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| Ultimate X-Men Vol. 11: The Most Dangerous Game | 
 enlarge | Authors: Brian K Vaughan, Stuart Immonen
Publisher: Marvel Comics
Category: Book
List Price: $9.99
Buy New: $2.00
You Save: $7.99 (80%)
New (39) Used (24) Collectible (1) from $1.99
Avg. Customer Rating:  6 reviews
Sales Rank: 278309
Media: Paperback
Edition: Direct Ed
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 104
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.5
Dimensions (in): 10 x 6.5 x 0.3
ISBN: 0785116591
Dewey Decimal Number: 741.5973
EAN: 9780785116592
ASIN: 0785116591
Publication Date: August 10, 2005
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
It's the ultimate reality show as mutants convicted of capital crimes are released on an island where contestants hunt them down. Longshot has survived longest, and the X-Men are sent to rescue him - until they become part of the game themselves! With one of their teammates a captive on the island of Krakoa, the malevolent media mogul called Mojo demands the X-Men return Longshot to his headquarters or Angel will soon have a harp to go with his wings! Meanwhile, does Longshot have a "Dazzling" not-so-secret admirer? Collects Ultimate X-Men #54-57.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 1 more reviews...
So its come to this? A Reality TV show? Oh well, the X-Men still kick @$$ August 25, 2005
8 out of 9 found this review helpful
Longshot, Mojo and Spiral all enter the Ultimate series in this volume of Ultimate X-Men. The take on Longshot is an interesting twist on his overtly positive, almost child-like, nature in the main-stream Marvel universe- the Ultimate version is a violent human hating bigot; but Mojo and Spiral are utterly dull. Longshot is the unwilling star of a hit reality show (in Genosha) that is owned and operated by an overweight albino (non-mutant, non-alien, base-line human) named Mojo. In Genosha, mutant criminals are sent to Mojo's island where they are hunted down and killed to entertain the masses, but Longshot has outlived all previous contestants and as a result brought the show big ratings. Mojo figures he had best off his fugitive star before the luster fades, and hires a goofy-looking hit-man by the name of Arcade to kill him.
Meanwhile the X-Men are appalled by what they have seen of Genoshan Television, but Professor Xavier refuses to let them become involved in a dangerous situation or spark an international controversy. Some of the X-Men, namely Colossus and newer recruits such as Angel and Dazzler, decide to just go on ahead and do what they feel is right, and soon enough they are in over their heads in Genosha. The other X-Men eventually head to the tiny African island nation to search for their friends, and stumble across Spiral, Longshot's six-armed mutant girlfriend who presents them with a less flattering image of her lover than the team had first assumed.
Pros: The characterization of the X-Men is great, and the focus is finally, after many issues, shifted away from Wolverine, Xavier, Phoenix and Cyclops to the rest of the X-Men. Dazzler and Angel break the mold of typical superhero behaviors (she is a jerk and he is a coward), and Colossus gets a lesson in keeping his emotions in check. The sly battle between Dazzler and Colossus for the attention of Longshot is more than a little amusing, and Nightcrawler's reaction when presented with the possibility that Colossus might have different tastes when it comes to romantic involvement shows that even the oppressed can have prejudices.
Cons: It seems to be that writer Brian K. Vaughan is great at making the main cast more realistic and interesting, but his villains are some of the worst one could imagine. Any appealing qualities the X-Men villains had before he retranslated them into the Ultimate series are time and again stripped away and replaced by dull and mundane bad-guys who would be better served facing off with Steven Seagal (they tend to have no powers and almost phallic obsessions with firearms, and often dress like extras in bad cop movies). Mojo was a lot cooler when he was an insane alien wizard with no spine and a whole dimension of whack-jobs to call down on the X-Men; I mean, seriously, a fat albino? At least give him some mutant power, something formitable, anything. Arcade might have some hope, I guess it's possible for there to be an Ultimate Murder-World, but did we really need just another guy with a big gun? That's the best Vaughan could come up with? A big gun?!? And then there is Spiral: not even a villain. Not even a single moment of thought put into her, so, why even bother wasting a perfectly good character by including her in the story at all?
This story is worth getting for the good stuff involving the X-Men, but anyone expecting a worthwhile battle or villain will be disappointed. And for me, personally, I hate reality TV, but if the people on the shows were killed at the end I might start watching.
 def. not vaughan's best August 3, 2005
7 out of 9 found this review helpful
i keep waiting for vaughan to settle in and pick up the pace on his run of ult. x-men, but he seems content to just coast most of the time, or at the worst, phone it in. this is really a shame b/c his other work is usually consistently worthwhile and he could've done so much great work in the ult universe. this book is completely what you'd expect w/ zero surprises except for a little twist at the end. the story and the characterization are completely forgettable (although longshot's powers are still cool), w/ the main exception of dazzler who is great as a sarcastic wisecracking smart alec. i hate to say it but i'm def. going to skip his next ult x-men arc unless i hear rave reviews.
Oh, well... guess the thrill is gone... November 29, 2005
6 out of 10 found this review helpful
I had been enjoying the "Ultimate X-Men" series pretty well up to this point, but was turned off here by the lackluster plotline and even moreso by the slapdash artwork, which stands in painful contrast to the richly detailed illustration of the earlier volumes. This volume felt a lot like the mass-produced X-books of the late '90s, where there were too many heroes and too many titles, and they all started to melt together into one big kaboom-fest, filled with fetishistically hyper-muscular males and inflatible-doll anorexic female characters. Sadly, the series seems to be taking on that same factory-produced feel, and has lost its freshness and revitalized vigor. Hopefully Marvel can get the book back on track, but I'm not sure I'll still be around to read it when they do. Other, better books clamor for my attention.
 Longshot's back! August 13, 2005
1 out of 5 found this review helpful
Some people may not like the Ultimate Universe's take on some beloved characters, but for me I was just glad to see Longshot back in comic books. The original series by Ann Nocenti and Arthur Adams are still one of my favorite all-time comic books and having him around (although portrayed much different than the "Earth 616" version of him), is still great.
Ehh... February 4, 2006
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I've liked Vaughan's work in the past, especially with the group of teenage superheroes in Runaways, I've always had some fondness for Longshot, and I was hankering for some good old soap operatic X-Men action, and to top it all off, I dig Stuart Immonen's work, so I decided to give this volume a shot, despite not having read any of the rest of his run on this series. At $9.99, how bad could it be?
Well, it's not bad, but that's the problem; that's the best thing I the way that the X-Men (and the reader's) can really say about it. My reaction was very tepid. I liked how the X-Men's expectations (and the reader's) expectations are violated, there's some nice character work (especially on Colossus and Dazzler), and at four issues, it's certainly not "decompressed", but this still didn't click with me like Vaughan's other work has. Maybe that's because he's working with other people's characters here, whereas the Runaways and the casts of Y the Last Man and Ex Machina are his creations, or maybe I'm just sick of the X-Men (not even Joss Whedon and John Cassaday's Astonishing X-Men could hold my attention), but at the end of the day, I can't give it more than 3 stars.
While I think this hits the right beats for an X-Men story, and works for me a lot more than what Mark Millar did with the book at its inception, I'm still not as fond of it as I was Grant Morrison's New X-Men, which is the best thing I've read with the franchise since Claremont's glory days. I'd still say it's worth your $9.99, just don't expect Vaughan's best.
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