Ultimate X-Men #40 Review

Archive

Reviewer: “Starman” Matt Morrison
Story Title: New Mutants (Part One)

Written by: Brian Michael Bendis
Penciled by: David Finch
Inked by: Art Thibert
Colored by: Frank D’Armata & Morry Hollowell
Lettered by: Chris Eliopoulos
Editor: Ralph Macchio
Publisher: Marvel Comics

SCENE: The Worthington Mansion

Xavier: So what you’re telling me is that the boy lives here alone because his parents find him… distasteful?

Butler: Indeed, the boy wants for nothing financially as my masters are your atypical WASP scumbags who cannot cope with anything outside their own viewpoints of normalcy but neither can they bring themselves to disown the boy outright.

Xavier: So you want me to take him out of their bigoted hands in exchange for a huge sum of money?

Butler: That is the offer, yes.

Xavier: You insult me, sir. I take all young people with mutations into my school based on need, not on financial reward.

Butler: So you won’t be needing the check for several million dollars?

Xavier: (grabbing the check) Not NEEDING as such… but advanced holographic technology doesn’t pay for itself… YOINK!

SCENE: The Xavier School For Mutants : The Pool

Xavier: I’m sorry to interrupt the 1 pm sunbathing and lounging around class, but I wanted to introduce our newest student. This is Warren. He never wears shirts.

Kitty: Oooh! I wanna sink my teeth into that! I don’t care if he’s Kosher or not…

Storm: Kitty, you’re 13 or something. Granted, we’d never know if from that swimsuit or the way your body is drawn in the long shots…

Rogue: Hold on… isn’t that kinda weird? I mean, he looks like an angel… and then we have demons walking around with us…

Nightcrawler: Ummmm….

Rogue: I mean, its all Biblical, right? Sign of the end times? The forces of good and evil standing among us, working in plain sight?!?

Nightcrawler: Uh.. hello? Standing right here?

Xavier: Now, Rogue. Kurt is not a demon. Apologize to him.

Rogue: I’m sorry I called you a demon, Kurt.

Nightcrawler: That’s okay. I’m just happy to see someone else is getting the dialogue with the heavy-handed religious commentary

Rogue: Well, I’m just glad to be able to say “I” instead of “Ah” and “sugar” instead of “sugah”.

Xavier: I do understand your concerns and we will be discussing the religious implications of mutation later. Not now.

Rogue: When will we be discussing it, Professor?

Xavier: Off-camera. There’s no way I’m going to piss off the Christian Coalition by touching this subject with a 10 foot poll in any story that will see print.

SCENE: The Xavier School For Mutants : The Next Day

Pro-Mutant Protestors: God is a mutant!

Anti-Mutant Protestors: God hates mutants!

Xavier: Before I ask which one of you is responsible for the crowds of zealots outside the campus, I would like to point out that I a) am not stupid b) am a telepath c) already know the answer and d) know that one of you has a history of saying things he shouldn’t to people about the inner-workings of our semi-secret school of superheroic celebrities… HANK?!

Beast: What? I just posted it on a few websites… along with those naked pictures of Storm.

Storm: You son of a-

Xavier: You can electrolicize the hair off of him later. Right now, I want you to go find Warren.
Storm: Why me?

Xavier: Because he likes you.

Storm: You read his mind to find that out?

Xavier: No, I found the pictures bookmarked on the computer in his room.

SCENE: A Cliff.

Storm: Hey.

Warren: Wow, I finally get some dialogue of more than like three words in a book that’s all about me.

Storm: We want you back.

Warren: So you can laugh at me some more?

Storm: We weren’t laughing. Well, Bobby was but we try to ignore him. All the girls think you’re gorgeous and want you to take them to heaven and back.

Warren: Okay. So I am going to have a lot of gorgeous and in the most case legal-age girls fighting over me…but people think I’m this thing I’m not.

Storm: So go show them what you are. Look, I write and nobody knows I write and nobody thinks of me as a writer, but that doesn’t mean I’m not a writer.

Warren: … what?

Storm: I don’t know. It’s news to me too, but it’s a lot more characterization than I got when Mark Millar was writing this book.

Warren: Well.I guess I can get all those nuts off the lawn, at least.

SCENE: The Xavier School For Mutants

Warren: I’m not an angel. I’m a mutant. I don’t have any message from any God, but I think that fighting over the whole thing is pretty silly and that we should all be good to each other despite our differences.

*crickets chirp*

SCENE: A Diner

Hank: (reading from newspaper) Angel Sightings are Mutant Hoax on Page One…. Dick Cheney’s Oil Company overcharging customers on page 20.

Shadowy Figure: Rather a mess, isn’t it?

Hank: Who are you?

Shadowy Figure: Darned if I know. Allow me to say something cryptic to lead into the next part of the story.

Wolverine: Hey! I didn’t show up once in this book! Call my agent!

He stands at the center of the universe, old as the stars and wise as infinity. And he can see the turning of the last page long before you’ve even started the book. He’s like rain and fog and the chilling touch of the grave. He is called many names in a thousand tongues on a million worlds. Heckler. The Smirking One. Riffer. The Lonely Magus. Wolf-Brother. The God of Snark. Mister Pirate. The Guy In The Rafters. Captain. The Voice In The Back. But here and now, in this place and in this time, he is called The Starman. And... he's wonderful.