Ultimate Comics X-Men #12 Review

Just got four new comics so that I could read them and post reviews for all you guys. I did it because I'm such a nice guy and not because I wanted comic books. I swear. It was all for you. A friend suggested that, instead of picking up Ultimate X-Men I should pick up X-Factor, because one sucked and the other was good. Thanks to the power of compromise I got them both.

*SPOILERS BELOW*

Ultimate Comics X-men #12 is written by Nick Spencer, with pencils by Paco Medina. The best way to describe this comic is...frustrating. This comic is very frustrating to me. For one, It has absolutely nothing to do with the previous issue. Oh what's that? Riot at Camp Angel? Colossus murders somebody? Nimrod Sentinels take over the entire Southwestern United States?! You want to hear about that story?

Too bad.

This issue begins with Alex Summers, apparently holed up in a mental institution. Do you want to know how he got there?

Too bad.

 However we do know that he is apparently being advised by the ghost of his dead brother, Scott a.k.a Cyclops. That might have something to do with people thinking he is crazy. Then a mysterious man in a suit shows up, draining the life out of everybody who tries to stop him from freeing Alex. This mysterious man then turns Alex over to Layla Miller who apparently is the head of Roxxon Industries. 

Layla talks to her executives about acquiring the M-Serum, a super-soldier serum recently acquired by Nick Fury that creates artificial mutants. Layla and the suit guy have some dialogue where they talk about mysterious things like, "The White Hot Room" and "The Fourth" without really explaining their significance. None of which help me understand what is happening in the comic book I am currently reading.

In the end it is revealed that the mysterious man in a suit is...Mr. Sinister. Back from the dead for the second time.

So yeah. Frustrating. Spencer sets up several plot points that look like they will make up the next arc however he does so in a very vague and unclear way. Not to mention the fact that half the plot threads from the last arc haven't even been resolved yet! The villains motives remain unclear to the point where I wouldn't be sure that they were villains if one of them wasn't named MR SINISTER.

The writing and art in this book are both solid, however it feels unbelievably short. I put it down feeling unfulfilled. Trapped in an existential quandary, I felt shallow and empty, wondering what meaning or purpose my small life could have?

Then I remembered that I had three more comics to read. Instantly I felt better.