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.