Peter Steigerwald is now sole colorist as we move into issue 4. This one picks up right where USM 132 left off, as Hulk causes the giant explosion we saw, and Spider-Man is caught up in it, blacking out.
Hey, that doesn’t look good. Would they really?
Doc Strange was looking prrrrretty not alive in USM. Well, it doesn’t matter, because after 3 pages of fightin’, Dormammu kills him. Again, I guess. But not before we learn that Dormammu inexplicably has Johnny Storm trapped inside him, that Big D is “channeling” Johnny’s flame. Uh, ok.
The freakin’ cavalry is very late. I guess that’s some mystery person becoming the new Sorcerer Supreme. If that pays off somewhere, I don’t recall seeing it. Next, Hulk is being chased by the army, as usual, shouting his innocence, when Cyclops and Storm run the military off. Storm says it’s all up to Logan now.
Alrighty. As if things weren’t absurd enough, we next go see Nick Fury in the Supreme Power universe, which is where Reed, Doom and Princess Power went.
The Doomsday Protocol! Once again, “Magneto decides to tilt the Earth” is given this portentous name, first by Professor X, now by Nick. Why does it have a fancy name? Did he tell them all he was gonna do it someday?
Panel 3… not great. Well. Nick’s exile didn’t last very long.
She doesn’t know. We don’t know. I’ll tell you one thing we did know, tho, and that was that USM 133 was the final issue of the series. Would they really? Logan leaves Kitty a box, tells her to open it if he doesn’t come back, and announces he’s leaving Iceman with her, so neither of them tries to come with him. He says when this is all over, the world will need people like Kitty to put it back together. Thus, the X-Men are in their Blackbird, zooming toward Magneto’s floating base. He’s in there quoting scripture/The Byrds when Angel comes smashing through the window and manages to punch him in the mouth. You’d expect stronger glass, you know? Angel doesn’t even have super strength! I guess that’s what you get when you’re always magically making your buildings out of raw materials with no background in architecture. Anyway.
If nothing else, I assume selling the originals of these spreads made Dave Finch a ton of money, so I guess that’s one positive thing this series accomplished. Well, it’s what’s left of the Avengers and X-Men vs. Religious Magneto for all the marbles next time.