Uncanny X-Men #30 annotations
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 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 Monet 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.
I legit thought it was a reference to Mars Needs Moms (the one from like 2010 with Seth Green mokapping as a wee lad
I remain utterly baffled (and a little bit disgusted) by Simone’s continued attempts to humanize the ICE stand-ins.
When I saw “Mars needs Mutants” on the cover, I thought, oh, this is an Arakko connection. Nope!
Also, prison wardens generally don’t go arresting people to put them in their prison. Other police arrest people and the prisons deal with them. And Google tells me that wardens can arrest prisoners if they do crimes in the prison. But really, it’s like Gail Simone isn’t even trying with this book. It’s like it’s some performance art project that only tentatively qualifies as a story.
“Presumably he’s thinking of Mystique, Destiny and Azazel.”
And Margali Szardos, Stefan and Grayson Creed. Kurt REALLY hasn’t had much luck with family, aside from Rogue.
“Finally, a group of apparent Brood show up at the school dance, but uncharacteristically, they’re all carrying guns.”
The Brood used guns in the first Brood saga. But I agree, it does seem suspicious here.
Annoyingly, the project that Graymalkin was working on is called “Weapon X-finity” while the main villain in Generation X-23 is called X-Infinity. They’ve probably got nothing to do with one another. ,since Jody Hauser made it sound like she came up with the idea for X-Infinity relatively recently but it’s annoying. You’d think that Brevoort (or someone) would make sure that two different books don’t use basically the same name at the same time for two concepts that have nothing to do with one another.
I wish Simone would have brought back the alien Frankenstein robot instead of circa Uncanny X-Men #155 Brood. As a lot of Simone’s villains come across as random as the Silver Age X-Men.
I’d like to see Simone reference I Married a Mutant from Outer Space next.
@michael
Remember the time Chuck Austen made Maximus Lobo the head of a family of mutant werewolves unrelated to the Lobo brothers who were a family of mutant werewolves ?
I hope the villain behind the aliens is Ben Liu. That would be hilarious.
Kurt’s family relations are so healthy he still uses the surname of a man who wasn’t his biological parent or involved in raising him but who happened to be married to his dad at the time of his conception, because all the alternatives are apparently even worse.
I hope Whitley Strieber is behind the aliens…as usual.
I also think Nightcrawler should go by Kurt Azazel going forward.
@yrzhe, Count Wagner is as much Kurt’s biological father as Azazel is. Mystique did use part of his DNA to impregnate Destiny.
Sean says to Monet “You should meet my cousin Black Tom sometime.” Didn’t she, when he attacked the Massachusetts school in GenX#25?
Another problem with this issue- previous issues implied that the reason for Sarah Gaunt’s hatred of attractive women was because she was trapped in her monstrous form. But in this issue, she’s able to revert to her human form of an …. attractive woman. But she still mocks “princesses” in this issue. So why does Sarah dislike attractive women if she can revert to human form?
When the Vig first appeared, he wanted one of the Outliers. So his trying to recruit Ransom is a continuation of his earlier scheme.
I’ve grown quite fond of The Vig. Nice crocodile guy who you probably shouldn’t turn your back on, though he won’t stab you without reason (for example, profit). I don’t mind seeing him again.
Is it only me, or is the Graymalkin plot about something else every time it comes up? This month it’s about the evil of private prisons, apparently.
M is not shocked that it’s more than a prison, but doesn’t know how – is everybody forgetting the mind-altering Trustees programme? Did Blob forget? Siryn? (Where is she, by the way? Oh, did she get released on a special exemption?)
I like the Outliers, I generally like the found family soap stuff approach, but the actual plotting of this book is… It’s just so weird.
And a lot of the character interactions are implied to have happened off-page, to the point that I don’t know if Ransom even invited Temper or mentioned the dance in any way. And without that information, what am I supposed to take from the fact that she doesn’t show? Is she having doubts about their relationship? Are they on a break? Is he expecting her to guess that he’s like her to be there?
Kurt best family relationship is Amanda, he and is Stepsister were very close.
I wonder if Monet cleaning up the the Prison, is to start getting close to a post DNX world returning to the school. Especially now the weird mind school is going away.
“Kurt best family relationship is Amanda, he and is Stepsister were very close.”
So close they were lovers.
“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?”
Monet prides herself on impeccable taste, and thus she really, really, REALLY effing hates disco.
The real secret is that Rogue still holds some sort of grudge against Ali from their time together in the Outback Era. Maybe Ali took the room she wanted.
Still, it does seem awfully inconsiderate to keep friends and allies locked up with power dampeners on if they’re legitimately innocent.
I was hoping we’d see the last of Graymalkin Prison tbh, it has been the weakest part of this run. I’m happy to see the Outliers and X-Men just hang and go on weird adventures.
I’m really enjoying the character beats in this run. A lot. Together with the art, it makes the comic really enjoyable.
But….There are times where the plot doesn’t flow. And incorrect references to past history make you pause and interrupt the story. Or you stop to wonder if it does line up with other parts of the line…
These are things an editor can help with. It reminds me of late Claremont, where the characters were there, but he didn’t have the stronger editorial hand of Weezie or Annie to push the comic in a better direction.
But I think the editors just trying to do their damn best with all the cuts, and whatever else is going on at higher levels.
@Dornixt: To be fair though, Claremont was famous during his first run for not needing a strong editorial hand. The Dark Phoenix Saga was the one big exception, but he had a reputation for being one of Marvel’s more reliable and lower-maintenance writers.
@Domixt The issue with late Claremont was not that editorial let him run wild it was that they were forcing plots on him and insisting Jim Lee have more say on plotting if the same reason Simonson left New mutants
@Taibak. Alastair- Shooter said that Claremont only does his best work when he has a good editorial staff supporting him.
People were complaining about Claremont’s writing before Lee came aboard.While it’s true that some of what people were complaining about were Harras’s orders (e.g. Maddie’s transformation into the Goblin Queen), a lot of them were clearly Claremont’s ideas.
For example, Excalibur was edited by Terry Kavanagh, and Claremont couldn’t be bothered to explain what the Crazy Gang were or what the connection between Sat-yr-9 and Saturnine was, even though those issues hadn’t been reprinted in the United States yet! That would have never happened under Shooter.And there were numerous complaints about the Cross-Time Caper.
I second enjoying The Vig. A morally-neutral gator man with the persona of a Southern gentleman is a good supporting character.
Outback-era Ali and Rogue did have a very brief rivalry over both being interested in Longshot as I recall. Longshot didn’t seem to struggle making his choice.
I’m pretty sure that the “Cross-Time Caper” as editorially mandated. It’s weird that no one has ever spoken on what was going on with the X-teams editorially around that period. Suddenly, the New Mutants were stranded in Asgard for a neverending story, X-Factor left the planet for a neverending story, and Excalibur had the neverending “Cross-Time Caper”. They all happened at roughly the same point. I can only conclude that (most likely) DeFalco wanted the X-teams kept apart for over half a year and asked the editors to concoct some plots which would derail Excalibur, New Mutants, and Excalibur until Uncanny X-Men/Harras could set up something for the X-line. “Cross-Time Caper” did seem to go long as, if I remember correctly, it was initially labelled as a nine-part story-arc.
Anyway, I don’t think anyone would argue that Harras was not a strong editorial hand. He happened to have his own ideas about the X-Men which clashed with Claremont’s vision at the time and eventually found that he had a better ally for himself with Jim Lee over Claremont.
@Michael: Shooter has also said that Claremont was meticulous in his plotting and insisted that everything be just right.
Besides, I was only dimly aware of Captain Britain’s UK stories when I read the Cross-Time Caper and I understood the connection just fine. Every world had a Brian Braddock, and every world had a Saturnyne.
@Chris V: Presumably that was all setup for the Mutant Wars crossover that never happened – it was supposedly meant to be a 12-part crossover between all the X-books (including Excalibur) that would’ve pulled together all the disparate factions in conflict during that era.
The event was cancelled and eventually replaced with X-Tinction Agenda as a more action-oriented, less politically-complex storyline that would suit Lee and Liefeld’s tastes. This probably explains why Excalibur got cut loose and just drifted on its own after that.
@Diana: I’m just annoyed that Excalibur had amazing runs from Claremont and Davis… with absolute garbage in between.
@Joseph S. –
I bumped hard against that too, but looking into it, the Monet who battled Black Tom in Generation X #25 was actually the “two kids in a Monet-shaped trench coat” version of the character, not this Monet. Any other time Black Tom showed up in Gen X, the “real” Monet wasn’t involved for various reasons.
Near as I can tell, they *maybe* interacted during Krakoa, but I don’t think we’ve ever seen them together on-page.
Monet violently keeping everyone in prison is like wtf. This Graymalkin crap has had so much grace and I know I was just glad for it to be over. Finding out it’s not, actually, is very irritating.
IDK why they’re talking like Black Tom wasn’t Krakoa’s security system for 5 years, and only ‘lapsed’ recently because he needed help and wasn’t getting it. I was expecting him to show up in Graymalkin too, but apparently not. Would have been a really good opportunity considering he’s literally incarcerated in the US right now. Banshee showed up and everything so the emotional stakes are there.
This series generally has its good points that balances out the crap, but there’ve been fewer and fewer of them lately, and this issue had none of them. The art, which is perfectly fine, is no longer good enough to cover for the fact that every plot point is muddled and every character interaction is either baffling or annoyingly twee.
I’ll try to make this as close to a compliment sandwich as possible, since there was only one thing about this issue that I liked: Jubilee telling Deathdream to mention his date’s shoes, and him responding with, “Oh, good, you’re wearing shoes.”