Expatriate X-Men #1 annotations
EXPATRIATE X-MEN #1
Writer: Eve L Ewing
Artist: Francesco Mortarino
Colourist: Raúl Angulo
Letterer: Ariana Maher
Editor: Tom Brevoort
COVER: Simply a group shot of the cast – except that Colossus, at the back left, doesn’t actually appear in this issue, and Mystique, at the back right, is more of a supporting character who the X-Men are dealing with.
This is the stand-in book for Exceptional X-Men, although that book hasn’t been solicited to return in January. Still, it’s written by Eve Ewing and it features Rift, Melée and Bronze. As for the other Exceptional cast members, Kitty Pryde has appeared in X-Men: Book of Revelation #1; Emma Frost is co-starring in Iron & Frost; and I don’t think we’ve seen Iceman or Axo yet.
PAGES 1-5. Rift, Ms Marvel and Bronze attack a border post.
Rift is Reggie McNair, Trista’s crush from Exceptional X-Men. He turned out to be a mutant in the closing issues of Exceptional when his time portals sent the cast back to Kitty Pryde’s teenage years. He seems to be the narrator here, since the first caption has the same colouring and lightning-flash symbol that appears in his portals.
Bronze is now an established X-Man. She seems to stay in bronze form permanently, and uses her metal tendrils as kind of insectoid legs. She acts entirely differently from her mainstream counterpart, which is hardly surprising now that she’s in her twenties, let alone living in a dystopia. Broadly, we’re doing “the nice characters have become cynical and hardened” here, though not to the degree of outright grimdark.
In the 2024 Christmas special Timeslide, Cable and Bishop meet Bronze in “near future” Washington DC, when she saves them from something called a War-Lock drone. She claims to be living in a world where Revelation has taken over the world. What little we see of this timeline – it exists mainly so that Bronze can deliver a house advert about upcoming stories across the Marvel Universe – bears no real resemblence to what we’ve seen in “Age of Revelation” and it’s probably simpler to just ignore it as a different timeline than it is to try and shoehorn it into “AoR”. If it is canon to this storyline, it would have to take place some time in the past, before Revelation nukes Washington.
Rift and Bronze show no discernible romantic interest.
Ms Marvel presumably doesn’t need any introduction; in the mainstream timeline, we last saw her in the various Giant-Size one-shots.
The border post is clearly something which has been put in place by the US authorities, rather than any sort of sign of co-operation between the mutants and humans on the border. One building seems to have been converted from the remains of a Sentinel. That said, there’s no suggestion in any of the “Age of Revelation” books that Revelation is actively waging any sort of expansionist campaign or picking fights on the border; he doesn’t need to, since the X-virus is continuing to slowly spread.
PAGES 6-7. Rift fails to rescue the prisoner.
This guy is identified later in the issue as Adrian Star, or “Lyrebird”. He’s a new character. A lyrebird is an Australian bird known for its mimickry.
If Mystique is to be believed, Star comes from Denver and spent 184 days in US custody. He apparently has a photographic memory and should have picked up lots of useful information while there, including the whereabouts of several other important prisoners. None of this explains why he has a leg injury or what he was doing at a border post, which is plainly not a long-term prison and certainly isn’t anywhere near Denver, but it’s strongly hinted later in the issue that Mystique is, at the very least, not giving them the whole story.
For what it’s worth, the US government doesn’t appear to be generally evil at this point in time; this week’s X-Vengers #1 mentions in passing that the current president is Sam Wilson.
PAGE 8. They go back in time and get the rescue right.
This isn’t how Marvel Universe time travel is meant to work, but the rules have never been consistent and the X-books have done stories that depend on changing history since Chris Claremont’s day. We never really did find out how on earth the timeline sorted itself out at the end of Exceptional X-Men #13, and it’s possible that Rift’s power just does weird things in this regard.
PAGES 9-10. The X-Men escape back to Melée’s ship, which teleports to safety.
This is an odd scene – there’s a passing mention of “raiders” attacking the ship, and “getting sniped by someone onshore” (which the dialogue has to cover because it’s just not in the art at all). Everyone is too keen to get the hell out of there to worry about what this means, but it’s presumably significant.
The ship is named in the next scene as the Dragonfly.
Melée is obviously familiar from the regular title, and is now in charge of this boat. The recognisable crew members include Doop, the Toad, Northstar, and a big bearded red-head man who seems to be throwing cannonballs around – I’m not sure who he is.
Melée and Rift seem to have to combine powers in some way in order to move an object as big as the ship, though it’s not obvious how Melée’s powers would contribute to that.
PAGES 11-14. The Dragonfly returns to the Flotilla.
The Flotilla appears to be a collection of boats serving as the mobile base for a bunch of mutants who are on the outs with Revelation and are living literally on the human/mutant border. Since it can’t be that hard to find them, you have to assume that they’re quietly tolerated by Revelation. They describe themselves variously as the X-Men, mercenaries, and “an autonomous confederated entity” (meaning, presumably, that they’re a community living literally in the gap between the USA and the Territories).
Ms Marvel presents the Flotilla to Lyrebird as a sort of superhero outfit who routinely rescue imprisoned mutants from “out west” (the human USA), but the next scene indicates that this is a massive overstatement of their heroic efforts, and they wouldn’t be bothering with him if it wasn’t for his intelligence value. Ultimately, their objective seems to be to set up some sort of mutant state independently of Revelation. However, the Flotilla do seem to have some sort of reputation as rebels and heroes – over in Undeadpool #1, a bunch of low-level wannabe heroes are aware of the Flotilla’s existence and of Ms Marvel’s status within it.
PAGES 15-19. The X-Men speak to Mystique.
Mystique gives her explanation of what she wants with Lyrebird, though as pointed out above, it all seems a bit partial.
For some reason, Mystique wants to get Lyrebird to Darkchild’s territory on the east coast (which we’ve seen in Amazing X-Men #1). Presumably this ties in somewhere with Colossus appearing on the cover.
The cliffhanger reveals that Melée is working for an unnamed rival employer who doesn’t want Darkchild to get Lyrebird. But they need Melée and Rift’s powers in combination to jump between waterways and make the trip, and apparently she’s still going to co-operate with that. Given how dangerous this trip apparently is, and the difficulties of making the return journey, all of which was spelled out just two pages previously, the obvious question is why she doesn’t just refuse to go and fulfil her contract that way.
It’s none of your favorite X-Men, plus Mystique and Colossus!
Oh, and Mystique appears for about two pages.
And also there’s no Colossus.
But I guess if you liked Exceptional X-Men, but weren’t reading it for Kate, Emma, and Bobby, this book is for you? Or maybe it’s just for whoever keeps demanding Ms. Marvel but then doesn’t buy her ongoing series, leading to a mandate that she appear in books that will then get cancelled.
“For what it’s worth, the US government doesn’t appear to be generally evil at this point in time”
God, if only. I finally understand the need for escapist fiction. Quick, someone shoot me up with the X-Virus and jack me into the Matrix. I’m ready.
“Colossus, at the back left, doesn’t actually appear in this issue”
Unless Lyrebird IS Colossus.
I get that this is supposed to be a Dark Future but this Kamala just doesn’t feel like Kamala.
“For what it’s worth, the US government doesn’t appear to be generally evil at this point in time; this week’s X-Vengers #1 mentions in passing that the current president is Sam Wilson.”
This is odd. Kamala and Bronze lie and claim they routinely free captured mutants from the United States government. That doesn’t make sense unless the United States government routinely imprisons mutants who haven’t committed crimes.
But in Unbreakable X-Men, and Cloak or Dagger mutants seem to be living freely in the United States. In X-Vengers there is prejudice but the protagonists seem to be able to come and go freely.
“We never really did find out how on earth the timeline sorted itself out at the end of Exceptional X-Men #13, and it’s possible that Rift’s power just does weird things in this regard.”
I have a feeling that was the intended explanation for the ending of issue 13 and Ewing and Brevoort just forgot to throw in a couple of lines of dialogue explaining it.
“I don’t think we’ve seen Iceman or Axo yet.”
Iceman is in Rogue Storm.
And with that, I guess Exceptional X-Men has been quietly cancelled. I thought they would do something, “exceptional” for a closing story, but I guess not.
It was announced that Eve L. Ewing will be writing an unannounced new X-title as part of the new launches. It may use elements from Exceptional.
@sagatwarrior- There’s going to be another Eve Ewing book coming, so presumably it will feature some of the characters from Exceptional.
I’m assuming that there’s an editorial mandate to do mystery box cliffhanger nonsense as much as possible, seeing as the entirety of FTA and AOR have had lingering ‘mysteries’ that end up disappointing. With that in mind (and the general sloppy oversight of this event), I think Ewing did a solid job rooting the mystery in character values and motivations – inevitable conflict driving tension.
When I was still doing weekly analysis and reviews of the X-books on Tumblr, I identified a few narrative tricks and formulae that are signature of Brevoort’s tenure as Conductor of X. Characters spinning their wheels for multiple issues in needless conflicts, tiny secrets revealed at the same time as five more are seeded, dumbass or half-baked ideas for hooks and characters given five issues instead of 1 (or 10, where it could be done properly,) secret identities/conspiracies that the heroes is super passive towards, and many more. Above all else, slapdash and disjointed when considered as a whole.
Given how many books these things apply to, I do wonder how much latitude writers have with narrative and character. For example, I assume that Ewing was not allowed to touch anything related to the main plot or core areas, was allowed to use her original characters plus Ms Marvel and dregs (though no Jitter, who was mentioned in Timeslide but hasn’t shown up yet AFAIK) and was approved for ‘black ops and drama in no man’s land. Does she have more latitude than that or less? I’d love to know.
I think it was a decent first issue, passing the bare minimum of ‘does this book have a reason to exist?’ that most others haven’t. It helps that I trust Ewing to handle the fundamentals well, and here at least, I assume the characters OOC actions will be explained.
Lyrebird! On the plus side, having the word “bird” in a character’s name is usually code for female, so well done getting away from archaic slang. On the other, much bigger side, he’s named after a bird that’s named after a musical instrument. A bird maybe best known in Australia for being on the 10 cent coin (this would obviously not be an issue in the US). It’s just not an inspiring kind of name.
If he has a great memory, he should be called Elephant.
I recently saw some video of a lyrebird, and their mimickry is *shockingly* good, well beyond “parrot”. I’m guessing that the mutant of the same name can not just memorize, but recreate sound with high fidelity.
Kylun from the Excalibur comics had the power of mimicry. He was an excellent example of a character who was a visually flashy badass with swords … and a power that’s completely useless outside of Police Academy movies. Such a cool character.
Thing is, Kylun’s power *isn’t* useless. For instance, there was at least one occasion where he intimidated some potential opponents by mimicking a monster roaring. He could do a lot of subtle things with that ability, if he had a clever writer.
Really, it’s his personality that really holds his power back. He tends to prefer charging headlong into combat and he’s embarrassed that his power usually doesn’t tie into that. It just doesn’t occur to him that he could use his power as a distraction or to help with a stealth mission or anything like that.
Don’t forget Lyrebird has a second mutation, which involves using his tail for elaborate courtship displays.
Kylun could team up with DJ to provide him with whatever type of music he needs to use his powers. Could Kylun also copy/simulate Revelation’s powers? Maybe he’ll make a surprising comeback in this crossover. Probably not.
He’s a Thundercat swordsman who grew up in a fantasy world, so it’s probably a bit hard to think of a story that would use him in regular Marvel Earth. Or it would take a writer being more creative than is standard for the current environment.
@Sam: Kylun should be good for at least one fish-out-of-water in the modern world story. We didn’t see much of that in Excalibur, unfortunately. Other than that, he’s a visible mutant, so most stories that involve visible mutants could involve him. He could be a local super-hero somewhere in his homeland of Scotland. I’m not sure that’s the most exciting place to uphold truth and justice, however.
There was a recent story where Kylun joined a support group for visible mutants complaining about how he’s become of interest to the furries fetish community. I’m not sure if that was a meta-commentary or something the writer actually saw on social media or just a perspicacious commentary if Kylun was a real person.
@Sam: I was thinking the same thing. Even if he can’t copy Revelation’s brainwashing ability, he could still generate a lot of noise to drown out Revelation when he’s speaking. Plus Kylun’s combat skills could play off of Doug’s inferiority issues.
He’s a surprisingly interesting fit for this story.
@Mike Loughlin: I don’t know. The lone swordsman upholding justice seems like it would transfer very well to Scotland.
@Chris V: I’m amazed there are that many people in the Marvel Universe who have heard of Kylun.
@Taibak: “I don’t know. The lone swordsman upholding justice seems like it would transfer very well to Scotland.”
Ok, I guess so, but there can be only one.
“He could be a local super-hero somewhere in his homeland of Scotland. I’m not sure that’s the most exciting place to uphold truth and justice, however.”
Alpha Flight would be jealous.
I’ve wondered if Kylun could duplicate Banshee’s sonic scream or even Black Bolt’s.
@neutrino: I suppose that depends on how deep you want to go into the physics. Presumably Kylun can only reproduce what he hears, so unless he was standing right in front of Banshee or Black Bolt (do not try this at home) he would be unable to mimic their screams at full volume.
@moo, @Mike Loughlin: This is a bit of a deep cut, but there’s that old Marvel UK Black Knight/Captain Britain storyline where they wind up fighting alongside some elves in a sort of bizarre late 70s/early 80s fantasy setting. Kylun might fit very well into an updated version of that.
Well, he could just go to Weirdworld in that case.
@neutrino,
That’s a very cool idea! Lots you could do with Kylun’s power. I still think he’s a character with a lot of undiscovered potential, both in powers and his own backstory
Who/what was the pet that triggered the alarm?