Ultimate X-Men #93, the final issue of Robert Kirkman's run, came out last week.  But it took an extra week to make it to my store, and that's why we're covering it now.

In his closing arc, "Apocalypse", Kirkman has been tying up his storylines and clearing the decks for the next writer.  Issue #93 is a classic departing-writer issue, making a couple of big changes to give the story a sense of weight, but also putting all the toys neatly back in the box for the next writer.

I've said before that Kirkman's wrap-up feels a bit rushed to me, and that comment applies again to this final story.  Kirkman's basic story, told over an extended period, involved Cable and Bishop coming back from the future and manipulating events in order to get the X-Men ready to face Apocalypse.  They remove Professor X, set up Bishop as the new leader of the X-Men, and generally try to get everything ready for the bad guy when he arrives.

Now, that's a passable plot.  It's not about anything in particular, but it's a story that you could hang things on.  Still, despite the many months of Bishop stories, not much was done to build up the threat of Apocalyspe, who comes charging in from left field as a sort of villain ex machina.  And then, after all that, he just gets zapped by Phoenix.

Erm... am I missing something here?  Phoenix wasn't even on Bishop's team.  She spent the last couple of years sitting around at the school with the other non-combatants.  How did any of Bishop and Cable's scheming contribute to Phoenix beating Apocalypse, which from the look of things she would have achieved anyway?  It doesn't even seem like a particularly close fight.  And after brushing the bad guy aside, Phoenix then gets to deliver a baffling speech blaming Professor X for the whole thing, the logic of which entirely escapes me.

So despite Kirkman's extended long-term build, what we end up with is a story that tags on a rather arbitrary ending.  I'm left looking back at the last couple of years of stories - all the stuff about the X-Men in Australia and so forth - and wondering whether there was  anything more to this than a mix-and-match exercise in piecing together a mosaic story from disparate familiar elements.  What was the point of all this?  The story ends with the X-Men deciding that they need to take a more active line in changing the world (because Phoenix tells them to), but how that moral relates to the preceding story is decidedly obscure.

In a clear indication of how Ultimate X-Men is sliding down Marvel's priority list, regular artist Salvador Larroca has left before the end of the story, in order to take up his new assignment on Invincible Iron Man (of which, more later).  His replacement is one Harvey Tolibao - a basically sound artist, but prone to massive over-rendering of muscle, even on characters who aren't particularly well built.  A closing scene of the X-Men sitting around on sofas is utterly bizarre, with half the team looking as if their over-stretched tendons could snap at any moment, sending a shower of blood and sinew across the room.

This is a story which has the superficial qualities of an ending, but when you stop to think about it, doesn't relate in any particularly coherent way to the story that came before.  Not a success.

Rating: C

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