Uncanny X-Men #2 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
UNCANNY X-MEN vol 6 #2
“Red Wave, part 2: There Was a Before, There Will be an After”
Writer: Gail Simone
Artist: David Marquez
Colour artist: Matthew Wilson
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Editor: Tom Brevoort
THE X-MEN:
Rogue thinks that it’s fallen to her little group to step up and be the X-Men. She flags that the Outliers were willing to ally with her when most of the former X-Men wouldn’t return her calls. The elephant in the room here is the state of her relationship with Cyclops. They’re clearly in touch and basically cordial – they spoke last issue and speak again in this one. At the end of issue #1 (which leads directly into this one) Rogue said that “Cyclops is building something up there [north], I think”.
However… this issue includes Rogue’s side of her conversation with Cyclops from X-Men #3. If so, this issue comes after X-Men #2, where Cyclops’s team showed up publicly in San Francisco, and attracted some public attention. So did Rogue just miss all that? Or does she not regard Cyclops’ team as proper X-Men for some reason? The fact that she calls Cyclops “the last guy I want to talk to” might point in the latter direction.
Gambit is apparently affected by the Eye of Agamotto which he obtained last issue. It’s described here as the “left” eye, which alludes to the fact that it’s the pair of the one normally found in the custody fo Dr Strange. (For more of the back story, see the Uncanny X-Men #1 annotations under “Sadurang”.) This plot is a bit odd, since the issue starts with everyone apparently aware of the issue, and I don’t see anything in issue #1 setting it up. Anyway, the Eye fires off an energy blast without Gambit wanting it to. He says he’s “picked up a hitcher” who’s “a bit twitchy”.
Wolverine initially rejects the Outliers’ request for help, surprisingly harshly. He gives two main reasons for that. First, he says that he doesn’t want to be a teacher again and says that some of his students are dead. When? It would have to have happened at some point after the fall of Krakoa – he says that they’re not alive, not merely that they died at some point. So maybe it’s an untold story from the time jump between volumes.
His other reason is that the Outliers smell of death, so apparently he doesn’t take their pleas for help at face value. Still, he seems to relent after a while.
Jubilee shows up direct from Free Comic Book Day: X-Men / Blood Hunt, where she was casing the Graymalkin Prison and decided to join Rogue’s group.
Cyclops cameos to give us the other side of the conversation from X-Men #3. We don’t learn anything new here; it’s the same scene from different perspectives.
THE SUPPORTING CAST
The Outliers – as they’re called on the cover – are a group of superpowered teens who are on the run from “the Hag” – the creature we saw attack Fawn in a forest last issue. More of her in a bit. The Outliers say that a voice led them to the X-Men. The group raise other questions, though. They’re surprisingly effective in a fight despite a lack of formal training; the X-Men do beat them but it’s not a walkover. They come from wildly different parts of the world, which begs the question of how they met.
- Jitter (Sofia Yong) is from Singapore. She seems to be some sort of speedster. She starts a one minute timer on her watch in order to “focus” and loses quite quickly after the time runs out
- Ransom (Valentin Correa) is from Buenos Aires and seems to be the leader or at least the alpha figure. He appears to be a generic big strong guy. He says he tossed a coin to decide whether he would join the X-Men or “the Brotherhood” – by which he presumably means “become a villain” in a general sense.
- Deathdream (Hotoru) is from Kyoto and he’s a goth with hazily defined dream-related powers. He seems to be able to contact the spirits of Wolverine’s dead victims, or at least that’s what he implies.
- Calico (Becca Simon-Pinette) and her horse Ember are from Clintwood, Virginia. She can apparently transform into a “pegasus warrior” with energy armour and wings, which is all very manga. She appears to have been raised by an anti-mutant mother who “said all mutants are dirty goblins”. What she thinks about mutants is hard to decipher given that she seems to get on fine with the rest of her group. Calico claims that she is not a mutant and that she had nowhere else to go. Maybe she’s in denial.
Nobody flags it, but the final words of Harvey, the precog who died last issue, were “They’re coming. You have to help them. One of them is the Endling.” Presumably he was referring to the Outliers.
Professor X appears in two flashback scenes which show how he met a girl called Sarah (see below). This flashback apparently takes place during his time at Oxford University, earlier in the term before he met Moira MacTaggert (as shown in Uncanny X-Men #389, to the extent that it doesn’t conflict with House of X).
Siryn, who was previously shown as a prisoner at Graymalkin in the Free Comic Book Day story, is offered the chance to become a prison trustee.
Fawn, the girl that was attacked by a monster last issue, is delivered by said monster to Graymalkin.
THE VILLAINS:
Corina Ellis remains whatever the female equivalent of moustache-twirling it. She tells Siryn that Professor X is dead (which she knows isn’t true). She also clearly believes that Siryn hasn’t heard Professor X’s voice in her mind since the fall of Krakoa. That may suggest that she doesn’t know that the Professor has the ability to transmit beyond his cell – but it could also mean that her telepath Scurvy has read Siryn’s mind and confirmed that she personally wans’t contacted.
Corina’s pitch to Siryn is odd; she says that “we’re going to fix everything”. Presumably something similar was said to Scurvy, although she doesn’t seem too bothered about talking about her plans in front of him.
Siryn has heard Corina’s podcast. It was previously mentioned in X-Men #35, when the mysterious people who appointed her to her role described her as a “glorified podcaster”.
Captain Ezra still seems a lot more normal than Ellis – he seems to be played as a basically sensible military type who’s just following orders.
Scurvy hangs around in the background but doesn’t do anything.
Sarah is the monster who attacked Fawn in the previous issue. She’s been capturing mutants and bringing them to Graymalkin, apparently somewhat to Ezra’s consternation. She shows up here complete with the two henchmen from the previous issue. The Outliers refer to her as the “Hag”.
The obvious implication is that this is the same Sarah who appears as Professor X’s pre-Moira girlfriend in the two flashbacks. If so, time has not been kind to her.
OTHER SPECIFICS:
Page 3: Professor X meets Sarah on a bench, presumably in Oxford. This is a deliberate echo of his first meeting with Moira MacTaggert in House of X #2.
Page 5 panel 3: “I’m a runner. Long-distance.” The origin flashbacks for Professor X and the Juggernaut in X-Men #12 (1965) do indeed show Professor X as a runner at college. (They also show that he was a quarterback, but he wouldn’t be doing that at Oxford.)
Page 7 panel 1: “I called half a dozen mutants I thought were my friends and not one of them picked up.” We saw Rogue call Kitty Pryde last issue and get knocked back; apparently others didn’t even answer the phone.
Page 7 panel 3: “Remy stole the left eye of Agamotto.” Last issue, though you could make a case that he ultimately struck a deal with Sadurang that allowed him to keep it for now.
Page 7 panel 4: “Yesterday we were there as a mutant, a kid, just died.” Last issue.
Page 11 panel 1: “She’s brought us another mutant… He’s hearing impaired. Deaf, really.” We don’t see this character on panel. As you might imagine, the list of pre-existing characters who are male, mutant and hearing impaired is extremely short. If it is someone pre-existing, then the most likely candidate would be Halcyon from the 2020 Iron Man run. (Technically, the highest profile deaf male mutant is Face from the 2010 New Mutants run, but he’s also blind and mute, so it seems unlikely that Ezra would single out his deafness as the only thing to mention.)
Page 21 panel 3: “He means the names you chose. Your mutant names.” This seems to echo a scene from issue #1 where the girl being attacked by Sarah/Hag first gives her name as “Rosa”, but is then prompted for her “real name”, which she gives as Fawn.
I think the implication of Wolverine’s dialogue is just a general reference to the high mortality rate of young mutants, not a reference to unseen events. I think the wording is just off.
So Corina Ellis heads an anti-mutant organization that is being aided by an evil ex-girlfriend of Professor X. There not even trying to pretend this is anything other than Orchis 2.0. I don’t see why Simone and Breevort thought we needed a “Professor X’s ex helps anti-mutant group” plot when we just got finished with one.
The X-Men aren’t very likable here. Four teenagers come to them for help and they threaten them.
“Jitter (Sofia Yong) is from Singapore. She seems to be some sort of speedster. She starts a one minute timer on her watch in order to “focus” and loses quite quickly after the time runs out”
According to Marvel, Jitter has the ability to “hyper-focus”- she can “do anything she sets her mind to—accessing talents and skills most people train their lives to develop” but there are problems if she does it for too long, hence the stopwatch.
” First, he says that he doesn’t want to be a teacher again and says that some of his students are dead. When? It would have to have happened at some point after the fall of Krakoa – he says that they’re not alive, not merely that they died at some point”
This is odd. At the end of Sabretooth War, Logan is depressed because Jubilee, Quentin and Daken are dead. Jubilee is right in front of him when he says this and Quentin has been operating publicly with Scott’s group, so it would be extremely odd if no one told Logan Quentin was alive. Maybe this issue takes place BEFORE the Hellverine series and Logan is depressed because Daken is dead. But if that’s the case, there should have been a note informing the readers that this takes place before the Hellverine series.
“He says he tossed a coin to decide whether he would join the X-Men or “the Brotherhood” – by which he presumably means “become a villain” in a general sense.”
I think he was referring to an actual organization called the Brotherhood. At first, I thought the Brotherhood might be whatever organization Lorna is forming in X-Factor but according to Marvel, Lorna’s organization is the Mutant Underground. In X-Men 3, Scott asks the ONE guy if he wants Scott’s team to be the X-Men or the Brotherhood. Maybe Scott’s group has been labelled “the Brotherhood” by the press and that’s why Rogue says there aren’t any X-Men proper anymore.
I think the real Big Bad is Sarah and not Corina Ellis and that’s why Corina Ellis is so bland.
Sarah: Charles, read my mind. You must listen to me. Humans always lose.
Xavier: Here we go again…
This was a direct follow-up to issue one, but it felt very disjointed, like we missed something.
It’s not helped that Wolverine is telling the same type of story with two of these very characters.
Right now, this is just above x-force for misfires in the relaunch for me.
Marvel did release marketing graphics that explain each of the new kid’s powers if you’re interested
Wasn’t Amelia Voight’s deal also that she was Xavier’s evil ex-girlfriend who got radicalized against him, but in the other direction?
Chuck’s got a pretty bad track record with these breakups.
“Right now, this is just above x-force for misfires in the relaunch for me.”
*scratches head*
So… by that do you mean that you see this as a bigger misfire than X-Force, or do you mean that although it’s a misfire, it’s still better than X-Force?
yrzhe-Yes, exactly. When I heard about the flashback in this issue, I thought they were bringing Voght back.
Xavier met Voght after he lost the use of his legs.
They were in a relationship, but they broke up when she discovered that Xavier was founding the X-Men. She believed that mutants and humans could never coexist and took a separatist stance. She felt that Xavier’s X-Men would being too much publicity to mutants, increasing humans hatred for mutants. She eventually joined the Acolytes.
@Chris V- More importantly, Xavier’s first reaction when she left was to start to use his powers to make her change her mind about leaving him. He stopped himself but she was traumatized by the incident. So yeah, in her case, Xavier could learn a lot about how to handle a breakup gracefully.
I’m sure he just wanted to tell her that the X-Men were simply a back-up plan and that his real agenda was secretly establishing a separatist mutant nation with his other ex and the guy Voght would end up aligning herself, but then realized that four’s a crowd.
Poor Xavier, the man is so misunderstood.
Joining the X-Men or the Brotherhood. Is there maybe a third group with a name that *doesn’t* ring of misogyny?
Oh Brother(hood)
Well, there was a Sisterhood at one point.
Mentioning Xavier’s history as a successful distance runner in high school gets a thumbs-up from me, at least. 🙂
I think Simone is pursuing an agenda to bring into prominence the metaphor of mutants as disabled people. Jitter immediately struck me as an ADHD metaphor. And there was explicit mention of a deaf mutant. And Siryn was basically threatened with disabling injuries.
This particular flavor of “the mutant metaphor” has been gaining a lot of fan traction over the last ~decade, but hasn’t been focused on much before, as far as I know.
“I think Simone is pursuing an agenda to bring into prominence the metaphor of mutants as disabled people. Jitter immediately struck me as an ADHD metaphor. And there was explicit mention of a deaf mutant”
Thing is, deafness is a literal disability, not a metaphorical one.
If a writer wanted to present mutants as a metaphor for disabled people, he/she would have to treat their mutations as disabilities. You could do that with some of the mutant characters depicted over the years, but certainly not all or even most of them.
Also, ADHD isn’t a “disability”, it’s classified as a disorder. The entire idea is really stretching.
“Chuck’s got a pretty bad track record with these breakups.”
Plus Gabrielle Haller, whose child with Xavier keeps changing reality. (Though in fairness, one of those reality changes wiped out the Elder Gods, so that might be a net positive.)
And Lilandra, who periodically reluctantly tries to end all life on Earth, or just the Grey bloodline.
Yes, but don’t forget that Moira hooked Xavier up with Gabrielle specifically to produce Legion (plus, she’s kinky like that).
@Chris V: While the name includes the word “disorder, ADHD is covered under the Americans with Disabilities Act.
It was also classified as a disability under the 1973 Rehabilitation Act. So ADHD is treated as a disability in terms of U.S. labor and education law.
More broadly, neurodivergence — including ADHD — is generally discussed in terms of disability discourse these days.
I go by definitions based on the DSM-IV and DSM-V (including the TR). I guess I see your point. My main contention is that a person with ADHD or depression/anxiety/OCD/etc. can choose to pursue medication to help treat or control undesirable symptoms of the underlying neurodevelopmental condition.
If Marvel chose to go in this type of direction for mutation considering the longstanding understanding of mutation in the Marvel Universe as a metaphor with minorities in society, is it going to lead to the idea of available treatment of certain negatives associated with mutant powers? In that sense, it would almost certainly be read by some fans as promoting the idea that LGBTQ+ issues, or even race, are a “disorder”.
Of course, I may be completely overthinking things.
I liked this one.
While I could do without yet another group of new mutants to be forgotten and used in the background as soon as the book ends, the characterization around the X-Men was good. And I’m interested by the B-plot, even if it is just Operation Zero Tolerance mixed with Orchis.
I’m enjoying Simone’s writing enough to stick with this one.
I’m very glad Paul mentioned that the first issue did not set up anything being off about Gambit. My short-term memory is so bad these days that I was willing to assume I’d just forgotten.
(As evidenced by the fact that I forgot Charles’ lady friend was named Sarah by the end of the book, thus missing the Hag connection. But in my defense, that’s more because I couldn’t have been less interested in those parts of the issue)
Otherwise, the art is gorgeous, and the writing is better than a lot of the relaunch books, but still contains plenty that annoys me. I’m still not convinced that we’ll ever get good reasons for Rogue and Cyclops having beef, or other X-Men not answering Rogue’s calls, outside of editorial fiat. And I really have to roll my eyes at things like Wolverine stating that his mentor role never works out while JUBILEE IS STANDING RIGHT THERE NEXT TO HIM AND DOESN’T SAY A WORD OH MY GOD.
@Moo
It sits on top of X-force on my to-read list, so it’s better.
@Michael- just a small note in agreement: Wolverine not only knows Quentin is alive, he saw him in person, as he was in Xmen #1 when Quentin was part of the group that rescued him.
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