Exceptional X-Men #3 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
EXCEPTIONAL X-MEN #3
Writer: Eve L Ewing
Artist: Carmen Carnero
Colour artist: Nolan Woodard
Letterer: Travis Lanham
Editor: Tom Brevoort
THE X-MEN:
Kate Pryde demands that Emma let the three teenagers go, and complains about Emma’s controlling nature, for several pages before giving in and fighting her. Kate is either immune to, or able to resist, Emma’s telepathy. There’s a precedent for this, with a handful of late Claremont stories claiming that Kate is resistant to telepathy while phased (we’re talking about the likes of X-Men: True Friends #2 here, mind you). Or, alternatively, she just has plenty of psychic training.
After Priti calms the situation, Kate grudgingly concedes that Emma is basically trustworthy and would be a very good teacher for the youngsters. However, she draws the line at taking the kids to a hidden base, and insists on training them in their community, in line with her general agenda in this series of wanting to return to the human world. Even then, she resists calling this project a “mutant dojo”. She tries to talk the kids out of aspiring to be heroes, though she accepts that they need enough training to defend themselves. She also disapproves of giving the kids codenames and costumes when they’re completely untrained and unqualified; it’s precisely what Professor X did with her, but she now thinks that was wrong. She’s hugely unimpressed with Emma ambushing the kids with a psychic illusion to see how they react.
Kate claims that Emma “has been trying to control my life since I was even younger than these kids”, which is an odd claim to make about their past relationship. Obviously Emma and Kitty debuted in the same issue, X-Men #129, with Emma trying to become Kitty’s mentor. But they didn’t have that much interaction in the following years. Priti recognises Emma as Kitty’s “old principal from the [Massachusetts] Academy”, which is bizarre – she was only there as a student in Uncanny X-Men #151-152.
Although she’s still going by Kate, she introduces herself at the first class as “Kitty”.
Emma Frost. When Kate asks what she’s doing with the teenagers (who she mind-controlled at the end of the previous issue), Emma claims that she’s bored, and that most mutants “are falling into the same old patterns already”. Previous issues strongly implied that she has some other hidden agenda, and if she does disapprove of everyone reverting to type, then finding some random kids to create a new class of protégés is a funny way of bucking the trend. She also points out, fairly, that she’s a much more experienced teacher than Kate, and in that sense has more to offer the group. She claims to have a “vision” for Kate’s life, even while she’s purportedly taking the kids away without her. The whole thing seems more designed to drag Kate back into her orbit than to help the teens.
The art has very odd ideas of how Emma fights, and either thinks that psychic attacks create billowing clouds of energy, or thinks she’s a telekinetic. Mind you, the art calls for the stairwell banister to get damaged somehow, and it’s not at all clear how that’s meant to happen.
Emma claims to have scouted out a training facility in the Adirondacks but doesn’t put up any resistance (as far as we see) to Kate’s preferred option of an after-school club. She brings in costumes for the kids on their first day, arguing that it will encourage them to take themselves seriously – but that’s on the basis that being an X-Man is their “calling”, which is precisely what Kate wants to avoid.
Bronze (Trista Marshall) comes up with the names and costumes for the team, which the other two love. She has no frame of reference for the “White Queen” being anything to do with the Hellfire Club or chess, and seems slightly taken aback by Emmna’s use of the name, presumably thinking it’s a racial reference. Her power is to turn to metal, in which form she has superhuman strength and can shoot out “these whip lash things”. She says her aim is “not to hurt people”. She sees herself as “tender” and feels that this doesn’t come across in her metal form. Kate helps her change form on purpose.
Melée (Thao Kitihawa Tran) confirms that her powers are to turn invisible and phase through things. She’s no good at it, and wants to improve. She doesn’t recognise Emma, despite her interest in mutant activism, but describes her as “kind of amazing”. Her mother is Native American, specifically Potawatomi, and her father is Vietnamese. She’s (correctly) a little sceptical that Kate got her start as a superhero by sitting around talking about feelings, and wants to talk about “security protocol” and “codenames”. She loves Bronze’s costume designs and claims that “We’re ready to be heroes”, though presumably she’s joking – she’s only just told us that she can’t control her powers, after all. When Emma sets her illusory goblins on the group, Melée doesn’t use her powers at all, but fights them with aikido.
Axo (Alejandro Mateo “Alex” Luna) is named by Bronze after an axolotl, because of his colour changing. He seems to duck personal questions – asked to include a “fun fact” as part of his introduction, he gives a trivia factoid about wasps. He doesn’t like being an empath and “ideally” he wants to get rid of his powers altogether, though he seems to accept that this is unrealistic. He can tell what direction that people’s emotions are heading in before it actually happens – it’s not entirely clear whether this is an aspect of his powers, or whether he’s just good at reading people with the benefit of the extra information that his powers give him. Emma thinks it’s impressive, anyway.
He’s clearly the most level headed of the group, and the only one who questions why they’re trusting a woman who only just mind-controlled them. He’s willing to accept Kate vouching for Emma, but he does question it. He sees through Emma’s illusion quite quickly, because the goblins don’t feel right to him. Despite his reluctance to be a mutant at all, he really seems to like Bronze’s costume design for him, perhaps just because he’s touched by the way that she sees him.
SUPPORTING CHARACTERS:
Priti, Kate’s flatmate, calms the fight between Emma and Kate as soon as she arrives on the scene. Remarkably, she recognises Emma Frost by sight, although as the principal of the Massachusetts Academy rather than a high profile mutant. Very conveniently, Priti happens to own a ballet studio which she installed in a warehouse that she inherited from her aunt, and is happy for Kitty to use this apparently empty property.
Iceman shows up at the end of the issue; we saw him getting a flight to Chicago at the end of issue #1. Astonishingly, the kids – even Melée, the wannabe mutant activist – don’t seem to recognise him. In full ice form.
OTHER REFERENCES:
Page 14 panel 5: “My middle name is Kitihawa, after one of the first Chicagoans.” Kitihawa Point du Sable was the wife of Jean Baptiste Point du Sable, who is generally credited as the first non-Potawatomi permanent settler of what became Chicago. They set up a trading post in the 1780s at the mouth of the Chicago River.
Page 15 panel 4: The flashback to Kate’s early training is a montage of three scenes:
- Angel, Cyclops, Nightcrawler and Sprite (in her generic X-Men costume) fighting Magneto
- Nightcrawler throws Sprite (in her hideous self-designed costume) across the Danger Room to Wolverine
- Nightcrawler, Storm and Sprite (in the same costume) fight the crystallised form of Garokk the Petrified Man.
The latter two are from Uncanny X-Men #149. The first one is probably meant to be the X-Men fighting Magneto in Uncanny X-Men #150, but the costume is wrong.
Page 19 panel 6: “Someone I love very much…” Colossus.
While it’s possible that Emma has somehow flown under the radar enough that none of these three recognize her — I expect it’s one of her telepathic tricks to obscure and obfuscate her identity, as it wouldn’t do for a prominent businesswoman to be completely out to the world as a telepath and member of the Hellfire Club… (etc)
Iceman has been a public hero for a number of years, with the X-Men, Champions, Defenders, X-Factor and so on, and was acting quite publically right through the Fall of X. I’d say that he’s easily as recognizable as Warren or Hank (in full Beast mode) or Scott when he’s iced-up. Maybe they’re all being sarcastic in the last panel. Let’s hope so.
And yeah, Kitty was at the Massachusetts Academy for all of five minutes before the New Mutants came to rescue her and Doug. So that doesn’t make much sense.
This series is interesting but making some odd choices, and Ewing’s grip on admittedly ancient comics history is a little shaky. But then again, Priti and Kate haven’t been good friends in (well, I dunno how long? 8? 10 years? Kitty was introduced when she was 13 1/2, now she’s a bartender (for the second time)…
(on a side note, you can be as young as 18 to be a bartender in some parts of Illinois, but 21 in Chicago.)
I guess we’ll see how this progresses.
Do people really associate colour changing with an axolotl?
I mean, they do change colour to an extent. I think most people would associate the axolotl with regeneration or neoteny.
I guess Anole was already taken, and chameleon would be culturally inappropriate.
“Mind you, the art calls for the stairwell banister to get damaged somehow,”
Don’t you mean “the plot calls for the stairwell banister to get damaged”?
Kitty’s anger at Emma is entirely justified- as Kitty points out, she could have killed someone when Emma caused her to black out while driving last issue. And Emma is completely unremorseful, even though some of those cars might have had children in them. So much for her supposed love for children. (To be fair about the illusory goblins, though, Dani Monster did the same thing with a sea serpent once.)
Re: Kitty being able to resit Emma’s telepathy, note that Prodigy was able to resist the Cuckoos telepathy in NYX 4 thanks to the Red Triangle Protocol. Breevort seems to think that since the Red Triangle Protocol was designed specifically to counter Emma’s telepathy. neither she nor the Cuckoos can affect anyone who knows it. Which makes sense. but I have a feeling that the Red Triangle Protocol is going to start showing up every time Emma or the Cuckoos need to use their telepathy.
Re: Emma’s telekinesis- note that Sophie, whose powers are derived from Emma’s. is depicted as telekinetic in NYX. The precedent usually cited for Emma being telekinetic is Generation X 40, where Synch copies Emma’s powers and becomes telekinetic.
Why isn’t Emma doing anything about the Cuckoos? If this takes place after NYX 5, everyone knows the Cuckoos minus Sophie are working with Empath. So Emma should be trying to show them how stupid that is. Besides ,if anyone can teach Sophie how to regain her powers. it’s Emma.
“The first one is probably meant to be the X-Men fighting Magneto in Uncanny X-Men #150, but the costume is wrong”
Plus, Angel wasn’t around for the battle with Magneot in X-Men 150.
“Kate claims that Emma “has been trying to control my life since I was even younger than these kids”, which is an odd claim to make about their past relationship. Obviously Emma and Kitty debuted in the same issue, X-Men #129, with Emma trying to become Kitty’s mentor. But they didn’t have that much interaction in the following years. ”
I think the reference is to X-Men 151-152. when Kitty got sent to the Massachusetts Academy. and New Mutants 14-17. when Kitty got captured by Emma.
The kids seem completely clueless about famous mutants, even Melee, who knew enough to make the Midnight M last issue. First, none of the kids recognize Emma, even though she was framed for murder TWICE since Devils’ Reign. Second, as you pointed out. nobody recognizes Iceman. Which is just bizarre. since Iceman should be one of the most recognizable mutant heroes in the world. At first I thought the problem was that Breevort was unfamiliar with how public the X-Men had become since Morrison’s run- which would explain how nobody seems to recognize Kitty or Emma. The public probably wouldn’t recognize Kitty or Emma before Morrison’s run. But Iceman has been a public superhero FOREVER. He was part of the Champions. the New Defenders and X-Factor before Breevort went to work for Marvel in 1989.
After Xavier developed telekinesis during the Krakoa era, writers seen to be just giving it out to any reasonably strong telepaths. I liked it better when the two weren’t linked (providing some contrast between characters with similar powers).
This book continues to have a mix of strong and weak points. I like seeing a Kate who’s just tired of all this and trying to move on, but who also recognizes the need to teach mutants self-defense and that Emma is actually a pretty good teacher.
But I don’t like these kids at all. Or maybe I just dislike Bronze enough to want to be done with all of them. It feels like we’re doing new mutants in too many books right now.
A theory: “publicly known” depends on the age/ generation of the person who is supposed to know. Timeline compression is a problem here, but maybe there’s enough time between Bobby’s public actions and these kids’ participation/ interest in public life that he’s not instantly recognizable to them (or other people their age) specifically.
Like when my brother (11 years younger than me) says he doesn’t know bands like Duran Duran and Depeche Mode even though those bands have been around for decades and are still active today.
I’m not sure I expressed that very well, but you get the idea: the kids’ ignorance of certain facts/ people demonstrates their youth.
The problem is that Bobby was extremely and pointedly visible as a hero during the Fall of X, which is about ten minutes ago Marvel time (despite the “X weeks later… we’re getting in From the Ashes.) I’d say that he’s one of the few mutants you’d expect anyone even vaguely savvy to recognize. Warren’s rich, handsome, and has wings; Beast is blue and fuzzy; Scott’s got the red glasses and has been the public face of the X-Men for ages (not to mention the imprisonment and trial…) Bobby’s the Ice… dude. (And I guess Storm is also world-famous for all sorts of reasons.)
And Emma had to wear a wig during Fall of X to keep people from recognizing her because she was Public Enemy Number One thanks to Orchis’s propaganda.
The kids really are clueless- at this point during One World Under Doom I expect them to ask “Who is Doctor Doom?”
I think Iceman would be famous for being made of ice. That’s something that stands out even among the superheroes. It’s weirder than living energy, weirder than living metal, he’s made of water ice and doesn’t even melt. You might not know any of the teams he’s on, or what his name is, but the fact that there’s a living human made out of ice would be one of those things you’d remember.
Everything else, I know a lot of teens. I don’t doubt for a second that they would be ignorant of even very public figures or events that were actually happening right now.
Think of it being on an episode of Pointless
Your asked to identify one of 5 mutants, you choose Pixie because you think Iceman is to obvious. But what you don’t know is Pixie is huge on TikTok and the survey group skews young so Pixie scores 28, and Bobby who more on tradition media only scores 19. You miss out on the pointless trophy and you chance to play for the Jackpot.
She also disapproves of giving the kids codenames and costumes when they’re completely untrained and unqualified; it’s precisely what Professor X did with her, but she now thinks that was wrong.
It was a long time ago and she’s totally allowed to have rethought things, but it’s kind of ironic that the famous “Professor X is a jerk!” panel was her complaining about almost the exact opposite. (That Xavier wanted to [in her view] “demote” her to the New Mutants, who he kept insisting he wasn’t training as superheroes, although they did have costumes and codenames.)
Daibhid,
Kitty almost died in the Massacre, her 2 closest friends in the new mutants Doug and Illyana both died, one in combat. She is aware of Emma’s track record; The hellions, Sync dying in Gen x, The Genosha school, the school bus, she has left a number of dead mutant in her wake by gathering them together to train and making them targets.
While some of the details are ropy (as has been exhaustively catalogued in the comments here), I’m more than willing to roll with it because the book as a whole is really working for me. Its a familiar concept, with enough variation to make it feel fairly fresh.
I’m in the same boat, the details sometimes stick out, but I like Ewing’s approach to these characters. And Carnero’s art is great at elevating them – the faces, the body language, the emotions. They come across as fully realized people.
…what did Priti’s aunt import? At the first mention of ‘a warehouse’ I thought it would be an empty hangar for superheroes to fight in like in all the Arrowverse shows, but what’s on page is a whole multi-storey complex? That all belongs to her? Or does she own only the room we later see the characters in, in which case it sucks as a training place for mutants if there are regular people on the other side of every wall.
Anyway. Details. Not important.
In regards to telepaths getting telekinesis…
As with most things X-men related, I lay the blame at the feet of Jean Grey. She is the first member of the team to have another power added, in her case it was going from telekinesis to telepathy. Yes, I know the retcon involved, but it wasn’t that way in publication.
Early X-men comics also had Magneto as telepathic and capable of astral projection, so it might have been a belief that all mutants with mentally activated powers would become telepaths; Mastermind is sometimes portrayed as having mind control-ish powers (I’m thinking X-men First Class here, but it’s been a while since I’ve read those so I could be mistaken, but the movie X2 sort of does it).
Why is this an X-Men book, other than Brevoort’s desire to overload the brand again? Adjectiveless and Uncanny more or less sell being “X-Men” books, but this is “Newest Mutants”, just like Weapon X-Men is “X-Force (but the name’s already in use and we can’t have two X-Force books)”.
Funny how long in the Hickman run they kept it down to one, main monthly X-Men book (albeit with some side projects like Giant-Size X-Men, or the counterprogramming/flashback-focused X-Men Legends). Then as soon as Hickman was gone, suddenly the Quiet Council book was “Immortal X-Men”, and the Arakko book was “X-Men Red”, neither of which attempted to seriously justify their names. And now we’re up to FOUR X-Men ongoings…
@Alistair:
Yep, Kitty has valid reasons to disapprove of Emma Frost gathering a bunch of mutant kids and giving them costumes. Which isn’t exactly the same as disapproving of anyone doing it, which is what Paul was describing in the passage I quoted.
And I’m not sure I completely buy the idea that the tragic events of New Mutants are what convinced Kitty that this sort of thing was a bad idea, given that she spent the Schism period as “Professor K”, originally for the side that paid lip-service to the idea that these kids weren’t being pushed into combat, before transferring to the side that was making child soldiers, and also included Emma Frost.
But basically, yes, you’re right. That’s why I was very specifically not saying she was in any way wrong to feel this way. I just found it mildly amusing that, at least as Paul describes it, it still adds up to Prof X being a jerk.
Forget mutant celebrities, kids don’t know there’s a white queen in chess?
If anything codenames, costumes, and secret identities make more sense for the kids. Being mutants makes them potential targets for people who hate or want to exploit them and they don’t have the training to defend themselves or live in an isolated compound alongside a paramilitary strike force of alpha, beta, and sometimes an alarming number of omega level mutants. Kate or Emma can take care of themselves just fine in a fight against an angry mob or Sabretooth. Though really, generic trainee costumes that you could pass off as a ski outfit would be better than individualized outfits that scream put me in a superhero v supervillain fight.
Unless she went there, why on Earth would Priti recognize Emma as the former headmistress of the Massachusetts Academy?
I’m enjoying this series, but the weird bits are puzzling. It reminds me of what’s going on in Uncanny X-Men right now: there are too many “off” details and unexplained plot beats that take me out of the story. I think Exceptional X-Men is better, though, and this issue gets bonus points for telling us each new characters’ names and powers. It’s not that hard, Uncanny team.
I haven’t read the issue, but chess wouldn’t be the first thing that jumps to mind, considering Emma’s costume and powers don’t have anything chess related, and she hasn’t hung around with other people named after chess pieces for years. She is however, the epiome of upper class WASP.
Si,
You’d think being a telepath, a manipulator, and notably snarky that Emma would be aware of the child’s reaction and defuse the situation. “Chess, dear. I’m named for the most powerful piece in the game. It’s all about strategy, I’d be happy to teach you how to play, I think you’ll be good at it.”
“Also, the White Queen is on the team that always wins.”
“Isn’t that just in chess puzzles, not actual games?”
“I said what I said.”
[…] X-MEN #3. (Annotations here.) You might question billing the trainee book as an X-Men title, but the comic itself is working. […]