UNCANNY X-MEN vol 6 #30
“Mars Needs Mutants”
Writer: Gail Simone
Artist: Rogê Antônio
Colour artist: Matthew Wilson
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Editor: Tom Brevoort

COVER: Jubilee, Wolverine and Nightcrawler react to a B-movie-style alien invasion. The story title is presumably a reference to the 1968 TV movie Mars Needs Women.

THE X-MEN. 

The previous issue ended with Rogue saying that she was planning to go on a journey to see someone who could help Gambit, and asking Monet and Quicksilver to run the X-Men in her absence. In fact, in this issue, Monet and Quicksilver are still sorting out the mess at Greymalkin Prison, so apparently not enough time has passed for anything to happen about this. Nonetheless, Rogue doesn’t appear in this issue.

Gambit. He takes Calico to the collectible store to buy a present for Jitter. It’s not spelled out here, but the pairings with the individual Outliers match the mentoring assignments from issue #9 (other than Nightcrawler, who ought to be with Jitter – he’s otherwise engaged, and she doesn’t appear much in this story). In this issue, Gambit seems to be behaving relatively normally – he argues with the store owner when he’s mean to Calico, but only goes beyond that when the man overreacts by threatening him with a baseball bat. He shows up at the dance in chaperone role, again seeming fairly normal.

Nightcrawler. He’s having a picnic with MacKenzie’s but they get ambushed by a weird alien thing. Before that, he finally gets around to asking about the father of MacKenzie’s children (see below), and makes a passing reference to his family being “a bit of a sour twist, really, in all directions”. Presumably he’s thinking of Mystique, Destiny and Azazel.

Jubilee. She accompanies Deathdream to pick up his date. Presumably she shows up at the dance too, but we don’t actually see her.

Wolverine. He gives Ransom a lift to the dance and hangs around afterwards.

Monet St Croix. I guess we’re counting her as an X-Man? She’s still in charge of the situation at Graymalkin. According to her, Ellis had no legal authority to arrest most of the prisoners, and she’s arranging for their release, which she expects to be granted; a minority of prisoners actually were arrested on legitimate charges, and she’s arranging for them to be handed over to the regular authorities. Quite how this has come to light is unclear, but Money seems to have appointed herself as the interim warden and is insisting that the prisoners simply remain there while she sorts out the paperwork. It’s not obvious what authority she has to do this, and Dazzler and Blob both challenge her on it. Holding on to the prisoners who might legitimately belong in the legal system makes some sense, but why is she not releasing the likes of Dazzler?

When Sarah Gaunt attacks her, she fights back as Penance and uses it as a display of strength to keep everyone in line.

Monet has some sympathy for Corina Ellis, seeing parallels between Corina’s treatment by her brother, and her own dealings over the years with Emplate.

Quicksilver basically stands next to Monet.

SUPPORTING CHARACTERS.

Ransom. It’s the night of the school dance, previously mentioned way back in issue #21. A girl called Shandi asks him to the dance (very much at the last minute) and he politely declines on the ground that he has a girlfriend, i.e. Temper. When Hotoru chips in to explain that Ransom’s girlfriend is in Alaska, Shandi understandably thinks she’s being mocked.

He’s happy enough to have the X-Men chaperoning the dance, since at least it shows they care (unlike his estranged father). At the dance, he’s hanging around outside, “hoping someone special” will show up – presumably Temper. When the Vig approaches him and offers him the chance to run a team, he’s interested, but the conversation doesn’t get anywhere before the aliens show up.

Calico. She insists on going to some sort of collectibles store in order to get a present for Jitter (her date at the dance, obviously), and is upset by seeing a “My Little Mutie” collectible. The rather unsympathetic store owner dismisses it as junk from a few years ago that only “freaks” collect – which rather begs the question of why he’s got it on display in the first place. As before, Calico is upset by the thought that mutants are seen as freaks.

Being homeschooled, she’s never been to a school dance before, but is delighted to have the chance to dance with Jitter. She doesn’t much care for modern pop music, and thinks more in terms of classical – presumably what she was listening to under her mother’s control.

Jitter. Gets to dance with Calico.

Deathdream. He does indeed go to the dance with Marlys, the girl who asked him in issue #21. He seems terrified of this social interaction but makes a reasonably sincere effort to do it properly. He tells Jubilee that he dug up his tuxedo, but let’s assume he’s joking, since it looks in decent enough shape. He tells Marlys that he knows how to dance because “Psylocke taught me”, referencing a scene in last year’s Hellfire Vigil one-shot.

MacKenzie DeNeer. She ducks Nightcrawler’s question about the father of her children, who indeed has always been conspicuously absent. She says he deserves to know but “not on this beautiful day”.

Marlys Zerbe. Deathdream’s date. We also see her father, who seems completely normal. Marlys mentioned in issue #19 that she was into horror films, and she’s a fan of Mutina, though this doesn’t seem to represent any sort of anti-mutant sentiment (she’s dating Deathdream, after all). As per issue #19, her room also has plenty of pink, girly things.

Banshee. Helping Monet out at the prison. He has no sympathy for Ellis whatsoever.

Fawn, Dazzler and Blob all appear among the prisoners. Blob is initially enthusiastic to resist confinement but backs down on seeing Penance in action.

VILLAINS:

Alien invaders. There are three alien attack scenes. One is just a police officer being sucked up into a flying saucer. The other is the alien who attacks Nightcrawler, and seems to be a humanoid in some sort of battlesuit – I don’t recognise it. For some reason, Nightcrawler can’t teleport it.

Finally, a group of apparent Brood show up at the school dance, but uncharacteristically, they’re all carrying guns. It’s a bit suspect.

Sarah Gaunt. The only prisoner to actually stand up to Monet’s attempts to assert her authority. She reminds us again of how she devastated Rogue in the first arc of this series, but seems to be no match for Penance.

The Vig. He shows up at the dance to speak to Ransom, and basically offers to give him a position of responsibility, as opposed to the X-Men treating him as a non-combatant. His pitch is basically that he could be a better mentor figure by letting Ransom actually do more, which isn’t entirely unreasonable – but we know the basic premise of the character is that he works by getting people in his debt. Still, when the Brood show up, he does square up to fight them alongside Ransom.

Captain Ezra. Now a prisoner at Graymalkin Prison. Monet has a degree of sympathy for him, since at least he was making a sincere effort to treat the prisoners properly, but she still interrogates him to find out what the point of the prison was. She’s picked up on the “Sentinel parts in the old Morlock tunnels below”, which will be part of the experiments from the Sentinels miniseries. Ezra reveals that the point of the prison was actually to experiment on the inmates and “make Wolverines”.

OTHER CHARACTERS:

Virgil Tomas. I don’t think we’ve seen this guy before. He’s described as the mayor’s cousin; we last saw Mayor Mikki Sapporo in issue #19. As the issue starts, Virgil has gone missing and the police have been sent to scour the country for him. It’s not entirely clear why this is such a priority; the two police officers we see, Andy and Len, clearly regard it as a waste of their time and something that’s only being done to indulge the mayor. They seem to be personally familiar with Virgil, who they regard as a “mean drunk”, and they think he’s probably just wandered off and got blitzed. When the police find him, he seems to have been murdered by the aliens – he’s covered in some sort of white tentacle materials which are coming from his eyes and mouth. Something similar appears around Andy as he’s abducted.