UNCANNY X-MEN vol 6 #34
“Wild Ride, part 2: Repent”
Writer: Gail Simone
Artist: Luciano Vecchio
Colour artist: Matthew Wilson
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Editor: Tom Brevoort

COVER: A close-up of a demonically possessed Gambit.

THE X-MEN:

Rogue. She’s hearing voices, or rather a single voice, which she initially tries to dismiss as an illusion. The suggestion seems to be that this is an unborn child, or at least how Rogue imagines her unborn child. It seems pretty miserable. After Gambit tells her about his vision of their son, she implies that she’s going to tell him shortly.

Gambit. He’s kept handcuffed to the wall while he sleeps, but easily breaks the chain when he changes into Wyvern form. He then feels drawn to go outside, where he’s confronted by what seems to be his future child with Rogue. Gabriel helpfully clarifies that this is not a dream scene, but rather an appearance adopted by the demons who are coming to recruit Remy. We’ll come back to them.

Apparently voicing Remy’s feelings of guilt, the “child” indirectly references Remy’s proposal to Rogue in issue #26 that they adopt the Outliers (though the child specifically focusses Remy’s interest in adopting the two girls, Jitter and Calico). The “child” resents Remy’s decision to form a family in this way rather than bringing a child of his own into existence. Even in Wyvern form, Gambit attempts to comfort the “child”, while resisting the urge to eat him. Gambit instinctively knows that the child’s name is Jean-Luc, meaning that he was named after Gambit’s own adoptive father.

Monet St Croix. She doesn’t participate in the Haven House training exercise, which she claims is because her role is to keep an eye on everyone else. She seems to think that they migiht have all gone a bit soft living in this cuddly, domestic location.

She says it’s been less than a week since she shut down Graymalkin – presumably meaning the point when she actually left it and moved to Haven House. She recognises that she made a bad impression on her first day by treating the St Juniors as servants, and puts herself forward to comfort the newcomer Howler in part so that she can show a different side to herself. It’s still a dubious choice, since while she’s better suited to comforting children than Wolverine, she certainly isn’t better suited to it than Jubilee or Nightcrawler. She keeps up the right image, though, and ultimately does a good enough job.

Quicksilver. He’s really defensive about Monet, and immediately wants to come to her defence against Howler even though she’s trying to calm the situation. There’s an echo here of his overprotectiveness towards the Scarlet Witch back in the Silver Age. He doesn’t seem to have any instinctive empathy towards Howler and sees him simply as a threat.

Jubilee, Wolverine and Nightcrawler are also on hand for Howler’s arrival.

SUPPORTING CAST:

Father Gabriel. He encourages Remy to use the knife from last issue’s exorcism and literally cut the demonic possession out of himself. Mind you, in the previous issue he told Rogue to kill Gambit with the same dagger if things went wrong, so perhaps the arrival of a bunch of demons who are trying to recruit Gambit leads him to the conclusion that it might be no bad thing if Gambit killed himself.

The demons accuse Gabriel of “debauch[ing]” himself, and “fear[ing] that God has abandoned you”. This bears little resemblance to the way he’s acted in this book, and he strongly denies it, claiming that his greatest fear is that God “witnesses all”. However, it seems to be referencing his crisis of faith during his time in Hellstorm‘s supporting cast.

He gets thrown out of the monastery, presumably for being a trouble magnet. He claims not to be bothered – “Rootless I was born, so too will I perish.” I don’t think Gabriel’s back story does particularly present him as “rootless” – he was a Columbia University scholar living a normal life until his pregnant wife died. I suppose it might be significant that he too has an unborn child in his back story.

He refuses on principle to be teleported using the Eye of Agamotto.

Marcus St Juniors and Alice St Juniors. We get a domestic sequence with them at Haven House, before Marcus discovers that all the house’s hens have been killed.

Howler. This is his first appearance. He’s a feral-looking mutant boy who takes refuge in the Haven House grounds, after apparently escaping some sort of facility where he was treated like a dog. He talks about “handlers”  and claims that he killed the hens to stop them from making noise that would give away his location. He says that he was forced to hurt people and that he isn’t allowed in the house because “I had an accident one time”. Monet claims that his mind reminds her of “my sister’s”, presumably meaning Penance, and suspects a neurological problem rather than a purely psychological one.

Waffles shows up briefly to scare Howler.

Repent. Making his first appearance at the end of the issue, Repent is an exorcist based in Barcelona who specifically deals with mutants. Gabriel warns that he’s “not exactly a good man” but “still heeds the call” – to be fair, Gabriel thought last issue that Gambit wasn’t a good man either. Gabriel specifically warns that Repent mustn’t be upset or startled, but doesn’t explain why. For his part, Repent clearly knows Gabriel and greets him as if he was a colleague.

VILLAINS:

Unidentified demons. They’ve come to recruit Gambit, presumably on behalf of the unnamed true owner of Gambit’s Eye of Agamotto, who was mentioned last issue. Their sales pitch needs work: “You will come to love our master’s torment.” However, the demons claim that the consequences of rejecting their offer will be even worse for Gambit, leading to eternal torment and corruption. It’s open to question whether Rogue and Gambit actually defeat them, or whether they simply depart when their offer is rejected.

As noted above, one of them appears as Gambit’s unborn son Jean-Luc. The others resemble the Emplate-like organic Sentinel monsters from the Outliers’ plotline in issues #26-29, although Gambit wasn’t there to see them, making them an odd reference point.