Review by Karl Verhoven

The Tempest begins Brain K. Vaughan’s five volumes writing Ultimate X-Men, and he opens with the team mulling over the loss of one of their colleagues in New Mutants. Vaughan has a very naturalistic approach to a spectacular subject, showing what a wide variety of X-Men can do over the opening two chapters, but mostly as they’re interacting with one another. An exception is the beginning sequence introducing Jean-Paul Baubier, Northstar in the main Marvel universe. Vaughan also introduces a guy going around shooting mutants, someone with ‘sinister’ tattooed on their arm.

There is a slight crunching of the gears with a little of the dialogue, Cyclops threatening Iceman with “open your mouth again and my glasses come off” being an example, but there’s far more that’s good here. Unlike the team under Brian Michael Bendis, the X-Men come across as people rather than vehicles for lines, and Vaughan arrives with a good idea of who they all are and how they’ll react to situations.

New artist Brandon Peterson works very much in the style of departing illustrator David Finch, his layouts not quite as spectacular, but certainly well above average for superhero art, and the excitement transmits. He’s given the task of redesigning Storm, and comes up trumps.

At the heart of The Tempest is the old philosophical chestnut of whether killing enemies makes a person as bad as those enemies. It’s handled well via a variety of opinions throughout the cast, Vaughan ensuring the one person for whom there would be no question is absent during the finale. If there’s a disappointment here it’s the introduction of a classic X-Men villain who’s then near enough thrown away in a role innumerable others could have filled. Then, on the other hand another classic X-Men villain is also seen for the first time in Ultimate X-Men.

Any writer needs some time to settle in, and the characterisation is more than compensation for the few disappointments. Vaughan continues with Cry Wolf, with which this is combined in hardcover as Ultimate X-Men Ultimate Collection Vol. 5. Everything is also found along with much else in the second Ultimate X-Men Omnibus.