Exceptional X-Men #5 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
EXCEPTIONAL X-MEN #5
Writer: Eve L Ewing
Artist: Carmen Carnero
Colour artist: Nolan Woodard
Letterer: Travis Lanham
Editor: Tom Brevoort
THE CORE CAST
Kate Pryde. The issue opens with several pages of flashback that take place during X-Men #25 (2023), immediately after the fall of Krakoa.
Page 4 panel 1 shows a flashback from that issue, which took place immediately after X-Men: Hellfire Gala 2023, where Kate found that she could now use the Krakoan gateways. She fell into an Orchis station where she was surrounded by Orchis soldiers, and initially gives them a chance to surrender. The Orchis soldiers strongly imply that they’re going to kill her, at which point she kills them all singlehandedly. The narration in that scene justifies her actions as keeping secret her ability to use the Krakoan gates. However, at the end of the scene she does kill one Orchis soldier who is explicitly trying to surrender.
In her narration, Kate accepts that she could make a case that she acted in self-defence, but thinks that something “broke” inside her when Krakoa fell. This is basically the idea that the original scene was going for.
Page 4 panel 2 is also a flashback to X-Men #25, and the scene where she goes to the X-Men Mansion and retrieves the swords that were given to her by Ogun. That scene actually ends with her picking up the sword, so this panel – with her holding the swords and looking at herself in a mirror – is technically an original appearance that comes immediately afterwards. The mirror is shown in the original scene, though.
Pages 5 to 7, in which Kate gets her new Shadowkat costume from Yukio, is an original scene which takes place somewhere between pages 7 and 16 of X-Men #25. This version of Kate seemingly enjoys the experience of taking down Yukio’s ninjas (though she leaves them alive). She takes umbrage at Yukio’s suggestion that her new attitude is “ugl[y]” and “unbecoming”, and rejects Yukio’s argument that she still has a choice. (She’s rationalising her choice to become Shadowkat by denying any agency in it, basically.)
Pages 8-9 seem to be a montage of Orchis figures living in fear of being assassinated by Shadowkat, though she didn’t actually kill any of the three seen here.
Kate understands the kids walking out on her on learning that she’s killed. When Emma argues that Kate hasn’t been honest with them about what being an X-Man involves, Kate claims that she wanted to give them a choice in the matter. Of course, so far, she hasn’t given them a choice, so much as tried to steer them away from the X-Men. Apparently, she now thinks that by letting her onto the team, the X-Men effectively made her a child soldier and set her on the path that led to her becoming Shadowkat (though she still takes responsibility for what she did). She regards Krakoa as not being the students’ fight.
When Thao shows up for training the next day after all, Kate is there, but she’s training to fight rather than just waiting. She gives Thao a similar speech about how she wants the kids to make their own decisions, and now feels that she didn’t truly make her own choices when she joined the X-Men. However, she now seems willing to accept that, by staying with her, Thao is choosing to be an X-Man.
Melée. Thao is horrified to learn that Kate has killed people, though she’s rather inconsistent about why. Although she calls Kate a “heartless, ruthless, stone-cold murderer” (without waiting to hear anything about the circumstances of the killings), she really seems more upset that Kate hasn’t been candid with the kids about what they were getting into – hence, her view is that Kate has denied them a choice, which is exactly what Kate claims to be trying to avoid.
She also says that she wants to be visibly standing up against injustice, implying that part of her objection is that she doesn’t want to be drawn into some sort of secret or underground form of activism. The irony is that her powers make her vanish when she loses control.
When cousin Ellie develops mutant powers and comes to Thao, Thao doesn’t really listen to what Ellie is saying. She jumps to the conclusion that Ellie wants to be defended from bullies, but Ellie specifically says that the other kids are not calling her names – instead, they’re telling her that she should use the Verate app to be “cured” in case she’s contagious, and Ellie just wants Thao to talk to them privately. Instead, as in issue #2 with Axo, Thao makes an enormous scene and gets into a fight with a protective older sister.
When Ellie refuses to go to school the next day, Thao still misreads the situation and decides to offer even more support – her family seem familiar enough with her to know that this won’t help. Trista and Alex manage to get across to her that she’s so focussed on her ideals that she doesn’t pay attention to people’s feelings. Even after taking that point, Thao doesn’t understand how badly she misread what Ellie wanted until Ellie spells it out to her. Still, she is capable of taking these lessons on board when they’re put to her Very Directly Indeed.
Thao decides to return to training with Kate, and seems confident that Kate can’t make her do anything she doesn’t want to do. Arguably, Thao is still missing the point: her problem is that she doesn’t even see the other choices in front of her. At any rate, Thao says that she’s choosing “to be an X-Man”.
Axo. Alex tries to stop Thao walking out, but then decides he needs some time to think over the implications of what he’s learned about Kate. He’s much less judgmental than Thao, and recognises that they don’t know the whole story, though he doesn’t actually ask to hear it before leaving, so he might just be playing the reasonable one for Thao’s benefit. He’s willing to tell Thao when she’s in the wrong. He regards Thao as having “bailed on your teammates” by walking out on Kate, which is a little unfair.
Bronze. Trista is dumbstruck by what she learns about Kate. After both Thao and Alex leave, Trista starts crying, rejects Emma’s support, and runs out, presumably to be with her friends. She seems more cheerful later in the issue, and backs up Alex’s refusal to endorse Thao’s behaviour. Unlike Alex, she actually explains what the problem is.
Emma Frost. She allows the kids to leave, and tries to be supportive to the tearful Trista. She argues that Kate’s error was in not being honest with the kids from the start about what it means to be X-Men. In a sense she’s right, because Kate was trying to railroad them in her own way, but Emma essentially buys in to the idea that mutants have no real opportunity to avoid a life of violence, which is precisely Kitty’s disagreement with them.
She gets visibly upset at Kate’s suggestion that Krakoa has nothing to do with the teens (who presumably gained their powers after the whole thing was over), and sees it as an emblem of their lives as mutants.
SUPPORTING CHARACTERS
Yukio. She appears in flashback, apparently running a costume shop for ninjas in Kyoto. Presumably that’s just one part of her operation, though, if she can be bothered keeping a bunch of ninja around to fight for her. Without claiming any moral high ground, Yukio tries to warn Kate off embracing her dark side and tries to persuade her that she has a choice about what she does.
Iceman. He tries to calm the situation when Thao is yelling at everyone, and heads off after the kids to try and talk to them. We don’t find out whether he caught up to them.
The Tran family. Thao lives with her parents (who don’t get names), her younger brother Harry and a baby brother whom she calls “Van Van”, most likely Vǎn. Harry is into skateboarding and doesn’t have his own room, so presumably he shares with the baby. The house looks nice enough, though, if a little crowded.
Her siblings and cousin Ellie know that she’s a mutant; presumably her parents do too, not least because her whole thing is that she wants to be visible. Nobody seems particularly surprised that Thao’s attempts to be supportive to Ellis have backfired.
Ellie Tran is Thao’s little cousin. She’s just developed mutant powers and she’s now reptilian with a spiky tail. Her friends are worried that she might be contagious, and she doesn’t like people staring at her. She finds Thao’s hamfisted attempt to “support” her excruciatingly embarrassing, quite reasonably. She looks up to Thao because of her idealism and moral centre, and clearly didn’t grasp how dreadful her people skills are.
At the end of the issue, Ellie is using the Verate app to try and cure her appearance.
VILLAINS
Orchis. They show up in flashback. Three specific Orchis members (all humans) are shown looking over their shoulders. Jun Wei is a mid-ranking soldier type who appeared in X-Force and Wolverine stories. Dr Barrington was an Orchis scientist who appeared in New Mutants, Children of the Atom and Sabretooth and the Exiles. Feilong was one of the top humans in Orchis and the main villain in Iron Man.
Verate. We still don’t know anything about who’s behind this app or what it actually does. According to issue #1, Verate claims to be an app that “uses your DNA … to design custom lifestyle solutions fit for you and you alone”, such as “skincare”. Ellie and her friends seem to think that it can depower mutants or at least make them look normal, though it’s not clear that the app actually markets itself as having this function – Thao describes it to Kate as offering “yoga moves and fashion tips”. Thao thinks it’s just a fad, and Kate hasn’t heard of it at all.
FOOTNOTES
Page 7 panel 3: “The child soldier forcibly possessed by a warrior demon?” The warrior demon is Ogun, from the Kitty Pryde & Wolverine miniseries.
“I am in no position to judge you. Ask Ororo about that the next time you see her.” Storm and Yukio fell out in Storm #5 (2014) after Yukio used Storm as a diversion to kill a rival.
Page 8 panels 1-3: Jun Wei, Dr Barrington and Feilong were all Orchis-related characters, though Kate didn’t actually kill any of them as Shadowkat. The idea seems to be that all three feared for their life.
Page 14 panel 5 to page 15 panel 2: Another of this book’s scenes in which a character effectively breaks the fourth wall and addresses the camera, though you could read it as Thao thinking aloud if you wanted.
Page 15 panel 6: “They say there’s a mutant disease that’s contagious.” The conspiracy theory that mutantcy has become contagious was first mentioned in X-Men #3 and was previously mentioned in issue #1 of this series.
It was never a bother, but I never saw that there was an in-story reason for the K in kat? Was it very subtle and I just missed it? I understand it was a break from the kinder Kate, but I wasn’t sure how the spelling change displayed that specifically.
Well it’s the most 90s variation on the name possible, so it has to mean either 1) pouches, 2) violent bravado or 3) plot holes…
It feels like the Kat was connected to her new identity as Kate, and that maybe it also served to differentiate from Shadowcat – making it not a return to an old moniker but the creation of a new one. There is a little splash of “it looks kewl!!” in there too.
Feels like they’d have been better off just giving the persona a fully new name but also it’s either way going to be a real albatross for the character to deal with for years – a near “Bishop wants to murder Hope” level of hard to come back from.
That said, they needed to have her explain to the kids the context. The immediate “you killed someone, you’re bad, that’s all I need to hear” vibe of things feels super rushed. It’s reasonable they’d be shocked she’d killed people (though as a long standing superhero, it’s not esp rare) but weird that they’d assume it was definitively evil or at least wildly unjust without any attempt to ask what the circumstances were.
It goes back to what Paul and commentors have said about it not being clear what various people know about Kate. Do we assume they now have gotten a history lesson on her (and perhaps Emma and/or Bobby)? What does the world know about the X-Men’s role in the fall of Orchis?
It feels like this reboot is following on the sort of often disastrous third act of the Krakoan Age and really jerking around several of the core characters in the line. Some, like Nightcrawler or Storm, just have strong enough character that they feel reasonably fixed in their roles. But others, like Kate, Moira, Everett, Beast, and others just feel like they’ve been messed around with to a point where they’re a bit of a mess.
I’m getting a somewhat disjointed feel about this series.
Whereas Gail’s book is clearly about Rogue and a satellite team of friends as they mentor a bunch of weird newbies, and Jed’s book is about Cyclops and his team doing traditionally X-Men stuff, Eve’s book is 1/2 Kitty’s Mid-Life Crisis and 1/2 young adult book about these three mutants as they fumble through life.
(I’d totally read the YA book that was all from the viewpoint of the three newbies and kept Kitty and Emma in the background as the mentors, tbh. And actually, I feel like any of the three could be the YA protagonist of their own story, especially with ‘Thao Learns A Lesson About Listening To People’ as presented here.)
Ewing’s got a good YA voice but it doesn’t always mesh well with her comics writing when it comes to some of the other storylines and characters. It’s not a dealbreaker, but it does mean her book doesn’t have as solid an identity as the other two core books at the moment.
The scene with Jun Wei, Dr. Bsrrington and Feilong confused me. (Aside from the fact that Dr. Barrington seemed to be leaving Orchis in Sabretooth and the Exiles, which is easily explained by her changing her mind and rejoining.) I first interpreted that scene as indicating that Kitty killed Jun Wei, Dr. Barrington and Feilong off panel. But that’s impossible, since we saw Feilong alive and imprisoned on Mars after Krakoa vanished into the White Hot Room.
The kids had an extreme reaction to learning Kitty’s past. As Ryan T alluded to, what do they know about Emma’s? Because Emma’s murders were far less excusable than Kitty’s.
A lot of the dialogue between Emma and Kitty felt like a missed opportunity. For example. Emma could have told Kitty that she’s used to this reaction when people learn of her past. Alternately, the fact that Emma really DID try to turn Angelica and Jimmy into child soldiers could have come up.
It’s a nice touch how even at the end, Thao gets it wrong- she’s sure no one will fall for the Verate app.
Judging from the previews, the Verate app is the handiwork of Sinister.
The end of this issue basically seemed to be begging readers- “Please keep buying. Sinister will be appearing next issue.”
I liked this issue. Perhaps the best character work in the line right now, and it addresses Kitty’s behavior, which I feel was a sore need.
@Michael- I was also confused by the opening scene. I couldn’t remember what happened to the Orchis characters, but I was pretty sure Kate didn’t kill them. The art (which continues to be very good) implies that she did.
I like the new characters, and how Ewing balances their stories with Kitty’s. I would like to see more done w/ Emma, however. She feels more like a plot device than a character. I get why no one has brought up Kitty’s Shadowkat phase, but I’m surprised Emma hasn’t said that being an X-Man means you might have to kill someone. If she wants to prepare the students for the “real world” and doesn’t care about social niceties, it would make sense for her to say something about Sentinels and anti-mutant groups.
Far and away, my favorite of the new era. Now that we’re five issues in it is clear what this book is and the perfectly matched creators are giving incredibly consistent high quality stories. I love how down to Earth this feels without it ever being dull. The new characters feel authentically modern and are really engrossing. Can’t wait for Axo’s spotlight issue!
Shame about such a generic cover, based on the annotations, we could have had a homage cover of Melee shouting “Kitty Pryde is a Jerk.”
The bloom’s starting to come off the rose for me here – setting aside that Thao’s tirade came completely out of left field (were these kids not around six months ago when mutants were being thrown into concentration camps?), Kitty’s insistence that the X-Men turned her into a child soldier is *not* what happened. This isn’t even the first time she’s quit the team and tried to find her own path out in the world – every time, she *chooses* to come back. Ewing denying Kitty’s own agency/complicity to make some facile point about teen superheroes is just ridiculous at this point.
There was an homage panel to “Professor Xavier is a jerk!” and it was the second one in two weeks, even in the same spot in the page layout as the one in UXM 8.
@Diana: “Kitty’s insistence that the X-Men turned her into a child soldier is *not* what happened.”
True, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it was an editorially-imposed point of conflict, a la the Rogue-Cyclops schism, designed to justify her separation from the X-Men.
Still, I can see Kitty reevaluating her own past based on what happened during Fall of X. I think it makes sense for her to be (possibly unfairly) angry with her surrogate family for introducing her to this world of conflict that she may not have been as ready for as she thought. I wouldn’t be surprised if she realizes she’s wrong at some point in the near future.
@Mike Loughlin: Mandated or not, the way Ewing frames that scene doesn’t seem like we’re meant to think Kitty’s wrong or fooling herself – even that *ridiculous* line of “I barely know what it means to be X-Men!” goes unchallenged when she’s been one longer than Emma herself.
I feel like the reactions would have been better if last issue had ended with Kitty yelling that she “murdered” people rather than “killed”.
Agree with @Luis and @Scott. For me, this is strong character work and really expressive art. Kate badly needs this reparative work to be sympathetic and usable long term and I’m glad it’s being addressed on page. For better or worse, it’s part of Kitty’s longer term story now.
Characters like Kitty, Kurt and Piotr never needed to be murderers. Let us keep some heroes!
@Diana, Mike Loughlin- The X-Men aren’t only being described as child soldiers in Exceptional X-Men. In X-Men 7, Scott tells Magneto “I didn’t ask to be made into a teenaged warlord, to have that be the tenor of my life.”
In fairness, the question of whether the X-Men were child soldiers has come up before Breevort. In Uncanny X-Men 289, by Scott Lobdell, Xavier asks Jean if she blames him for taking away her childhood and she tells him no- she got to see and do things most people never imagine. And in Louise Simonson’s X-Factor, she blamed Scott’s bad behavior on Xavier’s pressuring Scott to be a leader at such a young age before trying to blame it on Sinister.
And Al Ewing had Storm voicing similar sentiments to Xavier in Red – just because it’s been done before doesn’t make it any more valid in my eyes. It may not be *quite* as dismissive as Spurrier’s whole “ha ha you wear pervert suits” approach, but I’m still *very* tired of writers trying to convince me that the work of their (more talented) predecessors is “tainted” and that there was something inherently wrong with the X-Men all along.
If we want to consider some of Xavier’s students as “child soldiers” (the O5, Kitty, Piotr?, the New Mutants), maybe we should take into account that there was a war being waged on children at the time.
Humans routinely attacked mutants as their powers manifested around puberty. Not to mention Magneto’s plan to recruit and brainwash young mutants. IIRC, the Mutant Massacre started with some kids being killed. What other choice was there but to fight back?
Since the explosion in the mutant population, kids many have the luxury of not defending themselves anymore. But back when the number of known mutants was easy to count, hunkering down and fighting back seemed like the only option.
I’m not saying Kate (and others) can’t have feelings about that time in their lives. But those feelings shouldn’t invalidate earlier stories because there were very different circumstances. Hopefully, current writers understand that.
Gillen in Immortal X-Men #10 has Xavier admit that he knew of other mutants at the time he founded the X-Men, but he had an agenda by recruiting the 05.
I think the problem is that a lot of writers currently in the field are embarrassed by the Silver Age of comics at the same time as they have this cynical ironic fandom of those comics.
Why were the 05 teenagers? Because it was the Silver Age, Peter Parker was popular, and that was the audience that Silver Age comics were geared towards. It’s not how the comics would be written today.
Kitty is a case of coming along at a time when comics were growing up, but they still had a demographic child buying base. So, Claremont decided to include a viewpoint character for young readers alongside the new X-Men, who weren’t students anymore.
In reality, Kitty would be protected by Xavier, but she would certainly never be sent on dangerous missions where she could easily die for the cause.
Claremont, himself, addresses this issue in the less cynical times by stating that the New Mutants were students, not heroes. Although, the realities of writing for a superhero universe in the 1980s meant that this idea was rarely applied on the page.
Even in Marvel’s sliding timescale, Kitty has been an active X-Woman on and off for at least about ten years.
It is not unreasonable for her take on how much choice she had on the matter and what role she had to fulfill to change or even oscillate along time.
I will however point out that if we are discussing whether Xavier has any applicable blame, I can’t help but wonder why similar questions are not asked about Wolverine and Ogun.
@Thom H- Jubilee could also be considered a child soldier. Rachel, too, although she was a hound before she came to this time and in fact the X-Men often had to keep her from going after the villains in ways that were dangerous when she first arrived in this time.
Xavier and Magneto tried mostly to keep the New Mutants out of combat. The problem was the New Mutants often disobeyed them. When Cable took over he realized that going into combat with them was the only sane alternative to leaving them home and having them sneak out to fight the villains without any adult supervision.
Scott Lobdell pointed out that having the New Mutants sneak out behind the headmaster’s back just make Xavier and Magneto look inept. That’s why he tried to avoid anything like that while he was writing Generation X and had Banshee and Emma go into combat with them whenever possible.
At a certain point you have to accept that the X-teams just aren’t very good at keeping kids safe. The Original Five went into battle against trolls with a baby once and the woman the X-Men put in charge of training the next generation abused her former student and set her horse on fire. 🙂
@Luis- I think most readers agree that what Ogun did to Kitty was wrong. You have a point about Logan tough.
Ogun was always presented as an evil, reprehensible, unethical abuser, and clearly not an actual mentor. I would lump him in with over the top one note monsters to hate without sypmathy, such as Belasco and Tom Brevort.
I think this is the best book of the current line. Macay is writing drek, beloved Simone is making a few mistakes that create an uneven tone such as her trying to blend in with X-factors
… oops.
Continued:
X-Factor’s attempts at humor by using “sonic space cannons”. I have faith in Simone improving, and hope for some other titles bur Ewing is the only one that I am truly enjoying.
After Kitty arrived at the mansion is (not yet officially Uncanny) X-Men 138, Xavier didn’t put her in combat situations. She trained and attended to schoolwork. Kitty got caught up in situations due to being in the X-men’s orbit (e.g. being possessed by adult Kate in DoFP, fighting the N-Garai that snuck into the mansion in issue 143) or disobeying the order to stay home (e.g. Uncanny 149-150). As was pointed out earlier, she was treated more like a member of the New Mutants who was not expected to fight in a paramilitary organization. Additionally, Kitty wasn’t abused or pressured into fighting. That’s why I don’t think her calling herself a “child soldier” is accurate, even if it reflects the way she was processing her trauma when she said it.
Of course, the other X-men (especially Wolverine) accepted Kitty as one of their own and Xavier relented after she refused to join the New Mutants and then proved her worth in combat. They are culpable in making a young girl a member of their vigilante group. Maybe not a child soldier, but not something any teenager should have had to experience.
When people apply real-world standards to super-hero comics, the suspension of disbelief fall apart. X-Men is a super-hero comic, so teenagers with powers end up fighting super-villains. Same with Teen Titans, the Legion, and various sidekicks. It’s a staple of the genre. Still, I’m okay with characters mixing some real-world logic with the fantastical super-hero elements if it fits the story. To me, Kitty’s reactions to recent events and perceptions shifting works.
@Mike Loughlin- Kitty was allowed to go on the mission against Hybrid in Rom 17-18- that came out the same months as Uncanny X-Men 143-144. It was written by Mantlo but Claremont was credited for assistance. That seems to suggest that Claremont viewed Kitty as a combat-ready member of the team. In Uncanny X-Men 145-147. Kitty stays home from the battle with Dr.Doom but only because she’s ill. (You’re right about issue 149-150, though.)
[…] X-MEN #5. (Annotations here.) No Infinity Comic this week, with no explanation that I’m aware of. But apparently it […]
@Michael: I haven’t read the ROM story in decades and I forgot that detail. Then again, it’s a guest appearance scripted by someone other than Claremont, so I don’t hold it in the same regard in terms of importance. I remembered Kitty was sick during the Dr. Doom story (Dave Cockrum didn’t know what to do with her; according to an interview), but not that she was invited to go on the mission. Either way, the general pattern was Kitty being kept out of the field as much as possible.
More to the point, it isn’t as if Xavier was sending the X-Men on combat missions because he couldn’t think of something to do on a Friday night. They were a reactive superhero team, just like any other – trouble had a tendency to find *them* rather than the other way around. The most the X-Men would be guilty of is giving Kitty the training she needed to survive when and if trouble showed up at her door.