Uncanny X-Men #32 annotations
UNCANNY X-MEN vol 6 #31
“Mars Needs Mutants, part 3”
Writer: Gail Simone
Artists: Rogê Antônio, Jim Towe & Federica Mancin
Colour artist: Matthew Wilson
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Editor: Tom Brevoort
COVER: A B-movie style poster of the X-Men versus aliens, with a hypnotised-looking Rogue.
THE X-MEN:
Rogue. She didn’t appear in the last two issues, the only explanation being Gambit’s comment last issue that she was “off on a consultation”. In issue #28, she told M that she was going on a “journey” to see “someone who might be able to help” with Gambit’s curse. Last issue, Gambit said that he had sent her a message about the alien invasion, but hadn’t heard back. This issue opens with her on her way back from “an unnamed island in the South China Sea”, presumably something to do with that.
She’s powerful enough to punch one of the Nur’s flying saucers out of the sky. She’s not sure what to make of them – she seems to regard slaughtering the Brood as at least arguably genocide.
Gambit. Once again, he grows wings, but this time he goes further and transforms into a dragon-like form which calls itself Wyvern. (It’s a sort of two-legged dragon, you get them in heraldry.) As Wyvern, he talks in a mixture of his normal accent and a demonic voice which is very keen to eat everyone. After the fight, it seems to wear off quickly. Nonetheless, Rogue and Gambit depart together at the end of the issue in search of an exorcist.
Jubilee continues to act as leader in Rogue’s absence, and gets to come up with the plan that saves the day.
Wolverine is very proud of Ransom, and makes sure to remind us that he’s been mentoring Ransom since issue #9. He clearly still has claws on both hands in this story, so either we’re before the current Wolverine arc, or he goes back to his normal status quo once it’s over.
Nightcrawler also gets to fight the aliens in his subplot.
SUPPORTING CAST:
Mackenzie DeNeer. The Nur are monitoring her at the start of the issue. She seems to be looking up at with alarm. She’s still using her phone from the previous issue.
The Outliers (Ransom, Deathdream, Jitter and Calico). Rogue is very impressed with their performance against the aliens, and against Lady Darkhold in issues #23-25, and declares them to be the new New Mutants. They get New Mutants costumes along the lines of their subplot from issues #26-29. They’re all distraught at the thought of Rogue and Gambit leaving, regarding it as the breaking-up of their family. Jitter refers to Ransom and Deathdream as her brothers.
Deathdream doesn’t know the upper limit of his ability to summon the dead. When he does use his powers to summon an army to take on the aliens, instead of ghosts, a bunch of zombies rise from the ground – which is puzzling, because the school playing field presumably isn’t built on a graveyard. Does he somehow manifest them> The effort of summoning this zombie army exhausts him, and he passes out. Nobody seems especially bothered at the disturbance of the corpses.
He says that when he was six, his baby brother Keito died in front of him – this was a flashback in issue #25. He says that his parents were apparently driven insane as a result and both committed suicide within a week of each other. He claims to have grown up sleeping in cemeteries and (breaking character to take more sincerely than usual) talks about Haven as the place where he was first happy. He reminds us again of how he discovered cinnamon pretzels in issue #9, how he got Waffles as a pet, and met his new girlfriend Marlys.
Deathdream is 15. Ransom is presumably older, though obviously all of the Outliers are school age.
Mutina. Despite her generally co-operative approach in recent issues, she seems to regard alien invasions as above her pay grade, and doesn’t want to get involved until her manager Josh convinces her that it’d look bad to run away. She confirms that her power is to “see what people are afraid of, and … show them that” – well, one of her powers, anyway – which basically used to be Mirage’s deal. It works on the Nur, despite their alien thought processes.
Marlys Zerbe. She’s impressed by Deathdream’s heroic efforts, and gives him a kiss.
The Vig. He appears in one panel, still recovering from losing his arm in the previous issue. As before, there’s no blood.
VILLAINS:
The Nur. The story seems to take it as read that they’re the bad guys even though they’ve come to wipe out the Brood – it’s not really clear why they were abducting humans at all, and they can’t explain themselves. Even the terminally open-minded Nightcrawler regards them as intractably hostile.
Their flying saucers can extend three long legs to walk on, an image which echoes both War of the Worlds and Tripods.
While they aren’t afraid of earth, Mutina is able to get rid of them by summoning up an image of Galactus.
The Brood. They emerge en masse from under the school. They do indeed have their own guns, which were shown in issue #30 but missing from the art last issue. It’s still not clear where they came from. Nobody seems to think there’s any urgency to deal with the Brood infestation – to be fair, they don’t seem to have been doing any harm, despite being a predator race. It’s all a bit odd.
Josh. Mutina’s agent, who I don’t think we’ve seen before. In issue #22, Mutina said that “my people” thought it was good for her image to be hanging around with the X-Men – presumably Josh was one of them. He seems entirely mercenary.
Killers from Space being another B&W sci-for flick from the ‘50s.
> He clearly still has claws on both hands in this story, so either we’re before the current Wolverine arc, or he goes back to his normal status quo once it’s over.
All the post-Armaggedon stuff, including the Maximum X-Men (which looks spectacularly meh) #1 cover is showing him with two sets of metal claws. Reset button is clearly incoming.
[Also, we’re clearly going back to the “Wolverine is on all the teams at once” status quo of the mid-2000s. Yay…]
The Brood living under the school and a bunch of dead bodies being inexplicably buried under the school sure sound like facts that could be related, even if nobody makes the connection in the actual story.
So now the Outliers get to use the New Mutants’ name while nobody is using the real New Mutants.
Sounds like a way to renew trademark and have a new “New Mutants” title featuring different characters. Having a comic called “The Outliers” would probably sell horribly.
You would expect it to take less than 44 years, but yeah.
New Mutants will sell better than The Outliers, yes, but it is one of those names that only has significance because it used to mean something. On its own, it’s pretty… bad? It’s a shame “Generation X” is so 90s coded and makes them sound 45, and that the only other usable names are “New X-Men” and to a lesser extent “X-Force” – the earlier of which is very bland and the latter of which implies a commando squad.
But man making them “The New Mutants” still does smack of the nostalgia cycle that everything gets lost in in the current comics market (and certainly, also, in the reboot, prequel, franchise, and sequels endemic in movie and TV culture, also).
I liked the solution they came up with for the last series. It’s the originals, and they go around helping new mutants.
So, to summarize: Mutina is a movie star/blogger/conspiracy peddler with the power to disappear into shadows, teleport, read minds and project fears, and she can fight Wolverine to a standstill.
Anything else, Gail? Can she warp reality too? Is she immortal? Is she the Cosmic Nexus?
@Diana- Don’t forget- she’s not omniscient but she somehow knew who the Endling was even though none of the characters present knew, so she couldn’t have read it from their minds.
To be fair , Mutina has the same combo-platter powers as Age of Apocalypse Abyss , as he also had both darkforce powers (he was a living void like Cloak) and telepath/empath (specializing in fears( powers
@SanityOrMadness: “All the post-Armaggedon stuff, including the Maximum X-Men (which looks spectacularly meh) #1 cover is showing him with two sets of metal claws. Reset button is clearly incoming.”
I don’t know. Several variant covers for *X-Men: Hellfire Murder* also depict Wolverine with claws in both hands (and wearing his gala costume, so these aren’t archival covers), but within the story itself, he only uses the ones on his left hand.
Jdsm-Sure, but the powers aren’t the problem with the character though. Abyss was rarely ever used, and when he was the story seemed to go out of its way to make sure the character would never be popular. Simone wants to push Mutina as this great character she created for the X-mythos, but there’s nothing truly interesting or inspired about her.