X-MEN vol 7 #27
“Danger Room, part 2”
Writer: Jed MacKay
Penciller: Netho Diaz
Inker: Sean Parsons
Colourist: Fer Sifuentes-Sujo
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Editor: Tom Brevoort

COVER: Ben Liu, Animalia, Kid Omega and Temper react with shock as something with bloody hands approaches the Factory – it’s possibly meant to be Glob Herman staggering home, since nobody actually attacks the Factory in this issue.

THE X-MEN: 

This is mostly an introducing-the-villains issue, so the X-Men themselves don’t actually do or say that much.

Cyclops, Juggernaut, Magik and the Beast are shown defiantly fighting Beyond’s techno-organic monsters.

Psylocke. We only see her in the Marauder as it comes under missile fire while she’s on her way to Greycrow. (Come to think of it, why didn’t she just get Magik to teleport her there before the mission?) According to Charlene Jackson (see below), the Danger Room’s “stated objective” in going after Psylocke was to separate her from the X-Men in order to weaken the team, by depriving them of her psychic abilities and her second-in-command role. Jackson and Maxine Danger both seem strongly inclined to see her dead anyway, which begs the question of why the stated objective was anything else – is it simply for plausible deniability, or does Frank Bohannon not actually want the X-Men dead? He didn’t spell out last issue what the Danger Room were meant to achieve, after all. See also the position with Glob Herman.

Kid Omega and Temper are at the Factory, reacting to Glob’s injuries.

SUPPORTING CAST:

Glob Herman. He’s not dead, though he is “fighting for his life” in the Factory’s medical bay (with Magneto apparently doing his best to treat Glob in Beast’s absence). Since Glob was shot at point blank range last issue, it seems reasonable to infer that the gunman wasn’t necessarily trying to kill him.

Xorn. He appears with Psylocke on the Marauder.

Magneto, Ben Liu and Animalia appear at the Factory tending to the injured Glob Herman.

Paula Robbins. She appears with the X-Men on the ship.

VILLAINS:

Maxine Danger. She describes herself as “something between a high-functioning sociopath and a narcissistic solipsist”. She claims to dislike prisons because of the waste of human potential (i.e., the waste of resources that might be available to people like her).

The Danger Room. A group of four prisoners that have been released into Maxine Danger’s custody so that she can use them to mastermind a scheme to bring down the X-Men. Maxine describes them as “manipulative, psychotic masterminds, adept in meticulously ruining lives”, and her apparent conviction that she can keep them all on side seems questionable. Still, it’s such an obvious point that she must have a plan.

They’re all new characters, and much of the issue consists of a series of flashbacks to Danger recruiting them in jail. They are:

Charlene Jackson. A sociopathic former SHIELD operations planner who used to deliberately plan her missions to bring about excessive casualties, including on her own side. She claims to have felt compelled to get as many people as possible killed before she was murdered, and to have met her self-imposed target, but to remain unfulfilled. She claims that she’s not allowed to speak in jail because she keeps convincing her cellmates to commit suicide; we’re expressly told that she has no superhuman powers, so apparently she’s just incredibly persuasive.

She presents as formal and professional – she insists on calling the X-Men “Codename: Cyclops”, “Codename: Psylocke” and so forth, and refers to casualties euphemistically. She’s responsible for the part of the operation that’s targetting Psylocke and, as noted above, seems to have no problem implying to Danger that she’s trying to get Psylocke killed.

Colton Colton. A psychopath who slowly engineered grudges in his trailer park community until everyone else killed one another, simply to see if he could do it. Again, we’re told that he has no powers; he’s just very manipulative. His focus is on trying to damage the X-Men’s relationship with the town of Merle, and re-ignite the tensions arising from the fact that the X-Men are occupying the Sentinel factory that used to be the town’s main source of employment. Broadly, his aim in shooting Glob Herman seems to be to provoke Kid Omega (and to a lesser degree Temper) into doing something stupid. Presumably, he was responsible for shooting Glob last issue (though it might have been another Beyond agent). He drinks beer while working, wears military gear, but explains his plans quite calmly.

Grigos and Marquez. Two men who claim to be Skrulls that were trapped in human form at the end of Secret Invasion, in a modified version of the fate that befell the first Skrull invaders (who were trapped as cows by Mr Fantastic). They claim that their true names have been stolen from them, but Grigos also insists that his name is an ancient Skrull name – presumably he’s claiming that it’s not his Skrull name, but a different Skrull name that he’s learned about.

The two of them met online and have been waging a guerilla war to weaken humanity in preparation for the next Skrull invasion; their incentive for getting involved in the Danger Room is to undermine superheroes. Maxine believes that they’re delusional and says so to their faces. She correctly identifies that the name “Grigos” appears to be Greek (it’s a village in Patmos).

They’re responsible for the attack on the ship.

REFERENCES:

• The fact that the Danger Room members had been released from jail (at Maxine Danger’s request but on Frank Bohannon’s approval) was mentioned in passing last issue.
• Mr Fantastic turned the Skrulls into cows in Fantastic Four vol 1 #2.