“Thank you, Mei. For everything.”
Coming hot off the heels of the previous installment, Ultimate X-Men #17 takes readers into the assault of a lifetime as Peach Momoko and Zack Davisson’s mutant punks conduct their raid on the Children of Atom. In traditional X-Men style, Peach Momoko has put a heavy emphasis on the teenage rebellion of these characters in a way that feels in touch with Chris Claremont’s years on The New Mutants.
This issue, especially, feels like a way to evolve through the unification of these characters and their drive to save the book’s star protagonist, Hisako. That is seen immediately with how the team dives head first to her rescue. In terms of storytelling, I can tell you way early on in this review that Momoko stuck the landing; you can feel the love and passion she has for these characters.
Marvel
Unfortunately, the first thing I want to highlight in this installment is the biggest weakness of this issue. I feel that the pacing of this issue is at its all-time weakest. The script structure feels as such: the heroes break in, find Hisako, snap her out of her haze, and leave a nice little tease for the next issue. While for most stories this wouldn’t be too much of an issue, it just feels unusually fast paced for a comic series that tends to pride itself on slow burns.
Specifically, this feels like it could’ve been two issues itself as we see an emotional connection between Mei and Hisako that’s beautiful but feels like a sudden shift in tension. In a way, this feels mostly an issue with the chronological progression of the Ultimate Universe as a whole, which leads to a good amount of pacing issues that wouldn’t normally be seen in other lore-heavy worlds such as this.
In truth, I feel that the largest issue with the series is the fact that it does feel like we miss so much because of the universal progression. Thankfully, with how Momoko and Davisson handle things, this isn’t too much of an issue. It just makes certain stuff feel a bit like whiplash.
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Aside from the issue’s weaker pacing, I’d say that Momoko’s art continues to hit new highs with each and every installment. You can tell that, at the moment, she is free from the prison bars of NetEase’s Marvel Rivals and is using her newfound free time (or whichever equivalent of that would be for a superstar creator) to her advantage.
From start to end, Momoko’s usage of watercoloring and detailed character design moves to create a striking depiction of the Astral Plane and the characters who stand to inhabit it across each otherworldly appearance. It just creates a strong visual appeal that often feels like a callback to Momoko’s days as a horror and gore artist for the likes of Heavy Metal Magazine.
Moving from that, Davisson’s dialogue is brilliant and he manages to stick the landing in many of the emotional beats between Mei and Hisako (despite how fast pace it felt at times). He’s able to capture the feelings that Momoko expresses here, despite that, however, I do feel that the rest of the cast has a slightly lesser impact in this issue than the aforementioned characters. Big wins for those guys who ship them on Twitter, huh?
In conclusion, Ultimate X-Men #17 is a wild ride that lays the groundwork for thrills and that sweet J-Horror goodness. As I’ve mentioned before, Davisson and Momoko have a great thing going here, and this remains one of the strongest Marvel ongoings the company has presently. I can’t wait for more.
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