Robert Kirkman posts on his blog that Ultimate X-Men #93 is his last issue on the title:
A few weeks ago series editor Ralph Macchio and I were discussing what I would do after the upcoming APOCALYPSE story arc. This arc is something my run on the book has been building toward since I was given the regular writing assignment with issue 75 (issue 66-74 was supposed to be a fill-in arc). Everything I’ve done in the book thus far has been building to this and the thought of continuing after I’d completed my grand plan seemed like overstaying my welcome, frankly. I will have said everything I wanted and done everything I set out to do… so it seemed the time was right.
He adds that we should be hearing about what’s next for him “very soon.”
December 28th, 2007 at 5:33 pm
I’m as big a Cable fan as you’ll find and I had to drop this series once he introduced Ultimate Cable. So a change will be welcomed.
Good luck with your new projects Kirkman.
December 28th, 2007 at 5:41 pm
Kirkman’s run on Ulimate X-Men was this weird sort of attempt to do what Johns does to 60s-80s DC with early 90s Marvel and it just came out really, really strange.
December 28th, 2007 at 7:10 pm
Maybe I’ll pick up the book again…its been unreadable lately…I’ve actually dropped it a bunch of months ago for the first time since it started coming out. Minus the cheesecake aspect…Paquette’s illustrations were pretty nice though.
December 28th, 2007 at 8:14 pm
Kirkman is a good writer but his Ultimate X-Men was among the worst comics ever published. The sub-par artists he was handed played a part in that….
December 28th, 2007 at 9:40 pm
Good news for me… Ultimate X-Men has been on fast decline since Kirkman took over, he seems to have completely missed the point of Ultimate… Onslaught? Bishop, Cable and Stryfe? it’s just been an endless series of tasteless stories, with the sole exception of the psycho nightcrawler story
December 28th, 2007 at 9:49 pm
I’m beyond thrilled. Kirkman’s comics has been good, I love his Invincible. His Ultimate Xmen run is horrible. I did not enjoy one issue of his run.
December 28th, 2007 at 9:58 pm
This sucks, I love Kirkmans run on UX so far, Its his stuff that got me reading this and interested in the X-men
December 28th, 2007 at 11:04 pm
Oh thank god! Kirkman’s run on Ultimate was absolutely DREADFUL!!!
This is great news for people who like good comics. And to those who came into it during his run, go back and read BKV’s to see how it’s done.
December 28th, 2007 at 11:20 pm
This doesn’t surprise me in the least. I spoke to Yanick Paquette back in the spring and he said Marvel was killing Kirkman with a heavy workload and he wasn’t getting the scripts on time. Some were coming in a week or two before the actual issue was due! This could explain the problems with the writing and the artwork inconsistencies during their run.
December 28th, 2007 at 11:34 pm
Love Kirkman’s Invincible, but glad to see this end. It was just awful.
December 28th, 2007 at 11:44 pm
Never read is UXM, but it sounds like it was as tedious as his run on Ant-Man, ugh. Now Invincible on the other hand is effing stellar!
December 28th, 2007 at 11:50 pm
Kirkman’s run on UXM has been abysmal. Thank God he is off. He can have the time to work on his excellent creator owned books.
December 29th, 2007 at 1:44 am
I’ve been liking Kirkmans run on Ultimate X-Men. Hearing that he’ll leave the book is very sad. I’ll probably just quit the comic when his run is over.
December 29th, 2007 at 1:44 am
Do we really need an Ultimate X-men? It doesn’t sound to intersting. I read the first 12, neat and all, but this sounds not all that good.
We still got Uncanny and Volume2. It’s all good.
December 29th, 2007 at 2:13 am
Didn’t Loeb say the #94-#96 were part of Ultimatum? So I guess it’s going to be a while before we know who the new regular team is then.
December 29th, 2007 at 2:50 am
Maybe the Singer arc is finally scheduled.
December 29th, 2007 at 8:06 am
Yes! Yes!! YES!!!
December 29th, 2007 at 9:24 am
This is good news. His Ult. XM run was pretty bad albeit for that annual where he had Nightcrawler go all crazy.
i dont think he ever had the grasp of what UXM should be. Looking forward to his departure. hopefully he doesnt leave the book worse off than when he started.
December 29th, 2007 at 10:06 am
All the concepts Kirkman introduced in UXM sounded good in theory, but they just didn’t work out. It’s a shame.
December 29th, 2007 at 11:02 am
Marvel’s mistake for putting a ’90s aficionado on an Ultimate title. The Ultimate line was invented in part, because of the convoluted drek that came out during that decade.
December 29th, 2007 at 11:14 am
I think that UXM is going to be canceled as a result of Ultimatum. A year ago this would have made me sad but now it feels like it is time. PS Ultimate spider-man will continue, but possibly with a name change.
December 29th, 2007 at 11:26 am
I never thought the day would come when I would truly WELCOME the quitting of Kirkman from a marvel-book… But it has.
And I really don’t get why things turned out the way they did… why did X-men turn into the WORST book that Kirkman has ever written??
Why did he reign supreme on MZ and Thing, while failing so utterly to get what made Ultimate X-men good in the first place..?
December 29th, 2007 at 5:23 pm
He´s leaving? Cool.
Not one to bash Mr. Kirkman, he IS one of the best writers out there no boubt about it, but his UXM were unreadable.
Mr. Kirkman´s stories paired with those lousy pencillers literally killed this once great series in my opinion.
Ultimate Cable was hands down the worst character ever published in the sites of UXM.
So good luck on your upcoming projects but please don´t come back to UXM again.
December 29th, 2007 at 6:35 pm
Writers do have bad project results every once in awhile, Kirkman has more good than bad and that’s all that really matters.
I hope he puts more focus on his creator-owned projects. I realize they are not high paying gigs, but he’s such great writer that he can probably add 2 more creator-owned books to his workload and still keep stay afloat.
December 29th, 2007 at 10:23 pm
YAY! I’ve waited for this day since his second story arc ended! I can’t wait to see who they announce, I hope it is a top tier creator that can turn it readable and what it used to be.
December 30th, 2007 at 2:15 am
Its funny that 90% of his “25 comments” are completely negative.
December 30th, 2007 at 3:15 am
I dropped UXM several issues into his run. I like so much of his work, but this just seemed uninspired. The Magician is what completely lost me, if I remember correctly.
December 30th, 2007 at 4:33 am
As far as I´m concerned there is only one man who can “ressurrect” the Ultimate X-Men and that´s the man who made it the wonderful series it was in the first place:
Mark Millar
All other writers who got a shot at this series never came close to the quality of his UXM work.
December 30th, 2007 at 1:54 pm
I saw someone say the artists were bad.But I have to say Ben Oliver is fucking good!!!
December 30th, 2007 at 5:05 pm
I read somewhere Kirkman said he had it outlined to 125, but I guess with the negative reaction and–I assume–sales losses he decided to leave early. i don’t read this book, but it sounds like it needs a major overhaul and not Jeph Leob either. Someone said a top tier guy, but I don’t think anyone wants to touch this book. They need a young, hungry up and comer. This book can be great.
December 30th, 2007 at 5:29 pm
Thank goodness!! I’d been forced to drop the book sometime ago, after Jean was being treated like the crazy aunt in the attic while some red-haired *MALE* power-a-like was stealing her thunder – and stayed away after Professor X got “killed”(?) by Ultimate Cable. Please, Marvel, get a GOOD author who loves the characters on the book!
December 30th, 2007 at 7:06 pm
Wow. I’m not the only one that dropped this book during his run? The man’s a talented writer, but not for this book.
December 30th, 2007 at 7:50 pm
Yeah, and Kirkman smells bad, too!
December 30th, 2007 at 11:10 pm
“As far as I´m concerned there is only one man who can “ressurrect” the Ultimate X-Men and that´s the man who made it the wonderful series it was in the first place:
Mark Millar
All other writers who got a shot at this series never came close to the quality of his UXM work.”
Very true.
December 31st, 2007 at 12:34 am
I liked some of the ideas Kirkman brought in, especially Ult. Cable and Bishop. And he’s opened up lots of interesting possibilities. But as a whole the comic seems to have lost the edge it began with. In the first three or four years, it felt like Xavier and Cyclops had a plan they were following, and a goal, as well as opponents not only in Magneto but in Fury and Shield; with all respect to Kirkman’s great ability, under him and to some extent under BKV that all got lost in favor of who’s the latest Ult. character and superhero fights. Bring back that focus and edge!
December 31st, 2007 at 1:17 am
Anytime Kirkman touches a mainstream book outside of Marvel Zombies, which he was pretty much free to do as he pleased with the characters, he has totally bombed. His own creations are on an entirely different level. I mean anyone who reads Invincible and then reads UXM would easily think they are reading two different writers. Maybe now Kirkman will now have more time to create more wonderful Image books or better yet go entirely indie and do someting off the wall.
December 31st, 2007 at 2:32 pm
I think you may have hit upon something.
A lot of people here are not happy with what Kirkman has done on UXM.
So why is that?
His creator owned books are great.
He got to go crazy on Marvel Zombies, and that was great.
But UXM. Not so great.
So is Kirkman really to blame?
It makes you wonder what he had to deal with behind the scenes.
I can only guess, had he been given the ability to do what he wanted like he does on his own books, that this title would have been one of the best Ultimate stories ever.
January 1st, 2008 at 10:18 am
I agree with JimS. Though I don’t know what kind of editorial policies and standards UXM has, but it could be that Kirkman couldn’t catch the book’s vibe.
That’s not a bad thing. Every writer specializes in something, so maybe UXM isn’t a book where Kirkman was meant to shine.
January 2nd, 2008 at 8:12 am
after awhile with all the reimagined 90′s charecters I could barely tell the difference this title and any other x-men book ….too many charecters ruined this title..it was better when it was more of a close knit team book
January 2nd, 2008 at 12:59 pm
Does this mean Bryan Singer will FINALLY write his year-long run?
Or has that gone by the wayside?
January 2nd, 2008 at 3:35 pm
Very clearly, I am in the minority of those who have enjoyed the book with Kirkman at the helm.
January 3rd, 2008 at 9:41 am
Kirkman is a Grade A hack.
January 4th, 2008 at 2:40 am
Man, Finally! Kirkman’s UXM is one of the worst books out there. I’m not saying that Kirkman is bad writer. He seems not a good fit for x-men, that’s all…
I hope they can bring Vaughn back. Or release Bryan Singer’s arc
January 10th, 2008 at 3:45 am
One of the best things I thought the Ultimate line could offer was
***the modernizing of the defunct 60′s/70′s-old-to-extinct-stories and reinventing the “lost to obscurity” old school 60′s and 70′s characters. The Ultimate line was supposed to be a new generation of readers digging on 21st century versions of lee-kirby/thomas-adams/claremont-byrne stories. That is what had kept me excited about the Ulitimate line… then by the end 2004 my comic book shopping has turned to just browsing and checking out flogs like this by the end of 2005.
The Ultimate line was also used to promote and grab sales from the movies that have been produced since the Ultimate line was introduced. Yet Marvel’s corporate managers who dont understand comics entirely probably told Kirkman to work out an Ulitimate Cable to work off of interest generated in the Age of Apocolypse anniversary issues that had been printed a little while back. Yet most of Kirkman’s stories were contrived mush of the Morlock Pheonix Legacy Project with crap tossed back and forth from a “Brand New Day” Beast to new day ‘days of future past’ of too much crap — too much crap from the crappy 90′s, and no consistent great Ultimate art.
HEY!!! The upside, apparently these days
, is we could just Brand New Day Kirkman’s run out of existence! 
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