Hi Alex, I thought I’d add a comment explaining some of the points that you found confusing in the issue. I think, as a whole, the issue reads better if the reader has a wider understanding of the new Ultimate Marvel status quo. Essentially, Colossus, Magik, and Omega Red run a Soviet Union with the name filed off (the collapse of the Soviet Union never happened in this reality). They project to the rest of the world an identity as the welcoming, peaceful homeland of mutants, but actually run a brutal, repressive regime that experiments on mutants. From the issue, you’re supposed to get that Nightcrawler and Mystique escaped from some form of internment/reeducation camp and joined a resistance movement where they met Logan and became his friend. Logan was later captured after an altercation with the Eurasian forces and brainwashed. The letter at the end of the issue, written by Nighcrawler as a kind of newsletter to the rest of the resistance network, I think is basically supposed to accomplish two things: 1) explicitly state the characters’ connections and 2) lay out that, in this reality, Wolverine started as the friendly freedom fighter and became a broken, brainwashed killing machine as opposed to the opposite order in the main Marvel continuity. Hope this helped!
Thank you so much for this insight! The thing that really confused me the most was when mystique changed into colossus. But I appreciate the info! The thing about alternate reality comics is i think they need to be super clear on a lot of stuff because the reader automatically defaults to the main reality if they don't know any better.
@@alexturbin04401yeah that’s maybe the one part of the comic that seemed too vague. I think Mystique knew Eurasian forces were attacking them, so she impersonated their boss, which really doesn’t make much sense to me. Maybe it’s supposed to show how desperate she is? I agree that stories like this need to be super clear about how different the reality is. A lot of the early issues of other books included maps that show the political spheres of influence, but that seems to have been dropped. There’s definitely a tension in setting up this new Ultimate Universe as an easy on-ramp for new readers except it follows up an event series (and technically two other event series and an entire other publishing line). This title more than the other four suffers from the assumption that the reader’s already engaged with the rest of the line (I guess it helps that Black Panther and X-Men are basically doing their own things away from the overarching plot).
Hi Alex, I thought I’d add a comment explaining some of the points that you found confusing in the issue. I think, as a whole, the issue reads better if the reader has a wider understanding of the new Ultimate Marvel status quo. Essentially, Colossus, Magik, and Omega Red run a Soviet Union with the name filed off (the collapse of the Soviet Union never happened in this reality). They project to the rest of the world an identity as the welcoming, peaceful homeland of mutants, but actually run a brutal, repressive regime that experiments on mutants.
From the issue, you’re supposed to get that Nightcrawler and Mystique escaped from some form of internment/reeducation camp and joined a resistance movement where they met Logan and became his friend. Logan was later captured after an altercation with the Eurasian forces and brainwashed.
The letter at the end of the issue, written by Nighcrawler as a kind of newsletter to the rest of the resistance network, I think is basically supposed to accomplish two things: 1) explicitly state the characters’ connections and 2) lay out that, in this reality, Wolverine started as the friendly freedom fighter and became a broken, brainwashed killing machine as opposed to the opposite order in the main Marvel continuity.
Hope this helped!
Thank you so much for this insight! The thing that really confused me the most was when mystique changed into colossus. But I appreciate the info! The thing about alternate reality comics is i think they need to be super clear on a lot of stuff because the reader automatically defaults to the main reality if they don't know any better.
@@alexturbin04401yeah that’s maybe the one part of the comic that seemed too vague. I think Mystique knew Eurasian forces were attacking them, so she impersonated their boss, which really doesn’t make much sense to me. Maybe it’s supposed to show how desperate she is?
I agree that stories like this need to be super clear about how different the reality is. A lot of the early issues of other books included maps that show the political spheres of influence, but that seems to have been dropped. There’s definitely a tension in setting up this new Ultimate Universe as an easy on-ramp for new readers except it follows up an event series (and technically two other event series and an entire other publishing line). This title more than the other four suffers from the assumption that the reader’s already engaged with the rest of the line (I guess it helps that Black Panther and X-Men are basically doing their own things away from the overarching plot).