Ultimate X-Men #2 is finally starting to look more and more like an X-Men comic

Peach Momoko's Ultimate X-Men is starting to feel more and more like an X-Men comic with April 10's Ultimate X-Men #2, which starts to add in some recognizable mutant elements to the alt-reality title.

Make no mistake, the horror manga vibes are still front-and-center, but the writer/artist's vision is starting to become more clear as Ultimate X-Men #2 starts to add in its X-Men-centric plot points.

Ultimate X-Men #2 by writer and artist Peach Momoko, script adapter Zack Davisson, and letterer Travis Lanham opens with Hisako Ichiki, known in mainstream continuity as the mutant hero Armor, having a dream about her friend Tsubasa, whose haunting death lies at the heart of the mystery of the strange shadow-being who Hisako has encountered in Ultimate X-Men #1.

As Hisako later contemplates the dream, she meets Mei Igarashi (who readers will know as Maystorm, though she doesn't use that name yet on the page), who recognizes Hisako from the car crash where her powers manifested in the first issue.

Hisako invites Mei to go with her to the abandoned school, where the shadow-being beckoned her to meet him in the previous issue. Mei goes along, sensing a mystery, and sure enough, they find the shadow hiding in a strange room which he appears to have converted to a shrine.

After an eerie conversation in which the shadow promises Tsubasa's bullies won't be seen again, the shadow pursues Hisako and Mei, with the latter revealing her weather control powers (which seem to be still developing) and Hisako once again manifesting her Armor form to punch the shadow away.

Back at school, Mei and Hisako learn that they're new classmates, while also learning that the boys who taunted Tsubasa are now dead, just as the shadow told them. 

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Elsewhere, we see that the shadow seems to have been under the control of a character who bears a striking resemblance to a young version of mainstream X-Men villain Amahl Farouk, the Shadow