explosion gets his attention as one of the Reavers attacks him. In the regular comics, the Reavers were weirdos who got cybernetically enhanced to hate mutants better or whatever. Presumably not terribly different here. Spidey webs this dope’s face and beats on him some despite his hands being pinned together.
His name should actually be Big Giant Russian Metal Man. One of the few major X-Men Spidey has little screentime with in the regular comics. He’s had deeper conversations with Marrow, of all people.
I like the Soul Calibur 3 joke. This comic just loudly popped when I turned the page. I just got to the middle, I guess one of the staples decided to say “hi.” Weird! Poor Cyclops is being beat on by 2 Reavers and what appears to be 2 just generic robots when the boys rescue him, and they all quickly try to fill each other in. Spider-Man supposes they’re in Six Flags Crazy Town and also suggests they “wake up one of these Bioncles” to find out what’s happening, he’s really on a roll this issue.
It’s funny, in the 70s, they introduced Storm, and it was like, “she can make a raincloud or whatever!” Then, eventually, someone finally went “Hey, wait. Controlling the weather is actually insane.” And Storm went from a sort of weak character to one of the most powerful mutants overnight, just by thinking of her abilities differently. This also happened to Jean Grey, Sue Storm, Scarlet Witch and probably a bunch of other women. They were given cute little powers that let them stand off to the side and get kidnapped a lot until someone realized that, in each case, what they could do was actually pretty scary if you really wanted it to be. It’s just interesting to me how that shook out. I didn’t even remember an Ultimate Krakoa existed, but I guess I wouldn’t. The gang escapes the helicopters, one of which crashes near them, and then Kitty emerges from the fire.
Angel and Rogue arrive with an unconscious Jean Grey, the gang’s all here. This is a pretty large and unwieldy X-Men team, and it doesn’t even have Iceman or Wolverine anymore (For whatever reason). Exposition is delivered, and we learn Ultimate Krakoa is a prison island off the coast of Ultimate Genosha, where the Genoshans hunt and kill mutants for sport as a TV show. Original recipe Genosha was a very heavy-handed Apartheid metaphor, you see, and this one, even moreso, I guess. The X-Men came and busted up their stuff recently, despite Professor X telling them not to, and now appear to be getting thrown into a revenge plot. And as soon as the exposition’s over…
A lot more Reavers in the Ultimate U. Is Ultimate Deadpool not a mutant? I really don’t recall. I only really remember one thing about this story, and I think it comes up next issue. Maybe.