Uncanny X-Men #18 annotations
UNCANNY X-MEN vol 6 #18
“Corn Dogs and Carnage”
Writer: Gail Simone
Artist: Luciano Vecchio
Colour artist: Rachelle Rosenberg
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Editor: Tom Brevoort
THE X-MEN
Calico. Either she’s having nightmares about Mutina following the previous issue, or Mutina is genuinely stalking her. These encounters prompt her to sleepwalk, something she’s been doing “almost every night of late.” The very strong implication is that Mutina really is teleporting into Calico’s room to threaten her at night – when Gambit and Jubilee try to take her back to her room, they find the bed slashed, along with the painting on the wall. It was fine when she got up to start her sleepwalking a few pages earlier.
According to Gambit, she’s a hopeless cook (“she don’t know how to cook toast”), presumably because her rich family always had people to provide her with food. Despite this, she tries to make pancakes while sleepwalking, and seems at least to be vaguely aware of the correct ingredients. While sleepwalking, she recites some of Mutina’s threats, but also says “Everyone cooks, everyone cleans”, which are two of the Haven house rules from issue #3.
Gambit implies that on previous nights, she’s said disturbing things about her mother while sleepwalking – though the only thing we hear her say in this story is “love you mama” when Rogue is holding her. He thinks that her overly cossetted upbringing (which, per her origin story, was extreme even for the wealthy) has “ruined” her as much as the more conventionally traumatic backgrounds of other X-Men.
She really likes horses. She wears horse pyjamas, sleeps in horse bed clothes, and has horseshoes on her slippers.
Gambit. He’s clearly concerned about Calico’s mental health, for obvious good reasons, and wants to make helping her a priority – though without any very concrete plan of action for doing so. He’s ambivalent about the Friendship Fest. He’s in favour in theory, but minded to “keep to the shadows” to make sure it all goes smoothly.
Rogue. She persuades everyone that they should show up at the Friendship Fest and endorse it as the X-Men. However, the Outliers are kept to the side. Her relations with Cyclops have improved markedly from the start of the series. When he shows up, she defers to him giving orders, even though it’s her team – but seems comfortable enough with that, since he’s the more experienced leader and it’s a genuine emergency.
Jubilee. She’s up in the middle of the night for some reason – or at least very early in the morning – but since Calico is the immediate concern, nobody asks why. She’s sceptical about the Friendship Fest – she believes that MacKenzie means well but sees it as an obvious target if the X-Men show up.
Nightcrawler. He goes to visit MacKenzie Deneer, asking to have a word with her – we don’t actually see what he came to talk to her about. He certainly seems to trust her, and we’re pretty obviously moving towards them as a couple.
Wolverine. He’s sceptical about the Friendship Fest but willing to go along with the decision that the X-Men should attend. By his standards, he’s on his best behaviour, agreeing to pose for photos without being visibly grumpy about it.
Jitter. She seems slightly put out at not being allowed to appear in costume at the Friendship Fest.
Ransom and Deathdream are also at the Festival in civilian clothes, but don’t do much.
SUPPORTING CAST
MacKenzie Deneer. Having sold the mayor on Mutant Friendship, MacKenzie has been saddled with the task of actually organising it. She’s delighted to have Nightcrawler drop by, and keen for him to stay for lunch. Once again, there’s no suggestion of any husband around. She lives in Gentilly, which I gather is a fairly middle class neighbourhood. The flier for the “Friendship Festival” is a slightly amateur affair, complete with the Hallmark-style slogan “A stranger is a friend you haven’t met yet!” That said, it seems perfectly well organised for a local fair, and MacKenzie is a bit self-conscious about its more amateurish qualities.
Her children. The two kids show up again here. The previously unnamed boy is called Dylan. Oddly, the daughter – who was called Lena in her first appearance – is now “Lindy”. Traditionally, this is where Marvel Index and the Official Handbook would mutter something about nicknames and both names being right.
The Friendship Festival attendees. The Festival seems well attended, with a handful of actual mutants there. The X-Men are pleasantly surprised to find a crowd who treat them as celebrities.. Some of the attendees seem to be in cosplay – the opening splash page includes a girl in a Wolverine T-shirt (with Laura, surprisingly), a Sunfire on stilts, someone in a Colossus costume, a woman in a Storm costume, and someone who seems to be going for Polaris’ first costume from the 1960s. There are some kids with insectoid wings flying around who might be the children of Beak and Angel.
Among the crowd is a big guy who looks a lot like Cable, standing with a redhead who might be Rachel Summers. If it’s them, they’re consciously staying in the background.
There’s a stall where people can put their heads through cutouts in a picture of Cyclops and Marvel Girl and have their photo taken. The picture in question is the cover of X-Men #137 – since this is a shot of them fighting together in the Blue Area of the Moon at the climax of the Dark Phoenix Saga, it really is a testimony to MacKenzie’s research skills.
Five characters show up at the children’s hospital to help deal with the fire, having apparently intended either to attend the Festival or at least keep an eye on it:
- Cyclops, though not (visibly) any of the other Alaskan X-Men. Given his approach to the authorities in Merle, it’s in character for Cyclops to be hoping this event goes well.
- Strong Guy, last seen as a supporting character in Dazzler.
- Angel Salvatore, which would fit with her kids being at the festival.
- Outlaw, who originated in Gail Simone’s Deadpool run in 2002, though she also appeared as a supporting character in Simone’s Domino.
- The character in the red and black costume to Outlaw’s left is Haymaker, whose only previous appearances have been in Laura Kinney stories – they were in the last issue of Laura Kinney: Wolverine.
Haymaker is a not a mutant and is based in New York, making them a curious choice to include here. To be honest, all of these characters are slightly random presences, and you have to wonder if there’s any significance to them. Outlaw, in particular, is very likely to show up again in a Gail Simone comic.
VILLAINS
Mutina. See above re Calico. Assuming it really is Mutina, it’s not clear exactly what she’s doing to Calico, and whether it’s purely teleportation or whether there’s some sort of psychic element going on. She seems to have fixated on Calico alone – obviously, if she went after everyone it’d be obvious whether she was real because the X-Men would quickly figure out that they were having the same dreams. Possibly Calico is just the softest target because she has the most insecurities – perhaps her insecurities or fear are what give Mutina a hook in the first place, given her horror movie theme.
The Vig. He shows up on the fringes of the Friendship Fest beating people up. Wolverine recognises him – it’s not clear whether they’ve met before or whether he’s heard of him from Gambit. However, Vig claims to have been stopping Friends of Humanity from torching the place, and he seems to be telling the truth. He also shows up to help at the hospital fire.
Vig doesn’t spell out why he’s chosen to get involved with this – his usual modus operandi involves him helping people out and then threatening them for payment, but he doesn’t seem to attempt that here. Perhaps, as a visible mutant (or at least superhuman), he just thinks this is a good thing.
The Friends of Humanity. Vig stops them from torching the festival itself, but they do manage to set light to a children’s hospital. The FOH are low-grade type by the standards of current X-Men villains; I think they were last seen in Dazzler #1 last year.
I’m not sure that I buy that being treated like celebrities at the Friendship Fest was a new experience for the X-Men. Both Rogue and Wolverine have been Avengers. The X-Men have been on good terms with humans at several points in their histories.
“Vig stops them from torching the festival itself, but they do manage to set light to a children’s hospital. ”
Note that it’s never stated that the Friends of Humanity set fire to the hospital. We’re just shown that a few boys who the Vig identifies as Friends of Humanity tried to start a fire and then someone sets the hospital on fire. The two incidents are not necessarily connected.
“Haymaker is a not a mutant and is based in New York, making them a curious choice to include here.”
The previews for next issue claim Deadpool is appearing next issue. Haymaker’s costume sort of looks like Deadpool’s if you squint and nobody refers to him as Haymaker- I’m wondering if this was supposed to be Deadpool but the artist drew Haymaker instead.
I’m not sure I buy that the X-Men need Scott’s leadership just to rescue civilians from a fire. You’d think they’d be trained well enough to do that on their own. (Admittedly advice like “Don’t go through the ceiling. We have no idea what’s above us.” is useful.)
Rogue seemed a little Nerfed this issue. She worried she might die from the fire and the roof collapsing. She’s supposed to have Wonder Man’s powers, right? A fire and a collapsing roof would hardly bother Simon.
Jubilee is a young adult with no job, and she used to be a vampire. It’d kind of be weird if she wasn’t up in the middle of the night.
Calico presumably makes her horse out of mutant energy, right? Might she be doing the same thing with a copy of Mutina, accidentally manifesting her own nightmares?
“A stranger is a friend yoy haven’t met” is a Simpsons reference, a song lyric from the episode where Marge gets cast as Blanche in a musical production of “A Streetcar Names Desire.”
The lettering also used that lowercase, directed text when Calico got a message supposedly from her mother during the Raid on Graymalkin. That’s what’s making me think she’s manifesting this version of Mutina here.
Dave White-The Simpsons was referencing a famous quote by the poet WB Yeats. It’s use in pop culture predates The Simpsons too, as I remember it being used on an episode of ALF.
Correction: Actually, there are claims that Yeats wasn’t the originator of the quote, but it does long predate The Simpsons. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that a medal to commemorate the 100th anniversary of Yeats winning the “Noble Prize” (sic) wouldn’t have bothered with fact-checked.
I don’t think anyone is sure who first used the quote based on some quick online reading. So, maybe it was Yeats.
I once had someone tell me, after the Simpsons Cape Feare episode, that Sideshow Bob writing LUV and HAT on his fingers was a reference to Do the Right Thing. (I swear)
One of this series’s better issues, I think. I’ll chalk it up to the X-Men taking a bigger role than just babysitters for the Outliers.
There was some strangeness around the fire rescue – it feels odd that superheroes would be flummoxed by something so mundane. I recall being similarly surprised at previous scenes like this – I want to say some routine first responder action in Salem Center during the Morrison era?
But I guess it’s a function of most of their training being how to dodge saw blades in the Danger Room and most of their experience around civilians being “I hope they get out of here before I knock this sentinel through this building.” It’s reasonable that Rogue (who solves most problems intuitively and by being invulnerable) would welcome an assist from Cyclops (who solves most problems by being well-prepared and making a plan – it’s not unreasonable to assume that he’d study firefighting at some point).
Notably, *Streetcar!* the fictional musical, and the original Tennessee Williams play, are set in New Orleans—this must be an intentional reference one way or another.
You can see Beak and Angel dancing in the same panel as Jubilee. Presumably he stays with the kids when Angel runs off to help with the fire.
With what we’ve seen of The Vig, there’s a fair chance he’s behind the hospital fire. Though that might be a bit obvious.
Given her connection to the Simpsons Comics, I read it as a direct reference (which could just be an Easter Egg or a deliberate quote).
Williams play is an adaptation so Streetcar the Musical, he was so taken by Sexy Ned Flanders shouting Stella he wanted it to have more gravatas.
Ah. Yes. “They wanted to get Noël Coward originally for it. He was not available, he had acquired the rights to My Fair Lady, and he was removing the music and lyrics, make it back into Pygmalion.”
The way I see it , “Mutina” hates Calico because theyre demographically identical (Southern USA Blonde-haired Blue-eyed WASP middle class to upper class teen girls) but ideologically opposite (Mutina was raised “normally” but learned to loathe and despise , to hate her own X-gene mutant identity and her fellow X-gene mutants community all on her own , while Calico was raised “sheltered” i.e. Extreme Home Schooled sMOTHERed , but learned to tolerate and appreciate , to love her own X-gene mutant identity and her fellow X-gene mutants community all on her own) , so thats why she’s targetting her , also because she knows that between Jitter and Calico (who are the ones she personally encountered) its Calico who has the personality least likely to resist to resist her bullying (stereotypically demure & dainty girly-girl) and same thing , in terms of powers too (Calico’s all-around equine familiar doesnt share her bedroom) , while Jitter , due to her own background as an ex-bullying victim at her own all-girls-school , would obviously not put up at all with Mutina, and would most likely beat her up using her adaptoid-skillset powers
It was so fun going back & finding all the characters. Haymakers there without his mask. A mysterious white haired with elf ears is seen. A blonde with long hair is a illyana lookalike- (how did cyclops get there, eh?)
I have been disappointed with Simones run so far. I haven’t read any of her other stuff but it was always spoken highly of online.
This run has just been off.
Its like reading fan fic of a rouge and gambit stan.
“she tries to make pancakes while sleepwalking, and seems at least to be vaguely aware of the correct ingredients”
Setting aside that these are comics about super-powers, do things like this really happen with sleepwalking?
OK, I googled and am still posting anyway – in rare cases people can cook while sleepwalking.
I also wondered about a carrot being a correct ingredient, but was less surprised to find that it can be.
She’s a keeper. My ex-wife wouldn’t cook even while she was awake.
“Its like reading fan fic of a rouge and gambit stan.”
That’s a large percentage of 21st century comic book writing.
It seems like someone is really trying to push on how great Rogue and Remy will be as parents. It’s been sprinkle here and there on the latest issues.
You know when the time for Rogue and Gambit to think about parenting would have been? When their societies 3 rules included ‘Make babies’.
To be fair to Tini Howard, they did have that conversation then. Rogue was clear she didn’t feel ready.
As for how great parents they would be – it’s been long established that Gambit’s good with kids. Well, young people.
Yeah, this just reminded me again how weird it was to make it one of the Krakoan laws and then have NO known characters act on it. And then they made it extra weird with the babies in bushes nonsense. And thinking about it even more – not only did they not give any characters any babies to deal with going forwards, they actually took Jubilee’s baby away!
(If I’d been planning this it would at least have had Scott & Jean finally having Rachel).
Oddly, the daughter – who was called Lena in her first appearance – is now “Lindy”. Traditionally, this is where Marvel Index and the Official Handbook would mutter something about nicknames and both names being right.
Every so often I remember that the entire reason the Hulk’s full name is Robert Bruce Banner is that Stan Lee spent an entire issue calling him “Bob”.