X-MEN vol 7 #26
“Danger Room, part 1”
Writer: Jed MacKay
Penciller: Netho Diaz
Inker: Sean Parsons
Colourist: Fer Sifuentes-Sujo
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Editor: Tom Brevoort

COVER: The X-Men (Cyclops, Juggernaut, Beast and Magik) are ambushed on the ship.

THE X-MEN:

Cyclops. As usual, he gives entirely pragmatic rather than principled reasons for helping to find Sheriff Robins – she’s a useful ally and her replacement might not be. This isn’t particularly heroic reasoning but he may simply be tailoring his reasons to his audience (Quentin and Cain).

He says that he was a kid when he lived in Alaska, and “grew up” in Westchester – this glosses over his time in the Nebraska orphanage entirely.

His initial reaction to Psylocke prioritising Greycrow is to tell her that she’s needed on the mission, and then to more or less imply that Greycrow had it coming. He backs off, probably more because he realises that he’s being insensitive. However, he does then offer Xorn’s services.

Psylocke. She seems to have a broadly positive view of the locals (it doesn’t seem to occur to her that Glob might get into any trouble running his vegetable stall), but still has no particular interest in being called in to investigate the attack on the police station. She seems to see it as a pointless exercise in soldiers pretending to be detectives for show and rejects the description of the X-Men as super heroes. She claims to like Robbins, but understandably wants to focus on Greycrow when she learns that he’s in hospital.

Kid Omega. He grumbles about the X-Men paying any attention to “a cop”, even though she’s clearly been abducted.

Juggernaut. He’s a big guy who smashes things.

Magik. She uses “sympathetic magic” to track Paula Robbins using her blood, and quotes the old “as above, so below” line, presumably on the reading that things at different scales are essentially similar. For some reason she refers to George Frazer’s The Golden Bough, which was a work of comparative mythology, not a magical text.

Beast. He joins the field team, possibly replacing Psylocke.

SUPPORTING CAST:

John Greycrow. Psylocke’s boyfriend from her solo book (and Hellions before that) has appeared in this book before, and his bank robbing activities were specifically mentioned in issue #5. Adorably, he’s wearing a mask for the purposes of this robbery, even though he’s also in his extremely recognisable costume where he normally appears unmasked. Mind you, he’s hardly a public figure.

Greycrow tells us that the robbery was a trap (or at least that someone tipped off the authorities). When faced with a ton of police, his immediate reaction is to remove his mask and prepare to fight, anticipating death. Either he’s assuming that the cops will try to kill him, or he can’t accept capture – he doesn’t seem to regard surrender as an option. We don’t actually see who shoots first, but he does wind up in hospital.

Amy. Greycrow repeatedly tries to contact an unseen “Amy” to get him away. Based on issue #5, this would be the teleporter Amelia Voght. Something seems to have happened to her.

Glob Herman. He’s setting up a vegetable stand to sell fruit and vegetables to the locals. He’d rather just give the produce away, but Cyclops has persuaded him that people will trust him more if there’s at least a token price. Most of the locals seem to like him just fine, but he apparently gets shot at the end of the issue.

Paula Robbins. She’s been selected as bait to lure the X-Men into a trap, presumably on the view that she’s the closest thing to an outside supporting character that they have.

Deputy Smith. I don’t think we’ve seen this guy before, but Scott seems familiar with him. He’s entirely out of his depth dealing with the attack on the police station, and responds by calling in the X-Men rather than the authorities (either that, or he’s leading the X-Men into a trap). He regards the X-Men as superheroes who saved the town twice.

Rose Ellen Cobb. She seems to have been more or less deradicalised following the discovery that she had a mutant daughter, and is very apologetic to Glob about having believed “all those podcasts”. Understandably, she’s still quite keen to know what happened to the missing daughter, Robin. Glob gives a slightly evasive answer, confirming that the X-Men know that she’s with 3K (which Rose already knows) but dancing around the other reasons why the X-Men are trying to find 3K. Presumably Glob has in mind the fact that the Chairman has turned out to be the original Beast, and that the X-Men’s Beast shared that information with the team after the previous issue.

Piper Cobb. She likes Glob’s strawberries and seems quite happy.

VILLAINS:

Frank Bohannan. He wears his trenchcoat even in his office, and has a mug with the American flag on it. He’s hired Beyond to deal with the X-Men, but regards them as “psychopaths” and cynics who lack his belief in God and country.

Maxine Danger. She was the head of the Beyond Corporation’s New York branch in Amazing Spider-Man and responsible for turning Ben Reilly into a corporate Spider-Man. Originally an absurdist outfit from NextWave, at this point Beyond have basically become mercenaries with assorted wacky technology. She was last seen in Amazing Spider-Man: Blood Hunt, where she certainly wasn’t in jail – so when Bohannan says that he “approved your release requests”, he presumably means that Beyond asked for some people to be released from jail to help.

REFERENCES:

• Deputy Smith refers to “the Iron Night” (the first Sentinel attack on Merle that we saw in flashback in issue #7) and “the Second Iron Night” (presumably Magneto’s Sentinel fighting the attacking monster in issues #14-17).
• Glob is singing “The Move” by the Beastie Boys.