{"id":10541,"date":"2024-11-20T22:24:49","date_gmt":"2024-11-20T22:24:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=10541"},"modified":"2024-11-20T22:24:49","modified_gmt":"2024-11-20T22:24:49","slug":"exceptional-x-men-3-annotations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=10541","title":{"rendered":"Exceptional X-Men #3 annotations"},"content":{"rendered":"

As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>EXCEPTIONAL X-MEN #3<\/strong>
\nWriter: Eve L Ewing<\/strong>
\nArtist: Carmen Carnero<\/strong>
\nColour artist: Nolan Woodard<\/strong>
\nLetterer: Travis Lanham<\/strong>
\nEditor: Tom Brevoort<\/strong><\/p>\n

THE X-MEN:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Kate Pryde <\/strong>demands that Emma let the three teenagers go, and complains about Emma’s controlling nature, for several pages before giving in and fighting her. Kate is either immune to, or able to resist, Emma’s telepathy. There’s a precedent for this, with a handful of late Claremont stories claiming that Kate is resistant to telepathy while phased (we’re talking about the likes of X-Men: True Friends<\/em> #2 here, mind you). Or, alternatively, she just has plenty of psychic training.<\/p>\n

After Priti calms the situation, Kate grudgingly concedes that Emma is basically trustworthy and would be a very good teacher for the youngsters. However, she draws the line at taking the kids to a hidden base, and insists on training them in their community, in line with her general agenda in this series of wanting to return to the human world. Even then, she resists calling this project a “mutant dojo”. She tries to talk the kids out of aspiring to be heroes, though she accepts that they need enough training to defend themselves. She also disapproves of giving the kids codenames and costumes when they’re completely untrained and unqualified; it’s precisely what Professor X did with her, but she now thinks that was wrong. She’s hugely unimpressed with Emma ambushing the kids with a psychic illusion to see how they react.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Kate claims that Emma “has been trying to control my life since I was even younger than these kids”, which is an odd claim to make about their past relationship. Obviously Emma and Kitty debuted in the same issue, X-Men<\/em> #129, with Emma trying to become Kitty’s mentor. But they didn’t have that<\/em> much interaction in the following years. Priti recognises Emma as Kitty’s “old principal from the [Massachusetts] Academy”, which is bizarre – she was only there as a student in Uncanny X-Men<\/em> #151-152.<\/p>\n

Although she’s still going by Kate, she introduces herself at the first class as “Kitty”.<\/p>\n

Emma Frost.<\/strong> When Kate asks what she’s doing with the teenagers (who she mind-controlled at the end of the previous issue), Emma claims that she’s bored, and that most mutants “are falling into the same old patterns already”. Previous issues strongly implied that she has some other hidden agenda, and if she does<\/em> disapprove of everyone reverting to type, then finding some random kids to create a new class of prot\u00e9g\u00e9s is a funny way of bucking the trend.\u00a0 She also points out, fairly, that she’s a much more experienced teacher than Kate, and in that sense has more to offer the group. She claims to have a “vision” for Kate’s life, even while she’s purportedly taking the kids away without her. The whole thing seems more designed to drag Kate back into her orbit than to help the teens.<\/p>\n

The art has very odd ideas of how Emma fights, and either thinks that psychic attacks create billowing clouds of energy, or thinks she’s a telekinetic. Mind you, the art calls for the stairwell banister to get damaged somehow, and it’s not at all clear how that’s meant to happen.<\/p>\n

Emma claims to have scouted out a training facility in the Adirondacks but doesn’t put up any resistance (as far as we see) to Kate’s preferred option of an after-school club. She brings in costumes for the kids on their first day, arguing that it will encourage them to take themselves seriously – but that’s on the basis that being an X-Man is their “calling”, which is precisely what Kate wants to avoid.<\/p>\n

Bronze <\/strong>(Trista Marshall) comes up with the names and costumes for the team, which the other two love. She has no frame of reference for the “White Queen” being anything to do with the Hellfire Club or chess, and seems slightly taken aback by Emmna’s use of the name, presumably thinking it’s a racial reference. Her power is to turn to metal, in which form she has superhuman strength and can shoot out “these whip lash things”. She says her aim is “not to hurt people”. She sees herself as “tender” and feels that this doesn’t come across in her metal form. Kate helps her change form on purpose.<\/p>\n

Mel\u00e9e<\/strong> (Thao Kitihawa Tran) confirms that her powers are to turn invisible and phase through things. She’s no good at it, and wants to improve. She doesn’t recognise Emma, despite her interest in mutant activism, but describes her as “kind of amazing”. Her mother is Native American, specifically Potawatomi, and her father is Vietnamese. She’s (correctly) a little sceptical that Kate got her start as a superhero by sitting around talking about feelings, and wants to talk about “security protocol” and “codenames”. She loves Bronze’s costume designs and claims that “We’re ready to be heroes”, though presumably she’s joking – she’s only just told us that she can’t control her powers, after all. When Emma sets her illusory goblins on the group, Mel\u00e9e doesn’t use her powers at all, but fights them with aikido.<\/p>\n

Axo<\/strong> (Alejandro Mateo “Alex” Luna) is named by Bronze after an axolotl, because of his colour changing. He seems to duck personal questions – asked to include a “fun fact” as part of his introduction, he gives a trivia factoid about wasps. He doesn’t like being an empath and “ideally” he wants to get rid of his powers altogether, though he seems to accept that this is unrealistic. He can tell what direction that people’s emotions are heading in before it actually happens – it’s not entirely clear whether this is an aspect of his powers, or whether he’s just good at reading people with the benefit of the extra information that his powers give him. Emma thinks it’s impressive, anyway.<\/p>\n

He’s clearly the most level headed of the group, and the only one who questions why they’re trusting a woman who only just mind-controlled them. He’s willing to accept Kate vouching for Emma, but he does question it. He sees through Emma’s illusion quite quickly, because the goblins don’t feel right to him. Despite his reluctance to be a mutant at all, he really seems to like Bronze’s costume design for him, perhaps just because he’s touched by the way that she sees him.<\/p>\n

SUPPORTING CHARACTERS:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Priti<\/strong>, Kate’s flatmate, calms the fight between Emma and Kate as soon as she arrives on the scene. Remarkably, she recognises Emma Frost by sight, although as the principal of the Massachusetts Academy rather than a high profile mutant. Very conveniently, Priti happens to own a ballet studio which she installed in a warehouse that she inherited from her aunt, and is happy for Kitty to use this apparently empty property.<\/p>\n

Iceman<\/strong> shows up at the end of the issue; we saw him getting a flight to Chicago at the end of issue #1. Astonishingly, the kids – even Mel\u00e9e, the wannabe mutant activist – don’t seem to recognise him. In full ice form.<\/p>\n

OTHER REFERENCES:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Page 14 panel 5: “My middle name is Kitihawa, after one of the first Chicagoans.”<\/strong> Kitihawa Point du Sable was the wife of Jean Baptiste Point du Sable, who is generally credited as the first non-Potawatomi permanent settler of what became Chicago. They set up a trading post in the 1780s at the mouth of the Chicago River.<\/p>\n

Page 15 panel 4: <\/strong>The flashback to Kate’s early training is a montage of three scenes:<\/p>\n