It’s Girl’s Night Out in X-Men #11, written by Gerry Duggan, drawn by Pepe Larraz, colored by Marte Gracia and lettered by Clayton Cowles.
Cori McCreery: I am so excited to talk about this issue with you Tony! The main story was the most fun I’ve had in this series in quite a bit! Tony? You there? Tony? Hey To– you’re not Tony. Why are you here?
Nola Pfau: Hellooooooo, Corinne. You know what’s funny about life? Sometimes you’ll be so good at making a person miserable that the universe will just hand you opportunities to keep doing it.
Cori: Why did Tony have to go on a fun vacation? Why me? What did I do to deserve this? Hi Nola…
It’s All Fun And Gameworld
Cori: So the real meat of this issue (the return of my beloved Pepe Larraz to the art team) was the X-Men ladies heading to Gameworld. I very much enjoyed the touch of having them all wear their Gala outfits to get another use out of them like they were going to Mom Prom or something. What did you think of their arrival on the esteemed Gameworld?
Nola: I’m of two minds, honestly? I love the ladies vamping it up, but like…who rewears a red carpet event dress, a Gala dress, on a ladies night out? I love the reintroduction of fashion to the X-Men, but fashion is more than just “one fancy dress that we go back to multiple times.”
That said, I really dig both the girls’ night premise here and the absolute fun way it was lined up; tons of security measures specifically geared at mutants, followed by “haha, even with all that, this place is doomed.”
Cori: I’ll agree that we need more fashion, which is why I, like Lorna, got very excited by the dress she saw in the window. It felt to me like Rogue was jealous of her little side trek to the register too, and really, just give me another issue of the X-Ladies at the mall like we got during the late Claremont years. Just no Liefeld drawn dude issue to follow it up please. But yeah I’m really glad that the ladies just laughed off the defenses of Gameworld. Well… most of the ladies anyway. Laura got a little bit caught off guard, but I have a feeling that will resolve itself pretty easily.
Nola: Honestly, I’ve seen that bit used a bunch of times, but y’know what? I don’t care. It works every single time. Of course Laura’s going to shrug it off at a dramatically appropriate time, just like every time Logan does. Of course she is! It’s just good, fun comics, right down to that dramatic speech Jean makes while mangling a guy’s hand as an object lesson. I’m also (still) a huge fan of Cordyceps Jones. He’s just such a great, weird character, and I hope he sticks around a long time.
Cori: Yeah, like I said up top, that is certainly the most fun I’ve had with this book in a good bit. I think it’s at it’s absolute best when it’s just good bombastic superhero fodder. And I think this issue delivered that in spades. From Jean’s speech that you mentioned to the combat in the B-story, this issue really had a good time just being a superhero book. And since that’s what this book was promised to be, I feel like I finally got what I signed on for.
Nola: Cori, was that a card suit pun? I’m so proud of you. SPEAKING OF CARD SUITS!
Until Someone Uses An Eye
Cori: That was not an intended pun, no. We gonna go straight for the reveal then? I know you were torn on how to feel about it, and so was I, really. Still am, so maybe your thoughts on it will help to put mine in order.
Nola: It’s probably good that your heart wasn’t in it. Two of us making those would really be clubbing readers over the head, right?
There’s a duality at work in the structure of this B-plot that I really enjoy; as the ladies are up in space, the gentlemen go quite literally underground. This is probably fine; I certainly can’t remember a time when sewer adventures went very badly for mutants. Can we talk about that Synch fight, though? Whew.
Cori: I’ve said before and I’ll say again, that I really love what Duggan’s done with Synch’s powers and how he’s been able to attune himself to keep them for longer and longer periods of time. Seeing him go full Wolverine was an absolute joy, as was his delivery of “I’ve been Wolverine longer than anyone alive.” Just incredible growth for the character and a way to really give him a spotlight he has deserved since the nineties.
Nola: He’s not always my favorite writer, but I’ve noticed one thing Duggan is solid at is setting characters up for great one-liners. Combine that with Larraz’s very shounen-style presentation of the battle and it’s just a great scene all around. From there, we come to Cyc—sorry, Captain Krakoa, as he finally enters the lair of Dr. Stasis. A fight ensues, in which Cyclops discards his new pseudonym, then proceeds to deck the doctor with a good old fashioned ‘ZARK!’ Those classic sound effects are always fun to see, right?
Anyway, we finally get the reveal of Dr. Stasis, and this, uh. This sure was a thing that happened.
Cori: There was a good CHUDD too, just some A+ sound effect work this issue by Clayton Cowles. And yeah, the ZARK coupled with an impressive optic blast? Just *chef kiss* But yeah, let’s talk about that reveal.
I notice you dodged around giving me your thoughts, so that now I’m left holding the pot. Dr. Stasis is none other than one of the many variants of Mister Sinister, though oddly he has a different playing card suit on his forehead and doesn’t seem to understand why Scott recognizes him. I still don’t really know what to think about this reveal, but I don’t think I quite like it.
Nola: I’m not bothered by the Mister Sinister reveal itself—it’s fairly well telegraphed by the obsession with Cyclops and the genetic experimentation. It’s the club on his forehead. The diamond that’s been present has a specific history that goes back to Apocalypse first transforming him from his original form as Nathaniel Essex. I don’t object outright to changing the context of that, but it feels a little…too gimmicky? It also fills me with a kind of dread, knowing that we’ve got two more Sinister suits coming, because the potential for that gag to quickly become unbearable is immense, and believe me, I know all about being unbearable.
Cori: In fact, I don’t know that anyone is better at it than you. Mostly, I’m just confused that a man so deeply obsessed with Scott Summers would not know that he’d be immediately recognized as Scott’s greatest nemesis. That’s the part that keeps getting me. You know this man, so you’ve had to have seen his interactions with the guy that looks just like you sans forehead stamp.
Nola: I have two possible theories about that. The first is that we know via Immortal X-Men that Sinister has a process that involves compartmentalized information, down to encoding memories. It’s entirely possible (if not necessarily probable) that this version has no memories of Cyclops by design, and somehow ended up obsessed with him anyway, because it’s really just all about his latent attraction to Scott. The other theory is that he remembers Scott just fine, but he’s being a smartass, as evidenced by the smirk on his face in the moment.
Either way, this entire deal feels like it veers too close to a thing I’ve been talking about with modern Sinister lately; creators leaning too much into the fun camp set down by Kieron Gillen’s take on the character a decade ago, and forgetting that Gillen paired that sense of camp with genuine diabolical menace. It’s this overreliance on gags and quips that causes me to disengage with a story because it feels like the weight of that story is being ignored by its own creators. For more examples, see every Kelly Thompson Captain Marvel issue.
Cori: That’s an incredibly concise point, and I’m mad that you made it and I didn’t. Rude of you to be honest. But here’s hoping that now that Kieron is back in the X-Office he’s actually able to guide the Sinister ship for the whole team a bit better, so that we do get both sides of the coin.
Nola: What can I say, Cori? I’m a wildcard.
Cori: Well I wish I could say it’s been a pleasure, but I can’t.
X-Traneous Thoughts
- Wolverine snack watch: do mushrooms count?
- In a way, Laura was the snack.
- Lorna coffee watch: no coffee this issue, just a rad new dress.
- Sentient slot machine strippers that spew coins from their “mouths” is terrifyingly brilliant horror show.
- I really hope this arc ends with this Sinister variant depressed on an island somewhere, so we could call it the Island of Dr. Morose.
- SIGH
Nola Pfau is Editor-in-Chief of WWAC and generally a bad influence.
