Ultimate Revelations: All-New X-men #34 PREVIEW

I admit when I first heard that All-New X-men would be crossing over with Ultimate, my first reaction was, “Really? Haven’t these kids suffered enough? Now where the hell is my crack pipe?” I might have found my crack pipe, but I didn’t see the point of sending All-New X-men to Ultimate when they’ve already seen so much of a future that they would rather forget. It reeked of Marvel’s ongoing efforts to make Ultimate not seem like a rotting corpse that’s been gangbanged by necrophiliacs on meth. They tried with Spider-Men. They tried with Cataclysm. People have responded with a collective, “We don’t give an ultimate fuck!” Yet somehow, this crossover has managed to be entertaining.

I could still care more about the shit stains in my underwear than I do about Ultimate these days, but it has provided a fun little adventure for the O5 X-men. They’ve been to space. They’ve traveled through time. A trip to an AU is practically a rite of passage. Plus, I was really looking forward to seeing O5 Jean learning that being dead doesn’t make her future inherently shitty. Being alive can be just as fucked up and Ultimate is proof of that. I was skeptical that Marvel would explore something like that because it fell under the category of, “It makes way too much sense and we can’t have that. Let’s stick to pimping the Inhumans.” But then I saw the preview that CBR posted for All-New X-men #34 and I had a sliver of hope. And this time I didn’t even need a prescription for it.

CBR: All-New X-men #34 PREVIEW

Sure, that shit was copied and pasted directly from All-New X-men #5. But no, I don’t care. It’s still pretty damn awesome. O5 Jean and Ultimate Jean now know the world they come from. And O5 Jean sees that she really doesn’t have it so bad. At least in her world, she died a hero, married the man she loved, and even got to raise a badass son. In Ultimate, she’s a raving psychopath who ditched her once lovable personality for someone that only Rush Limbaugh would find appealing. She really has no excuse to be pissed at her future now.

I’m sure their reactions will be fucked up to say the least. It might even be one of those things that comes up again with the upcoming Secret War event in 2015. I’m also fairly sure it’ll do absolutely jack shit in terms of making the many flaws Ultimate has with its characters not named Miles Morales less egregious. I’d love it if Ultimate Jean got a chance to recapture those elements to her character that once made her so lovable. But that’s not going to happen because we all know Marvel can only give so many fucks about Ultimate at this point. And most of those fucks are going to be reserved for Miles Morales. Nuff said!