Uncanny X-Men #19 annotations
UNCANNY X-MEN vol 6 #19
“Skin Condition”
Writer: Gail Simone
Artist: David Marquez
Colour artist: Matthew Wilson
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Editor: Tom Brevoort
COVER: Deadpool and Outlaw flee the X-Men.
Hey, Outlaw’s got a logo!
PAGES 1-3. Ellis and Ezra stop by the All Star Diner.
The All Star Diner. As a footnote points out later in the issue, this is the same diner from last year’s Free Comic Book Day 2024: Blood Hunt/X-Men with the same mutant waitress. The sign that reads “Stop on in and make a friend” was in that story too, although it was just advertising the food there.
“She says I have a skin condition.” This is the same claim that was made in the FCBD issue. In that issue, Jubilee interpreted it as a sign that Uva’s mother was ashamed of her being a mutant, despite the obvious possibility that they might just be legitimately afraid.
The Midnight M. Uva makes the Midnight M signal to Ellis and Ezra on page 2 panel 3, presumably hoping that they’ll recognise it. It’s not clear whether Uva recognises them, though Ellis seems to think it’s at least a possibility. Ezra is in full uniform, so for that reason alone Uva might think he was able to help.
Ellis figures out that Uva is covering for some sort of robbery or hostage situation but reacts simply by leaving her to it. Ezra genuinely doesn’t realise what’s happening until Ellis explains it to him, at which point he makes a seemingly genuine proposal to deal with the situation – consistent with his self-image as a legitimate law enforcement official – but evidently he accedes to Ellis telling him not to bother.
Pie a la mode. That was Todd’s order in the FCBD issue too.
PAGES 4-6. Mayor Mikki pitches the Uncanny Village to the X-Men.
Friendship Fest. The banner over city hall (partly obscured by lettering) reads “Friendship Fest”, which was the fair in the previous issue. Obviously not much time has passed.
Mayor Mikki. Her name is Mikki Sapporo, but this is apparently how she prefers to introduce herself – she did it at the press conference in issue #16. Her aide, Lisley, was named back in issue #10.
“Mr Wagner’s friend, Ms DeNeer.” Mackenzie DeNeer pitched the Friendship Fest to Sapporo in issue #12. “Friend” is a slight overstatement of their relationship (at least to date), which really consists of Kurt having stopped her kid being run over by a truck, and Mackenzie being effusively grateful.
While Mackenzie sold the mayor on pro-mutant policies on moral grounds, this scene gives the distinct impression that Sapporo thinks that inviting mutants to come to New Orleans could be a tourist attraction and a money spinner. From what we generally see, mind you, this would still qualify as a progressive view in the Marvel Universe.
PAGES 7-8. Deathdream and Ransom.
Deathdream is genuinely moved by the thought that Ransom regards him as brother, but unwilling to acknowledge it in front of him.
Gambit’s cats. They’ve been around since Astonishing X-Men #62 (2013). If you really care about such things, the ginger one is Lucifer, the pale one is Fiagro, and the grey one is Oliver. Deathdream claims that cats generally are drawn to him because they “can see death”, although he’s evidently uncomfortable with the attention.
“Horse(?)” Waffles is evidently confused about precisely what Ember is; we established in issue #14 that Ember was somehow brought back from the dead by Calico and isn’t truly alive.
PAGES 9-14. Deadpool and Outlaw get into a fight with Waffles and the Outliers.
They’re only trying to pass on a warning, but this is the superhero genre, so a misunderstanding ensues. To be fair, you can’t really blame Deadpool and Outlaw for treating the Wolfpack Sentinel dog as a threat.
Deathdream is uncharacteristically emotional at the thought of anything bad happening to his “big brother” Ransom or his beloved dog Waffles, which leads to him lashing out with his powers – but he’s starting to move away from staying in persona 24/7.
Outlaw had a cameo in the previous issue as well, though it doesn’t seem to be connected to this.
“That guy who looked like a scribble.” Deadpool means Warlock.
“I’m not up on the From the Ashes stuff… is this Bronze?” Deadpool’s fourth-wall gimmick means he knows the post-Krakoa branding, although it evidently doesn’t extend to him actually reading the books. The man has his limits.
“It’s a John Wick situation.” In John Wick (2014), the titular hitman is out for revenge on the man who killed his dog.
“I don’t know what kind of Dario Argento nightmare this is…” Horror director, born 1940, but I don’t know if there’s a more specific reference here.
Eddie Munster. Oh come on, if you’re reading this, you probably know who the Munsters are. Though Eddie is a werewolf, rather than a death-ghost-spirit type guy.
“Get your grubby hands off my girlfriend.” I think this is the first time that Calico has explicitly referred to Jitter as such?
PAGES 15-17. Deadpool and Outlaw tell the X-Men about the diner.
The attack on the diner is somehow an attempt to take revenge on Jubilee for showing up the evil rich guy in the FCBD issue – not by fighting her directly, but by going back to the diner. Quite why he thought Jubilee would need to be kept busy when she’s several states away isn’t clear, but he’s not the brightest. Deadpool and Outlaw have taken his money and run.
Jubilee’s flashback is a straight recap of the FCBD issue.
“Standing there with the powers of Wonder Man…” Rogue has been using powers copied from Wonder Man since her stint in Uncanny Avengers.
PAGES 18-20. Jubilee deals with the diner.
Pretty much self-explanatory, though Jubilee’s power-up was also noted in the FCBD issue
This Ellis subplot is really horrible. She literally shows up this issue just to do nothing.
“They’re only trying to pass on a warning, but this is the superhero genre, so a misunderstanding ensues. To be fair, you can’t really blame Deadpool and Outlaw for treating the Wolfpack Sentinel dog as a threat.”
Although as Outlaw points out, they could have delivered the warning much quicker if they’d just texted the X-Men like normal people.
Is Rogue’s current powers setup that she can control her absorbtion abilities? Because she didn’t seem to be wearing gloves when she shook the mayor’s hand.
I realize she’s been all over Gambit in this book, but I assumed that was resolved somehow around the time they got married, and wasn’t sure if it applied universally.
The last time I remember it being a major plot was when her absorbtion got supercharged right before Messiah Complex, then Charles and Danger helped her gain some control right before she went to San Francisco. I can’t recall if they ever moved her back the other direction again after that.
“Oh come on, if you’re reading this, you probably know who the Munsters are.”
Pretty sure Paul’s saying that we’re old.
And we’re probably all wearing reading glasses too, right? So what if I am? You’re no spring chicken yourself, O’Brien.
I don’t think it’s an overstatement at all to say that Kurt and Mackenzie are friends – he stopped by her house, had lunch with her and her kids, and spent a bunch of time with her at the Friendship Fest. I suppose it depends on your definition of friendship, but I’d probably classify them as such.
@John
So, Rogue basically has far greater control of her powers. She can touch a person without her absorption powers activating unless the person gives her consent, and then she can use her absorption powers. She can also remotely absorb from a short distance. If she is anxious or stressed out, she can lose control. Also, if she wants sexy time with Gambit, she has to use an inhibitor.
I assumed (as I don’t actually remember) Rogue still had control, but if her powers were really working ‘properly’ then she wouldn’t have Wonder Man’s powers permanently.
“although it evidently doesn’t extend to him actually reading the books.”
I never appreciated Deadpool being this intelligent.
Ouch.
Neither Gail Simone nor Tom Brevoort have realized that Buenos Aires is _not_ in Brazil.
This is going to hurt.
“From what we generally see, mind you, this would still qualify as a progressive view in the Marvel Universe.“ As a former resident of New Orleans, it would qualify as a progressive view there, too.
Ellis’ appearance had a point, even a blunt one: she is the deeply hypocritical sort of villain and may not be fully aware of that yet, while Ezra is well meaning deep down (as previously implied), if likely somewhat delusional.
Getting real Murderbot vibes from Deathdream this issue. “I have to go have an emotion in private.”
@Luis Dantas: “Ouch.
Neither Gail Simone nor Tom Brevoort have realized that Buenos Aires is _not_ in Brazil.
This is going to hurt.”
I think they know that very well. Gail Simone chatted at length with Argentine fans on social media about Ransom, and Brevoort has just edited the Emma Frost mini-series, which opens in Argentina, at the Hellfire Club in Buenos Aires. But since Ransom is Sunspot’s cousin, he is obviously of Brazilian origin and must have settled in Argentina later. We’ll see in the next issue how Logan and Valentin will travel between Brazil and Argentina.
I think Brevoort has been receiving way too much unfair criticism, but this time I will have to criticize him myself.
He has a line in this issue at the letter page that strongly implies that he believes next issue will be set in Brazil. Despite the last panel stating that it will be Buenos Aires.
I don’t think that having families split between Argentina and Brazil is nearly as common or seamless as apparently Marvel does. The language and cultural barriers are not just considerable, but also rarely transposed.
I fully expect this to hurt.
I noticed that Brazil is suggested, then the Next Issue blurb says Argentina.
“this is the superhero genre, so a misunderstanding ensues. To be fair, you can’t really blame Deadpool and Outlaw for treating the Wolfpack Sentinel dog as a threat.”
Also to be fair, Gail Simone established years ago in “Agent X” (in one of Outlaw’s first appearances, actually) why supertypes always fight when they first meet — they do it because… it’s FUN. And if you had superpowers, you would too. 🙂
(Also also, it’s pretty clear from that issue that fighting is foreplay for Outlaw, so one can’t exactly blame Deadpool for going along with it.)
I don’t read the letters, so I completely missed that they write “Valentin’s country of origin — Brazil!”
It would be a funny mistake if only I had more trust in the editors…
Valentin _can_ be Brazilian. His cousin is long established as being Brazilian (despite having spent decades using Spanish words instead of Portuguese), and this series established that they keep in contact.
I just find that odd, and it is something of a tired joke here in Brazil that some/many/most Americans believe that Brazil’s capital is Buenos Aires.
I’d have thought most Americans would think Brazil’s capital is Rio and not Brasilia. (I guess if they were really old, they can remember before Brasilia was even built.)
Eczema is a skin condition.
Vitiligo is a skin condition.
Miss, you have zebra stripes. Either you’re a mutant, or the High Evolutionary’s been up to no good again lately…
I’m glad Gail’s getting to play with some of her toys, like Agent X and Outlaw. This was a fun issue. Is it high art? Nah. But it’s -enjoyable- Something I can’t always say about X-Comics.
Also, the more I see of the new kids, the more I like them. Jitter and Calico are adorably weird, Deathdream is a whole vibe unto himself, and Ransom exists.
I’m very hung up on the “keep the X-Men occupied” part of the plan.
Deadpool made it sound like he was going behind his employers’ backs to warn the X-Men. But passing on the info that the diner had been taken over had to have been part of the plan, right? Otherwise why would Jubilee go there?
Instead of keeping the X-Men occupied while the punks attacked the diner (which makes no sense, the diner was already taken over at this point), did Deadpool mean to say he was supposed to keep the rest of the X-Men occupied while Jubilee responded to the diner attack alone?
“Also, the more I see of the new kids, the more I like them.”
I’m surprised longtime readers can still invest themselves in new X-characters given the frequency in which the books are relaunched with new creative teams, often resulting in the newbies get mostly benched. The Academy X kids, the Lights, etc. Where are they now? Why does anyone think that these new characters might have a bright future ahead of them as opposed to getting escorted to limbo? I’m not criticizing. I’m just genuinely curious as to how anyone could give a shit about new characters when they keep piling them on and throwing them away?
Unto every generation, there shall be one or two characters who stick amidst the rest.
I guess I’m just used to the cycle of life as each new take on a team (any team–X-Men, Doom Patrol, Titans, Avengers, Justice League, New Mutants) brings fresh faces of which one or two will stand out and the rest will fade into the background.
Old fans are just too used to entire new rosters (the Giant-Size X-Men, the Wolfman/Perez Teen Titans) becoming hits, when the reality is most newbies don’t make it.
I just enjoy what we get for as long as we get it, before it’s swept away for the next batch.
“Old fans are just too used to entire new rosters (the Giant-Size X-Men, the Wolfman/Perez Teen Titans) becoming hits, when the reality is most newbies don’t make it.”
I wouldn’t say that. I don’t expect them to become hits.
(In Goldfinger voice) I expect them to dieeee!
No, really, I don’t expect them to hit. Once something hits big, jt always goes back to those characters. Most of what comes after doesn’t stick. You can’t do what Wolfman did with Titans or what Claremont did with X-Men twice.
That’s my point. It feels like it’s much, MUCH harder (if not impossible) to essentially start from scratch and have an almost 100% hit. And most of those, like the Wolfman Titans and Claremont X-Men, are also calcified with age. The Fantastic Four, the “classic” Justice League, a certain core Avengers roster– people always return to those.
But comics are littered with the groups that didn’t make it (Young Heroes in Love, Power Company) and the ones where maybe one or two breakups emerge (i.e. most subsequent generations of Titans or mutants.)
Right now, we’ve got the four Outliers, plus the three Exceptional newbies, plus Ben and Jen on the Alaska team, all vying for space, popularity, and longevity alongside the more traditional rosters, and I’m sure they all have long-term potential but we’ll lose half or most of them within five years to whatever the next relaunch is…
I just think someone ought to step in and say, “Look, let’s stop cluttering the canon with new characters if we’re not going to take the time to properly nurture and cultivate them.” Kyle and Yost may have botched New X-Men, but they had a promising cast there. No, they were never going to replace the old guard, but they could have been their own thing by now. They went the wrong way by replacing New X-Men with that piece of shit Young X-Men book. They should’ve just hired someone like Brian K. Vaughan or someone else to take over the book and the cast that was already in place.
The problem that is particularly endemic to the X-Books is they keep creating new series based around the idea of the school, but it’s inconsistent and unpredictable as to who actually gets to graduate and what happens to them next.
So now we have like, 8 generations of young mutants. Some have died, some have gone on to become full X-Men or heroes elsewhere, some have become teachers, some just vanish. By this point, all of the New Mutants and Generation X have graduated, and some of the original New X-Men-era cast. But that still leaves a ton of others in an uncertain state, especially with the shoddy Krakoan approach to schooling and the “toss all the old crowd-fillers away” approach of From the Ashes.
Very few people actually get a full, accredited, useful education from the Xavier/Frost school of thinking. It’s probably notable that in -this- era, the Outliers and Exceptional go to mundane schools and the Alaska newbies are adult-onset mutants, thus sidestepping the part where Xavier downloaded a BA in general studies into your brain before sending you out to fight murderbots…
As much as I like the current crop, I agree that there was SO MUCH wasted potential in the Yost/Kyle era’s school full of characters, many of whom only got writeups in the Yearbook before being depowered and/or blown up. As least we revisited some of them in Krakoa… before Ayala introduced a whole new batch of quickly-forgotten students.
@Moo — I think the keyword here is “longterm”. The new characters aren’t for the readers who grew up with the New Mutants, they’re for the kids who are going to grow up with the Outliers. Maybe in ten years those kids will be writing the future X-Men comics — or at least buying the merch.
The Young Avengers/Champions/New Champions line shows which characters stick around, too.
I don’t think any kids read Marvel comics anymore. How can they? The price is exorbitant for a kid. When most of us started reading comics, the price of a Marvel comic was around 60 cents. The average age of today “mainstream” comics reader is late-30s to early-50s. 25% are still from the “Baby Boom” generation, only 6% are age 18 to 25. I can’t find statistics on under 18 years, but I’m guessing that the majority of the remaining percentage are over 30 years old.
It seems like the majority of fans getting letters published in the letter’s page of the current comics are older than me, and I’ve been reading comics since the early-‘80s.
The last time I saw an actual young person in the comic shop I visit, which was a few years ago now, she was looking for My Little Pony comics. Granted, I’m not there a large percentage of the time they are open and that’s only one store, but it seems to be the norm with comic readers today.
“I think the keyword here is “longterm”. The new characters aren’t for the readers who grew up with the New Mutants, they’re for the kids who are going to grow up with the Outliers”
Yeah, that’s not how it works. Kids can’t “grow up” on any cast that get tossed aside a year or two after they’re introduced. That’s just a blip in their kiddie lives. Nobody is going to grow up on the Outliers.
I expect they’ll grow up much like everyone else who’s grown up on X-Men comics to date. They’ll grow up enjoying Wolverine, Gambit, Rogue, Kitty, etc. There’s certainly room for them to enjoy more. The Kyle/Yost cast was new once, and I *liked* those character even though I was already in my thirties and it was too late for me to grow up on them.
Right. New Mutants was around for 100 issues (before a lot of the cast was taken up by X-Force, the third best-selling comic of all time). That’s around a decade worth of publication time these characters saw print in their own series.
Generation X was around for 75 issues during the “hottest” period for comics, and most of them are forgotten today (outside Jubilee who was introduced in Claremont’s Uncanny X-Men). The Outliers are going to be forgotten about after Simone leaves this title. A few years from now, some comic creator may dig up Deathdream (one of them) as a hipster character for some random X-team, but very little will ever be done with them again.
I still believe that Transonic’s time will come, dammit.
“and Ransom exists.”
Ha! He’ll be The Endling.
I remember it was said that Transonic got an off the chart level score on the SAT and she was Canadian. How can you discard a character like that?
They need to make that her gimmick. She scored so highly on the Gaokao that the CCP said they don’t have any university qualified to accept Transonic, and she’s never even been to China.
“I remember it was said that Transonic got an off the chart level score on the SAT and she was Canadian. How can you discard a character like that?”
Because she’s Canadian.
@Chris V- I wouldn’t say that Generation X was around during the “hottest” period for comics. Sales for comics started to decline in 1993. By late 1994, DeFalco was fired because of declining sales and from late 1994 to early 1995 dozens of Marvel series were cancelled.
Part of the issue is that the period after the end of 1995, when Harras became editor-in-chief and Mark Powers was in charge of the X-books, is viewed negatively by many fans. And Generation X is largely aasociated with that period- like Nate Grey, Cecilia Reyes, Maggot and Marrow- and therefore the characters are not used as much as characters associated with earlier eras.
I think there were other factors besides the timing with the Generation X bunch. I know that X-Men is supposed to be about inclusion and acceptance, but I think some of those Gen X characters might’ve been a bit too weird for some readers. One of them was pretty hard to visualize, one of them had kind of an icky shedding power, and one of them was a human scrotum.
Generation X were at their most popular for the first 25 issues when it was Lobdell/Bachalo. They’re more fondly remembered than Reyes, Maggott, and Marrow, as those characters came along after Generation X’s peak.
Still, Generation X lasted for 75 issues. People remember those characters. I’m just saying that if Generation X lasted for 75 issues and the characters are rarely used, then all these random young mutant teams that came after Generation X and got 25 issues (at most) are going to be forgotten.
I still say Marvel should put Angelo Espinosa and Marrow in a series together call it “Skin & Bones”. They could be the new Power Man and Iron Fist! But gross.
Plus, Generation X got a tv movie wmovie starring Matt Frewer and the woman from General Hospital.
I believe Brevoort was trolling-ragebaiting the die-hard hardcore X-fans who he passively-aggressively hates (and who more than mutually hate him back) in the tradition of his generational-contemporaries Quesada and Jemas tsk tsk tsk
And Gen-X is still remembered enough that all of the main cast* still appear in official published stories in 2025
*btw its my headcanon that Mondo still refuses to talk about his supposed “clone” in the XMen Infinity Comics which is a de facto OG Gen-X revival because there was actually NO clone at all , such that he was just straight-up mindcontrolled by Black Tom through their combined powers (Mondo is an Omega-level mutant version of Absorbing Man who actually merges with matter more than merely mimicking it , and BT is an Omega-level were-tree/Ent) and when both of them were resurrected by Sinister (in the 1997 Peter David Incerible Hulk story where Bruce-less Hulk [around Heroes Reborn] became Apocalypse’s Horseman of War, Cain mentioned an unnamed “doctor” agree to restore BT to human form in exchange for Cain stealing Apocalypse’s favorite giant broadsword for him) after they were killed respectively by Bastion and OG Penance (Monet still fused with “Hollow”/Yvette)
There is no obvious reason why a comic book superhero team could only be succesfully reinvented once instead of several – or none. I don’t think that is true at all.
But launching a succesfull superteam in 1980 or even 1995 was a lot different from doing so in 2025 when comics are so much more expensive, their distribution has changed so much, and have so much more competition in the field of entertainment, even from themselves. Perhaps also significant is that the social structures and communications have changed considerably as well. I have to assume that word of mouth does not influence sales quite as much as it once did, or at least has a much harder time finding its way to pockets of readers that are not predisposed to actively seek and listen to opinions about specific books. And as I stated elsewhere very recently, I also think that even the various “events” are competing way too much with each other even inside Marvel.
For a new Claremont X-Men, Levitz Legion or Wolfman New Teen Titans to happen, we would need someone with the combination of editorial influence to market the novelty; distribution channels to actually make the novelty available to the unsuspecting public so that they begin to suspect it may be worth buying and reading; and a certain number of potential readers willing and able to follow that novelty for at least a few years and encourage others to do the same.
Of those three factors, the first (editorial promotion) is probably still present, but takes a back seat to movie and streaming considerations; distribution has become such a stranglehold that I will not be surprised if it turns out that Marvel and DC make much more money currently out of TPB and other forms of reprints than from the monthlies; and readership has become, if not dispersed, at least complex.
Editorial will look at which new characters get popular and give them more stuff. That’s why Kamala’s here in the X-Men books! The kids reading her stuff in 2014 are now old enough to be mourning her on X now. Presumably Marvel expects some of the new kids to gain the status she and Miles have.
Not all characters have to have continuing stories, either. They’re populating a world. Ayala’s “new set of characters” was, in fact, old characters from the Academy X days + one (1) new character. The new character finished her story arc, so she can live in the background until someone else wants to write her again.
@Luis Dantas
Not what I meant. I wasn’t speaking generally. I wasn’t talking about “a superhero team”. I was speaking specifically of X-Men and Teen Titans. You can’t do for either of those franchises a second time what Claremont and Wolfman already did once. They brought back two canceled series that may have retained loyal cult followings but were never mainstream hits, and turned them both into mainstream hits.
You can’t do *that* again with X-Men and Titans. Once you find the winning formula, then that’s the formula and that will always be the formula. You can’t successfully change the winning formula. Coca-Cola found that out the hard way.
I should add that the reason I brought that up in the first place was to point out that although I felt that the Kyle/Yost-era New X-Men characters had a lot of potential that went to waste, I never expected them to sweep the old guard aside. Cyclops, Storm, Wolverine, etc are too entrenched as a result of being so strongly associated with Claremont’s winning formula for that to happen.
Speaking of Coca-Cola, I was just reading up on the New Coke debacle and came across this:
“Bill Cosby ended his long-time advertising for Coca-Cola, claiming that his commercials praising the superiority of the new formula had hurt his credibility.”
Looks like that move worked out for Mr. Cosby. Pretty sure that neither he nor his credibility will ever be remembered for those
New Coke commercials he was in.
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