{"id":11140,"date":"2025-06-11T23:17:15","date_gmt":"2025-06-11T22:17:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=11140"},"modified":"2025-06-11T23:17:15","modified_gmt":"2025-06-11T22:17:15","slug":"exceptional-x-men-10-annotations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=11140","title":{"rendered":"Exceptional X-Men #10 annotations"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>EXCEPTIONAL X-MEN #10<\/strong>
\nWriter: Eve L Ewing<\/strong>
\nArtists: Carmen Carnero & Federica Mancin<\/strong>
\nColour artist: Nolan Woodard<\/strong>
\nLetterer: Travis Lanham<\/strong>
\nEditor: Tom Brevoort<\/strong><\/p>\n

Quite a short one for annotations, to be honest.<\/p>\n

THE CORE CAST<\/strong><\/p>\n

Emma Frost.<\/strong> The end of the previous issue apparently involved Emma sacrificing herself to free Axo from Sinister’s machine (not something that was terribly clear from the previous issue), and then Emma’s mind being sucked into Sinister’s mindscape. She believes that she made a heroic sacrifice for Axo, and is rather put out by him coming after her – she claims he’s overshadowing her, but obviously her sacrifice would be in vain if he got killed too. She does make a point of getting him to safety first, before following back to the real world.<\/p>\n

She claims that a major event in her personal development was meeting Kitty Pryde as a teenager and being shaken by the level of confidence she had. (Emma’s own back story has her only becoming that assertive later on.) The flashback shows Emma with Kitty in a Hellions costume. This is not actually the first time that Emma met Kitty – which would be\u00a0X-Men<\/em> #129 – but rather a scene from\u00a0New Mutants<\/em> #16, when Kitty was briefly at the Massachusetts Academy. That’s the first story where they spend an extended amount of time together.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Axo.<\/strong> Somehow, he knows that reconnecting himself to Sinister’s machine will restore his mental link to Emma and temporarily give him the fuller telepathic powers that he needs to help her. He’s right, but it’s not obvious how he knows this. Once inside Sinister’s mindscape, however, he’s able to defeat the child version of Sinister that they meet through the power of empathy, which apparently cuts through to Sinister’s inner child; Emma seems to lack the emotional instincts to use this angle so effectively. He’s also able to single handedly subdue the monstrous clone animals that Sinister has as guard dogs, again simply by calming them down. Basically, he comes across here as wildly powerful.<\/p>\n

Bronze<\/strong> and\u00a0Mel\u00e9e<\/strong>. For the final showdown with Sinister, they insist on being at the forefront. Mel\u00e9e is initially hostile to Axo putting himself in more danger, but quickly accepts that she put herself in harm’s way to help him. The three trainees firmly declare themselves to be X-Men here.<\/p>\n

Kate Pryde<\/strong> and\u00a0Iceman\u00a0<\/strong>are also there.<\/p>\n

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

The animals kept in Sinister’s lab turn out to include a little dragon thing which is apparently\u00a0Lockheed<\/strong>. Though obviously it could be a clone. If it’s the real Lockheed, we haven’t seen him since the end of the Krakoan era – he was in\u00a0X-Men<\/em> #35 along with everyone else.<\/p>\n

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

Mr Sinister. <\/strong>This Mr Sinister’s mental landscape is a sort of goth\u00a0Alice in Wonderland<\/em>, where he appears as a child version of himself called “Nathaniel”. This version seems to have no awareness of an outside world and doesn’t recognise Emma or Axo. He seems to enjoy evil pastimes, but immediately welcomes Emma as a companion – albeit one who can help him with\u00a0his<\/em> favourite things.<\/p>\n

Everyone who appears in this world wears a version of Sinister’s own costume. Emma’s is a dress. Axo looks like Dracula.<\/p>\n

In the real world, his lab’s automatic defences include a pack of sabretooth-type clones which serve as guard dogs. This seems wildly impractical, but that’s Sinister for you.<\/p>\n

As in the previous issue, Emma claims that Sinister is a match for her telepathy even when she’s at her best – presumably a comment on this particular version of him, since his psychic power levels have varied wildly over the years.<\/p>\n

Eventually, Sinister’s body explodes in a shower of goo – much like Axo’s clone did in issue #8. This being Sinister, we can’t be entirely sure that this is even the original or prime Sinister, if there is such a thing. If it’s a duplicate then that might explain how he had time to set up an entire business as a cover.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

EXCEPTIONAL X-MEN #10 Writer: Eve L Ewing Artists: Carmen Carnero & Federica Mancin Colour artist: Nolan Woodard Letterer: Travis Lanham Editor: Tom Brevoort Quite a short one for annotations, to be honest. THE CORE CAST Emma Frost. The end of the previous issue apparently involved Emma sacrificing herself to free Axo from Sinister’s machine (not […]<\/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-11140","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-annotations"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11140","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=11140"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11140\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11142,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11140\/revisions\/11142"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11140"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11140"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11140"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}