EXPATRIATE X-MEN #2
Writer: Eve L Ewing
Artist: Francesco Mortarino
Colourist: Raúl Angulo
Letterer: Ariana Maher
Editor: Tom Brevoort

COVER: Rift, Melée, Bronze and Ms Marvel in the crosshairs of… something.

PAGES 1-5. Bronze brings Colossus his medication.

Bronze. She hasn’t met Colossus yet in the present day timeline, but in this timeline she calls him “Unc” (and he calls her “Tristachka”). She’s clearly trying to keep up good spirits when talking to Colossus, although talking about the loss of Kitty Pryde (see below) does bring tears to her eyes. She claims that Kitty would want them to “live”.

Colossus. He was on the cover of the previous issue, but didn’t actually appear, so this is the first time we’ve actually seen him in the “Age of Revelation” timeline. He has a cabin on the Dragonfly and doesn’t look to be in great health. His left arm has been replaced with a crude cyborg one, and much fo the left side of his body seems damaged (it’s hard to tell whether it’s meant to represent rust, or acid burns, or what). He seems to get through pills at quite a rate – Bronze gives him four to take in one go, which nearly exhausts the supply. He has regular nightmares about the missing Kitty Pryde.

Kitty Pryde. Bronze and Colossus refer to her as if she’s missing and probably dead. Over in X-Men: Book of Revelation, we’ve seen that she was turned into a ghost by Revelation and now haunts his citadel.

The Blob. He’s working as the ship’s chef. He’s made “his version” of solyanka, which is a kind of soup.

“Some munitions from the Lyrebird raid.” Last issue.

“The Presque Isle market.” We’re not told exactly where Presque Isle is, but given where they’re trying to get to, it’s probably meant to be the one in Pennsylvania (on Lake Erie). A “Presque Isle” is a “nearly island” – a peninsula, basically.

PAGE 6. Lyrebird and Melée.

Last issue ended with the reveal that Melée was secretly working for a mystery employer who didn’t want Lyrebird to be delivered to the Darkchild. More of that later, but for now, there seems to be a strong implication that she and Lyrebird have had some kind of liaison before this scene.

Lyrebird had a leg injury last issue, but while his upper body remains heavily bandaged (possibly as costuming) his legs seem fine now. The bandages on his eye have gone too.

PAGES 7-11. Melée and Lyrebird fend off the Shaw Syndicate.

Because Melée was busy with Lyrebird, her crew have foolishly started refuelling before negotiating a price. The crew members seen include Toad, Doop and Northstar, all of whom were also visible in the previous issue.

Melée is either willing to let Lyrebird be killed which would fit with her secret mission or she’s genuinely bluffing. As it turns out, Lyrebird has previously unmentioned fire powers which he uses to save himself. Since Lyrebird was previously established as having photographic memory powers, this is all a bit suspect (as everyone discusses int he next scene). Melée claims to be annoyed with him for disobeying her instruction to stay below deck, but is it possible that her employer knows more about who this guy really is, and she was deliberately allowing a situation where he would have to break cover?

More generally, the next scene suggests that Melée is actually helping Lyrebird to escape. After all, would you want to be delivered to the Darkchild, given what we’ve seen of her realm in Amazing X-Men #2?

Mad Anthony. Melée’s usual contact in this port is someone she refers to as “Mad Anthony”, who isn’t seen, and may have been killed off panel. He’s probably named after Anthony Wayne, one of the US Founding Fathers, who had the same nickname.

Shaw Syndicate. Apparently a profiteering gang led by Shinobi Shaw. Melée doesn’t seem to recognise him, or to have heard of his group. The last time we saw mainstream Shinobi was in Psylocke, where he was coming close to a face turn – but trying to make a profit through dodgy dealings in this sort of situation is well within his established parameters. Frankly, personally extracting money from ships in need of refuelling suggests that, despite his comparatively elaborate costume, he’s fallen on hard times.

Credits. Apparently the currency of the Revelation Territories, or at least some sort of currency used for black market dealings.

PAGES 12-17. The X-Men confront Lyrebird.

“I’m starting to think you didn’t rescue me out of the kindness of your hearts, Rift.” The X-Men did indeed give Lyrebird a disingenuous speech about their heroic motivations in rescuing him during the previous issue – but Rift has a point that, given the powers that Lyrebird has just demonstrated, it looks a lot like he was just feigning capture anyway.

Not unreasonably, Ms Marvel concludes that this guy is some kind of spy and that they’ve been set up. She and Melée vote to dump him, but Rift and Colossus want to honour the original deal and take Lyrebird to Darkchild. Strictly speaking, Bronze merely objects to chucking Lyrebird overboard, but she apparently intends that to be taken as a vote to honour the deal, as she describes Colossus’s vote as breaking the tie. Melée then just helps Lyrebird to escape anyway, by phasing through the bottom of the boat, but Ms Marvel decides to honour the vote and retrieve him.

“I wish Axo was here.” We haven’t had any mention of Axo so far in Age of Revelation. His emotional powers would be quite useful in calming this situation.

“The Blue Dashers.” This is what they called their little strike team in the previous issue.

“Since Fearless attacked us…” As the footnote says, this is something to do with events in Undeadpool #3 that we haven’t seen yet. Issue #2 of that series is out this week, and the Expatriate X-Men case show up right at the end. Fearless is a blind psychic girl who’s named herself in honour of Daredevil, and Deadpool is trying to help her to reach the X-Men. Nothing we’ve seen in Undeadpool so far would suggest that Fearless is likely to attack the X-Men, so something must go very wrong in issue #3.

PAGES 18-20. Ms Marvel learns that there are submarines under the Flotilla.

The idea here seems to be that the Flotilla has always secretly been powered by 3K’s submarines, and that they – or someone who’s stolen their tech – is Melée’s secret employer. Lyrebird seems to be aware of what’s under the Flotilla, and so apparently Melée’s secret mission is to get him to 3K instead of handing him over to the Darkchild – but in a deniable way.

Since Rift teleports the Flotilla around, presumably he must be transporting the submarines too – but perhaps he just opens the portals and can’t tell what’s going through them.

For some reason, once the submarines are exposed, Melée seems to become keen to complete the original mission after all, and she and Rift make the last jump to the Limbo Lands.