{"id":10986,"date":"2025-04-16T22:42:30","date_gmt":"2025-04-16T21:42:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=10986"},"modified":"2025-04-16T22:42:30","modified_gmt":"2025-04-16T21:42:30","slug":"exceptional-x-men-8-annotations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=10986","title":{"rendered":"Exceptional X-Men #8 annotations"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>EXCEPTIONAL X-MEN #8<\/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 CORE CAST<\/strong><\/p>\n

Axo.<\/strong> He spends the entire issue as a prisoner of Mr Sinister, and so he doesn’t actually do or say anything. According to Trista, it’s out of character for him to enjoy Dazzler songs.<\/p>\n

Bronze.<\/strong> She’s the only one observant enough to recognise that Sinister’s Axo clone is an impostor. She uses her powers in public to contain the guy who’s panicking in the shop fire.<\/p>\n

Mel\u00e9e.<\/strong> She absolutely isn’t<\/em> observant enough to recognise that Sinister’s Axo clone is an impostor, although she understands the clues immediately when Trista points them out. She’s open to Trista’s fashion advice (which does indeed seem to be appropriately tailored to her tastes). Her first reaction to a crisis is to try and contact Kate, followed by Emma – nobody seems to think of contacting Bobby – but she does correctly figure out that something has happened at Verate and decide that they’re going to have to do superhero things and get inside.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Kate Pryde.<\/strong> She sings Dazzler songs in the shower. She’s delighted to get a call from Nina, but apparently keeps complimenting her by calling her “normal” – something she does without any real prompting here. Nina has picked up on the fact that Kate seems a bit fixated with normality and won’t quite let her into her life. Unfortunately, Kate gets called away to deal with the crisis before she can answer. Broadly, Kate seems to be attracted to Nina at least in large part because she represents the possibility of a life outside the X-Men, and fears that bringing her too far into the mutant world will cause that to be lost.<\/p>\n

Emma Frost.<\/strong> She doesn’t appear in this story. She hasn’t given the kids her contact details and instead gets in touch with them telepathically when she feels the need. After failing to reach Kate, Thao and Trista have a stab at contacting Emma by thinking very hard about her, with no result. Evidently, Emma isn’t monitoring the kids – although if she was, then she’d know about Axo anyway.<\/p>\n

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

Mr Luna<\/strong> and Ana Luna<\/strong>. Alex’s father and sister are baffled by the eccentric behaviour of his clone, and she wonders whether he’s on drugs.<\/p>\n

Sophie Cuckoo.<\/strong> She doesn’t appear, but she does send some messages to Axo’s phone – asking whether he’s ghosting her, but also expressing concern that something might have happened to him.<\/p>\n

Nina.<\/strong> She regards her relationship with Kate as one where they’re starting to get close, but Kate keeps pulling away from her before really letting her in. She seems tolerant of this to a degree, in as much as she seems to assume that Kate may need time, but she’s starting to gently press the point.<\/p>\n

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

Mister Sinister.<\/strong> The issue opens with him delivering a monologue to Axo without interruption for seven pages, which is what you might call a bold pacing decision.<\/p>\n

His current pet idea is that you can’t fully understand the body without understanding the mind. He’s well aware that his lack of empathy is an obstacle in that regard, and sees Axo’s powers as a way of getting round that. He’s built a machine which can harness Axo’s ability in order to produce a more complex analysis of the DNA samples that Verate users are sending in. Quite what that achieves beyond More Data isn’t made clear, but given Sinister’s mad scientist agenda, that may in fact an end in itself for him.<\/p>\n

He says that although he generally blocked Axo’s powers when they were together, he had to experience it at least once. Presumably he means that he’s allowing Axo to interfere with his mind during the monologue he’s delivering, now that Axo is safely restrained and it’s basically harmless – he does seem a bit more excitable than in previous issues, though not to any degree that’s out of the ordinary for Krakoan Sinister. This also implies that he was lying last issue when he claimed that he was immune to Axo’s powers because he lacked emotion altogether.<\/p>\n

He thinks the prospect of people becoming mutants as jaded adults is a fascinating one – he made a similar point to Axo in the previous issue. This might be something to do with the fact that he (or at least, the original Nathaniel Essex) became a superhuman as an adult.<\/p>\n

He knows at least one Dazzler song.<\/p>\n

Sinister has created a clone of Axo which he seems to genuinely believe will keep people from looking for the real Axo. Given that this clone has basic gaps in its ability to act normally, doesn’t replicate Axo’s powers, doesn’t change colour and turns to goop within less than a day, either it doesn’t work properly, or Sinister didn’t think that he needed to buy very much time.<\/p>\n

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