{"id":10843,"date":"2025-03-05T21:38:02","date_gmt":"2025-03-05T21:38:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=10843"},"modified":"2025-03-05T21:38:02","modified_gmt":"2025-03-05T21:38:02","slug":"uncanny-x-men-11-annotations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=10843","title":{"rendered":"Uncanny X-Men #11 annotations"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

\"\"<\/a>UNCANNY X-MEN vol 6 #11<\/strong>
\n“X-Manhunt, part 1: Echoes of Madness”<\/strong>
\nWriter: Gail Simone<\/strong>
\nArtist: Javier Garr\u00f3n<\/strong>
\nColour artist: Matthew Wilson<\/strong>
\nLetterer: Clayton Cowles<\/strong>
\nEditor: Tom Brevoort<\/strong><\/p>\n

This is part of the “X-Manhunt” crossover, which ships its first three chapters in a single week. It doesn’t come up in this issue, but part two establishes that One World Under Doom<\/em> is also in full flow at this point. The plot of that series basically involves Doom getting all national governments to pledge allegiance to him, presumably through magical means, which is why the normal day-to-day authorities are continuing to operate.<\/p>\n

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

Rogue.<\/strong> Despite running the cuddly X-Men team, she’s becoming worried that everyone is treating their training exercise as a game, and that it’s actually making people complacent – the Outliers in particular. In classic Claremont fashion, her solution to this problem is to have Gambit <\/strong>chuck an exploding card at one of the group in the middle of a training session which has been specifically described to the kids as a game. Gambit sides with her on this, and doesn’t even seem particularly bothered about it. Wolverine <\/strong>says that he understands but seems a bit less convinced.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Jubilee<\/strong> is furious and tells Rogue that she’s acting like Cyclops. Nightcrawler<\/strong> is too preoccupied with aftercare to comment directly, but completely misreads Rogue’s concern earlier in the issue; he assumes that she’s worried the kids will get hurt and tells her what fun they’re having.<\/p>\n

Ransom, Deathdream, Jitter<\/strong> and Calico<\/strong> (with\u00a0Ember<\/strong>) only appear in the training scene, and get left behind for the mission to Graymalkin. Even before Rogue blows up the game, Calico is easily defeated, and Deathdream just tries to hide behind a post. Ransom gets picked off by Logan. Jitter – who gets targeted by Rogue – was the last one standing at the time, but also the only one who seemed to be doing reasonably well. She’s reduced to tears.<\/p>\n

Ember really does seem to be glaring at Rogue afterwards.<\/p>\n

SUPPORTING CAST<\/strong><\/p>\n

Professor X.<\/strong> Somehow, even while imprisoned in Graymalkin, Professor X becomes aware of the attack on his daughter Xandra (of whom more below), and is extremely distressed about it. Xandra is apparently making a conscious effort to call him for help, but the contact leaves him in tears, with an elevated heartrate, and “like his brain is overheating”. All this seems like a callback to Lilandra’s debut in X<\/em>–Men\u00a0<\/em>#97, which similarly involved him picking up on her psychic signal and being driven slightly mad by it.<\/p>\n

He seems to be driven to the conclusion that while he was (past tense) a good man, he has never been a good father – which seems likely to be more of a comment on his strained relationship with his son Legion, but Xandra would be entitled to make many of the same complaints.<\/p>\n

Even while sedated, he’s able to contact fellow inmate Sarah Gaunt, who helps him to escape. He then hallucinates that the five X-Men who’ve come to speak to him are the original team, and fights his way past all of them to waltz out of the building on a mission to save Xandra. Corina Ellis understandably assumes that this is something to do with his tumour, but by this point he’s been affected by both Xandra’s psychic message and Ellis’s own attempts to sedate him, so there are other factors at play. Also, his hallucination about the X-Men seems to have something in common with the subplot about the guard hallucinating that his family are Sentinels. Certainly, Professor X shows no signs of hallucinating the next two chapters.<\/p>\n

While hallucinating, he takes great offence at being challenged or questioned, and dismisses the attempts to tell him about his tumour as lies. We’re told that it’s a “mutant tumour”, whatever that means – isn’t that a bit like telling us that he has mutant knees?<\/p>\n

His narration is described as being from his “final journal”, but despite the lined-paper captions, it seems to be something that he imagines himself writing while imprisoned in Graymalkin.<\/p>\n

Xandra Neramani.<\/strong> As established back in her first storyline (Mr & Mrs X<\/em> #1-5), Xandra is the genetic child of Professor X and Lilandra Neramani, created using their DNA at a point when they were both meant to be dead. She became the new Shi’ar Majestrix in\u00a0New Mutants<\/em> vol 4 #2. I think Xandra’s only significant interaction with Professor X to date was when he arranged for her resurrection in X-Men Red<\/em> vol 2 #4. We last saw her in\u00a0Alpha Flight<\/em> vol 5 #2 (the Fall of X miniseries) when she was providing asylum to Canadian mutants.<\/p>\n

Xandra is also a powerful telepath, but apparently the Secret Alliance rebels have sufficiently powerful “psi-restraints” to make that academic.<\/p>\n

Deathbird.<\/strong> She’s been guarding and mentoring Xandra since New Mutants<\/em> vol 4 #2. She fights loyally as Xandra’s last line of defence against the Secret Alliance.<\/p>\n

VILLAINS:<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Secret Alliance.<\/strong> These guys are new. They’re Shi’ar rebels – or possibly rebels from Shi’ar dominated worlds, but from the look of it, they’ve all got the Shi’ar feathers on their heads, albeit in a wider range of styles than we’re used to seeing. They seem to be zealots, and they regard Xandra as a “bastard abomination” and a “false empress” – presumably because she’s genetically engineered, or possible because she’s a hybrid and only half-Shi’ar.<\/p>\n

Corina Ellis.<\/strong> She asks Captain Ezra for an update despite having a daily report from the Perimeter system – there’s a definite implication that she doesn’t trust what Perimeter is telling her. When Professor X starts acting oddly, and she doesn’t get an immediate explanation from the technicians, her first response is to sedate him.<\/p>\n

The next thing we see<\/em> her do is calling Rogue for help – and we established in issue #5 that they could get in touch. Rogue is obviously a strange person to call, because in “Raid on Graymalkin” Rogue was the one arguing for breaking Professor X out. It would be more natural to call Cyclops’ team, who were arguing for leaving him in jail. But to be fair to Ellis,\u00a0X-Men<\/em> #11-12 end with Cyclops’ team learning that Professor X has escaped while they were busy teaming up with Alpha Flight to fight aliens – so quite possibly Ellis does<\/em> try the other X-Men team first.<\/p>\n

Captain Ezra.<\/strong> Mostly there to deliver exposition to Ellis. He trusts Perimeter more than she does and seems to be trying to steer her away from wasting his time with this stuff. His instinct is to refer to Scurvy as Phillip, but he corrects himself before Ellis picks up on it.<\/p>\n

Scurvy.\u00a0<\/strong>He doesn’t appear in this issue, but we’re told that he’s “still in the sick bay in recovery from the Raid.” Presumably that’s referring to the “Raid on Graymalkin” crossover and specifically his defeat at the hands of Professor X in issue #8… but if so, that means we’re still before Sentinels<\/em> #4-5 (which follow issues #9-10 of this series due to Larry Trask’s plotline, and show Scurvy active as usual). That seems to be possible, but it’s awkward.<\/p>\n

If Scurvy dies, Ellis wants his brain removed for “proper postmortem study” (which isn’t entirely unreasonable given that his tumour has implications for other major characters, but it’s fairly obvious that she hasn’t asked him).<\/p>\n

Other Graymalkin staff.<\/strong> There’s a “virus of some kind going around” which has eleven of the guards calling in sick. One of them has a Professor X-style hallucination that his family are Sentinels and (it’s implied) kills them all.<\/p>\n

Sarah Gaunt.<\/strong> Still in Graymalkin, where she was imprisoned in issue #5. She has enough power to help Professor X escape her cell. Since she hates the guy, her initial reaction is not to help. But when she learns that he’s trying to save his daughter, she relents – this refers to her own obsession with motherhood and her lost child.<\/p>\n

FOOTNOTES:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Page 24 panel 2: Rogue fought to free Professor X during the “Raid on Graymalkin” crossover.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition. UNCANNY X-MEN vol 6 #11 “X-Manhunt, part 1: Echoes of Madness” Writer: Gail Simone Artist: Javier Garr\u00f3n Colour artist: Matthew Wilson Letterer: Clayton Cowles Editor: Tom Brevoort This is part of the “X-Manhunt” crossover, which ships its first three chapters in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10843","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-annotations"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10843","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10843"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10843\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10846,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10843\/revisions\/10846"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10843"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10843"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10843"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}