Marvel’s new Ultimate Universe is brilliant so far, and it’s taken the comic industry by storm. While DC’s Absolute books have stolen a lot of its thunder, Ultimate has supplied readers with some of the best Marvel stories in years. Ultimate Spider-Man alone is worth its weight in gold. However, of the three launch titles, the most interesting is Ultimate X-Men. Ultimate Spider-Man and Ultimate Black Panther were both sort of standard Spider-Man and Black Panther comics; sure, there were differences from the mainline books, but they were obviously Spider-Man and Black Panther comics. Ultimate X-Men, however, has been completely different from stereotypical X-Men books and that has made it one of the more talked about Ultimate books.
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Written and drawn by Peach Momoko, Ultimate X-Men definitely doesn’t look like a standard X-Men comic, not even the previous manga-inspired art from legends like Joe Madureira. Momoko’s watercolor manga style gives the book a chibi vibe that can often butt right up against its horror manga writing style. Ultimate X-Men has been something of a slowburn, and the vast differences between it and the mainline X-Men have caused many fans to revolt against it. However, Ultimate X-Men is something special and it finds new ways to tell X-Men stories that open the concept up for the future. This is exactly the kind of X-Men comic fans — and the characters — deserve.
Ultimate X-Men Is an Amazing Remix of the X-Men Mythos
The X-Men are a deceptively simple concept, but there are a few things that some fans want from the team. There’s Xavier’s dream of peaceful co-existence between humans and mutants. There’s the mansion, a school for mutants, and people trying to learn to control their powers. There’s evil humans and mutants, and the X-Men have to fight them. X-Men fans like to pat themselves on the back about liking a comic that has such a positive message — racism sucks, a message that wasn’t always as controversial as it seemingly is in America in 2025 — but there’s very little of that sort of thing in Ultimate X-Men. There’s definitely a familiar attitude towards mutants — the heartbreaking story of Natsu, Ultimate X-Men’s version of Cyclops, is an example of this — but there’s no dream. There’s not even an Xavier.
Ultimate X-Men has a school, but it’s not a special school for mutants. It’s just a regular Japanese secondary school, full of regular students, and the young mutants of the so far unnamed X-Men. There are people trying to control their powers, but there’s no one there to teach them; they have to figure out it themselves. There’s definitely evil mutants and humans — the cultlike Children of the Atom and the government of Hi no Kuni, the name of Japan on Earth-6160, fill the void but so far haven’t been as overtly monstrous as those in the mainline universe. There’s no Magneto, no opposite dream for the mutants, but there’s the evil leader of the Children of the Atom and Shinobu, this universe’s version of the Shadow King, who each present a different idea of mutant relations to the book’s cast.
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Ultimate X-Men takes what readers expect from an X-Men comic, and remixes it. It isn’t a traditional superhero comic either. Peach Momoko’s books have always been heavily Japanese, and that’s given Ultimate X-Men a horror manga feel. All of these things have made it so that many more traditional X-Men fans — the ones currently cheering the regressive “From the Ashes” current status quo — not only don’t like the book, but take every chance to call out the book for not being the exact same thing as what came before.
The book is full of interesting new characters — Armor is finally getting her chance to be a star nearly twenty years after her debut — taking versions of what we have seen before, and tweaking them. Maystorm is a fan of Storm and that’s why she took her name. There’s a new version of Surge and fan favorite Nico Minoru is one of the most fun characters in the book. The new version of the Shadow King, Shinobu, isn’t the hedonistic monster who wants control, but a broken young man out to corrupt everything he touches. Waiting in the wings are the Children of the Atom and the government of Hi no Kuni itself, all sniffing around the edges of the X-Men’s world. The latest issue revealed one of the biggest mysteries in the book, and set the characters on an entirely new path. It’s a very different kind of X-Men story, and that’s what makes it so vital and, honestly, more important than any other X-Men book on the market.
Ultimate X-Men Is a Mutation of the X-Men’s Concept and We Need More Books Like It
The X-Men are in an unfortunate place right now. The initial sales glow of “From the Ashes” has already faded from the books, and many fans are realizing that the way it just takes portions of X-Men history and drops them into the present hurts the X-Men more than anything else as a concept. It’s like the ’90s all over again — a spate of good looking and often entertaining books with very little meat on the bone. The ’90s was disastrous for the X-Men, and Marvel in general, and one of the things that saved the publisher was the original Ultimate Universe. The new Ultimate Universe is doing the same thing, with Ultimate X-Men leading the charge of taking a venerable concept and bringing it to a new level.
The X-Men have been around for over 60 years now. They’ve told nearly every kind of superhero story under the sun, and just rehashing the past with new members dropped into it can be boring for fans. Ultimate X-Men isn’t rehashing anything; it’s taking the ingredients of the X-Men and putting them into an entirely new type of story. The X-Men have never been in a horror manga before, and it’s definitely a unique take on the concept. This is exactly what the X-Men need right now, and it’s exactly what X-Men fans should be craving. The X-Men are more than the school, the dream, Xavier, and familiar characters and Ultimate X-Men shows that brilliantly.
How do you feel about Ultimate X-Men? Let us know your thoughts in the comment section.
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