With ten years of experience working with college students — and even more experience reading and writing about comics — I’m absolutely certain Marvel’s new Ultimate X-Men title is the publisher’s next big chance at attracting new readers from younger generations. Despite the X-Men’s upcoming post-Krakoa reboot, Peach Momoko’s alternate take on the X-Men could be a genuine hit, but only if Marvel plays its cards right.

Ultimate X-Men #1 by Momoko arrived in March 2024 to practically universal acclaim. The story takes place in the new Ultimate Universe, which, in simple terms, has reset the traditional Marvel Universe to basics, reintroducing classic Marvel teams and concepts with new origins. The X-Men — as fans know the classic team — don’t yet exist — but mutants certainly do.

If the X-Men don’t exist in this universe, what exactly is Ultimate X-Men about? The simple answer is that it’s the story of Hisako, a young Japanese girl who discovers she has the power to manifest armor around herself as she navigates her complicated school and personal life. The complex answer is that Ultimate X-Men is actually unlike any other standard Marvel comic on the shelves right now, and that’s part of what should make it so appealing to new readers — but new readers who aren’t exactly unfamiliar with visual storytelling.

Ultimate X-Men Is Already Designed to Attract New Readers

Marvel’s Ultimate Universe Relaunched in Late 2023

It’s no secret that Marvel’s Ultimate Universe relaunch that has taken place over the last year was and is designed to attract new and lapsed readers. I know this because I’m one of those lapsed readers; since childhood I’ve been more of a DC fan, but I hit my peak Marvel era, like so many before me, during my college years, which aligned with the height of Brian Michael Bendis’ involvement with the X-Office (I was especially fond of All-New X-Men; I’m a sucker for time travel drama). But life happens, and for a variety of reasons, I hadn’t bought a Marvel comic in almost ten years — until now.

That said, Ultimate X-Men #1 isn’t the very first new-release X-Men comic I bought in the last year. I may not be a regular Marvel reader, but I’m as aware of Krakoa’s end as anyone following comics, and I can count 2023’s monumental Hellfire Gala one-shot among my collection. But despite the big, fascinating swings happening at the end of the Krakoan age, the dense continuity eventually became far too much for me.

Even with a true X-Men reboot on the horizon, I still feel that history looming over me. And no wonder, when the rebooted X-Men titles aesthetically and narratively evoke an X-Men era from before even my time as a comics reader. If even I, a lover of deep lore and a long-time reader of superhero comics, have trouble navigating the newest X-Men era, why would an 18-year-old newbie feel compelled to pick up these books?

Ultimate X-Men Is Heavily Influenced by Manga

And That’s Part of Its Appeal

That same un-compelled teenager — and other college-aged readers, in my experience as a university lecturer — would have plenty of reason to be drawn to Momoko’s Ultimate X-Men, which dispenses with the need for any continuity knowledge whatsoever. It’s an issue-one-page-one kind of comic with no need for any wiki deep dives for character histories and story references. Actually, there’s little need to “keep up” at all, because this iteration of UXM is methodically slow in its pacing, a storytelling style that feels more drawn from certain genre traditions in manga than from the American-born superhero genre.

That manga influence is true of Momoko’s art as well as her pacing, an observation she confirmed herself in an exclusive interview with Screen Rant earlier this year: “I was inspired heavily [by] Japanese manga, body horror, and horror in general. So, for Ultimate X-Men, or any books that I write, I always want to put in what I love and what I understand.” Momoko’s art is notably distinct from even the most stylized superhero books in comic stores, and that’s not saying anything new.

For me, though — a long-time superhero reader who only started reading manga in 2023 (late to the party, as always) — experiencing a quasi-traditional X-Men story in Momoko’s manga-influenced art and writing style is genuinely thrilling. Ultimate X-Men makes a familiar Marvel property completely unfamiliar to me while still evoking the most popular graphic storytelling style in the world today: manga.

Manga’s Influence on Contemporary Comics Readers Is Undeniable

Junji Ito-Inspired Variant Cover of Harley Quinn #33 by Hayden Sherman

The numbers back me up: according to some recent data analysis by the Beat, 49% of the “graphic novels” sold via BookScan in 2023 were manga, meaning manga easily dominates literally half of the market, and that’s after sales have slowed down after the pandemic upswing. I say this with great love and affection for my weekly comics, but to refer to Marvel or DC as manga’s “competitors” is genuinely laughable from a data standpoint. But I’ve never been one for data analysis — I teach creative writing to undergraduates, after all — so let’s move to the anecdotal evidence.

Even before I began reading and sharing my interest in manga with my undergraduate creative writing students — who, typically, are between 18 and 22 — they were sharing their love of manga with me. When I taught a Poetry and Visual Art course in the fall of 2022 and asked my students about what visual media they had been consuming, manga came up multiple times; I remember one young woman in particular waxing poetic about Attack on Titan.

My Experience Teaching Gen Z Tells Me Ultimate X-Men Could Be a Genuine Hit

Marvel’s Longevity Depends on Reaching These Readers

Since that class, I myself have started reading and “bonding” with my students over manga, and I’ve come to learn just how much anime they’re watching and manga they’re reading. This isn’t the niche interest of my 2000s youth anymore. If my 2023-24 Intro to Creative Writing students are anything to go by — many of them American midwesterners studying the sciences, so a mere slice of the cultural pie — Gen Z is likely far more familiar with and therefore attracted to manga-style storytelling than traditional Marvel-style superhero tales.

With the right packaging and marketing of Ultimate X-Men, Marvel could have a genuine gateway series on its hands for brand-new (and young) readers looking not for an easy entry point into nearly 65 years of X-Men comics, but for innovative superhero storytelling more along the lines of My Hero Academia than New Mutants. Hand me a manga-sized collection of Momoko’s first six issues — something along the lines and price of DC’s new Compact Comics editions — and I could easily get Ultimate X-Men into the hands of my manga-hungry undergrads.

The X-Men Reboot Should Start Courting Younger Readers

Manga Is the Present and the Future

Marvel will, of course, continue promoting the rebooted X-Men line as the mutants enter their new era, and a healthy comics ecosystem should be able to handle both the main X-Men books and the unlike-anything-else Ultimate X-Men. But if half the point of a reboot is offering a jumping-on point for new readers, Marvel could have a sleeper hit on hand with Momoko’s manga-style take on the X-Men. Ultimate X-Men may be critically-acclaimed, but it can’t stay that way, cordoned off in online comics circles. This book is meant to be in the hands of young, eager, new readers. I can only hope Marvel sees that before too long.

Ultimate X-Men #1-4 are available now from Marvel Comics. Ultimate X-Men #5 is available July 17th, 2024.

Source: The Beat