X-Men United #4 annotations
X-MEN UNITED #4
“Ancient Orc Oaken Arclight”
Writer: Eve L Ewing
Artist: Tiago Palma
Colour artist: Brian Reber
Letterer: Joe Sabino
Editor: Tom Brevoort
COVER: Cyclops and Deathdream under attack from some sort of frost monster. Not a scene from the issue.
THE X-MEN:
Iceman. His solution to the tension between Scott and Emma in issues #1-2 is to get them to play what he describes as a specially tailored version of Ancient Orc Oaken Arclight. From the sound of it this would normally be a standard issue Dungeons & Dragons style RPG, but for this purpose. Iceman seems to be a fan, though god knows who he’s been playing it with in the past. Maybe there was a regular game on Krakoa.
Somehow, he’s actually convinced Scott and Emma to play along with this, and he’s roped in Rogue and Ben Liu to help out. Nobody else seems to be quite as keen on the actual game as him, but they do seem to be on board with it as a team building exercise, with varying degrees of reluctance. The game he’s designed seems pretty generic, but then he is doing it with rookie players. It’s clearly intended as a scenario to force Scott and Emma to work together, but it doesn’t get anywhere near his intended plot points before actual monsters show up to derail things.
Emma Frost. Heaven only knows how she was talked into this, but she seems to accept the argument that something needs to be done to get her and Scott back on the same page, and seems broadly willing to go through the motions of playing along. She shows up late and has to be reminded of what they’re doing, and she doesn’t seem to have read the rules, but she claims to be willing to try and be civil. Despite that, she’s really making less of an effort than Scott, who is at least trying to play the game properly.
The NPCs in Ben’s landscape don’t register to her telepathy. When Ben can’t shut off his powers, she goes into her normal teacher mode and tries to psychically commandeer him (reasonably enough, in the circumstances), but gets repelled by something. This gives Scott an opportunity to save her from a monster, which does seem to bring her round to him a bit.
Prior to the game, she meets up with Lourdes Chantal (who wrote to her at the end of the previous issue). She assumes that Lourdes has come to ask for help, and is irritated when Lourdes lectures her about abuse of power. Lourdes’ basic theory is that Emma is obsessed with control, created Greymatter Lane in order to have a space where she controlled everything, and only helped Lourdes to escape Sebastian Shaw because she enjoyed the feeling of agency of Lourdes’ life. Emma responds by pointing out that she’s also been controlled in the past – by Sebastian Shaw in her back story, though she also cites Mr Sinister from Exceptional X-Men #10 – and claims that she saw these situations as opportunities. There is clearly something in Lourdes’ argument that Emma is a control freak, though.
Cyclops. He’s agreed to do this because Iceman asked, although he’s not happy about it, regarding it as a compromise merely to show up in Greymatter Lane at all. Nonetheless, having agreed to participate, he’s making a sincere effort to understand the game and to play it properly (and is irritated that Emma isn’t making the same effort).
Rogue. She’s supposed to be here to keep the peace between Scott and Emma, which mainly consists of yelling at them for squabbling and demanding that they play Bobby’s stupid game.
STUDENTS:
Ben Liu. Iceman has enlisted him to help create an actual psychic landscape for the game, rather than just rolling dice and using your imagination. (There’s a passing mention of Ben serving as the dice, so perhaps there was meant to be some system for him to make the dice rolls if the game had ever got that far.) All of this, unfortunately, sits rather awkwardly with X-Men, where a big part of Ben’s story arc is that he still doesn’t really understand his powers or what he can do with them, beyond the fact that he accidentally conjured up an alien invasion in X-Men #2. Being able to create this sort of landscape is miles beyond anything he’s done before. Let’s be generous and assume that, as a psychic landscape to begin with, Greymatter Lane is much, much easier for him to control.
And to be fair, it does go wrong very quickly. When monsters show up, Ben is unable to break the scenario. Emma’s attempt to commandeer his mind results in his eyes turning red as if he was possessed, and Emma being repelled – though he goes back to normal in the next panel with no apparent memory.
Deathdream. Rogue has brought him along because… well, the explanation we’re given is that “Rogue wanted one of her mentees to shadow her”, which might make sense if this was a low-stakes mission, but it’s a team-building exercise for Scott and Emma. To be honest, you have to suspect that he’s here mainly because the plot requires him, but maybe you could argue that Rogue thought that Scott and Emma might be more inclined to act civilly towards one another in front of a junior mutant who neither of them know.
As in Uncanny X-Men, Deathdream is prone to literalism and to a blasé attitude to death. When Rogue has been trapped and is suffocating to death, he’s able to use his powers to help her. Specifically, this involves him using his powers to travel to the spirit realm and then letting her absorb some of his powers so that she can then bring herself back to life. Quite how that helps her escape the bonds that she couldn’t escape before, it’s hard to tell, but apparently it gives her the surge of energy that she needs to escape.
Afterwards, he senses “another plane” encroaching, which seems to panic him. Moments later, he fades away into nothingness.
VILLAINS:
Lourdes Chantal. It’s open to interpretation whether Lourdes is meant to be a villain here, but Emma certainly takes her to be making threats.
By way of recap, Lourdes Chantal was originally a one-off character from a back-up strip in Classic X-Men #7, who was killed by the Sentinels. In Marauders #21-22, this was retconned so that Lourdes was in an abusive relationship with Sebastian Shaw, and Emma rescued her by faking her death during the Sentinel attack, then offering her services to Wilson Fisk, to set her up with a new life. Chantal now regards this as something that Emma did at least in large part to show her own control over the situation (and over Chantal in particular), and accuses Emma of being more like Sebastian Shaw than she cares to admit.
Chantal claims to have come with a warning that Emma’s abuses of power are being watched by people “who would make dire foes”, which Emma brushes off. Chantal seems to be working with two other women who we don’t see clearly, and who have an even lower opinion of Emma than she does.
I’m sad to say that with storylines like this, I won’t miss United when it wraps up.
I feel like Ewing has absolutely squandered the whole concept, or maybe just misunderstood it, or maybe she didn’t want to do “The X-Men create a new school for mutants but it’s on the astral plane to get around needing a central, vulnerable, physical location.” Two issues of weird time travel nonsense with Captain America, and now a weird RPG-centric plot? And almost no attention paid to actual students save a couple of the current favorites?
Meh.
It’s funny how little interest most of the current writers have in writing X-Men. I guess it’s the cul-de-sac that mutants find themselves in following Krakoa coupled with the lack of any sort of editorial vision: “sort of back-to-basics, but not really, just lots and lots of content.”
You have Gail Simone. “You’ll be writing one of the big two X-books in Uncanny.” “OK, can it be Rogue and Gambit raising kids in a haunted southern town?” “That’s not really a premise for Uncanny X-Men, but sure.”
You have X-Men United. “This is going to be the return to the school setting in some format.” “I’m sort of over mutants. What if I write whatever I want instead?” “Well, ok.”
You have Storm. “This is where we humanize Storm and make her a standout star among the X-Men again.” “So, she can be an Orisha meets Anime character?” “Well, no, that’s not what I said. You know? I don’t care. Sure.”
It’s good to stretch out the concept of what can be done with Marvel’s mutant characters and make the titles diverse instead of each one serving the same purpose, but it feels like a lot of these writers would rather be writing any other comic.
I’m not sure I like the idea that Lourdes holds a grudge against Emma. Eve seems to want to make the point that Emma can be as controlling as Shaw. That’s true and it would work perfectly if Firestar or Warpath, for example. made this argument. But in Lourdes’s case, Emma helped her escape from Shaw so Lourdes just looks like an ungrateful jerk quibbling about how it was done. It’s also odd considering that the last time we saw them together in the Hellfire Gala they seemed to be on good terms before Lourdes died.
Judging from the solicits, the women Lourdes is talking to is Justina Laguardia. She was a mutant who Xavier tried to recruit but viewed the X-Men as terrorists. Lourdes’s new view on Emma is probably her doing, since it seems to reflect Justina’s feelings. In fact, Lourdes might be under so sort of control- Justina’s power is the ability to duplicate the powers or abilities of anyone nearby but stronger, so if she’s within range of someone who can control minds, she could be controlling Lourdes.
According to the solicits, the other villain is the Shadow King, so he’s probably the one that possessed Ben.
I’m still confused about whether Graymatter Lane is on the astral plane or not. The letters page seems to suggest that it is but if it is, then why does Emma need Ben to reshape the environment? Shouldn’t she be able to reshape the astral plane with her own telepathy?
Eve is doing a horrible job juggling the cast. Kitty and the Exceptional kids are nowhere this issue. Meanwhile Bobby is front and center this issue despite doing nothing last issue.
Oh, and with regards to Lourdes’ co-conspirators, I really get the impression we’re supposed to think it’s Mystique and Destiny. The silhouette in the background has a very Mystique feel, even though she may or may not still be incapacitated after her recent mini.
I still love the idea behind Uncanny, it’s just that the execution has been pretty rocky in a way I don’t usually associate with Gail’s work.
Emma is a control freak? Emma, who’s office attire was an S&M costume? Surely not! But yeah, I’m happy with that angle. Lourdes is probably even right.
I can’t imagine Iceman being that into tabletopgaming though. Beast, sure. Jean probably plays a bit but always plays a healer. Cyclops would be more into historical war games. Angel would only play X-Box.
Though of course they had a Danger Room, why bother with dice at all?
Why are Scott and Emma suddenly so at each other’s throats? Their relationship during Krakoa was fine, at least as fine as “Hey, my wife is alive again so… I guess we’re really done now” can be. Emma hasn’t really hated Scott since he took her half of the Phoenix at the end of AvX, and the Uncanny series that followed. I get where he wasn’t on board for Graymatter, but it wasn’t so bad they needed an intervention.
And to have Rogue come in as the peacemaker, when she had a phony contrived conflict with Scott feels like Ewing isn’t even reading the other books.
Also, Si, I have to disagree about Bobby being into RPGs. Remember that he was an accountant in his time off from the X-Men. And I agree that Scott would be more into historical wargames (he’s likely figured out 20 different ways for America to have won at the Alamo), he’s also the X-Men most likely to have been a DM, putting meticulous planning into his campaign and figuring out a mix of monsters that allow every player to show off their character’s cool gimmicks.
Not to be that guy… but the U.S. wasn’t involved with the Battle of the Alamo. It was part of the Texian war of independence, so it was Texas against Mexico.
Also, I can’t picture *any* of the O5 being into TTRPGs. Really, the only X-Men I can picture getting into this are Kitty, Cypher, and *maybe* Cannonball.
When they have access to the Danger Room, I can see the New Mutants essentially LARPing a campaign thanks to Doug and Kitty programming it.
The main X-Men were always more about sports–basketball, baseball, American-style football with powers.
I can also see some of the New Mutants being into console games, but mainly like, sports games, shooters and PvP combat games. (Bobby and Sam and Doug, for sure. Dani, Rahne, Amara, Illyana–none of them really struck me as the sort to do more than watch and make snide comments about the boys before Dani finally taps in, grabs a controller, and whups Bobby’s ass at Mortal Kombat.)
As for the X-Men proper… Scott would indeed make a great DM because he’d use it as a tactical training exercise, reframing Magneto as a wizard, Juggernaut as a dragon, that sort of thing. Bobby would never take it seriously and play a comic relief character, Warren would play a pretty-boy elf paladin and flirt with all the NPCs, Jean would go along reluctantly while RPing her heart out, and Hank would be such a rules lawyer.
Sadly, by the time you get to the All-New cast, none of them are into such activities, which is how you get disorganized sports.
Generation X? Jubilee, Jono, Angelo would be console gamers. Monet and Paige had other priorities. Penance and Mondo don’t even really factor in.
It’s not until you get to the Morrison era where the school radically increased in size and you got many more younger students, that you’d see an actual gaming club or mass use of console games and so forth.
“Deathdream is prone to literalism” I wonder if he’s intended to be autistic.
Given that they encounter actual dungeons and/or dragons semi-regularly, I imagine most X-Men would prefer RPGs about dull 9-5s and walking the dog
D&D didn’t even exist until the ’70s, so even though the sliding timeline means it was around when the original five were teens it still feels weirdly off imagining them playing it.
Wasn’t the contrived Scott/Rogue beef supposedly an editorial mandate, and quietly dropped because neither writer could think of a good justification for it? The equally-contrived Scott/Emma beef feels like a retry of the same idea, like Brevoort’s sure having Cyclops at odds with a rival X-leader will be a good hook.
@Scott B: It was mentioned in an early comic that Cannonball loved scifi, but I have to believe that once he got a girlfriend from outer space, and now a wife and a suburban apartment on another planet, Heinlein just wouldn’t hold the same allure.
And I’m pretty sure Cypher said he played D&D, at least once. The Asgard story maybe.
One of my fave things about Billy Kaplan is he’s a big mythology and superhero nerd and that’s still the case after both become a big part of his literal life
Even outside of comics lots of people go into fields they were total geeks for already and don’t lose their enthusiasm for it
Sam is definitely loving being in space, that was probably part of the reason he’s even in that situation
Another odd bit of character assassination from Ewing – though I suppose we should be grateful she’s at least moved on from Kitty. The last time we saw Lourdes before the Gala, Emma was getting ready to offer her Emma’s own seat at Hellfire Trading – hardly something a control freak would do.
M and Skin have an Atari 2600 Space Invaders competition in the Generation X Underground Special. M is good at the game, but says she’s never played games before. (Though I don’t know which version of M this is supposed to be.)
I think Kitty who is supposed to be lead in the book would in to RPG all the way back to Kitty’s Fairy Tale, where she tells young Illyana (pre limbo) an fantasy story in the manner of a Dungeon master narrating a quest.
For the New Mutants I think we look at those who took best to Asgard, which are Dani, Rhane and Berto. Rhane also has experience a fantasy realm in Rhane of Terra, so she seems to have the strongest link to that milieu .
And if your going bring someone form Uncanny to join the game it would be Kurt, who also love that swashbuckling fantasy stuff, not Rogue, who is on leave so she can find a cure from her husbands curse so too busy to paly silly games.
Also Kurt is a better peacemaker
Honestly, I’m not sure when was the last time I had such whiplash reading one author’s work. The change in quality from Exceptional to United is remarkable. Maybe a little too slow, but engaging character work of Exceptional gave way to the incomprehensible, shoddy scripting of United.
And I like mutant school books! But… this isn’t even a school book. It’s basically an anthology title, a grab bag assortment of characters and plots.
I don’t get why this is such a mess.
Exceptional read like Ewing was interested in the characters and themes of the series. United reads like someone said, “we’re going in a different direction, you still want a job?”
Brevoort or some higher-up wanted a school book, but didn’t want to set it at the mansion. This mess is what they came up with, and it isn’t working. Will they learn from their mistakes? The ads for DNX don’t inspire much confidence.
@yrzhe- The problem with Emma and Scott is that Scott’s concerns about using Sinister’s tech are entirely legitimate, considering what happened with Krakoa. But Ewing couldn’t come up with a real reason why Emma insisted on using Sinister’s tech instead of having Forge invent something.
@Alastair- To be fair, it isn’t clear if this takes place before or after Oscar’s defeat.
@Diana- As mentioned, there are multiple instances of Emma acting like a control freak. The problem is that there aren’t any instances of Emma acting like a control freak to LOURDES.
Wasn’t Kingpin’s deal with Emma was that he’d only give Lourdes a new identity if *Emma* worked for him? I distinctly remember thinking it was improbable that a crime lord didn’t see any use for a teleporter.
@MasterMahan- The entire plot made no sense. If all Emma needed were a faked identity and some funds, and if Emma already had enough control over her telepathy to force a man to shoot his girlfriend, then what did Emma need the Kingpin for? Couldn’t she have just mind controlled a forger into creating a new identrty for Lourdes and a weatlhy man into sending Lourdes money?
[…] UNITED #4. (Annotations here.) This book has been rough so far, but issue #4 is at least a step in the right direction, with a […]
No no no, Scott would be running an incredibly dry game of Rolemaster, using every single supplement.
I know Uncanny isn’t much like any previous version of Uncanny, but I do like how it’s really leaning into taking the title literally.
Karma, Anole, Glob and Franklin Richards had a D&D game going on Krakoa. Maybe it was more popular than was shown