All-New X-Men #36 (HERE BE SPOILERS!)

It was clear from the start of this issue that Bendis had to wrap up the original X-Men's excursion to the Ultimate Universe fairly quickly, since the kids have already returned to "our" Earth and headed into outer space to join Kitty for the "Black Vortex" saga.  He actually manages to do it pretty well, though he makes the X-Men a little luckier than they normally are to get there.

First, the X-Men are lucky that Carmen Cruise -- the mutant who threw them into the Ultimate Universe in the first place -- happens to return to said Universe every time she tries to "jump" to "our" Universe to get home.  They're also lucky that Carmen doesn't totally panic when they approach her; after all, the whole reason that they're in this mess is that she panicked the first time that they approached her.  In the end, Ultimate Jean is miraculously able to find the right synaptic sequence (or something) to reverse engineer the original jump and send the original X-Men "home."

But, luck aside, it's still a pretty strong issue.  I wish that we would've gotten a little bit more time to see the teams say good-bye, particularly to explore how painful it must be for the Ultimate team to lose Warren again.  But, at least we get a decent good-bye from Jean to Miles, so beggars can't be choosers.  In the hands of someone else, this issue could've been a plane crashing into the runway, but Bendis managed to hit the landing, even if it was rough one.  (OK, I'm done with the metaphors.)  I wasn't the biggest fan of this arc, but I'll admit that it got better when the two teams started interacting last issue.  I almost hope that we see the two teams meet again...

*** (three of five stars)