Ultimate X-Men #41

[cyberghostface]

Bendis had a fairly short run on Ultimate X-Men. All things considered, it wasn't his best work for reasons I won't get into. That being said there was one stand-alone issue -- #41 -- that I thought was pretty effective.

The issue opens with a young teen (who I don't think is named except that his first name begins with 'J') who wakes up to find his house empty. Confused that his mother is absent, he leaves a note on the fridge and leaves.





At his high school he meets up with his girlfriend when suddenly...

Soon everyone around him is dead, leaving nothing behind but their clothes.

The kid flees to the caves when one night he gets a visitor-- Wolverine. The kid warns for him to stay back, but Logan tells him that he has a healing factor and it won't hurt him. He hands him a beer and tells him he was found by Cerebro.
 

He wants to know how many people he killed, but Logan tells him that he doesn't. He persists. The number is 265.

Comments

[crinos]

Damn, that's cold as ice right there.

[protogarrett]

Damn. That is heavy.

[brooms]

could they not hook the boy up with avenger's academy's hazmat suit :(

[lbd_nytetrayn]

Does the Ultimate Universe have an Avengers Academy?

[brooms]

i don't think so? and this was published before an avengers academy even existed, i think, but i'm assuming the technology was already there.

[darkknightjrk]

Nope. First, there's no real "Avengers," per se, but basically everyone that's part of the team is connected to the US Military, so it would probably look more like The Initiative.

[q99]

And the only young (non-mutant) hero-in-training we knew of was Spider-man.

[darkknightjrk]

I wonder if, since all three of the Ultimates books are going to link together with this "Divided We Fall" story, if maybe these young revolutionary X-Men will be accepted by the Ultimates team or something.

Then what?

[silverzeo]

If there was one tear or puncture, everyone around would either go out like a flame on dry wood...

Besides, even if they can contain him... how can he just live with the fact he wiped his parents, his girlfriend, a dog, and several people that day by simply hitting puberty and walking to school? How can he expect himself to live a life inside a suit he has to wear for the rest of his life, with the knowledge of a tear or opening to the suit will cause death to anyone around him instantly? With Rogue, she can't touch or be touch without risk of hurting them or killing them due to long term exposure, with his kid, he can't even risk to be a couple yards away from any living thing without risk of killing them with nothing but their clothes to show that they were there....

[endis_ni]

Acid-like poisons. He'd probably corrode clear through a suit.

[mrstatham]

Not if the suit's made of inorganic materials. Bendis is clearly employing some kind of cover-all term to basically imply that the kid kills anything living and basically dissolves them right down, but he's still wearing clothes, after all.

Which is maybe a lack of thought on Bendis' behalf, given a good majority of clothes are in part based on organic materials.

[lbd_nytetrayn]

Guess there are some things even ol' Chuck can't teach you how to control...

...and when the heck did Wolverine come back? Isn't he supposed to be dead? Or is this the old #41?

(I don't even know where they are any more, to be honest.)

[cyberghostface]

This is from 2004 I think.

[mrstatham]

It's the old #41. This was an issue that, I believe, led in to Bendis' 'New Mutants' storyline that introduced Angel, Dazzler, Emma Frost, etc, to the Ultimate Universe.

[sinesofinsanity]

It's worth poiting out that this issue comes up once or twice in both Ultimate X-men and the Ultimates, with Wolverine basically taking a "Once, but Never Again" stance.

[likeaminx]

Wasn't it implied that Fury was the one who sent Wolverine to the kid? I just remember Logan and Fury fighting over something and Logan brought this up. Or something like that. It's been a while since I read Ultimate X-Men so I'm probably wrong.

[cyberghostface]

Yeah, it was Fury.

[likeaminx]

I THOUGHT SO.

Thank you. :D

[shadowpsykie]

Wow... this was good...

Also who was on art

[cyberghostface]

David Finch.

[kraesil]

"Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Sorry, kid."

Pfffty Wolverine

[icon_uk]

Wouldn't it have been kinder and easier just to kill the kid instantly, rather than make him reflect on what a hidesouly horrible thing he had done and dwell on all the things he'd bever get a chance to do? The end result would be the ssame in any event, but the poor kid would have had an easier time of it.

[needagasmask]

Ultimate Universe has never really been kind to its characters. Besides which, they probably wrote it like this to make you sympathize both with the kid and Logan. Knowing you just killed nearly 300 people by simply walking to school, not to mention all the plant and animal life around is something heavy. Then in pops one of the few people in the world you can actually be around, only for him to kill you.

If I recall correctly, this was also around the time that Logan was really starting to connect with the other students, too.

[kamino_neko]

It was either the depressing conversation about why he had to die, or Wolvie chasing him down and killing him while he was terrified.

...

I'm not actually sure one is better for the kid than the other, but this makes for a better, less Benny Hill-ish story.

[icon_uk]

Wolverine found him the cave without help, I find it hard to believe Logan wouldn't have been able to kill him almost before the kid knew he was there. As it is, the conversation does nothing but make the boy feel horribly guilty that he IS to blame, albeit accidentally, for the 265 deaths, including his loved ones, making his last moments on Earth filled with horror and self loathing.

If we'd even found out that Logan hadn't been told to kill him, but contain him, because essentially he's the perfect anti personnel weapon. Put him in a sealed suit, drop him into a hostile situation, unzip the suit and voila, all the enemy are dead in moments. And Logan kills him rather than see someone else turned into a weapon, this might not seem QUITE so bleak.

[wizardru]

You could take the opposite tack, though, that Logan gave him a measure of peace and closure. He clearly suspects that he's the cause of all the death he's seen, he just doesn't understand how or why its happening. He also gets agency in his own death. I'm not sure there's really a good answer here, though.

My cynical side wonders why Fury wouldn't have had him locked in a deep,deep vault to be used as a bioweapon against some future threat.

[rfmcdonald]

I've popped in eight years later.

I am inclined to agree with you. Would it really be better to all but know for certain that you are somehow responsible for the mass death that you have seen around you but not know how this happened? Some degree of closure is a kindness.

[angelophile]

I always read it more as Logan having to justify it to himself by explaining to the kid why he was there to kill him. Black Widow or someone probably would have taken a headshot from a dinstance and been done with it, but even Ultimate Logan seems to have the need to square things with his own personal morality and stabbing a kid in the back of the head without explaining why wouldn't seem like fair play.

[icon_uk]

Which may be all well and good for Logan, but is a frankly fucking awful thing to do to the poor, grief stricken, terrified, innocent kid, who SHOULD be Logan's concern here.

[angelophile]

Yeah, but not prioritizing other people's feelings about his actions is pretty much everything Logan's about too. He's the poster child for being a hero because it makes him feel better about himself/his past, not through being a genuinely good person.

[mrstatham]

I didn't think Bendis' run on Ult X-Men was that bad. His first story was a bit of a waste of time, featuring Daredevil who wasn't really any different than his main counterpart, and Spider-Man, but I thought he made some solid contributions to the Ultimate Universe with his New Mutants story, which fit in perfectly with the absolutely incredibly shitty manner that mutants get treated in the Ultimate U. And frankly, I think Ultimate Dazzler was one of the best ideas he's come up with. Because she was just awesome.

[icon_uk]

Was he the one who made Doug Ramsey a human in the Ultimate universe, because if I ever saw a case of a writer missing the whole bleeding point of a character, that would be one.

[cyberghostface]

Bendis had left the title by that point.

[mrstatham]

No, I think Doug was mentioned only during the Magnetic North storyline? Which was a Brian K Vaughan story.

I could be wrong.

[icon_uk]

He appeared as a throwaway mention in one issue, then a few issues later he appeared as member of Emma Frosts school and was sort of a member of Frosts's team though they did keep stressing that though a genius, he wasn't a mutant. He was killed along with the rest of the team though.

[crazycomiccult.blogspot.com]

I remember Bendis posting a link on his Twitter to a student film of this issue. It was surprisingly good, wish I'd saved the link now.

[cyberghostface]

Is this it?

https://vimeo.com/41530049

[crazycomiccult.blogspot.com]

That's the one!