Uncanny X-Men #13 annotations
UNCANNY X-MEN vol 6 #13
“The Dark Artery, part 1: Machinations of Dread”
Writer: Gail Simone
Artist: David Marquez
Colour artist: Matthew Wilson
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Editor: Tom Brevoort
THE X-MEN
Gambit. Sadurang claims that the Left Eye of Agamotto will corrupt him over time, eventually leading him to kill his family and friends. We don’t know whether that’s true or not, but it’s at least consistent with what we’ve seen so far – Rogue was claiming as early as issue #2 that the Eye was “affecting him somehow”.
In narration, he says that he had a “hard time growing up” as a visible mutant due to his eyes. He says that the nurse cried at his birth when she saw him; I’m not sure that’s been said before, but Gambit #1 (1999) does say that the Thieves Guild “cursed the babe as an abomination” because of his eyes. He’s privately hurt by people’s reactions to his eyes, but feels that if he hadn’t been a mutant he would have been a nobody – maybe a low-level criminal enforcer.
Rogue. Appears in two panels. She is cold.
Deathdream. He feels drawn to the “Dark Artery” in the swamp near Haven, and rounds up his fellow Outliers (but not any of the other X-Men) to investigate. He seems surprised that the other Outliers can’t hear this call, so apparently it’s not just the usual experience he has with his powers – but since it’s death-related, there must be some power-related reason why it’s resonating particularly with him.
The Dark Artery manifests as a large obsidian tomb with an X-like configuration (at least from some angles). A door leads down into an underground tomb. The top level has eleven apparent coffins arranged in a circle around a table with Henrietta’s diary on it (see below). Lower levels are less salubrious, with corpses propped up in alcoves. As Calico points out, this thing makes no physical sense, because there isn’t any obsidian in the area and an underground graveyard can’t be built underneath a swamp.
He’s either heard of the Dark Artery before or has some instinctive knowledge of what’s calling him – though at the same time he says he’s not sure where they’re going. He claims that “It has been our secret for three hundred years” – “our” apparently meaning mutants, given the flashback scenes. He also knows that the torches have been burning for the whole 300 years. He regards the Artery as a “beacon” (not an experience anyone else seems to share) and as “like a morgue”, though “not one of the fun ones” (an unusual example of Deathdream using a death reference to imply something negative). He believes that the dead are watching them.
He knows that the Man-Thing is associated with the Artery, and is familiar with the mantra about fear burning at the Man-Thing’s touch. He seems typically oblivious to the fact that his teammates are going to be frightened by the location.
Ransom. He’s picked up on the relationship between Jitter and Calico. He’s typically supportive of Calico when she starts to panic.
Jitter. She can use her powers to read Latin.
Calico. She acts as if Ransom was sleeping practically naked even though he seems to be wearing a T-shirt and shorts. She raises perfectly sensible questions about how the Dark Artery makes sense as a building, and seems at first to take that in stride, before having a panic attack. She feels she lets the others tell her what to do, but once assured that she’s free to go – and that she’s “still a mutant”, something she seems to see as more a question of identity than biology – she pulls herself together and sticks with the group.
SUPPORTING CAST
Henrietta Benjamin. Also known as “Henry”. She wrote the diary that Ransom finds in the Dark Artery, but more to the point, she appears in five pages of flashbacks.
The precise time frame for her flashback isn’t given, but when riding the Chicago elevated railway, she refers to it as “Mr Yerkes’ iron marvel”. “Mr Yerkes” is Charles Yerkes Jr (1837-1905), a financier who was involved in developing Chicago’s elevated railway system. Since she apparently thinks of elevated railways as new, that would suggest it’s fairly close to 1892, when the first elevated railway line opened. However, she also refers to the Chicago Elevated Railways Collateral Trust, which was formed by a merger in 1911.
According to Henrietta, she’s a schoolteacher from Chicago who has never been more than three miles from her home before. She’s a mutant – or rather, she calls herself a “mutate”, but the obvious implication is that it’s the same thing. We don’t know what her powers are, but her eyes glow red at one point (which seems notable given that Gambit gets a monologue about his eyes in this story). There’s an underground community of mutates who leave signals for one another by carving them into signs, and use the same “Midnight M” hand signal that we’ve seen in various post-Krakoa stories. The signal is unreliable, since it’s also known to members of the Service (see below).
Her mother was also apparently a mutant and “died alone”. She’s travelling to Haven in order to honour her mother’s wish “to be interred with our kind, at the Artery in Lousiana”. Since she’s only carrying a medium-size bag and a small box, the implication is that she’s carrying her mother’s ashes, but we’re not told this directly. Since Henrietta is black and this is still a segregated era, the journey is not a straightforward one. kl
Ember. The horse refuses to follow Calico into the Artery and waits at the door.
Marcus St Croix and Alice St Croix know about the Artery, and know that Deathdream is being drawn to it.
VILLAINS
Sadurang. Back in issue #1, Gambit stole the Left Eye of Agamotto from him, and agreed to return it in a year if Sadurang left him alone until then. Sadurang shows up in this issue, in well under a year of Marvel time, but claims that he’s simply trying to persuade Gambit to vary the deal. As noted above, Sadurang claims that the Eye will drive Gambit mad by the end of the year and offers to take it off his hands – for no consideration, but he claims to be doing Gambit a favour. That said, Sadurang also drags Gambit to the Savage Land to have this conversation with him, so he’s leaning on him rather hard.
Samurand claims to like him because they both “have simple wants and … do not apologise.” He approves of Gambit trying to fend off the Savage Land dinosaur without killing it, which he regards as “admirable”.
Sadurang mentioned in issue #1 that he would head to Antarctica and become an “ice drake” (basically an ice dragon), and he has indeed changed form here. The idea is apparently that Sadurang changes form depending on where he lives at the time.
The Service. Two members – Jacob Miller and a sidekick called Andrew – appear in Henrietta’s flashback. Miller wears a suit with a prominent S symbol on the lapel, openly introduces himself as a member of the Service, and seems to take it as read that this makes him an authority figure. We’re not told what the official remit of the Service is, but it’s abundantly obvious that they’re interested in mutants, and they’re not seriously trying to hide it. Miller’s approach is basically to harass Henrietta and tail her in the hope of finding more mutants.
GUEST CAST
The Man-Thing. He has something to do with the Dark Artery, and shows up right at the end.
CONTINUITY REFERENCES
- The giant magical Latverian razorbill who visited Haven recently was an envoy sent by Dr Doom to collect Storm in Storm #3. The “two near-immortals” that Sadurang refers to are Storm and Wolverine.
- Gambit and Sadurang’s deal was made in issue #1.
- Gambit refers to his fight with the Vig in the previous issue, which he says was “yesterday”.
Rogue being cold is odd, since she said in issue 4 that she still has Wonder Man’s powers. and one of Simon’s powers is immunity to cold.
The idea that the Marcus and Alice know about the Dark Artery and the Dark Artery is connected to mutants makes sense. it was Tante Mattie who sent Remy to Haven in the first place- presumably that was deliberate. Also note that Tante Mattie, Marcus, Alice and Henry are all black.
Specifically. Sadrung seems to say that the Eye will turn Remy into a cannibal.
I’m not liking the idea that the Midnight M has been around before World War I. The idea that the Midnight M has always been around and no mutant mentioned it before the 2024 FCBD issue is just ridiculous. Plus, if humans have known about the Midnight M since before World War I, then why didn’t the mutants switch to another signal. How stupid are the mutants?
I guess I dislike the idea that there were communities of mutants before the Atomic Age. Before Krakoa, the idea was that large numbers of mutants were a result of modernity. Before humanity started using nuclear power. mutants were EXTREMELY rare. But the Krakoan age introduced Okkara. an entire mutant civilization in ancient times. And this issue gives us not only a community of mutants in the pre-World War I period but an anti-mutant organization in the same period.
Yet another issue of “The Outliers, with guest appearances by the X-Men.” It feels like Simone came ready to tell an Academy X story, but was told by editorial that if she was doing a flagship book, she needed to put the X-Men from the cartoon on it so people would buy it.
I wish they had swapped her with Lanzing and Kelly, given them Uncanny and let her write that book she wanted to write.
Myself, I never liked the attempts at tying up mutancy to nuclear energy. It is fine as part of the origin of Sunfire and Nuklo, but presenting it as a _major_, even decisive contributor to the spread of mutancy is just too far removed from biology for my tastes (yes, it is a lost cause regardless. Still.)
To me it works far better if the multiplication of mutants simply mirrors the human demographics, with a slightly greater incidence of mutancy in the last few decades due to environmental pollution and improved medicine.
Yes, the “children of the atom” concept doesn’t make sense anymore. It was fine in 1963, but now where were all the mutants in the 1940s, 1950s, 1960s? There were a few, but there should have been a major increase in those decades, instead of the 1980s and 1990s.
I agree that the idea of a large number of never-before-revealed mutants appearing in the early-20th century is a really bad idea too.
Grant Morrison and Jonathan Hickman did away with the idea that mutancy is involved with atomic radiation, instead treating the “next stage in human evolution” as literal.
There’s an analog of Batman called Sadman. He dresses as a depressed person to fight crime. His main tool is a thrown weapon that he calls his Sadurang.
Anyway … there was nothing wrong with radiation causing mutants. Of course that’s not how it happens in real life, but it’s how it happens in science fiction, it’s a very common trope that serves the plot purposes well. The timescale is wrong now, but that’s a problem common to all Marvel comics. Surely we can shrug and move on.
@John: Personally, I think Marvel has the X-Men in a holding pattern until they find out what’s going on with the new movies. The only characters actually changing (or at least aren’t in situations they’ve been in previously) are Storm and Jean.
No-Prize:
1) The coldness that Rogue feels may actually be magickal and/or psychic/psionic in origin (since Rogue now has Harvey C’s powers) and so she’s feeling cold psychosomatically
2) The “Midnight M” was already forgotten but was revived by hipster Millenials/Zoomers/Generation Alpha mutants LOL
3) “Rarity” is relative, and even after all, even in the 1990’s/2000’s Fabian Nicieza was already implying there were established X-gene communities , in XMen Forever Volume 1 , he referred to the Externals as the Secret People among the Secret People , so x-gene mutants were already numerous enough to be considered a people . This was roughly around the same editorial era (Bill Harras) as Chris Claremont introducing The Neo in his 2nd XMen run (arguably the inspiration for Okkara) and John Byrne introducing The Promise in his XMen The Hidden Years volume 1
Also , the whole EM radiation being linked to X-gene mutation started with Stan Lee & Jack Kirby’s origin for 616 Beast . So while it’s now currently canon that 616 X-gene mutants are the result of Celestial experimentation and Deviant evolution* , radiation still both 1) triggers / activates the x-gene and 2) enhances / radicalizes the X-gene
*Kieron Gillen retconned that when Deviants’ genes eventually stabilized in succeeding generations ** , they turned into the precursors for X-gene mutants, as well as all of the natural metahumans species on Earth***
**Neil Giaman revealed in his 2004/2005 Eternals series that Deviant genes were so chaotic that each and every individual in their earliest generations were practically whole distinct species unto themselves , though they could still interbreed with each other
** *which is not entirely his original idea , since the Silver Age , it was already established (I’m not sure exactly by who though) that the various Marvel-616 Earth-subterranean races , such as the Moloids of the Mole Man, and the kaiju of Monster Island, are direct descendants of the OG Deviants
So ironic that the origin that makes most biological sense is by far the Deviant one… if you just remove the Celestials and the Deviants. And the Eternals.
This is definitely one area of Marvel Comics that is overexplained for no good reason.
My take is that if you’re going with the mutants as minorities metaphor, then there should be historic mutants, just like with real-life minority groups. The metaphor is tortured enough as it is without mutants being a new thing.
I agree. Also the ship has long sailed on mutants existing before the 1960s. And even more generally, there’s been multiple stories depicting the Marvel universe as having always been full of superhumans.
Regarding this issue – I liked it! That makes it two in a row, possibly a record for this volume of Uncanny Outliers.
Which… I’m happy to accept the book for what it does. It kind of sucks that Wolverine, Nightcrawler and Jubilee don’t get anything to do in this book – it’s kind of hard to say who’s more superfluous between Kurt and Jubilation – but having accepted that, I’m happy to go with what Simone is actually interested in writing about.
What really sucks is the book already having been dragged through two crossovers at issue 13. I’m sure Brevoort has his good qualities as an editor, but reading the x-books, I have no idea what they’re supposed to be.
The bit where Ransom says “why is there ice everywhere on the ground?” – what is he talking about? No ice is shown in the art. Is this linked to the “call” that Deathdream is following, or was there supposed to be some ice left behind from Sadurang?
The X-books’ strength and problem has always been that the flexibility of the mutant metaphor is also its limitation.
Are mutants more like traditionally oppressed heritage groups, like neurodivergent folks, like sexual minorities, or what? The mutant metaphor can be used to touch on all of these applicable themes, but it can’t really line up perfectly with any one of them.
As far as the source and pseudoscience descriptions of mutation, I suspect they should e understood as equally flexible, changing with the times. In the 1960s, they reflect the promise and the horror of atomic energy; in the 1970s and 1980s, mutants reflect minoritized groups who are “born that way” in society’s eyes; in later eras, as the whole Celestials backstory solidifies and more and more past mutants are added, they reflect oppressed peoples and erased heritages, so the emphasis on parts of mutant origins shift to accommodate a more historical sensibility that justifies mutants-as-stateless-nation or as self-determining nation-state. No doubt that some future X-book will shift emphasis or add elements to make the books work for something else.
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