{"id":11990,"date":"2026-05-06T22:46:42","date_gmt":"2026-05-06T21:46:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=11990"},"modified":"2026-05-06T22:46:42","modified_gmt":"2026-05-06T21:46:42","slug":"x-men-29-annotations-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=11990","title":{"rendered":"X-Men #29 annotations"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>X-MEN vol 7 #29<\/strong>
\n“Danger Room, part 4”<\/strong>
\nWriter: Jed MacKay<\/strong>
\nPenciller: Netho Diaz<\/strong>
\nInker: Sean Parsons<\/strong>
\nColourist: Arthur Hesli<\/strong>
\nLetterer: Clayton Cowles<\/strong>
\nEditor: Tom Brevoort<\/strong><\/p>\n

COVER:<\/strong> A collective gravestone for the X-Men, with a gloating Frank Bohannan and Maxine Danger reflected in a puddle. Neither of them actually appears in the issue. Shouldn’t it be “Here Lie The X-Men”?<\/p>\n

THE X-MEN:\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Psylocke.\u00a0<\/strong>The opening flashback explains how she and Xorn survived the attack from Beyond’s men at the start of last issue: Xorn used his gravity powers to bend Beyond’s laser away from the Marauder, and then Psylocke blasted the Beyond vehicle with the Marauder’s missiles. This fits well enough with the previous issue, though issue #27 had the Marauder dodging hails of attacks as opposed to the single major assault shown here.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

She’s unimpressed with Beyond hijacking the “Danger Room” name, but immediately figures out that the plan involves attacking the X-Men through their supporting cast. Presumably she works that out based on the fact that she’s lost contact with Cyclops, whose team were going after Paula Robbins. Curiously, she’s also lost telepathic contact with the Factory, even though Kid Omega is still there – perhaps he’s just too obsessed with the Glob Herman situation to pay any attention to her.<\/p>\n

While her default is to start talking about the plot and what she’s going to do about it, she does hesitantly apologise to John Greycrow for indirectly putting him in the line of fire. John correctly identifies that she seems incapable of asking for help (in issue #26, Cyclops had to insist that she accept Xorn’s help).<\/p>\n

Kid Omega<\/strong> and Temper. <\/strong>On arrival in Merle, they seem to assume that Glob’s shooter will be known to the townsfolk generally and simply demand that someone gives up their identity. They take it as read that the shooter\u00a0is\u00a0<\/em>a local, and not an outsider. While they don’t simply start smashing everything up (and appear to regard this as taking the moral high ground), they make it abundantly clear that they regard themselves as above the law, even though Deputy Smith (who we saw in issue #26) responds perfectly reasonably towards them. They seem to think that mutants will be safer if humans are scared of them. Of course, logically it ought to be at least in their minds that the shooter could be one of the X-Men’s many enemies from outside town – but that doesn’t accord with their prejudices, which Cyclops has evidently been holding back until now.<\/p>\n

Recall that Cyclops tends to justify his dealings with the town to the rest of the team on pragmatic grounds, and hasn’t done a great deal to challenge their attitudes more generally. In issue #26, he specifically told Kid Omega that the X-Men should rescue Sheriff Robbins because she was an “asset”, and if they let her\u00a0 die, then her replacement might be less friendly.<\/p>\n

The Beast.\u00a0<\/strong>Last issue, he hurled himself into the techno-organic ship creature in an attempt to reason with it. He now finds himself in a dream where he’s in the Factory, and the other characters from the ship (Cyclops, Magik, Juggernaut and Paula Robbins) appear as scary techno-organic versions. These seem to be purely the creature’s mode of mental communication, and the real characters don’t appear in this issue.<\/p>\n

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

Xorn.\u00a0<\/strong>His black hole gives him gravity powers that can bend lasers around the Marauder, though he claims that using his powers in this way is “dangerous” – presumably there’s a risk of it going wrong and crashing the Marauder, but in practice it all goes fine. He doesn’t like his protective helmet (in context, he seems to mean specifically the skull-like design rather than the mere fact of having to wear something). Despite not being a field operative, he regards himself as an X-Man and is perfectly willing to go into action alongside Psylocke and Greycrow.<\/p>\n

John Greycrow.\u00a0<\/strong>Once Xorn has healed his organic parts, his mutant powers are able to fix his cyborg components. This issue gives us a rare outing for his Forge-like power to improvise technology out of the components from his own body. He’s able to track the Danger Room’s signal using his own abilities in combination with the Marauder’s technology, and isn’t sure whether he could do it alone.<\/p>\n

As in\u00a0<\/em>the\u00a0Psylocke<\/em> solo series, Greycrow is devoted to Psylocke and somewhat better adjusted than she is, at least to the point of being able to articulate his feelings. He feels guilty for allowing himself to be used as bait to entrap Psylocke, and insists on helping against the Danger Room.<\/p>\n

Deputy Smith.\u00a0<\/strong>He seems completely reasonable and professional. When Kid Omega and Temper first show up, he tries to calm them down and let him open an investigation in Glob’s shooting. When they start threatening the town, he draws his gun but openly acknowledges that it’s a waste of time and keeps trying to reason with them. He seems to be doing his best in an impossible situation. Smith was a big fan of the X-Men in issue #26, but this encounter might change that – which, of course, was the sort of thing that the Danger Room’s plan was trying to bring about.<\/p>\n

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

Danger Room.\u00a0<\/strong>None of the higher-ups from Beyond appear in this story, only the generic footsoldiers and the techno-organic creature on the boat.<\/p>\n

The creature is some sort of newborn which just wants to understand what’s going on; Beast concludes that the X-Men have hypocritically (or at least ironically) reacted to it with fear and hate because it’s so strange. This is pushing it – it’s a bit of a stretch to read the art in issue #26 as showing the X-Men attacking first, but even if they did, they had also (correctly) identified that the creature was part of a trap intended to hurt them.<\/p>\n

Once Beast starts answering the creature’s questions, it seems to calm down and let him speak.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

X-MEN vol 7 #29 “Danger Room, part 4” Writer: Jed MacKay Penciller: Netho Diaz Inker: Sean Parsons Colourist: Arthur Hesli Letterer: Clayton Cowles Editor: Tom Brevoort COVER: A collective gravestone for the X-Men, with a gloating Frank Bohannan and Maxine Danger reflected in a puddle. Neither of them actually appears in the issue. Shouldn’t it […]<\/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,"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11990","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-annotations"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11990","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=11990"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11990\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11992,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11990\/revisions\/11992"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11990"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11990"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11990"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}