Exceptional X-Men #2 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
EXCEPTIONAL X-MEN #2
Writer: Eve L Ewing
Artist: Carmen Carnero
Colour artist: Nolan Woodard
Letterer: Travis Lanham
Editor: Tom Brevoort
THE MAIN CAST:
Kate Pryde is still “Kate”, despite giving her name to Trista as “Kitty” in the previous issue. She doesn’t want to get dragged back into the mutant world by mentoring Trista, and when she stumbles upon some more mutant teenagers, she decides that the solution is just to introduce them to one another and leave them to get on with it. Such is her enthusiasm for the mundane world, she actually wants to go and watch a complete stranger’s high school soccer game. When asked about her own interest in sport, she defaults to talking about dance, but awkwardly acknowledges “some martial arts stuff”.
Kate does step in to calm the situation and get Thao and Alex to safety when a fight breaks out, but immediately gives Thao a dressing down for escalating the situation.
Trista Marshall is pestering Kate to remain friends with her, and seems to be looking for a mutant mentor.
Thao and Alex are the two new members of the core cast, making their in-story debut (though they were on the cover of issue #1). Thao is playing in the Senn High School soccer team – remarkably, this is a real school, shown in its actual colours, although they stopped short of using its bulldog logo. She’s unwilling to tolerate Alex being bullied, and starts frantically making the “Midnight M” sign at him. When he doesn’t respond – and doesn’t seem to want her help – she charges in anyway to fight the bullies. This is apparently fairly normal behaviour for her.
Thao seems to have phasing powers somewhat similar to Kate’s, although she turns invisible when phasing, and can apparently get stuck in an object at least for short periods without harm. She can’t control her powers.
Alex apparently doesn’t go to the school, but has come to watch his friend Dani play. He’s a visible mutant thanks to his skin and eye colour, which seems to change from page to page – but less commonly from panel to panel. A pale gold skin tone seems to be his default state. He’s an empath who just wants to be left in peace, but his powers cause some people around him to start uncontrollably rambling about their inner lives and hang-ups.
Alex seems to have no interest in the mutant community, and doesn’t recognise the Midnight M sign (which he takes to be some sort of gang sign). He seems to broadly agree with Kate that Thao caused a pointless fight. He used to play chess, but quit when he became a visible mutant – it seems like he doesn’t go out much, though he’s more socially isolated than actually afraid to be seen in public.
The basic dynamic is fairly clearly set up on page 21 when the three teenagers meet for the first time. Thao wants to be an activist. Trista wants a mutant social circle. Alex finds being a mutant a bit of a nuisance. All three wind up going back to Kate anyway.
Emma Frost shows up at the end of the issue – after briefly looking in on Kate a couple of times during the story – to take the teens off Kate’s hands. But other scenes suggest her main interest is actually in roping Kate into some project. Still, Emma’s interest in training young mutants has generally been played as sincere since the 1990s, so it’s probably not just a means to an end.
THE SUPPORTING CAST:
Nina is Kate’s date – the same girl she failed to meet last issue when she got the date wrong. She mentioned last issue that she was working on the date they’d agreed, which is why they’ve rescheduled. Nina takes Kate to watch her cousin Grace play high school soccer, which is tremendously useful in terms of getting Kate to the plot but, um, is this something people actually do in America?
Dani is the girl that Alex came to watch play football. She’s broadly minded to leave Alex to deal with things his way.
Lulu’s Tavern has another barman who we didn’t see last issue, and doesn’t get a name.
OTHER REFERENCES:
Page 5. Kate is apparently monologuing to camera again, as she did twice in the previous issue.
Page 7 panel 1: “Vamos otra vez… peleano con el puño al aire…” “Let’s go again, fighting with our fists in the air.” This is the song Alex is listening to:
Page 17 panel 3: “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” From Martin Luther King’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail.” Alex seems unimpressed by Thao quoting it at him.
Page 22. This is a flashback to Uncanny X-Men #129 (January 1980), Kitty’s first appearance and the first time she met Ororo. Specifically, it’s an expansion of a conversation that appears in three panels of that story on pages 13-14. The actual dialogue is new, but the original scene does feature Storm telling Kitty about the X-Men, and then cuts away to Peter and Logan for a while, so this fits in quite happily.
“Nina takes Kate to watch her cousin Grace play high school soccer, which is tremendously useful in terms of getting Kate to the plot but, um, is this something people actually do in America?”
Only if the cousin has drugs to sell. Otherwise, no.
Alex is a mood ring version of the 2013 movie Horns?
Just like last issue, Ewing seems to forget that Kitty doesn’t have a secret identity any more. Nina doesn’t seem to know who Kitty is, judging from her questions about sports and non-reaction when Kitty mentions martial arts. And Thao doesn’t recognize Kitty when Kitty phases and walks on air.
Kitty’s really not being responsible when it comes to the kids. If Thao gets stuck in an object while phasing she could starve to death- she needs training. If she doesn’t want to train them themselves, she could just give them Scott’s or Rogue’s numbers.
Emma Frost shows her genuine care for children by causing Kitty to freeze up while driving and endangering all the other cars on the road.
Come to think of it, why DID Emma cause Kitty headaches and paralysis when she read Kitty’s mind? She’s been able to read minds without side effects since her introduction.
A lot of readers didn’t like that Storm’s hair in the flashback was curlier than Byrne drew it.
Emma deciding to mind-control the kids into leaving with her seemed to have no purpose than to create conflict with Kitty.
Small sample size, but I have gone on dates to sporting events. But it was either a sport I knew she liked or it was during college and probably free, since it was not a revenue generating sport like basketball or American football.
I am liking the characterization in this series. Kate/Kitty sounds more like a human being than I am used to see. So does most everyone else. I will keep an eye on Eve Ewing’s books.
I think going to a younger family member’s sporting event is a plausible date idea. Not traditional, but if you’re looking to avoid the standard coffee/drink/dinner it makes sense, especially for two people in the food/beverage industry looking to meet in the daytime. High school sporting events can certainly be community events/social occasions in the US.
A high school soccer game is not where any normal person would even consider taking someone out on a date. Not if they’re actually hoping to get laid in the near future. Suggesting this to someone as a date activity is more likely to yield a response along the lines of, “You know what? I just remembered, I already have a thing that day. Maybe some other time.” followed by that person losing your number.
@Ward – I don’t know why you’d assume that someone working in the food & beverage industry would prefer to avoid restaurants in their free time. I worked in that industry for thirty years. You know where you’re most likely to find restaurant and bar staff on their days off (assuming they’re not staying at home)? Other restaurants and bars. Even in the daytime.
So this basically had the same plot as the first issue. Kitty tries to go to a date, interferes in a low stakes fight, picks up mutant teenager(s). I still liked it though.
@Michael I didn’t read it has Emma causing headaches/paralysis, just that Kitty was distracted by the unexpected messages and lied about a headache/took her eyes of the road. Though one would expect Kitty to be pretty used to telepathy, I think this makes more sense than Emma being clumsy or malicious.
Even if Kitty doesn’t have a secret identity, how famous is she supposed to be? I mean there are loads of low level “celebrities” I would not recognise by name nor sight. And things like Kitty being a martial artist trained by a demon ninja would probably not be known either way.
@Bengt It’s definitely Emma causing the headaches, it happened two times in this issue and once in the previous one.
The question is why, I don’t remember this ever happening before when she – or another telepath – is reading someones mind. Not often enough to be memorable at least.
Either it’s just how the writer has chosen to depict telepathy now or it’s some kind of plot point. Have to wait and see.
This is quite good. Not what I expected, but fun, and I’m much more interested in these three newbies than the kids over in Uncanny X-Men. It definitely helps that they’re written as core cast, while in Uncanny they’re still some people who the core cast met.
It’s definitely a slow burn, but I’m interested to see where it goes.
I kinda assumed that Kitty is reacting in unusual ways to telepathic contact because her mental state is atypical, as the plot emphasizes.
Kitty has been trained by Xavier to have effective defenses against unwanted mental contact; that has been told us infrequently but consistently through the years. Right now she is deliberately attempting to disconnect from mutant activism, and if anything she might be less willing to open herself up for the telepath who violently attempted to capture her shortly after she learned that she was a mutant herself. It would not surprise me if she is having to fight the urge to engage in the Red Triangle Protocol by instinct. I will have to check the description in page 51 of the 2023 Hellfire Gala special sometime.
It is an interesting way of depicting telepathy, too.
In New Mutants 39 or 40 (the ones where the New Mutants temporarily joined the Massachusetts Academy), Emma reads the mind of some of the New Mutants (Amara and Cannonball, I think?) and they tell her that her mindprobe hurts. I don’t believe it’s ever shown to unintentionally hurt in the nearly 40-ish years since that time.
Unrelated to this, last night I realized that if Frenzy ever became a member of the Marauders, she’d have completed the clean sweep of being a minion of the X-men’s big three villains (Magneto, Apocalypse, and Mister Sinister). I’m not sure anyone else comes close, barring alternate timelines/reality warps (greater than 50% odds that a mutant worked for Apocalypse in the Age of Apocalypse timeline, ditto for associations with Magneto in the House of M).
Immediately after hitting the submit button, I realized that Vertigo is only missing Apocalypse.
Krakoa Era Moira is missing Mr. Sinister, but I would think that otherwise she qualifies.
Not a big deal IMO. Mutant loyalties are very fluid now.
@Sam – don’t you think that New Mutants #39-40 is a bit of an outlier?
Those are the issues where the team is recovering from the trauma of being killed and ressurrected by the Beyonder. They act like walking dead and end up involved in a fight against the Avengers before Magneto and Emma somehow put them back into functional shape. Xavier isn’t around to reassure the New Mutants and we are IMO not meant to fully trust either Magneto or Emma at this point.
Even in Emma’s own thought panels we see that her motivations are charitably described as conflicted. She admits to herself that she had alternatives besides putting the New Mutants on the ground against the Avengers, but they are not politically pallatable given the risk to her standing on the Hellfire Club.
This is the time period when Claremont’s writing was most ambitious, attempting to present Magneto (and to a lesser extent Emma) as complex, nuanced characters. The general consensus seems to be that he succeeded. I largely disagree; Claremont puts a lot of effort at pointing out the subject matter but there is no substance there. The character growth is informed, not shown.
After rereading the issue I agree. On first reading I assumed that Emma’s balloons were messages to Kitty, but as she doesn’t react at all to content and the wording is odd for messages they are obviously just Emma’s musings while mindreading.
Just chiming in here on the high-school-as-date question. My first take on it is that it’s unusual, but not suspension-of-disbelief shattering. Plus, even if unusual, if one person offered it as an option, and the other accepted, that would be a sign of things in common, right?
Personally, under no circumstances would I ever go to a sporting event (professional, amateur, school) as a date, or under any circumstances other then my own kid playing. But that’s because I loathe watching sports.
If a potential partner offered a date at their sister’s high school play or concert or something like that, though, I’d gladly go. So I assume I’d do the same for sports, if I had any interest.
Luis-Moira was never a “minion” of anyone. She was the master manipulator. She was the equal of Apocalypse in Life Nine, and she was the one guiding Magneto in Life Eight. She has been aligned with two of the three on her past lives, but she wasn’t a follower of anyone except, to an extent, Destiny after Life Three.
Another take on the high-school-sports-as-date question:
In some parts of the country, going to a high school football as a date is more likely than others. And by “some parts of the country”, I pretty much mean “Texas”.
For everything else, it would be unusual, but not unheard of. It almost certainly wouldn’t be an option for a first date, but for people who’ve been seeing each other for a while, someone might ask their significant other along if they had to go watch a younger sibling play.
Painful telepathic scans have been shown for aggressive probing without the skill, or in Emma’s case interest, to be gentle or when overriding natural or trained resistance more by force than finesse.
Compare it to being frisked for contraband or palpated for internal anomalies. It _can_ be gentle if you’ve got the time inclination and skill, and they’re not struggling and you don’t have try to feel through a lot of padding.
Also school sports are big community events in the US. Maybe a little weird for a first date with a near stranger who has no other reason to be there, but if you’re committed to going and don’t have a better opening in your schedule.
Yeah I think the “High School Sports Date” is pretty plausible, particularly if you’re still in the getting-to-know you phase.
An actual football match might be a bit raucous, but a soccer match is pretty low-key, and would serve the same basic function as a walk in the park.
Not every ‘date’ is trying to result in getting laid. I actually went with a girl once to watch her sister play in a tennis tournament, and it was a lovely time.
To: My Fellow North Americans
Cc: Paul
Subject: Re: Attending a High School Soccer Game as Dating Activity
For clarification, Paul asked if this was something people do in America. Or, in other words, he’s asked: “Is this a thing?”
It isn’t, and we should all be able to agree that it isn’t. It is something two people *might* do under certain circumstances, but it is definitely not “a thing.” It is unusual, and Paul is not asking if it’s within the realm of possibility (of course it is). He’s asking if it’s a relatively common practice, and we know that it’s not. High school soccer as a typical date for adults? Come on.
@Tim – One person asking another person if they would like to do something together, and the other person agreeing is not necessarily a sign of shared interest. It could just mean that the person being asked doesn’t particularly care what they do as long as it means spending time together. If Shakira were to show up at my doorstep and ask me if I’d like to accompany her to the nearest landfill to watch the trucks dump off their daily hauls, I’d go with her without hesitation.
But, for the sake of your argument, even if we were to assume that such an agreement was, in every case, an indication of common interest, you do realize that would apply to literally everything, right? That doesn’t make every possible dating activity “a thing” in America.
I can see “picnic while watching high school girls soccer” as a nice low-key queer dating activity, no problem. I’ve heard about weirder, and this looks like a comfortable, low-stress occasion for Kitty and Nina.
(I half expect Nina to be all “Oh yeah, I knew you were that mutant Shadowcat, but you were trying to hard to pretend you were normal, I figured I’d go along with it.”
Sam’s comment made me start thinking about the Big Three and their respective minion squads.
Magneto had the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants, Mutant Force, Savage Land Mutates, Acolytes.
Apocalypse employed the Horsemen, Alliance of Evil, Dark Riders.
Sinister has utilized the Nasty Boys and the Marauders.
For the most part, there’s actually very little overlap between these various teams — (if we count ONLY the versions specifically led by Magneto, Apocalypse, and Sinister, and discount later iterations, especially where the Brotherhood is concerned…)
Frenzy may indeed take the crown, especially since she joined the X-Men willingly after serving under Apocalypse and Magneto!
(If you expand this survey to cover Xavier, Frost, even Stryfe as other major mutant leaders, you get much more overlap, especially thanks to Apocalypse’s bad habit of recruiting from the X-Men…)
But wait, there’s one surprise contender for the “Whose Side Are You On?” title and that is…
POLARIS.
X-Men. X-Factor. Starjammer. A Marauder while possessed by Malice. A willing Acolyte during Magneto’s rule of Genosha. Served as Pestilence for Apocalypse. (About the only team she hasn’t joined is the MLF…)
And so… ALL HAIL LORNA DANE, WINNER OF THE TRIPLE CROWN OF VILLAIN SERVITUDE.
I quite enjoyed this and found this second issue to do what it needed to do, considering the first issue was so focused on Kate. Now we’ve got two new characters, who are given sufficient spotlight, and the third issue won’t have to repeat the formula for the third time. Instead, I find the parallels with the first issue reinforce Kate’s struggle for normalcy.
@The Other Michael: (I half expect Nina to be all “Oh yeah, I knew you were that mutant Shadowcat, but you were trying to hard to pretend you were normal, I figured I’d go along with it.”
Ah, the Johnny Storm Scenario.
@Daibhid — Or most times when Logan/Wolverine, the man with the most recognizable hair in the Marvel Universe, goes by “Patch” and others pretend to go along. Though that mostly ended in the 90s, aside for flashback minis.
@Moo
I’m not sure why you’re so defensive about this ‘Dates Can Be Lowkey Activities’ thing, but while it’s not some kind of hot fad that EVERYBODY’S DOING!!!!!!!, it is common enough that most people wouldn’t find it unusual, and several people here probably have had similar experiences.
I’ve referred the issue to the judges, and they have verified that this is enough to qualify as ‘A Thing’.
@Luis Dantas – Those issues are certainly an outlier, as that sort of pain has never unintentionally happened in ~40 years since. Though you’re misremembering one of the issues, Emma didn’t send the New Mutants against the Avengers, she called the Avengers on Magneto, who was coming to get the New Mutants back.
Honestly, that was a brilliant move by Emma, and I’m still sad that Marvel decided to rehabilitate her.
As for the thought about Frenzy, it ended up coming from the fact that out of Bob Layton’s regular X-Factor issues, Tower was in 4 of the 5! How’s that for a crazy stat?
And, yes, I’m specifying regular issues to exclude the Annual which introduced a whole bunch of Soviet mutants that didn’t even show up in Krakoa crowd scenes. Might have been interesting to use them with Mikhail Rasputin’s plots, but, eh, probably not.
@Maxwell’s Hammer
A Low-Key Activity, in general, as a dating option is not unusual. But we’re not talking about Low-Key Activities in general, are we? We’re talking about a very specific low-key activity, and “Hey, let’s go watch my relative you’ve never met play high school soccer for our first date.” IS unusual, even amongst low-key activities. Sorry.
I think I liked this – a lot. The more banal bits feel more lived in than the parallel moments in NYX, which I’m enjoying, but feels more tonally awkward and inconsistent than this does. I think it’s the art?
But also to have human-mutant relations being depicted rather than hammered at on a purely thematic level feels refreshing, and necessary. Somehow I feel that out of the three core titles, this is the one most grounded in terms of it’s identity and with the most perspective for the long run.
(I’m sure saying so will result in it being cancelled next month, but I’d stand by it.)
A good point of comparison would be how arch-specific Simone’s title seems to be right now, with explicit major villains aligned and a full cast already in action.
Or how unlived in, detached, and slightly out of time and place Storm’s solo feels on a first read. Like nothing tethers it to places, people, or events we might recognize.
I think the only thing that bugged me about the date is that there is absolutely no chemistry between Kate and the new character.
I get that Americans love to stage their own identity incessantly, if given the chance. But the only real question I had about the whole scene was “why go through this much trouble to reschedule, if there nothing there”? Not on the page – heck, not even in the narration!
Plus, I like these kids. They feel awkward and clumsy and a little real.
@AMRG- That could have worked if Claremont had limited the characters that came to Madripoor. At around the same time the Wolverine series came out, Battlestar mistook D-Man for Wolverine, even though Dennis is much taller than Logan. So clearly the average resident of the Marvel Universe has an unclear idea of what Wolverine looks like. If Claremont had used heroes and villains that had no meaningful interactions with Wolverine it could have worked- I have no problem accepting that Battlestar, Quasar and Shocker couldn’t recognize Wolverine with an eyepatch. But instead Claremont dragged Jessica Drew, Lindsay McCabe, Karma and Silver Samurai down to Madripoor and expected the reader to believe they were too stupid to recognize Logan. (Although he left it ambiguous with Silver Samurai.)
I think calling the type of date Kate goes on in this issue “a thing” or “not a thing” is a really weird argument to have. It’s something that happens in this comic, does it matter if it’s common or not?
This issue was similar to the first, but I think the premise worked- no, really, Kate is done with this life! Stop dragging her into it! Oh no, here’s more mutants who need help, she’s getting involved- and having Emma show up at the end lets us know the plot will move forward.
I thought the headache line wasn’t literal- Emma is the “headache,” not a physical effect of the telepathic communication- but I might be reading it wrong.
@Sam- The reason why Tower never caught on is he’s a thug with size-changing powers- just like Erik Josten. Only lacking Josten’s history and connections with the larger Marvel Universe.
Of course, of the Alliance of Evil, Frenzy is the only one that really caught on.
“It’s something that happens in this comic, does it matter if it’s common or not?”
Paul’s the one who asked if it’s common on our side of the pond, and I assume he asked because it struck him as unusual (which it is).
And yes, as a matter of fact, it does matter if it’s common or not. It matters in terms of plotting because it’s the difference between Kitty showing up for the plot in a believable manner or in a forced, contrived manner.
I didn’t think Kate not being recognized by anyone was a problem, it’s consistent with past portrayal, improbable as it may seem.
The refugee mutants on Mars/Arakko didn’t recognize her, except very vaguely as someone they saw on TV once, and it took a minute to click. Multiple times throughout Marauders both the population of Krakoa, and the various armed goons the team came up against, had no idea who she was. In Wolverine and the X-Men the local government had never heard of her. In Astonishing X-Men, the world’s press had never heard of her before. In X-Treme X-Men, she’s able to go to school in her own name without anyone ever connecting her to X-Men activities. In Excalibur the leaders of SHIELD are only familiar with her by name. It’s been a recurring gag for decades.
I haven’t read this issue yet, but surely if you’re worried about it being contrived, the awkward part isn’t “Kate goes to a high school soccer match”, it’s “The one high school soccer match Kate goes to has two previously unknown mutants reveal themselves at it”?!
(For the record: small town Michigan here, and I’ve been to a LOT of high school sports where I didn’t know anyone playing. Never soccer (but that’s gotten a lot more popular) and never as a first date (but my sample size there is small).)
It is a big world, where even celebrities are plentiful and hard to keep track of. At the end of the day, Kitty is a young woman with brown hair (sometimes wavy, sometimes straight) with no particular distinguish features. It is very believable that people would not immediately recognize her without some sort of hint.
Low key dating is probably fairly common, particularly if the people involved are in the mood for knowing each other better through casual conversation. In this specific form it is also a good use of time, if Nina’s reasons for being there have more to do with her relative than with love for the sport (a very likely circunstance). There is also the aspect of curiosity about how each other handles boredom and situations with lack of obvious guidance for behavior and subject matters.
Even beyond that, we have little notion what they had previously talked about. People do all sorts of otherwise unlikely things if they feel at ease and we take the trouble to notice. That is a big part of why both privacy and intimacy are valued. And, in fact, why people date.
I have no real trouble with the idea that Kate can go unnoticed on the street, or that Trista and Alex don’t recognise her even when she’s drawn to their attention.
I think it does strain credibility that Thao fails to recognise (1) a member of the X-Men (2) with no dual identity (3) who was a member of the ruling council of Krakoa and the public leader of the X-Men when they were based in New York (4) who comes from her city (5) who has broadly the same powers as her and (6) who has just used those powers right in front of her. Given that Thao’s whole deal is that she’s the one with an active interest in mutant politics, it does seem like Kate ought to be recognisable to her.
“Low key dating is probably fairly common”
Yes, I know it is. That’s why I already wrote, “Low-key dating activities aren’t unusual.” Nobody here is arguing that people don’t do low-key things on dates. Maxwell’s Hammer seemed to be under the impression that I was scoffing at the notion that anyone would be interested in doing something low-key on a date, but I wasn’t.
“…surely if you’re worried about it being contrived, the awkward part isn’t “Kate goes to a high school soccer match”, it’s “The one high school soccer match Kate goes to has two previously unknown mutants reveal themselves at it”
No, no, no, because that’s a suoerheroey event based contrivance, and as readers, we let those types of contrivances slide. It’s a superhero comic, after all, and “hero goes out on date” almost always results in something like “villain attacks” or something of an extraordinary nature. It’s almost a rule. But as long as everything else surrounding that event seems plausible enough, then there’s no problem. For example, if Susan Storm were to be attending a baby shower and a villain happened to attack a bank or something like that just down the street from her, then that’s to be expected. But swap out Susan Storm with Wolverine in that scenario and then there’s a problem, because what the hell is Wolverine doing at a baby shower?
And Kitty attending at high school soccer match, especially in the context given (a first date, and because her date’s cousin is on the team which is why her date wanted to go this thing), is just plain odd. If you’re asking someone to do *that* on a first date– to go watch a member of your extended family whom they’ve never met play a high school sport, then chances are, you’re not so much interested in seriously dating this person as you’re curious to find out just how into you they are.
“I’ve been to a LOT of high school sports where I didn’t know anyone playing. Never soccer (but that’s gotten a lot more popular) and never as a first date.”
So, you’ve done the same unusual thing except for the bits that make it unusual. Gotcha.
Well, how about that? I haven’t read this issue, but I just found some of the interior pages online, and Nina actually has a line of dialogue that reads:
“Thanks for being down! I know it’s kind of a weird first date.”
Well, why didn’t anyone say anything about this sooner? We could have short-circuited this whole stupid argument. At least Nina acknowledged that this was an unusual first date activity. Kitty actually being down for it is weird as well, but then again, if she’s fully committed to mundanity, then I suppose it matters much less to her what she does on a date than it would to the average person.
Still hard to believe Nina threw the suggestion out in the first place when she was consciously aware it was weird, and she certainly lucked out by her date turning out to be a woman who didn’t give a shit what they did, which brings us right back to “contrived means of delivering hero to the plot.”
Michael: Given Wolverine’s reputation, I can imagine a lot of people in the Marvel Universe would think he was taller.
@Moo I assume Wolverine is at the baby shower because he’s the expectant father and trying to be a good father this time. Or he could be the expectant grandfather (his adopted daughter with Mariko is still alive, right?).
@Sam – Well, you got me there.
“Still hard to believe Nina threw the suggestion out in the first place when she was consciously aware it was weird…”
I’ve definitely been on both ends of “I’m so sorry I had to cancel but I really want to see you and my schedule sucks — do you want to come do this other random thing I’m locked into even though it’s weird?” But then again, I am old and haven’t dealt with dating in a long time. Does this not happen anymore?
[…] X-MEN #2. (Annotations here.) We’re still at the stage of introducing the cast, but this seems like a fun series so far. […]
@Matt Terl
Were you already in a relationship with that person in those instances? Because I’ve been there myself. I’ve been on a laundromat date, lol. The Brick Tamlin date! But that was a case of my then girlfriend and I having such horribly conflicting schedules that we seized on any opportunity we could to spend time together, and missing each other was very motivating. Can’t say I’d have been as eager to do just any random shit on our first date.
Is Kitty working full or part-time, and what does Nina even do for a living? Do we know yet?
We learn in this issue that Nina is a waitress and does some kind of theatre acting on the side.
“We learn in this issue that Nina is a waitress and does some kind of theatre acting on the side.”
Oh, so she’s basically my ex-wife (not the same woman I was dating in my laundromat example, but with hindsight I wish I married her instead).
In that case, with Kitty and Nina, we have two single people, neither with kids, both working in the service industry, which implies flexible hours and coworkers who do the same job that they have the possibility of trading shifts with. There ought to be plenty of room for maneuvering there.