UNCANNY X-MEN vol 6 #26
“Who’s Been Sleeping in My Bed, part 1: Careful What You Wish For”
Writer: Gail Simone
Artist: Luciano Vecchio
Colour artist: Matthew Wilson
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Editor: Tom Brevoort

COVER: The X-Men and Outliers react to someone in a classic X-Men uniform. From the interior, it’s specifically a New Mutants uniform and the character wearing it is Mutina.

THE X-MEN:

Rogue. She’s reluctant to see herself as a mother to the Outliers, claiming that “bad parents are worse than no parents at all”. She could be referring there either to her birth parents or to Mystique and Destiny, but either way it’s a surprising lack of confidence in her own parenting abilities. She’s obviously more comfortable seeing herself as a teacher or mentor.

Gambit. He seems to want to adopt the Outliers as a family, and has started referring to them as “our kids”.

When confronted with common or garden muggers who want to join the Thieves Guild, he becomes downright aggressive towards them – it’s ambiguous how far this is him adopting the persona he thinks is needed for the occasion and how far he’s genuinely outraged, but he gets as far as cutting one of the mugger’s faces with a knife (superficially, admittedly). He apologises to Rogue afterwards.

The woman he saves seems understandably terrified of him. Her Spanish dialogue is “Get away from me, cannibal”, which is a slightly odd thing to say. It seems to link back to the influence of the Left Eye of Agamotto, which is supposed to give him those urges.

Nightcrawler. MacKenzie Deneer hasn’t been in touch since their first date ended with her being attacked by Mutina (in issue #22), and she hasn’t been returning his calls. He’s about to give up hope when she shows up at Haven to apologise. He also appears in Deathdream’s dream sequence.

Jubilee. Offers Nightcrawler encouragement with his relationship woes.

Cyclops, Wolverine and the Beast have cameos in Calico’s dream sequence.

SUPPORTING CAST:

The Outliers. All four Outliers get a page of them having a nightmare, in each case rooted in their actual back stories. They then vanish from Haven House and their dreams turn into a re-enactment of the New Mutants’ individual back stories and recruitment scenes from Marvel Graphic Novel #4 (listed on Marvel Unlimited as The New Mutants Graphic Novel and almost impossible to find on the app), also featuring Mutina (see below). This is why the issue carries a “thanks” credit to Chris Claremont and Bob McLeod, the creative team of that story.

Starting with the “actual” nightmares:

• Ransom seems to be sleeping in the football strip we also saw in this week’s annual (and which dovetails with his New Mutants segment). He dreams about the kidnappers that he killed in his origin story returning from the grave for revenge. That flashback was first covered in issue #3 and was expanded on in issue #20.
• Jitter dreams about dodging awkward questions from her mother about how she knows how to do things she was never taught to do; presumably this is before she understands her power. At least in Jitter’s dream version, her mother thinks Jitter is lying to her, and brushes off her protests that the kids at school hate her. (We know from her origin flashback in issue #3 that she crippled at least one of these bullies.)
• Before her dream transitions into this, we get a panel of Jitter dreaming about the theme tune for akids’ cartoon called Brute Force. Brute Force was a 4-issue miniseries about cyborg animals that was published in 1990. Despite being presented here as something which is fictional within the Marvel Universe, it’s actually been shoehorned into continuity in Wolverine & Captain America: Weapon Plus (2019).
• Deathdream sleeps on his back with his hands folded across his chest as if he was dead, and looks entirely peaceful even while having a nightmare. When the Outliers were giving their back stories in issue #3, Deathdream gave an account about dying multiple times at the time of his birth, and his mutant powers emerging at that stage. In issue #22, Mutina referred to a story involving his brother. In this flashback, Deathdream is shown playing with his younger brother Keito, who chokes on something and apparently dies. Deathdream has always given his real name as “Hotoru” (which is apparently not a normal Japanese name), but in this flashback he gives his name as “Hotaru” (which is), and “Hotoru” is the baby brother’s mispronunciation. We can tell that Deathdream is indeed the older brother because he has Deathdream’s  white-on-black speech balloons.
• Calico is still sleeping with the dinosaur soft toy that Chelsea gave her in issue #6. Her bedclothes are still horse-themed. She dreams about her mother berating her for speaking to a boy who, she says, only wanted to know if she had seen his missing dog. Her mother accuses Ember of coming between them, and claims to have killed her. Of some note, the dream also has a mention of her absent father, who has evidently been driven out at some point for his “filthy mind”.

Turning to the New Mutants sequences: the original story takes place during the first Brood storyline, when the X-Men were off in space and Professor X believed they were dead. The story involves four of the New Mutants making their debuts and being brought to Professor X, who is persuaded to take them on as a new class.

• Jitter takes Wolfsbane’s role. The original scene features Rahne on the run from a local lynch mob and being rescued by Moira MacTaggert. A couple of the panels on this page are direct references to panels in the original. However, in this version Moira’s dialogue refers to her actively looking from Jitter from the outset, and Jitter’s pursuers are Hellfire Club soldiers. Their non-standard colouring reflects the way they looked in the original story.
• Ransom takes Sunspot’s place. In the original story, Sunspot’s powers emerge while he is playing football and gets into a fight with racist opponents. The team strips are different here: Ransom’s team are in X-Men colours, and their rivals have strips based on the original Hellions uniform. Cyclops is present in the crowd here, which didn’t happen in the original either.
• Calico gets Cannonball’s back story, rescuing miners from a cave in. It’s also the only sequence not to expressly feature the Hellfire Club, although in the original story the mine belonged to Donald Pierce.
• Deathdream is held prisoner by Hellfire Club soldiers who demand to know “where Perimeter is”. Perimeter is the name of the AI in the Graymalkin Prison, although Deathdream doesn’t appear to know that. This seems to be based on a sequence in the original story where Sunspot is interrogated by Hellfire Club guards – curiously, none of the four Outliers appears to be representing Dani Moonstar. Deathdream is relatively unfazed by anything that’s happening and is using his powers to escape anyway when “Nightcrawler” comes to his rescue – Nightcrawler describes him as a “defenceless child” as if he can’t see what’s happening.

In the modified version, the Outliers vaguely recognise one another once brought to the X-Men Mansion, but don’t remember being at the school before. Deathdream claims that the Mansion is in mourning for a death, which would fit with the plot of the original story but not with the appearances of the X-Men in this version. Noticeably, they deal only with Moira, who claims that the Professor is around somewhere. This would sort of fit with the original story, in which she was trying to railroad him into taking on the team. But the Professor’s absence, combined with Moira’s drastic retconning into a very different character in House of X, seems important.

Waffles. The dog is the first to notice the Outliers’ disappearance, and sounds the alarm.

MacKenzie Deneer. See above on Nightcrawler. She claims that she wasn’t afraid for herself but was worried about him putting himself in harm’s way to protect her. This doesn’t really accord with her (understandable) reaction to Mutina holding a knife to her, and doesn’t entirely make sense given that Kurt will be putting himself in harm’s way all the time either – perhaps what she’s getting at is that her concern is about getting into a relationship with someone who’s routinely in jeopardy.

VILLAINS:

Mutina. She also shows up as a member of the “New Mutants”, without any origin scene. This would make her the equivalent of Karma, who also didn’t get an origin scene in the Graphic Novel (because the Professor had already met her in Marvel Team-Up #100). She doesn’t seem to be responsible for this, but seems slightly more aware of what’s going on than everyone else – she says that she didn’t want to be there, and is the only character to voice the possibility that it’s a trap.

OTHER REFERENCES:

• Woldenberg Park is a real park in New Orleans.
• The aquarium that Gambit mentions is Audubon Aquarium.
• The Train Garden is basically a miniature village and model railway, from the looks of it.