UNCANNY X-MEN vol 6 #29
“Who’s Been Sleeping in My Bed, part four: A Prison and a Pyre”
Writer: Gail Simone
Artist: Luciano Vecchio
Colour artist: Mattherw Wilson
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Editor: Tom Brevoort

THE X-MEN:

Rogue. She seems remarkably unfazed to learn that Gambit has grown dragon wings, and even continues to accept his (correct) assurances that the “Cannonball” she’s fighting is a fake and can safely be killed. Nonetheless, once the crisis is over, her top priority is to focus on helping him, and she plans to take a leave of absence from the team to get help for him.

Her plan for dealing with Greymalkin was to send in M undercover as a prisoner to gather evidence, which would be more effective at bringing down the operation in the long run than simply smashing up the building. Quicksilver has been acting as a courier to relay M’s messages. That goes some way to explaining how M was in better health than she ought to have been given the prison food, though it’s not really made clear how Quicksilver was getting in and out.

Rogue sees herself and M as “bonded” by their shared high power levels, even though they don’t know each other well “aside from that bit with the Avengers” – referencing the Uncanny Avengers miniseries from “Fall of X”. She asks M and Quicksilver to lead the Louisiana X-Men in her absence.

M. Presumably she accepts Rogue’s offer, so we’ll treat her as a team member.

Her full name, Monet Yvette Clarisse Maria Therese St Croix, has been given before (in X-Men vol 4 #18).

She seems absolutely confident that she can take Perimeter in a fight. She’s presented as substantially more powerful than Rogue here, to the point of being able to take on Sarah Gaunt without any of the difficulty that Rogue had in the opening arc. (Admittedly, Sarah has been in Graymalkin for much of the intervening period so she may not be on top form.)

Quicksilver. He shows up to help his partner M at the prison. M refers to him as “my love”, which he says is the first time.

Nightcrawler, Jubilee, Wolverine and Gambit deal with the fake “New Mutants” and then teleport to the prison to finish off Perimeter.

SUPPORTING CAST:

The Outliers (Ransom, Jitter, Calico and Deathdream) and Mutina. According to Ransom, once everyone realises that they’re in a simulation, they break the spell and appear back at Haven House, still wearing their New Mutants costumes. It’s possible that Perimeter stretching himself too thinly has something to do with it as well.

Calico is annoyed that Jitter never mentioned her epilepsy (which we found out about last issue).

Marcus St Juniors is at Haven House, but doesn’t get much to do.

Siryn. Like all the prisoners, she starts the issue under Perimeter’s mental control. He sends her to kill Banshee when he shows up at the prison, presumably out of sadism rather than coincidence. Once Banshee appears, however, she and Blob both seem to be freed from Perimeter’s influence. It’s understandable that Siryn gets freed by the emotional shock of seeing her father, but Blob has no such investment, so perhaps Perimeter is just distracted.

Banshee. His Irish dialogue reads (I think): “I was ambushed (?). I’m sorry. Come now, my dear. Your dad is here. I’m here.”

He says that he didn’t come to break Siryn out earlier, because “after the Vigil, I didn’t think you’d want me to.” That refers to a scene in Hellfire Vigil where they cross paths and she asks him to leave her alone, presumably under some degree of outside psychic influence.

It’s not entirely clear why he shows up at the prison here. If we assume it’s not just pure coincidence, then perhaps he’s also in on the scheme and he’s been tipped off about the likelihood of things at the prison coming to a head (which, after all, M saw coming several issues ago).

A bunch of other characters also appear as prisoners who get freed from Perimeter’s influence in the course of the issue:

• Fawn, who was captured by Sarah Gaunt in the opening arc.
• Blob and Wild Child, who have been there since issue #6.
• Dazzler, who was publicly abducted at Hellfire Vigil.
• Omega Red, who was captured in Sentinels #1.
• Sebastian Shaw, who was captured in Sentinels #2.
• Johnny Dee, Stacy X and Tommy (from the Morlocks), none of whom have been shown as prisoners before.

VILLAINS:

Perimeter. At some point in the past, he was on medication and was lucid; this was when he and M were friends. He says that during this period, he was thinking of being part of the “mutant community” and a hero. At the same time, though, he says that he used to torture animals until developing empathy for them, but has no empathy for humans (including mutants). He claims to have given up the medication when he learned that Corina had become an anti-mutant campaigner, but acknowledges that that in turn was prompted by him killing their parents. The general suggestion seems to be that in his eyes he tried being “normal”, but ultimately decided to embrace his horrific nature.

He has mental control over the prison population, though it fades when he’s distracted. He has no discernible effect on M, presumably because of her own telepathy. He seems to expect the prisoners to accept him as a “beloved warden”.

His actual motivations remain unclear, and may not extend beyond causing chaos and slaughter. He seems to violently resent any suggestion of being contained. M continues to regard him as basically someone in need of psychiatric help. We’re never given any clear explanation of what he was trying to achieve with the Outliers/New Mutants thing.

His host body (Scurvy’s corpse) is disabled when Wolverine claws him through the head. Apparently this causes him to return to his original body in its vault. The plot here is a bit confusing: Rogue and M both seem to agree that without a host body, his mind control powers ought to be contained for now by the technology in his vault. But… wasn’t the whole point that they needed Scurvy to keep him under control, and that as soon as Scurvy died, Perimeter was free to spread his influence? Why is the vault technology suddenly up to the task now?

At any rate, there is apparently a plan to rehab him, though both Rogue and M are sceptical about it. He seems to remain contained in the prison by the end of the issue.

Corina Ellis. As Perimeter starts to get out of control, she shows uncharacteristic concern for the prisoners, to the point of trying to go back to rescue them. She tells Ezra that she “meant for something good to come at the end of all this”, but doesn’t specify what – presumably, part of her motivation was simply to get her hands on the resources to contain Perimeter.

Banshee destroys her helicopter as she tries to escape, but we’re told that she survives with “some burns and broken bones”. Her status, and that of the prison, are a little vague at the end of the issue; Rogue and M both anticipate that the evidence they’ve gathered will create a scandal that will bring down the prison operation, but at least formally it’s still a prison and still containing Perimeter.

Corina says that “‘The degree of civilisation in a society can be judged by entering its prisons.’ Fyodor Dostoevesky said that. Supposedly.” He didn’t. It originated in 1969 on the masthead of Fortune News, the newsletter of a prisoners’ rights group called the Fortune Society. For some reason, Fortune News misattributed it as a quotation from Dostoevsky’s House of the Dead (1860-1862).

Captain Ezra. Ever dutiful, his priority is to get Ellis to safety – though as events cross the line where she’s no longer the warden in any meaningful sense, he’s increasingly unable to conceal his exasperation at her. Despite apparently believing that it’s a suicide mission, once he’s got Ellis out of the way, he does go back to try and help, though we don’t see him contribute much.

Sarah Gaunt. Still seems to be basically evil whether or not she’s under Perimeter’s control. Either M is much more powerful than Rogue or Sarah is much weaker than she was in the first few issues – M claims it’s the former.

“The New Mutants”. Simply Perimeter’s “AI” duplicates of the team. It’s not entirely clear what being AI means in this context, since they’re apparently creations of Perimeter’s powers; perhaps the idea is that since he’s spreading his attention so thinly, he’s using the Greymalkin prison’s AI system (which is what “Perimeter” originally referred to) to fill in the gaps.