{"id":11501,"date":"2025-10-29T22:08:43","date_gmt":"2025-10-29T22:08:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=11501"},"modified":"2025-10-29T22:08:43","modified_gmt":"2025-10-29T22:08:43","slug":"expatriate-x-men-1-annotations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=11501","title":{"rendered":"Expatriate X-Men #1 annotations"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>EXPATRIATE X-MEN #1<\/strong>
\nWriter: Eve L Ewing<\/strong>
\nArtist: Francesco Mortarino<\/strong>
\nColourist: Ra\u00fal Angulo<\/strong>
\nLetterer: Ariana Maher<\/strong>
\nEditor: Tom Brevoort<\/strong><\/p>\n

COVER:\u00a0<\/strong>Simply a group shot of the cast – except that Colossus, at the back left, doesn’t actually appear in this issue, and Mystique, at the back right, is more of a supporting character who the X-Men are dealing with.<\/p>\n

This is the stand-in book for\u00a0Exceptional X-Men<\/em>, although that book hasn’t been solicited to return in January. Still, it’s written by Eve Ewing and it features Rift, Mel\u00e9e and Bronze. As for the other\u00a0Exceptional<\/em> cast members, Kitty Pryde has appeared in\u00a0X-Men: Book of Revelation<\/em> #1; Emma Frost is co-starring in\u00a0Iron & Frost<\/em>; and I don’t think we’ve seen Iceman or Axo yet.<\/p>\n

PAGES 1-5.\u00a0<\/strong>Rift, Ms Marvel and Bronze attack a border post.<\/em><\/p>\n

Rift\u00a0<\/strong>is Reggie McNair, Trista’s crush from Exceptional X-Men<\/em>. He turned out to be a mutant in the closing issues of Exceptional <\/em>when his time portals sent the cast back to Kitty Pryde’s teenage years. He\u00a0seems<\/em> to be the narrator here, since the first caption has the same colouring and lightning-flash symbol that appears in his portals.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Bronze<\/strong> is now an established X-Man. She seems to stay in bronze form permanently, and uses her metal tendrils as kind of insectoid legs. She acts entirely differently from her mainstream counterpart, which is hardly surprising now that she’s in her twenties, let alone living in a dystopia. Broadly, we’re doing “the nice characters have become cynical and hardened” here, though not to the degree of outright grimdark.<\/p>\n

In the 2024 Christmas special\u00a0Timeslide<\/em>, Cable and Bishop meet Bronze in “near future” Washington DC, when she saves them from something called a War-Lock drone. She claims to be living in a world where Revelation has taken over the world. What little we see of this timeline – it exists mainly so that Bronze can deliver a house advert about upcoming stories across the Marvel Universe – bears no real resemblence to what we’ve seen in “Age of Revelation” and it’s probably simpler to just ignore it as a different timeline than it is to try and shoehorn it into “AoR”. If it\u00a0is<\/em> canon to this storyline, it would have to take place some time in the past, before Revelation nukes Washington.<\/p>\n

Rift and Bronze show no discernible romantic interest.<\/p>\n

Ms Marvel<\/strong> presumably doesn’t need any introduction; in the mainstream timeline, we last saw her in the various\u00a0Giant-Size\u00a0<\/em>one-shots.<\/p>\n

The border post\u00a0<\/strong>is clearly something which has been put in place by the US authorities, rather than any sort of sign of co-operation between the mutants and humans on the border. One building seems to have been converted from the remains of a Sentinel. That said, there’s no suggestion in any of the “Age of Revelation” books that Revelation is actively waging any sort of expansionist campaign or picking fights on the border; he doesn’t need to, since the X-virus is continuing to slowly spread.<\/p>\n

PAGES 6-7.<\/strong> Rift fails to rescue the prisoner.<\/em><\/p>\n

This guy is identified later in the issue as Adrian Star, or “Lyrebird”. He’s a new character. A lyrebird is an Australian bird known for its mimickry.<\/p>\n

If Mystique is to be believed, Star comes from Denver and spent 184 days in US custody. He apparently has a photographic memory and should have picked up lots of useful information while there, including the whereabouts of several other important prisoners. None of this explains why he has a leg injury or what he was doing at a border post, which is plainly not a long-term prison and certainly isn’t anywhere near Denver, but it’s strongly hinted later in the issue that Mystique is, at the very least, not giving them the whole story.<\/p>\n

For what it’s worth, the US government doesn’t appear to be generally evil at this point in time; this week’s\u00a0X-Vengers<\/em> #1 mentions in passing that the current president is Sam Wilson.<\/p>\n

PAGE 8.\u00a0<\/strong>They go back in time and get the rescue right.<\/em><\/p>\n

This isn’t how Marvel Universe time travel is meant to work, but the rules have never been consistent and the X-books have done stories that depend on changing history since Chris Claremont’s day. We never really did find out how on earth the timeline sorted itself out at the end of\u00a0Exceptional X-Men<\/em> #13, and it’s possible that Rift’s power just does weird things in this regard.<\/p>\n

PAGES 9-10.\u00a0<\/strong>The X-Men escape back to Mel\u00e9e’s ship, which teleports to safety.<\/em><\/p>\n

This is an odd scene – there’s a passing mention of “raiders” attacking the ship, and “getting sniped by someone onshore” (which the dialogue has to cover because it’s just not in the art at all). Everyone is too keen to get the hell out of there to worry about what this means, but it’s presumably significant.<\/p>\n

The ship is named in the next scene as\u00a0the Dragonfly<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Mel\u00e9e\u00a0<\/strong>is obviously familiar from the regular title, and is now in charge of this boat. The recognisable crew members include\u00a0Doop<\/strong>,\u00a0the Toad<\/strong>,\u00a0Northstar<\/strong>, and a big bearded red-head man who seems to be throwing cannonballs around – I’m not sure who he is.<\/p>\n

Mel\u00e9e and Rift seem to have to combine powers in some way in order to move an object as big as the ship, though it’s not obvious how Mel\u00e9e’s powers would contribute to that.<\/p>\n

PAGES 11-14. <\/strong>The Dragonfly returns to the Flotilla.<\/em><\/p>\n

The Flotilla\u00a0<\/strong>appears to be a collection of boats serving as the mobile base for a bunch of mutants who are on the outs with Revelation and are living literally on the human\/mutant border. Since it can’t be that hard to find them, you have to assume that they’re quietly tolerated by Revelation. They describe themselves variously as the X-Men, mercenaries, and “an autonomous confederated entity” (meaning, presumably, that they’re a community living literally in the gap between the USA and the Territories).<\/p>\n

Ms Marvel presents the Flotilla to Lyrebird as a sort of superhero outfit who routinely rescue imprisoned mutants from “out west” (the human USA), but the next scene indicates that this is a massive overstatement of their heroic efforts, and they wouldn’t be bothering with him if it wasn’t for his intelligence value. Ultimately, their objective seems to be to set up some sort of mutant state independently of Revelation. However, the Flotilla do seem to have some sort of reputation as rebels and heroes – over in Undeadpool<\/em> #1, a bunch of low-level wannabe heroes are aware of the Flotilla’s existence and of Ms Marvel’s status within it.<\/p>\n

PAGES 15-19.\u00a0<\/strong>The X-Men speak to<\/em> Mystique.<\/em><\/p>\n

Mystique gives her explanation of what she wants with Lyrebird, though as pointed out above, it all seems a bit partial.<\/p>\n

For some reason, Mystique wants to get Lyrebird to Darkchild’s territory on the east coast (which we’ve seen in\u00a0Amazing X-Men<\/em> #1). Presumably this ties in somewhere with Colossus appearing on the cover.<\/p>\n

The cliffhanger reveals that Mel\u00e9e is working for an unnamed rival employer who\u00a0doesn’t<\/em> want Darkchild to get Lyrebird. But they need Mel\u00e9e and Rift’s powers in combination to jump between waterways and make the trip, and apparently she’s still going to co-operate with that. Given how dangerous this trip apparently is, and the difficulties of making the return journey, all of which was spelled out just two pages previously, the obvious question is why she doesn’t just refuse to go and fulfil her contract that way.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

EXPATRIATE X-MEN #1 Writer: Eve L Ewing Artist: Francesco Mortarino Colourist: Ra\u00fal Angulo Letterer: Ariana Maher Editor: Tom Brevoort COVER:\u00a0Simply a group shot of the cast – except that Colossus, at the back left, doesn’t actually appear in this issue, and Mystique, at the back right, is more of a supporting character who the X-Men […]<\/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-11501","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-annotations"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11501","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=11501"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11501\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11503,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11501\/revisions\/11503"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11501"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11501"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11501"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}