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Peach Momoko's Ultimate X-Men is starting to feel more and more like an X-Men comic with April 10's Ultimate X-Men #2, which starts to add in some recognizable mutant elements to the alt-reality title.
Make no mistake, the horror manga vibes are still front-and-center, but the writer/artist's vision is starting to become more clear as Ultimate X-Men #2 starts to add in its X-Men-centric plot points.
Spoilers ahead for Ultimate X-Men #2
Ultimate X-Men #2 by writer and artist Peach Momoko, script adapter Zack Davisson, and letterer Travis Lanham opens with Hisako Ichiki, known in mainstream continuity as the mutant hero Armor, having a dream about her friend Tsubasa, whose haunting death lies at the heart of the mystery of the strange shadow-being who Hisako has encountered in Ultimate X-Men #1.
As Hisako later contemplates the dream, she meets Mei Igarashi (who readers will know as Maystorm, though she doesn't use that name yet on the page), who recognizes Hisako from the car crash where her powers manifested in the first issue.
Hisako invites Mei to go with her to the abandoned school, where the shadow-being beckoned her to meet him in the previous issue. Mei goes along, sensing a mystery, and sure enough, they find the shadow hiding in a strange room which he appears to have converted to a shrine.
After an eerie conversation in which the shadow promises Tsubasa's bullies won't be seen again, the shadow pursues Hisako and Mei, with the latter revealing her weather control powers (which seem to be still developing) and Hisako once again manifesting her Armor form to punch the shadow away.
Back at school, Mei and Hisako learn that they're new classmates, while also learning that the boys who taunted Tsubasa are now dead, just as the shadow told them.
Elsewhere, we see that the shadow seems to have been under the control of a character who bears a striking resemblance to a young version of mainstream X-Men villain Amahl Farouk, the Shadow King. What's more, he's wearing a kind of a fez type hat with wires coming off of it, connecting to pictures all around the small room in which he sits - somewhat resembling a strange, mystical version of Cerebro.
And with that, we're getting our first glimpses of how the mythos of the X-Men will fit into the relaunched world of Ultimate X-Men, in the first look at at team up between two mutants in the Ultimate Universe, and in the Cerebro-esque apparatus used by the apparent new take on the Ultimate Shadow King.
Of course, any of that could be something other than how it appears at first blush - and given the spooky, horror manga vibes that form the basis of the story, we're betting there are more than a few twists ahead. But with Ultimate X-Men #2, the vision of how this story will fit into the larger X-Men line and how it will compare to the upcoming mainstream X-Men relaunch is starting to take shape.
Ultimate X-Men #3 goes on sale May 15.
Stay up to date on all the new X-Men comics Marvel has planned for release.
