Ok, back to the good comic to see what befell poor Aunt May, who is being escorted through a police station. The now bog standard Bendis move of a costumed person being arrested and yelling something, first begun in Powers but quickly spreading to all his superhero work, is observed. May is taken to an interrogation room.
I think I come to this point a lot when we cover USM, but how cool is it that, New York flooding, superheroes dying, etc, etc, and Aunt May in jeopardy is the most compelling storyline going at the moment?
Well, that sounds bad.
Typical cop behavior. But then…
May wanders out into the deserted police station. The only person left is the crazy costumed lady. She mutters “it’s all gone” as May walks past. Suddenly it’s a horror movie for 2 pages. And then she steps outside, and…
Not many artists in comics, then, before then, or now, are going to be able to do this splash (John Romita, Jr. woulda crushed it). But Immonen? No sweat. He conveys everything you need effortlessly. The scope and the shock. This is followed by a 2nd amazing (Er, ultimate?) 2-page splash of New York flooding, which is way more apocalyptic than Finch’s was. And then we rejoin our hero, more or less as we left him in Ultimatum 1…
Spider-Man desperately tries to save people as Professor X’s message from Ultimatum plays out in his head, showing him Magneto’s base. And then we get Immonen’s recreation of the Magneto splash from Ultimatum, now with Spider-Man’s head transparent in the background, which seems kind of unnecessary, honestly.
The desperation is palpable. The whole team is really going in on this stuff. It’s so strange and ironic. Ultimatum is a famously bad event, and yet the USM tie-ins are famously good. I mean, how unfortunate! How’re the other kids doing?
Did not everyone get Xavier’s exposition dump? I only read the USM issues, I don’t really know what all went out elsewhere. Did anyone bother to, like, lay some track for this? Did Magneto appear in Ultimates or X-Men before this? No idea. Anyway, Aunt May is still in front of the precinct, helping people, reuniting a mother and child, when there’s an explosion that throws her to the ground. When she gets up, she finds the detective who arrested her earlier pinned under some debris, and tries to help her up. But a power pole is abot to fall on both of them, and May can’t lift the debris.
That’s gonna be awkward, too.
Well, that came out of nowhere! Next issue, it’s Spider-Man vs. the Hulk at the end of the world. But first, Ultimatum gets worse…