Uncanny X-Men #7 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
UNCANNY X-MEN vol 6 #7
“Raid on Graymalkin, part 2: No Walls can Hold Us!”
Writer: Gail Simone
Pencillers: David Marquez & Edgar Salazar
Inkers: David Marquez & Victor Olazaba
Colourist: Matthew Wilson
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Editor: Tom Brevoort
This is the second part of the “Raid on Graymalkin” crossover, which started in X-Men #8 and continues in X-Men #9. In fact, the action of this issue heavily overlaps with the previous chapter, with some scenes appearing in both issues.
Roughly speaking, the sequence of events goes like this.
- X-Men #8 pp2-3. Beast wakes up in Graymalkin Prison.
- Uncanny #7, pp3-6. Cyclops and Rogue have a phone call and he fails to convince her to stand down. The Louisiana X-Men use the Eye of Agamotto to teleport north.
- X-Men #8 pp5-6. Cyclops briefs the Alaskan X-Men and tells them to “gear up, we’re moving”.
- X-Men #8 pp7-17. Warden Ellis talks to Calico, Jubilee and Beast in the meal hall; Beast is beaten up by guards. In this version, the conversation is interrupted by the Marauder teleporting in and taking out the primary generators, and by a Limbo demon atacking.
- Uncanny #7, pp8-10. Warden Ellis and her men take Jubilee to the cells; Ellis instructs Ezra to release Calico, which he does; and Beast is dragged back to his cell. The Alaskan X-Men are shown on the Marauder. This version is written as if the attack is about to start, but if you squint a bit you you pretend that it’s already started and it’s just not being mentioned on the page.
- X-Men #8 p18 and Uncanny #7, p11-p12pn1. Cyclops, Temper and Psylocke teleport into Graymalkin; Cyclops calls Juggernaut to check he’s in place.
- X-Men #8 pp19-22: Cyclops, Temper and Psylocke fight their way through the building.
- Uncanny #7, p12-p15pn2: Meanwhile, Calico returns with Ember and breaks into the building; the rest of the Lousiana X-Men (who have been stuck outside) follow her in. Jubilee escapes. Kid Omega locates Beast.
- X-Men #8 pp23-25 and Uncanny #7 p15pn3-p16pn1. Psylocke declares that Graymalkin is a “place of horrors”. Blob attacks, but is immediately defeated by Rogue as the two X-Men teams meet.
- Uncanny #7 p16pn2 onwards then play out uninterrupted.
THE X-MEN (LOUISIANA):
Rogue seems to be angry with Cyclops because he set up a remote strike team in Alaska which isn’t playing a leadership role in the mutant community; the idea seems to be that this is abandoning one of the core roles of the X-Men, and that’s why she’s unhappy with him. She does still respect him, though.
She reluctantly allows the Outliers to come with them – the only member of the team to show any disquiet about it. She tells them to stay outside the walls, but she does seem to be referring to them as X-Men on page 6. Since the recap page and X-Men #8 both refer to Calico as an X-Man, we’ll go with that.
Gambit uses the Eye of Agamotto that he obtained in issue #1 to teleport the team to Graymalkin.
Wolverine‘s eyes have recovered since last issue. He argues in favour of the Outliers coming on the mission.
Nightcrawler is also there, but doesn’t get the spotlight.
Even though Calico refused to sign the document that Ellis asked for in X-Men #8, she gets released anyway. It’s not clear whether this is a continuity glitch, or whether Ellis was just pushing her luck. She declines the offer of a lift to a rendezvous with her family and insists on leaving on foot – which Ezra allows, despite (a) warning her of dangerous dogs in the area, and (b) not actually telling her where she’s meant to go. (She doesn’t ask, to be fair.) While alone, she hears her mother’s voice telling her to abandon the mutants, but she ignores it and goes back to help.
Somehow, once she’s out of Graymalkin, she can summon Ember – who wasn’t brought there by the Eye of Agamotto. Presumably some sort of power dampening was involved while she was in the building. Ember also somehow escapes his bridle between pages 1 and 5, and our attention is drawn to that. With Ember, Calico is able to smash through the prison walls singlehandedly. Her main priority seems to be to rescue Jubilee. She doesn’t take Ember into the building (presumably because there isn’t space) but she can manifest an energy mace.
Ransom starts the fight between the two groups, but has the excuse that he was given misleading advice by Wolverine, and wrongly (but reasonably) thought Cyclops was about to attack. Jitter and Deathdream are also there.
THE X-MEN (ALASKA):
Cyclops tries to talk Rogue out of attacking, much as he did in X-Men #3 and Uncanny #2 (a scene that seems wildly premature with hindsight). In those issues, he argued that Rogue’s rookie team would be wiped out. This time, he argues that both groups would be overkill and would escalate the situation even more. Um, you’re setting demons on the place, Scott.
Scott tells Rogue that he doesn’t “love” his teammates, but he does “care” for them.
The rest of the group are mainly just there, since this isn’t their book. Psylocke seems amused by Cyclops’ lack of succes with Rogue and implies that she thinks he’s patronising her. Temper (under Scurvy’s influence) complains that Wolverine should have “looked out for us during Krakoa”, presumably meaning his failure to do anything about the Pit. Kid Omega, Magik and Juggernaut also appear.
The Beast joins the fight once freed.
SUPPORTING CAST:
Professor X‘s cell is seen from outside, but he doesn’t play a part in the story.
VILLAINS:
Warden Ellis seems to have no particular interest in Calico or Beast beyond getting money for them, so maybe the angle is indeed that she’s more of a grifter. She doesn’t care about her staff being injured by the Wolfpack.
Captain Ezra lets Calico go on foot, which shows a certain lack of concern for her wellbeing.
Blob, Siryn and Wildchild show up as trustees again, still apparently loyal to the prison.
Scurvy can make both X-Men teams angry enough to fight one another. Either he isn’t powerful enough to affect them more directly than that (particularly given their psychic training) or for some reason Ellis doesn’t want him to.
The Wolfpack are cyborg dogs created by the Graymalkin Prison. We’ve seen them under development in Sentinels where Ellis seemed to want them as replacements for the human cyborg title characters (who work for mutant Larry Trask). Ezra protests that “the AI is still spotty” and “[t]hey’ll maul our own men”. In Sentinels, the cyborg dogs didn’t even work yet.
MISCELLANEOUS:
Page 4 panel 1: “There’s nobody I respect more, not even Charles.” Professor X is an odd reference point in this context in 2024, but then I suppose he is coming off a “father of the nation” role which may appeal to Rogue’s sensibilities.
Page 8 panel 1: The “missing dog” poster outside the prison wall was also shown in an establishing shot of Graymalkin in issue #3, so it’s probably significant. (Most likely, the implication is that this is where the cyborg dogs are comingf from.)
It’s an odd way to do a crossover, to spend the first half of an issue largely just retelling what we already saw in another installment. Especially because only a little of that is a new perspective, and none of it was really surprising.
I don’t know if this was editorial not being confident that people would read both books (even after they’ve been building this up for months), if Simone just wasn’t feeling Makay’s version of events and wanted to tell the whole story in her own book, or if they just didn’t really have enough plot to eschew the overlap (the “new” material here was mostly just a pointless fight between the teams).
Maybe this crossover just happened too soon, maybe it’s because it’s only been two books, and maybe it’s the different storytelling styles of the two authors not meshing well, by this stands up poorly compared to some of the great crossovers of X-Men past.
@John: It’s probably less that Simone and MacKay are at odds and more that, as you surmised, this crossover is happening too soon. There’s no way Graymalkin Prison actually falls at the end of this crossover: it hasn’t served any actual narrative purpose yet.
The more likely scenario is the assault fails, the teams scatter back to their corners, and we’ll get another attempt somewhere further down the line (probably at a point where Kitty and Emma’s students can participate as well).
I’m still convinced they had to rush to this crossover due to the One World Under Doom event. I guess they aren’t getting rid of Greymalkin already due to the upcoming events, but I think they’ll do something to sideline the narrative involving Greymalkin and Ellis which will allow this to be put on hold until after Doom.
They’ll probably free all the inmates except Xavier, and there’ll be some revelation about Xavier and Greymalkin which will change the purpose of Greymalkin, in some way.
I don’t think they can go on with the way Greymalkin has been portrayed throughout One World Under Doom.
The conflict between Rogue and Scott seemed ridiculously contrived. There’s no real reason they couldn’t have just agreed to work together to liberate the prison. Scott thinking Rogue is more threatening to the general public than demons is just ridiculous. And yes. Scurvy intensified their anger to start the fight but they were acting ridiculously at odds with each other before Scurvy intervened.
” “There’s nobody I respect more, not even Charles.” Professor X is an odd reference point in this context in 2024, but then I suppose he is coming off a “father of the nation” role which may appeal to Rogue’s sensibilities.”
Has Rogue figured out that Xavier framed himself for murder yet and didn’t really betray them? Xavier made it clear that Sally Floyd would eventually regain her memories but we haven’t found out if she did.
Captain Ezra is really an idiot. Calico promises to go to meet her family and he just lets her go and trusts that she won’t return to free Beast and Jubilee. He didn’t bother to send an escort, slap a power damper on her or ask Scurvy to read her mind and see if she planned on coming back.
Interesting that Calico heard her mother’s voice in her head. Was she just imagining it or his mother a telepath?
The bit where Logan tells Ransom to only attack Scott if he reaches for his temple was also contrived and Ransom winds up attacking Scott when he triggers his comms was also contrived. Scott is able to trigger his optic blasts without touching his temple in multiple scenes this issue.
Note that Quentin says that something down there is watching the X-Men. It could be Scurvy but it could be something else.
The fact that Calico is able to activate her energy mace away from Ember seems to confirm that she IS a mutant, and it’s not just Ember who has powers, as some speculated. Although, it’s possible BOTH Calico and Ember are mutants.
Note that this issue confirms that Rogue DID absorb the Blob’s powers in X-Men 8.
It’s obvious that Xavier ISN’T in that cell- he’s been moved or something- and whoever’s in there is probably dangerous.
I’m still not sure if that’s supposed to be Wild Child or Toad on the last page- maybe if Simone hadn’t spent so much time rehashing X-Men 8, she could have actually named him.
From Calico hearing her mother’s voice and the her mother calling mutants ‘goblins’ in the past, I’m taking the implication that her mother’s into magic. That could also be another reason why the Eye is around narratively, for some future magic-based storyline there.
@Michael: Scott never thought highly of Rogue as a leader; he spent most of Utopia criticizing her decisions. To the best of my knowledge, that was never resolved between them – now it’s come back around.