X-Men: The End praised the scenes featuring Storm as the most compelling, despite not having been a particularly avid fan of that character, and the artwork, saying that the pencils, coloring and storytelling were "all on target", but criticized other aspects of the book, including the characterization, the pacing of the action scenes, and the story, which he felt was neither original nor complete, lacked character insight, and did not serve as a worthy finale to the X-Men. According to one interview with Chris Claremont, "GeNext" is supposed to take place 10 years after the events of "X-Men: The End", although as the
Ultimate X-Men books; you're competing with 'Buffy'...Superhero comics aren't adult, but they shouldn't be written for five-year-olds either." Millar shaped "Ultimate X-Men" into a commercial hit, consistently outselling its sister titles, "X-Treme X-Men" and "Uncanny X-Men" and staying just behind Grant Morrison's experimental and popular "" run. After Mark Millar's run, "Ultimate Spider-Man" writer Brian Michael Bendis took over for a year. Bendis stated that his run on the book would be more character-driven, especially concerning Wolverine, who had previously tried to kill his teammate Cyclops. Bendis' run was marked by the relative absence of major villains and was also notorious for