Uncanny X-Men #6 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
UNCANNY X-MEN vol 6 #6
“The Change in Ourselves”
Writer: Gail Simone
Artist: Javier Garrón
Colourist: Matthew Wilson
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Editor: Tom Brevoort
THE X-MEN:
Wolverine still hasn’t regained his eyesight, even though some time has obviously passed since the last issue (as Marcus has had time to get the Outliers into school). This is unusual for Wolverine but nobody comments on it, so it may just be an editorial decision to drag Wolverine’s healing powers back into more sensible territory than it’s been pitched at in recent years.
He explains that he’s depressed because he recently acquired a bottle of tequila for outliving the last of a bunch of army friends. We saw Logan collect this bottle from a dying friend near the start of issue #1, but the criteria for him “winning” it weren’t explained. Rogue‘s conclusion is that Wolverine has PTSD which has never been properly treated, which seems reasonable enough – many stories over the years have suggested that Wolverine’s healing factor attempts to deal with psychiatric injury but only in rather unhelpful ways, such as suppressing painful memories. Wolverine isn’t convinced, ahd points out that she isn’t a therapist.
Gambit proves surprisingly effective at persuading Calico to accept that she’s a mutant – he ascribes it to her needing a new parent figure. Parenthood is a major theme of this series so far, and the basic premise of Sarah Gaunt’s character.
Jubilee is missing her adopted son Shogo, who stayed in Otherworld as a dragon in Knights of X #5. She and Calico get abducted by the Graymalkin crew to set up the “Raid on Graymalkin” crossover, for reasons which aren’t made clear at this stage (assuming that they extend beyond “because mutants”).
Nightcrawler tells Jubilee that he sometimes thinks about having kids, but thinks he’s a better babysitter.
SUPPORTING CAST:
Calico. An opening flashback to “six years ago” shows her mother infantilising her; at that point she’s keen to go to a normal school, but gets shut down at once. This is consistent with her account of her origin in issue #3, though that showed her slightly older, and put more emphasis on her isolation than on her not being allowed to grow up. She said in issue #3 that she had “No films, no TV, no music”, but her room here has a TV with a video game console of some sort attached ot it. Maybe it got removed as she got older.
In the present day, she vigorously refuses to go to school – with both her and Ember’s eyes gleaming. Again, a possible reading is that Ember is driving this and resists the prospect of being separated from her. This is the first time that she’s been at all uncooperative. She even has Ember boot Wolverine in the face when he tries to talk sense into her. According to him, the horse is insanely powerful – if we’re to take him literally when he says that he can’t remember the last time he was hit that hard, then Ember is more powerful than Sarah Gaunt, who he fought in issue #2-3. And Sarah was strong enough to break Rogue’s wrist.
Calico does calm down when spoken to sternly and in a trad-parent manner. She tends to fend off claims that she might be a mutant by citing her (clearly deranged) mother, but changes tack surprisingly quickly when Gambit gives her a pep talk. Everyone seems inclined to take this as a good thing and an act of self-acceptance, but it’s so abrupt that you have to wonder.
She’s only reluctantly separated from her beloved horse in order to go to school, and the Graymalkin soldiers have little difficulty in defeating her when Ember isn’t around. I still think it’s an open question whether she really is a mutant, or whether the horse is the one with the power.
Jitter tries to make friends with the kids on the school bus, and is upset by their rejection. Ransom and Deathdream both deal with the bullies on her behalf (and without her involvement). Ransom claims that he was an Olympic boxing hopeful. He also reprimands Deathdream for not supporting Jitter and not caring about anyone but himself – however, last issue we were told that Jitter and Deathdream were particuarly close, so it’s possible that Ransom is just misreading Deathdream’s surface persona.
Marcus St Juniors insists on any children staying at Haven going to school, which seems fair enough since his own daughter Chelsea St Juniors goes there already. She gives Calico her stuffed toy in orer to comfort her in Ember’s absence. Principal Owens is evidently on good terms with Marcus and willing to bend the rules to admit the Outliers early (though they still need school uniforms). He tells them to “keep a low profile, for everyone’s safety”, which suggests that he knows they’re mutants; it seems to be intended as genuine practical advice.
VILLAINS:
Jubilee and Calico are both abducted by soldiers from the Graymalkin Prison; the gunman who first tries to arrest Jubilee is head of security Captain Ezra. Dr Corina Ellis gets a brief cameo at the end of the issue.
Ezra is accompanied by the Blob, Siryn and an unnamed character who looks to be Wild Child. All are wearing gray uniforms (though Siryn still has her costume wings) and seem to be wearing control collars. We saw Blob and Siryn as prisoners in the Free Comic Book Day one-shot, and Dr Ellis invited Siryn to become one of her trustees in issue #2. Apparently she wasn’t giving Siryn a choice. As for Wild Child, this is his first significant appearance since the Krakoan-era Hellions book was cancelled.
Tommy is the school bully who gets a name.
Calico’s mother, presumably Mrs Simon-Pinette, is a controlling weirdo. She not only fires an assistant groundskeeper for telling her daughter about the outside world, but falsely accuses him of sexual offences. It’s not clear whether the staff were told not to speak to Becca, but the fact that she felt the need to invent a false reason suggests not.
OTHER REFERENCES:
Page 7: “Harvey X and Sarah Gaunt both tried to warn us. One of the kids here at Haven might be the Endling, the last mutant on Earth, the one who watches as every mutant dies.” In issue #1, Harvey X said: “They’re coming. You have to help them. One of them is the Endling.” He didn’t specify what an Endling was. Sarah didn’t warn them so much as just try to kill the Outliers.
Page 12: “Everyone has chores.” This was indeed given as the first rule of Haven in issue #3. (The other two were “Everyone cooks” and “Everyone cleans.”)
Page 13: “Marigny Bywater.” These are actually two different districts of New Orleans, though they do neighbour each other.
Page 13: “Besson’s Dark.” Previously mentioned in issue #1, where Gambit described it as one of his favourite beers and “only available from a tiny grocery chain in town”, which would apparently be the Guidry’s Grocery chain seen here. Nightcrawler either doesn’t realise that it’s a local craft beer, or has remarkably jingoistic views on the quality of German beer for someone who’s been living abroad this long.
““Harvey X and Sarah Gaunt both tried to warn us. One of the kids here at Haven might be the Endling, the last mutant on Earth, the one who watches as every mutant dies.” In issue #1, Harvey X said: “They’re coming. You have to help them. One of them is the Endling.” He didn’t specify what an Endling was. Sarah didn’t warn them so much as just try to kill the Outliers.”
It was SADURANG. not Sarah Gaunt, who tried to warn them about the Endling in issue 1. It’s not exactly reassuring that Simone can’t seem to remember what she wrote five issues ago.
“Ezra is accompanied by the Blob, Siryn and an unnamed character who looks to be Wild Child. ”
There was considerable debate on the internet over whether that was supposed to be Toad or Wild Child.
This was a lot – setting up the crossover, four new characters still barely developed beyond tropes, and for some reason we get the ‘revelation’ that Wolverine might have some PTSD? Doesn’t he have multiple solo books for that? The Nightcrawler moment was a nice inversion of expectations but I don’t know if I buy Calico suddenly accepting she’s a mutant after a short conversation with Gambit.
The principal is doing the Midnight M in one panel, so he may be a mutant himself.
I’m still trying with this book, and there’s a lot to like (the scene with Nightcrawler and Jubilee, Gambit trying his hand at mentoring). But the stuff with the kids is just dull. I get that everyone wants to create new characters in the hope they’ll stick, but all the new mutants introduced post-Krakoa are just so dull.
I think the Krakoa era showed that there was a lot of interesting things you could do by integrating the “evil mutants” and telling new stories with new configurations of existing characters, instead of just introducing endless generations of mostly-forgettable kids. But now, we’re seeing new mutant school in all three flagships, and I don’t expect to see any of these characters again outside of a background scene once we move to what’s next.
So Calico is from Clintwood, VA. That’s a real life place, a town of about 1400 down there in the very tip of southwest Virginia, not far from the Kentucky border. It’s an interesting location just for being so specifically small town and I wonder if there’s any significance to the choice, or just Gail being capricious. After all, all evidence is that Calico is extremely sheltered and privileged, her mother extremely controlling and clearly a bit… unconventional with her views on both parenting and mutants. What if there really is something to the talk of goblins and witches, the hyperfocus on horses, and Calico’s bond with Ember?
Just saying, she wouldn’t be the first mutant with ties to the mythological, folkloric, or supernatural…
^Silver John? Shonokins?
What if the horse has been trying to tell everyone its a mutant since the beginning, but it can’t do the midnight M with hooves?
Actually there’s a lot of mutants who’d have trouble with it. Nightcrawler for example. Why’d they pick a sign for mutants that relies on having ordinary human anstomy?
The “Zagg’s Chips” mentioned on p10 are a thinly-veiled version of the actual New Orleans based “Zapp’s” brand. I discovered a few months ago that Amazon sells their “New Orleans Voodoo” flavor, which is odd, but has grown on me. These chips can also be seen in some episodes of Leverage: Redemption.
I think that Calico *is* a mutant, but is a specialized power-granter. I bet she’s going to escape by giving the stuffed dinosaur powers 🙂
@John: No one expected we’d see Quentin Quire again after Riot at Xavier’s either, or that out of everyone in Generation Hope it would be Idie who ended up getting the most exposure. Introducing new mutants is always a gamble, but you never know who audiences will latch onto.
“So Calico is from Clintwood, VA.”
It is curious that the flashback is set there since in previous issues Becca had said she was a Simon-Pinette of the Loudon County Simon-Pinettes. There is a Loudon County in Virginia, but it’s nowhere near Clintwood, which is in Dickinson County.
@Diana: Probably more a question of which character future writers will latch onto, but they are of course part of the audience too.
Sitting here in a befuddled half-awake state trying to work out what Chris V is talking about. Silver John is of course a great Manly Wade Wellman hero. (Fresh in my mind because I was looking at the list of Last Dangerous Visions stories and one was a chapbook from the fancy The Complete John the Balladeer book set I got a while back.)
And Shonokins are… well, after googling, a monster a different Manly Wade Wellman hero faced? Oh, but also in one of the Silver John novels that I haven’t read, “After Dark”.
But I still don’t understand the connection with anything else here?
@Sol: Maybe they’ll fight the Ugly Bird next issue.
Morrison’s “new mutant” characters seem to have a lot of sticking power: Quentin, the Cuckoos, Glob, Beak, Angel are all currently appearing in the X-books.
I assume that has something to do with the popularity of Morrison’s run. But maybe it’s also because Morrison gave the characters things to do besides a) get trained in the Danger Room and b) get sucked into fights with supervillains. They had unique perspectives in the story and weren’t just defined by their powers.
@Sol: At a guess, maybe it’s the general “supernatural characters from Appalachia” thing?
@Thom H- Beak and Angel arguably don’t qualify, since they’re only appearing in the Infinity Comics. You’re right about Quentin, the Cuckoos and Glob, though. (Of course, it took a LOT of work by later writers to make Quentin and Glob even vaguely sympathetic/heroic. )
Every (good) new mutants book gives the new kids unique perspectives and story arcs.
Morrison’s special class had the added benefit of co-starring in the main x-book instead of a b- or c-title like most new mutants.
I do think it mostly has to do with who the new writers latched onto when they were fans. I like the Academy X kids. They got nothing after Messiah Complex ended their book. For almost 20 years. X-23 nonwithstanding, since she was dropped into that book instead of coming out of it.
And now, suddenly, NYX is basically an Academy X reunion book, Surge was part of X-Force (and I still expect her to be back in energy form at some point), even the rather bland Wind Dancer is doing something.
Sol-As Omar and Drew guessed, Clintwood, VA is in Appalachia, and The Other Michael mentioned goblins and witches. So, it brought to mind the Manly Wade Wellman John the Balladeer stories. Just a joke.
I’m pretty sure Glob Herman’s sticking power was in fact his unique and memorable appearance, more than anything else, until — was it Jason Aaron who really had a thing for him? — anyway, until writers decided he’d be interesting as part of an ensemble. If you can’t have a unique personality (i.e. Quentin as the resident uppity rebel/asshole) then have the sort of distinctive look writers wanna use or artists wanna draw (like Glob or Pixie or Anole or Rockslide).
Beak was popular because writers liked to pair distinctive appearance with useless powers with ‘well, he has a personality’. Angel… well, she really got demoted to ‘Beak’s baby momma/wife/occasional partner in adventure when not stuck at home with the hatchlings’ after Morrison was done.
As noted, be bland (Wind Dancer) and you have to hope a writer sees something in the character…
@The Other Michael- I’m not sure I’d really say Beak is popular. Yes he was used in Exiles for a couple of years, and as the-Blackwing-that-wasn’t-Silvermane’s-son in that awful New Warriors series and he appeared in that 6-issue Vengeance series but aside from that he really hasn’t been used that much. He really hasn’t had that many appearances since the Vengeance series ended.
Glob Herman is even weirder. He had only THREE appearances between Riot at Xavier’s and Aaron’s Wolverine and the X-Men series. Yes. Aaron used him as part of the ensemble of students but he betrayed the X-Men AGAIN to the Hellfire Brats and nearly killed Quentin. He didn’t start to become heroic until after Arron was gone.
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