Uncanny Spider-Man #3 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers and page numbers go by the digital edition.
UNCANNY SPIDER-MAN #3
“Superpositional”
Writer: Si Spurrier
Artist: Javier Pina
Colourist: Matt Milla
Letterer: Joe Caramagna
Design: Tom Muller & Jay Bowen
Editor: Sarah Brunstad
COVER / PAGE 1. Nightcrawler fights Silver Sable.
PAGES 2-4. Nightcrawler fights Gaap and the Wild Pack.
The narrators here are the Vulture and Nimrod.
Gaap the Integument is said to be a Deviant; he’s a new character. Gaap is a traditional demon name; an “integument” is just a tough outer protective layer. Gaap is wearing the same mind control device that was used on Rhino last issue and on Nightcrawler in X-Men: Before the Fall – Sons of X #1. Obviously, this is a repeat of the same basic idea that was tried that issue with the Rhino: lure out Nightcrawler so the Wild Pack can try to catch him.
Nightcrawler has apparently embraced the nickname “Creepy Crawler”, after initially calling himself Spinnenmann.
PAGES 5-7. Vulture and Nimrod.
“The detainee – the captive you [Nimrod] brought in…” Warlock, who was absorbed by Nimrod in Legion of X #10. A data page in the previous issue already confirmed that Vulture was working on the “stolen alien Technarch sourcecode”.
According to Nimrod, Nightcrawler is a high priority target for Orchis for two main reasons. First, he can somehow evade their scanners (as seen in issue #1), and they want to know how. Second, he’s a popular mutant, and that won’t do. Note that Nimrod doesn’t attach any particular significant to the fact that Nightcrawler was an X-Man, or even a member of the Quiet Council. Maybe he just regards that as going without saying, and he’s focussing on why Nightcrawler is a high priority even for an X-Man. Certainly the two reasons that Nimrod gives here would apply equally to Iceman, who does indeed seem to be a particularly high priority for Orchis over in Astonishing Iceman, compared to less visible mutant heroes.
PAGE 8. Recap and credits.
PAGE 9. A data page on Silver Sable International, from Orchis’s files. This is just a straight intro to Sable’s organisation, for readers not familiar with the Spider-Man mythos.
PAGES 10-14. Nightcrawler and Silver Sable.
Pretty self-explanatory. Silver Sable insists that she’s doing her job properly during the day while romancing Nightcrawler when she’s off the clock, but you have to assume that she is not exactly driven to help Orchis out, given how her first encounter with Nightcrawler went last issue.
Lila Cheney is surely familiar to everyone, but since she’s not a regular in this book: she’s the intergalactic mutant teleporter who used to be a supporting character in New Mutants, and she’s also a rock star. Nightcrawler says that he “heard” that Lila was killed by Sentinels in X-Men: Hellfire Gala 2023 as part of their priority attack on teleporters (to stop the mutants from escaping or fetching reinforcements). It’s not clear how he knows this; the book has been vague about whether he’s in touch with the X-Men in New York. Lila was not in fact seen dying in the Hellfire Gala one-shot.
“Then again, she married a single-minded Nazi hunter who got the whole family blown up…” Silver Sable’s parents were Anastasia and Ernst Sablinova. There is at least one version of her back story in which Silver Sable’s mother dies when the family home is blown up by vengeful Nazis, but sadly Silver Sable & The Wild Pack has yet to make it to Marvel Unlimited.
PAGE 15. Data page: the lyrics to Lila Cheney’s song “Superpositional”, presumably from her Muse phase.
PAGE 16. Mystique runs past.
“They took my baby – here, in these endless forests of Bavaria”. As in the last issue, Mystique is rambling about Nightcrawler’s origin story. Again, she seems to be alluding to a version of events that contradicts previous accounts, and suggesting that baby Kurt was taken from her, instead of being abandoned.
PAGES 17-21. Nightcrawler fights the Hounds.
The Hounds are an imported concept from Rachel Summers’ back-story – basically, mutants who are programmed to hunt other mutants. As with the Hounds here, this involved personality alteration rather than direct mind control. Technically only one of these three Hounds is actually a mutant, but they’ll do in a pinch.
We saw Feral being experimented upon by Vulture in issue #1. Dagger appeared last issue (and now we know why she was introduced at such length), when she mentioned that her partner Cloak was missing.
Nightcrawler’s Hopesword is able to revert Cloak back to his human form, but we don’t see enough of him to know whether it reverts his personality too. Mystique shoots him through the head, which apparently isn’t fatal because of his Technarch infection.
PAGE 22. The Hounds capture three other mutants.
The three victims are Fatale, Animax and Reaper, all of whom were last seen among the refugees at the Limbo Embassy in Dark X-Men #1.
PAGES 23-24. Nightcrawler talks to his “demon” image.
Page 23 panel 3 is simply a recap of Legion of X #10 and the Sons of X one-shot.
PAGE 25. Trailers. The Krakoan reads PIZZA GOOD LYNCHING BAD.
Vulture using Warlock’s techno virus to turn people into hounds is far beyond anything he’s been capable of in the past. Yes. he created his electromagnetic harness but that’s it. Any time he’s needed advanced technology- like his rejuvenation device or a virus to kill everyone in Manhattan- he had to steal it from other scientists.As Omar pointed out, the Wizard would work better in this role than the Vulture. Yes, the Wizard relies heavily on his anti-gravity discs or power gloves but he’s always able to come up with an id machine or a pocket of non- causality or a cloning device whennver the plot requires.
Sable mentions her father taking her to a Lila Cheney concert. That’s odd because Lila and Sable should be about the same age. In the 1980s, Lila was introduced and started dating Cannonball at about the same time Sable was introduced as a divorcee running her country’s primary source of income. Then again, maybe her father took her to the concert when she was an adult.
Steve Foxe menntioned in an Interview something that pops up in Dark X-Men 1, and develops in Uncanny Spider-Man before appearing in Astonishing Iceman. That must have been Fatale, Animax and Reaper- they’re shown in the embassy in Dark X-Men 1, turned Ito hounds this issue and a couple of them will be appearing in Astonishing Iceman. next week.
I would love to read your review of this issue because it’s so disjointed between the meet cute between Sable and Nightcrawler and the darker stuff with the hounds.
Not to mention in this issue it looks like Sable is helping Nightcrawler infiltrate Orchis for one panel but then it’s never developed or explained.
The Wizard is a fourth-rate Doctor Doom or Reed Richards
Which still makes him a viable choice for a mad scientist villain
Super Nit-Pick:
Silver Sable’s father’s name would be Ernst Sablinov (without the ‘a’), if you’re going by general naming conventions of Eastern European and Slavic languages. And you’d use that masculine form to reference the family.
For the same reason, Black Widow’s real name is Natasha Romanova, even though she’s often referred to as ‘Romanoff’.
@Maxwell’s Hammer- the problem is that he’s often referred to as Sablinova, see, for example, Silver Sable and the Wild Pack 9. Western writers are very bad at Eastern European and Slavic naming conventions
Western writers are very bad at Eastern European and Slavic anything, really
I love it when Marvel characters arrive in Poland. Always amusing in one way or another.
Because you know it’s going to feature a super-character who is a baby, for some unfashionable reason?
That should read some *Unfathomable reason. I’m not sure if presenting babies as superheroes is currently unfashionable or not. If it is, Poland will surely be out of luck in the future.
I like Silver Sable undermining Orchis while sticking to the letter of her contract. She’s got her county’s economy on her back, and screwing with them benefits her people. I could read a follow-up series featuring Nightcrawler joining the Wild Pack, although the prospect is highly unlikely.
As for the Hounds concept, it would work better if spread out to more X-titles. Seeing remaining mutants on the run hunted by mind-controlled mutants would work. Orchis could send out PR that they’re “the good ones” helping to bring in the “bad apples.” Lack of connectivity during Fall of X continues to bug me.
@Maxwell’s Hammer
The character in fact is referred to as “Ernst Sablinov” in this issue.
Have Nightcrawler and Feral ever been on-panel together before? Or Nightcrawler and Dagger before their earlier scene in this series? “It’s me! You both know me!” seems odd for characters that have no significant history together.
Kurt and Feral were among the many heroes at Illyana’s funeral in X-Men 304.
And Nightcrawler and Dagger were both part of the legions upon legions of Utopia X-Men.
Somebody would have to check, but Dagger might have had more on-page time than Kurt before Second Coming. The way I remember it, Nightcrawler completely disappeared in the background after the move to Utopia, so much that it was jarring – and telling – when he was suddenly front and center at the beginning of Second Coming.
Mike Loughlin said: I like Silver Sable undermining Orchis while sticking to the letter of her contract. She’s got her county’s economy on her back, and screwing with them benefits her people. I could read a follow-up series featuring Nightcrawler joining the Wild Pack, although the prospect is highly unlikely.
There’s almost a sense of a kind of metacommentary in the plot here.
The book works as a thesis that a Nightcrawler solo title set in the larger MU would work, except that it has to be done around the edges of a big, grim X-crossover story.
Aguirre-Sacasa managed to get 12 issues out of a Nightcrawler solo. And with the nice, if a bit left-field, twist of making him a supernatural detective.
Well, a detective of the supernatural.
A superhuman detective of the supernatural to be as exact as I can.
I’ve been meaning to reread it. I remember it as quite good?
@Krzysiek Ceran: I read the first story arc of the Aguirre-Sacasa Nightcrawler series. It ended with other people solving the problem and Storm telling Kurt his strength was knowing when to get help. It left such a bad taste in my mouth that I stopped reading a solo comic about my favorite mutant. It might be good, but I never went back for the second half.
“Have Nightcrawler and Feral ever been on-panel together before? Or Nightcrawler and Dagger before their earlier scene in this series? “It’s me! You both know me!” seems odd for characters that have no significant history together.”
I don’t know about these two particular examples, but I see this sort of thing in a lot of super-books these days. Probably because if you write two characters as not knowing each other, you run the risk of some reader pointing out, “Actually, they met in [obscure 90s guest-appearance]” that you’ve never read. Because who can keep track at this point? Whereas, with the reverse of writing characters who’ve never met as knowing each other, you can at least justify it as them having met off-panel.
ylU said: Probably because if you write two characters as not knowing each other, you run the risk of some reader pointing out, “Actually, they met in [obscure 90s guest-appearance]” that you’ve never read.
On the one hand, I get why this might be frustrating to a writer.
On the other hand, there is so much easy information about these characters available on the web that it’s hard for me to think writers and editors are just incapable of finding this out, and finding it out easily.
Nor is it hard to fudge with a line like “we’ve never spent much time together” or “I barely know them.”
Technically, Nightcrawler (may have) met Cloak and Dagger back in 1985/1986’s Secret Wars II #9 and Feral at Illyanna’s funeral (part of “Fatal Atractions”) in 1993’s Uncanny X-Men #304.
Three main provisos apply, of course.
1. It is not clear that they even noticed each other, given the crowds present and the absence of obvious scenes with both characters.
2. There were quite a few other events with crowd scenes before and since, such as the Infinite trilogy of the early 1990s by Jim Starlin.
3. This being the Marvel Universe, we can’t rule out telepathy-given crash courses, meetings with alternate timeline versions of the characters, time travel and whatnot.
Again, they lived on Utopia at the same time, from the end of the Utopia crossover until Nightcrawler’s death in Second Coming. Less than a year in publication, admittedly, and there were ~200 mutants there. But on the other hand they were both active X-Men and Kurt would have definitely noticed the fit blond woman.
No idea of they shared page space together, I’d have to go through Fraction’s Uncanny to do that, and who has the time and/or the willpower?
@Omar Karindu
“On the other hand, there is so much easy information about these characters available on the web that it’s hard for me to think writers and editors are just incapable of finding this out, and finding it out easily.”
I’d disagree with ‘easily.’ To be really sure, you’d have to get lists of every appearance by each character, sort out every issue the two lists have in common, then go through all those issues. With the added complication that there’s still stuff not on Marvel Unlimited.
To add to the above: When even someone continuity conscious as Al Ewing can mess this sort of thing up — he wrote Scott Lang and Eric O’Grady meeting for the first time, when they’d actually previously met once — that tells us something.
@Luis- it’s not clear if Nightcrawler WAS in Secret Wars II 9. There’s a figure in two panels who looks like it’s Kurt but the dialogue in issue 204 implies he missed the final battle. Another weird case is Cyclops- someone who looks like him appears in a panel but Rachel displays her Phoenix effect throughout Secret Wars II 9. In issue 206, everyone acts like Scott doesn’t know Rachel is Jean’s daughter and in X-Factor Annual 5 Scott acts like he’s never seen Rachel’s Phoenix effect before. The weirdest case has to be Valkyrie- she seemingly appears in a few panels even though she was DEAD at the time. Al Milgrom, who drew Secret Wars II 9, wasn’t very careful about who he was drawing.
Of course, this problem wasn’t limited to Marvel. During Crisis on Infinite Earths, Alan Scott, the original Green Lantern, had just married the reformed villainess Harlequin. So, hilariously, George Perez drew her among the villains on one page and among the heroes on another page.Of course, the problem is artists drawing characters who have no dialogue or role in the plot without asking whether it makes sense for them to be there and writers doing the best to ignore them and hoping we readers don’t notice (which we inevitably do.)
@Omar- but in practice. writers never seem to fudge it. Jim Starlin, when he was writing Silver Surfer, had She-Hulk punch Silver Surfer in the face because she didn’t know who he was. Then readers complained that they’d met on multiple occasions. Chris Claremont, when he was writing Fantastic Four, had Firestar gush over meeting the Thing. Then readers complained that they’d met on multiple occasions. Neither Jen not knowing the Surfer nor Firestar not knowing Ben was relevant to the plot. And both Starlin and Claremont had been writing comics for DECADES at this point. But even writers as experienced as them didn’t seem to know that if they weren’t sure if two characters had met, they should just say “I barely know them”.
No-Prize : Superheroes and Supervillains often have damaged memories/constant amnesia due to the head/cranial injuries which they regularly incur in the usual course of their own chosen way of their life and/or the sheer busyness of such frenetic hectic daily lives full of violence and stress LOL