Uncanny X-Men #26 annotations
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.
“From the interior, it’s specifically a New Mutants uniform and the character wearing it is Mutina.”
I read that and my immediate reaction was “Oh no”.
I suppose after “The Outliers’ Fairy Tale” last arc it makes sense we’d get to “The Outliers’ New Mutants” now. Place your bets what they’ll retread next: “The Outliers’ Secret Wars”? “The Outliers’ Lifedeath”?
The Outliers’ Draco, where it turns out Calico’s real dad is an evil horse from the horse dimension.
“The Outliers’ Dark Phoenix Saga”
“The Days of Future Outliers Past”
Let us not forget the “Outliers Back Era”.
“Ou-Tinction Agendliers”
“Outperation Zero Toliersance”
There seems to have been some miscommunication between the writer and the artist here. Presumably the old woman calling Gambit a cannibal was supposed to be because Gambit actually bit a chunk off, rather than having magical cannibal detection powers. Same with Kurt not noticing a couple of wraiths.
“either way it’s a surprising lack of confidence in her own parenting abilities.”
I think it’s understandable- Mystique seemed to Rogue like a good mother for much of her childhood but she nearly stabbed her to death in Dreams’ End. Worrying that she might turn into Mystique someday would be understandable.
“it’s actually been shoehorned into continuity in Wolverine & Captain America: Weapon Plus (2019).”
Brute Force were first established as in continuity in Deadpool Bi-Annual 1, in 2014.
“Her mother accuses Ember of coming between them, and claims to have killed her.”
Specifically, she claims to have set Ember on fire. In issue 22,Mutina says “The fire inspector says the fire that killed li’l Becca’s own mother was arson. She walked away, let it all burn.” Presumably this is how Becca’s mother died- the fire she set went out of control and killed her.
It’s odd that Becca’s mother resembles Emma Frost so much- they were both rich women who burnt a horse to death in order to abuse a child. But Becca has had no meaningful interactions with Emma since she’s been introduced.
Noie that Hank says in the dream that he’s not sure whether Calico or Ember is the mutant.
More inconstancies between the dream and reality- Hank was with the Defenders when the New Mutants were recruited and Wolverine is wearing the wrong costume.
“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”
It’s possible the death is Jean Grey- the New Mutants were recruited about two years in real life after Jean Grey died, which in Marvel Time is about five minutes. 🙂
“they deal only with Moira, who claims that the Professor is around somewhere. ”
Note that the Professor is never referred to as “Charles”, “Xavier” or “Professor X”. I have a feeling the Professor isn’t Xavier.
“But the Professor’s absence, combined with Moira’s drastic retconning into a very different character in House of X, seems important.”
Whoever is behind this, I doubt it’s Moira. For a moment, I was wondering if the Chairman could be behind this, since Beast wasn’t present. in the original story but that doesn’t seem to ring true either- why would he include Perimeter in the sequence?
Gail said that two classic X-Villains would be appearing in Uncanny. I wonder if this is the story where they appear. And is she counting Moira as one of them?
So, with the Hellfire Club so involved, are we assuming this is Mastermind, then? Or more of a reality warper?
“I have a feeling the Professor isn’t Xavier.”
Professor Power.
“Get away from me, cannibal”
She repeatedly says “cantbal” instead of the Spanish “canibal” — which I take everyone is presuming to represent an accent.
I am so glad for these annotations. Even having read the originals, I needed the deliberate parallels pointed out to me. I felt lost. Thank you Paul!
Mutina’s powers involve knowing things that she shouldn’t. Perhaps telepathy, or perhaps her marketing team includes Gwenpool. I am not ruling out the dreams being inside her mind despite her confusion.
Previously Gambit proposed having children with Rouge, and she was firmly against it. This was a nice validation of her character not being defined by motherhood. I didn’t take Gambit’s dialogue here as being limited to adopting the Outliers. This felt like the subtle back and forth between a couple in an evolving relationship. Simone’s voice for Gambit lands for me here.
Heroic effort on Paul’s part to extract some sense from the MacKenzie resolution.
Personally, I think Rogue and Gambit have both been around enough X-kids with sad backstories that it’s weird they feel so specifically parental toward these ones. But whatever.
Maybe the woman was going with the New Mutants theme, and was trying to say “Get away from me Cannonball”. We don’t know if she has a speech impediment.
This was one of the better issues of Uncanny, and not just because Nightcrawler got some lines. It’s probably the first Outliar story I’m actually interested in reading, because of the connection of X-Men history, though I do have to wonder how many of the continuity differences are a choice and how many are Simone not doing the research.
I do think it would have landed better if we hadn’t just done the Outliar Western plot, but I guess that’s the book.
@Sean it does seem like they are living in tighter quarters with less people and more of an even kid to adult ratio than in previous runs. They also are more specifically the central leadership figures than in other runs. I think if you squint, it makes a decent amount of sense.
Donald Pierce is a mining magnate, but was was it stated he owned the mine that Sam worked in?
The Hellfire goons were differently colored because they (Cole, Reese, and Macon) were working for the renegade Pierce.
In addition to the soccer teams having the New Mutants and Hellions colors, the two people tackling Ransom are his brother and his brother’s friend.
“Hotaru” is a Japanese name, but it’s a female one.
“Hotaru” as a name might trend female, but it’s not gendered— one second on Wikipedia turned up this guy as an example:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hotaru_Yamaguchi
“Donald Pierce is a mining magnate, but was was it stated he owned the mine that Sam worked in?”
Never specifically stated, AFAIK. But I think the insinuation was there. Given that he owned a mine in Kentucky, and Sam’s powers manifested while working in a Kentucky mine, and Pierce was aware of the manifestation and promptly hired Sam (off-screen, so there’s clearly some blank space to fill in someday)…
It makes more sense than not for Sam to have been working in Pierce’s mine, just to keep things narratively tight. (Especially since they narrow the location down to Cameron County in both cases.)
“It’s odd that Becca’s mother resembles Emma Frost so much- they were both rich women who burnt a horse to death in order to abuse a child. But Becca has had no meaningful interactions with Emma since she’s been introduced.”
The parallel here is probably just due to the trope of horses being a symbol of girlhood and free-spirited innocence – but yes, I had the same thought. The wealth and the burning do give a gothic flare to both Becca and Firestar’s backstories.
A story with Emma and Calico interacting would be interesting, since they’re both from very privileged American families, but Becca is naive where Emma is jaded and experienced. Emma’s part in Angelica’s backstory doesn’t jibe much with how she’s been written for the past three decades, so you probably have to ignore that element – but there are certainly story possibilities for a writer who dared to pull that thread.
I suppose the book IS making explicit New Mutants parallels now, though … it strikes me that while this era of X-books has introduced quite a lot of new young mutants, one thing we haven’t seen for a while is rival team or school.
In the early Lee and Kirby books you have the Brotherhood functioning as essentially a rival team of young mutants who parallel the original X-Men, although this gets dropped after a while, I thought it was a fun dynamic in the early issues. Claremont got a lot of mileage out of having Emma’s Hellions/Massachusetts Academy as a rival school to Xavier’s.
I *think* this drops away in the ’90s. Does Generation X get a rival school? There is certainly a some soap opera stuff about Cable being a different kind of teacher than Xavier in X-Men and X-Factor, but I find that era of comics hard to parse in retrospect.
When Morrison makes the school a more central element in New X-Men, we get Quentin’s group of teenage rebels – though they are set mostly in opposition to their ‘teachers’ instead of other a group of ‘good’ students. The follow-up Academy X books gave us a whole line up of rival student teams, but none of them explicitly villains. That whole idea gets derailed with Decimation of course…
Eventually, Schism gives us rival factions between Cyclops and Wolverine, but Cyclops’ young ‘Generation Hope’ team isn’t really positioned in opposition to Wolverine’s Jean Grey School students. Instead, Wolverine & the X-Men establishes the Hellfire Academy as a kind of extra-evil version of the Massachusetts Academy concept.
I think that’s the last time we’ve had a a ‘bad’ mutant school.
There have been plenty of times where there are philosophically-opposed teams since the ’90s, but the debate is usually framed as ‘students should be trained as soldiers’ or ‘students should not be protected’ which I find a very dull dichotomy. It isn’t a convincing argument in a superhero world, but also isn’t very analogous to any real world debates. I guess if you were to do it with the characters today, you would probably set it up as integrationalist vs separatist teams, which could be interesting but I don’t know if I trust Marvel to tackle that with the nuance that would be required.
I think there’s can be a fun tension in some of the ‘evil school’ stories — i.e. seeing good students being potentially recruited to the bad school, or having the heroes realise that the students of the ‘bad’ school aren’t irredeemable. These are kind of heel/face-turn plots are standard in superhero comics of course, but having them happen in the context with students and schools, when the heroes/villains are still learning who they are, can add some subtlety.
[…] X-MEN #26. (Annotations here.) This is the first part of “Who’s Been Sleeping in My Bed”, which takes us back to […]
I’d say the core concept behind this title has always been Rogue and Gambit moving back to the South and taking in some mutant foster kids. Kurt is there as Rogue’s brother, Logan is the gruff but lovable uncle, and Jubilee is there, I assume, because of an editorial mandate. The Outliers don’t really need power training, their need is for emotional support and a stable environment.
Woodsworth – The be-mugged lady isn’t saying “CANTBAL”, she’s saying “CANÍBAL”, with an accent over the “I”. The lettering just looks weird. (I think because the Í is constrained vertically to be the same total height as the other letters, even including the accent mark.)
It took me a few moments to register the character in the foreground of the cover. My brain kept telling me I was seeing the X-Men in a silhouette of (half of) Galactus’ helmet.
@thekelvingreen: funny, I looked at the cover and wondered why Husk was in this book wearing her Generation X uniform.
Oooh! Now I can see Galactus’s helmet too!
@Joe I: It’s probably like “Evelyn” and “Tracy”. Anyway, his brother would call him “onisan”.