Uncanny X-Men #3 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
UNCANNY X-MEN vol 6 #3
“Red Wave, part 3: The Inside Man”
Writer: Gail Simone
Artist: David Marquez
Colour artist: Matthew Wilson
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Editor: Tom Brevoort
THE X-MEN:
Rogue and Gambit have chosen to stay at Haven even though they have options; she feels they qualify as “orphans”, and besides, the Outliers certainly do (at least in a metaphorical sense).
Wolverine leaves, just as he refused to stay with Cyclops’ team in X-Men #1. He satisfies himself that Rogue will be able to take care of the Outliers, and claims that something feels wrong with him and that he doesn’t feel people are safe around him right now. As a parting gift, he leaves something outside for Rogue – presumably the makeshift Danger Room in the grounds, or maybe part of it. He then heads for the Kisatchie National Forest, apparently in search of Sarah Gaunt. At least, that’s where she finds him. Somehow, he’s able to psychically warn Rogue when he’s being killed by Sarah, but that might be more to do with Sarah’s magic.
Jubilee sticks around. Wolverine expects her to take his departure badly, but we don’t actually see that.
Nightcrawler duly shows up to help with the newcomers. (Really, Rogue doesn’t seem to be having that much trouble getting people to return her calls, for all her grumbling.)
THE SUPPORTING CAST:
Professor X claims that he has no outlet for his powers in his cell. That seems to contradict X-Men: From the Ashes Infinity Comic #4-6, where he was certainly able to interact with the outside world, albeit with some difficulty, even while being contained in Graymalkin Prison.
The Outliers:
- Ransom was the child of a rich Argentinian couple who were ashamed of him being a mutant and abandoned him when he was kidnapped – hence his codename. He has no heart and when the kidnappers tried to shoot him, the bullets went straight through him. They also apparently gave him some sort of power up, though it’s not really clear how this works.
- Jitter can apparently do “anything” for a period of a minute, before exhausting herself – this appears to mean that her normal human abilities are briefly supercharged, rather than her being able to fly or so forth. Her origin story involves her killing a bully while fighting back.
- Calico is from another rich but abusive family, which kept her in isolation from the world and from pop culture. She’s bonded mainly with her horse Ember. She gives a strange back story in which her family home just burns down one day for no reason and she leaves with Ember – her powers don’t feature in this story at all, and it seems fairly obvious there’s more to it. Calico claimed last issue that she wasn’t a mutant; is she implying that the horse is the mutant, and that it turned on the family to rescue her? She seems clueless enough about the outside world to suggest that she hasn’t been away from home for long, and she assumes that this makeshift orphanage to have servants – although at the same time, she chooses to sleep in the stable with her horse. As in the previous issue, mutants keep reminding her of the horror stories her parents told her about them, though this doesn’t seem to put her off interacting with them.
- Deathdream either spends the night in the cemetery or at least goes there early on. He was stillborn but has the mutant power to die and return to life, and has some sort of connection with ghosts. He’s generally rather spooky and attacks Nightcrawler with surprising brutality – but also breaks character and apologises as soon as he’s interrupted, saying that he’s “poison” and “can’t help it”. He returns to normal very quickly, though.
Marcus St Juniors, the owner of Haven, gives a pep talk to his new mutant residents about the house rules (there don’t seem to be any other residents). We also meet his wife Alice and daughter Chelsea, who were mentioned in issue #1, but not seen.
THE VILLAINS:
Sarah Gaunt somehow gets into Professor X’s cell and demands to know where “the children” are. If she means the Outliers, why does she expect Professor X to know? She makes a similar demand when she fights Wolverine later in the issue. Sarah is apparently semi-magical – she did claim to be a pagan in flashback last issue – and talks about “my realm”. Her claws, she claims, are “forged from the melted blades of murderers”.
Corina Ellis, Captain Ezra and Scurvy all show up to discuss their inability to control Sarah.
OTHER SPECIFICS:
Page 3 panel 1: “I fancy I smell wildflowers and hillside heather.” This page has a lot of references back to the flashback in issue #2 which showed Charles and Sarah’s first meeting. Specifically, this is how Charles imagined Sarah smelling in that scene too.
Page 3 panel 3: “Shall I make a stirrup, Charles the jaguar?” In last issue’s scene, Sarah asks him to make a stirrup for her so that she can climb a tree. He tells her that his long-distance running coach “says I have the focus of a jaguar on the hunt.”
Page 4 panel 1: “When my friends, my family, wouldn’t answer my calls…” Rogue made a similar claim in the previous issue, and we still haven’t been told how that squares with the fact that Cyclops’ X-Men are very willing to talk to her.
Page 4 panel 4: “They take any orphans in, they said.” This is what Marcus said when Rogue and co arrived at Haven in issue #1.
Page 7 panel 5: “Weird how that kid in the hospital, Harvey X, predicted all this.” “Predicted one of the kids was gonna end mutantkind too, as I recall.” Issue #1. What Harvey said was: “They’re coming. You have to help them. One of them is the Endling.” Harvey didn’t in terms predict that one of the kids would end mutantkind. An “endling”, according to Wikipedia, is the last known member of a species, so what Harvey actually said was that one of the Outliers would be the last mutant – not who would bring that about. (For what it’s worth, the Oxford English Dictionary doesn’t regard the term as sufficiently well established to list – it appears to be a suggested coinage from the letters page of Nature.) At any rate, Rogue is willing to ignore that part of the prediction.
Page 10 panel 4: “…the most sophisticated AI security ever conceived.” No wonder it doesn’t work.
Page 20 panel 1: “False pirate? False priest?” Nightcrawler has done his swashbuckling schtick from his debut. The “false priest” stuff involves the notorious Chuck Austen story where Nightcrawler’s training to be a priest is retconned into a trap by the Church of Humanity.
Page 24 panel 6: “Not dead yet.” This was the title of a late 90s Wolverine story by Warren Ellis and Leinil Francis Yu (Wolverine vol 2 #119-122).
Not Dead Yet was also the title of my father’s autobiography
Endlings popped up in Scarlet Witch recently. IIRC they were just monstrous mooks sent by the villain. Odd that the same word pops up twice in one year, in different contexts. Or maybe that’ll be the next big crossover.
Also, Wolverine really looks like Hugh Jackman here. Mandated from above, or artist’s own decision?
I’m onboard with this one. I’m enjoying the emphasis on character interaction, I think the new characters are all pretty interesting and of course the big thing is David Marquez’s art. He’s just top tier, the book looks gorgeous. I like the kind of isolated feel similar to the Outback era. Good stuff!
“Deathdream”
Ugh, this sounds like an early ’90s codename. Also, I know his powers aren’t exactly the same, but this character reminds me of Wicked. Maybe they could pair up and she can change her name to Lady Deathdream.
The Outliers are interesting. This may turn out to be a worthwhile book just for learning more about them. I liked the scenes between them and Nightcrawler.
There was never a time when Jubilee, Nightcrawler and Wolverine were all together in this book. Perhaps a deliberate choice from Gail Simone to highlight how this is a team of volunteers.
Wolverine seems to acknowledge that he is not quite himself. Which I see as hints that this happens before his newest solo ongoing. Still, it is odd that Rogue just accepts that she is somehow sensing Wolverine’s plight for no obvious reason.
There seems to be a willingness to show characters remembering Krakoa and regretting its loss in the current books. It is very evident in Nyx, and to a lesser extent here as well. I like that. Makes the characters more believable and rounded.
While I don’t dislike this comic, the disjointed storytelling is driving me up the wall. What powers do the Outliers possess? Other than Jitter, they’re annoyingly undefined. Where did Nightcrawler come from, and how did his appearance here relate to his role in issue 1? Unclear. Why don’t we see Jubilee’s reaction to Wolverine leaving? We just don’t. What’s up with the “moonbeam” nickname? No idea, and it sounds stupid. Is Charles able to see the outside world, as he did in X-Men 35? Guess not? Maybe?
That said, David Marquez and Matthew Wilson are killing it on the art. This might be Marvel’s best looking comic. The dialogue is generally good, and I want to see Rogue & co. work with the new characters. I like this title enough to keep reading, but it should be better.
@Luis Dantas, at least issue #1 of his ongoing is explicitly before Uncanny X-Men #1, although I think we’ll get a small time jump for #2.
So does Deathdream have the same powers as Mr Immortal? Who btw is a mutant that has been prophecised to survive until the end of the universe. 😛
I actually love the way the story jumps around. I normally can’t stand character introduction issues but this moved at such a brisk pace that it didn’t feel like one.
And this book aces the sense of displacement for the whole cast. The X-Men always do this thing where they settle right into each secret base or whatever, but the sense of being “addressless” here is really something new.
The original X-Force bummed around in a convertible for ages. The funny thing is, before that they lived in a variety of basements. X-Force used to mean deadbeat, not beat dead.
I haven’t actually read this comic yet, but from previews and such I kind of like Deathdream. Monarch of the miserable goths. I joke, but being a kind of material ghost of a stillborn baby grown to adulthood is pretty poignant. Just so long as they don’t overdo it, which would be a very fine line.
Gail Simone is clearly having a lot of fun writing dialogue here. Rogue’s Southern folksiness is dialled up to 11, not exactly like in the cartoon but not unlike that.
The question arises, am I having as much fun reading it as Simone had writing it? I’m not sure. The potential is there, the art is great, I like character focused books. I’m definitely not sold on the villains – either the Hag from the Witcher games or the evil podcaster (podcastress? podcastrix?). And I think I rolled my eyes so hard that it was audible when I saw the Attack on Graymalkin announcement.
Mixed bag, then. More good than bad, but still very much mixed.
I loved this week’s NYX, though.
Regarding Calico, I already had the suspicion that her horse is the mutant, not she herself. But animals have usually not been considered mutants in the strict sense in Marvel comics.
There have been a few:
There was Don the Lobster from Fallen Angels, although his mutation was simply his blue colouration. I’m not sure why they made a point that Don was a mutant while Bill was only an enhanced cyborg…are there many green lobsters, as opposed to blue?
I guess that this is debatable by a “strict definition” of “mutants” considering blue lobsters are a real genetic mutation in our world.
Devil Dinosaur was considered a mutant.
There was also the mutant cat from an issue of X-Men Unlimited. Beast thought she was a human whose X-gene made her appear feline, but the twist at the end of the story was she was actually a cat whose X-gene made her appear humanoid.
On the one hand, Calico being the human and Ember the mutant wouldn’t be without precedence, since in Alpha Flight there was Major Mapleleaf, empowered by his horse Thunder. (As many folks have noted)
However, it’s not out of the realm of mutant weirdness that Calico is a mutant whose power requires a focus–in this case, either horses or one horse in specific. This of course leads to questions like “Is her power restricted to Ember, and if so, what happens if her horse is injured or killed?” and “If it’s not solely Ember, can she only horse whisper one at a time, or could she presumably bond with multiple?” and “Is she restricted to horses, or could she theoretically bond with other equines? What about a winged horse from Asgard? Zebras? etc”
That’s one problem with mutants: writers are always trying to find new and interesting powers, and some definitely get pretty weird–and hard for subsequent writers to understand…
We have had mutant aliens, including Warlock. There isn’t any reason why MU animals would not include mutants.
Although I now realize that MU mutancy seems to long have become some form of mystical phenomenon as opposed to biological, so who knows.
Maybe there’s a non-human equivalent to the X-gene. Horses have the Q-gene, lobsters have the Bb- gene, Warlock’s species has the @&$&”)-gene, etc.
Warlock would clearly possess the 01011000-gene.
I’m going to go out on a limb here and guess that Calico’s horse is going to turn out to be this “Endling” villain that Harvey character warned the X-Men about at the end of the first issue (it’s supposed to be one of the Outliers, right?)
A villain disguised as a horse. Because I can totally see a writer like Gail Simone Trojan horseing a villain into the cast using an actual horse (or what appears to be a horse anyway).
If Charles X is alive and (apparently) well inside Graymalkin Prison, then what was it that happened at the end of X-Men 35? Where it looked like he was dead. Then it looked like he was in a coma. Then his eyes opened in the back of the prison ambulance in the final panel. I’m still awaiting a payoff for that. Did I miss one already?
@The Other Michael: Now I’m imagining Calico trying to bond with Mr Horse, while he natters on about how a posh lass like her would as like be happier with one of them fancy ponies from That Asgard.
I know it’s not the same as a mutant animal, but this is making me think of Lockjaw and arguably Byrne’s worst recon ever.
@Chris V I’m not sure if you’re being rhetorical, but there is a real-life mutation that makes American lobsters bright blue instead of dull green.
Devil Dinosaur got turned red in his first appearance. He jumped through a fire, and instead of getting burned he just changed colour, and I think he got tougher and smarter as well, but it’shard to tell. A pretty standard silver age superhero origin, just applied to a tyrannosaurus, and easily retconned into him being a mutant, much like Toro.
Si-I’m confused. I mentioned that there is a real-life mutation making some lobsters blue. I guess you’re questioning me about lobsters being green? I don’t think of lobsters as being green, no. I’d describe them as brown.
I like the writing on this book, the art is great and I enjoy that there’s an actual plot that’s going somewhere (even if I’m a little over the parade of girlfriends wronged by Charles).
The book does seem to be moving at a glacial pace, though, as we didn’t really get much this issue we didn’t have last time. Maybe they’re just buying time while Team Cyclops advances their plot before the crossover, but it’s odd how much it happening in Alaska while Louisiana moves at such a languid pace.
Just to short circuit this:
American lobster, green: https://wgme.com/resources/media/10c8c630-c795-49a9-8703-3ce431d92589-large16x9_greenlobster.jpg?1470326955938
American lobster, blue: https://www.usatoday.com/gcdn/presto/2022/08/16/USAT/d22cd02c-4879-4fe7-bd88-3cae201f931d-MicrosoftTeams-image_12.png
But I thought that Jitter only crippled one of her bullies , but didnt kill her ?
And Deathdream is like the male version of X-Statix’s necromorphic/necropathic/necrokinetic Dead Girl (minus the green skin and “healing factor”) while Jitter is like the female version of Generation Hope’s super-survival-instinct-adaptoid* Teon (minus the secondary mutation of feral caveman attitude and abilities)
* whose powers are like a mental version of Darwin’s
I really don’t like Simone’s “Anna Marie”. I don’t quite get the nervous dependence and vivid vulnerability as key parts of Rogue’s character. It feels s bit like she’s regressed in some ways, in comparison to earlier stories – if that makes sense?
I also don’t quite click with some of the odder elements in the storytelling, including the Jubilee bit. Heck, is there even a strong enough reason to stick to Rogue as our only point of view character?
I do like the batch of new mutants though, a lot. Again with the reversible time scales: Logan, who served this exact same role with Marrow and Maggoty, feels almost less mature here than he did under Joe Kelly – though maybe that’s just my bias showing.
I just wish there was a better balance between newer and older characters, and that the villain didn’t seem a bit awfully predictable. But I found a lot to like about this!
@JDSM24: and yeah, I’m pretty sure there’s reference to breaking someone’s net or spine – but nothing further than that.