More mall mutt madness in Uncanny X-Men #10

The four potential mutant recruits known as the Outliers are the target of a new, vicious and unstoppable anti-mutant weapon initiative, a cold-hearted pack of tracking Sentinels based on dogs, who use their enhanced senses and chainsaw-like teeth to hunt down and kill mutants. Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide as the Outliers face the bone-chilling Bloodhounds. Uncanny X-Men #10 is written by Gail Simone, drawn by Andrei Bressan, colored by Matt Wilson and lettered by Clayton Cowles.

Adam Reck: Welcome back, Groundbears and Moonbeams! Hope you’re ready to head back to the food court. With me again is the fella with the encyclopedic X-Men brain, Austin Gorton! Austin, are you more of a plain salt or cinnamon pretzel kind of guy? 

Austin Gorton: Plain salt, assuming I have a good mustard — not gross-ass processed cheese — to dunk it. You? 

Adam Reck: Oh, straight salt for me, please. Maybe a little spicy mustard on the side? 

Let’s recap: Previously in Uncanny X-Men, our New Muta– er, Outliers went to the mall to experience being normal only to be attacked by the Wolfpack, or are they the Bloodhounds? Regardless of any ad copy confusion over their name, these are Sentinel-tech enhanced stray dogs, and they are ready to kill. Hope you brought your killer instinct this month, Austin, because I HAVE QUIBBLES!

Personal Jesus

Adam: We start this issue with the lovable Kurt Wagner doing some home improvements with the daughter of the family the X-Men are living with. Ten issues in, and I still couldn’t tell you much about this family or why the X-Men are living there, but the house ain’t gonna paint itself. Kurt’s back to doing his “God is Great” shtick here, and you’d think the guy who spent several years of continuity creating mutant religion might not be so eager to jump right back into Christianity.

Austin: You know how on the back of the old Marvel Universe trading cards, there’d be a little biography of each character, after they listed the real name and group affiliations and such? But because they had all of a paragraph to work with, the bio would just be a “greatest hits” sort of thing — the two or three most definitional/important things to know about that character? This book seems like it’s written such that everyone’s characterization is based solely on their trading card bio, and not their richer, more complex narrative history.

And since “is ironically Christian” is one of Nightcrawler’s top-line bio items, well, here he is, being demonstrably Christian, even if the last time he had a prominent role in a story, it involved him exploring his religious beliefs in a way that would make them vastly more complicated than what is on display here. Our criticisms of this series aside, Gail Simone is a professional writer with a long history in this genre. I know, from other things she’s written, that she’s capable of engaging with a character’s complicated history in an entertaining way. So I have to (?) assume this sort of “trading card” approach to characterization is being driven, implicitly or explicitly, by editorial, to present the characters as generically “familiar” as possible.  

Adam: That’s quite generous! Kurt is also questioning his place on whatever this version of the X-Men is. When the mother of the child he saved in a previous issue shows up to deliver piles of German cakes and kiss his hand, he concludes that this response to his heroism makes him never want to don the “X” again. This … makes no sense. 

Austin: I can buy the general idea that Nightcrawler doesn’t want to be a superhero (I’m not sure I buy the conceit of “a mother’s gratitude reminds him of why he doesn’t want to be a superhero,” but let’s leave that aside); he’s had similar crises of faith plenty of times before. What I bump against here is his belief that Rogue would have a hard time accepting it. I … don’t think she would? She’s been there for at least some of those crises before. She seems generally pretty understanding and warm toward Nightcrawler (who is her brother). If he said, “I don’t want to fight, I just want to hang out,” I think Rogue would be cool with that. It seems like an attempt to create dramatic tension without any real justification for it.

Adam: Kurt’s demonstrations of faith continue as he sees news reports of the Outliers being attacked at the mall on TV and instead of diving into action he *sigh* pauses to hold hands with his hosts and pray. No, Kurt! You don’t have time to pray! Go save those kids! 

Austin: Again, I can see what Simone is trying to do here: underscore Nightcrawler’s reluctance to “don the X” again while also selling the threat of the Sentinel dogs (“they’re so fearsome, all Nightcrawler can do is pray!”). But it’s not just a deep misrepresentation of Nightcrawler’s character, it’s inconsistent with what we saw last issue, where the whole point of the thing he did that the mother thanked him for in this issue was save someone who needed help even though he’s fed up with the life of an X-man. 

And bottom line, I don’t care how religious Nightcrawler is, or how much he might yearn for a life away from the X-Men; he’s not going to stop and pray when there are lives that need saving. 

All Dogs Go to Heaven

Adam: The bulk of this issue is the Outliers simultaneously trying to save Deathdream’s life (I guess he can die?) and fend off the Sentinel dogs. This furthers my contention that Gail is much more interested in writing about the Outliers than the X-Men. 

Austin: Which, in turn, furthers the conspiracy I’ve just hatched while writing this review that there is a heavy editorial hand involved in the creation of this book, which makes Gail more invested in the Outliers because, as new characters, she has more latitude to do what she wants with them. 

Adam: I like this line of thinking! Jitter saves Deathdream by using her power to engage any skill for 90 seconds and reenacting the adrenaline shot scene from Pulp Fiction. It also seems like she can retain the skill afterward if she remembers enough of it, which kind of negates the timer. 

Austin: The implication seems to be that it’s limited to her “normal”/human memory, which is of course subject to stress, etc. So it’s not a complete negation of the limitation of her ability. There also seems to be a limit in terms of mental energy to how often she can do the “any skill for 90 seconds” thing, which I assume is a way to stop her from just re-upping the same skill every 90 seconds for however long she needs.

Adam: Bressan’s art really shines in these action sequences, especially when Wolverine gets to slice stuff in half with his claws jutting out of frame. And as the fight lasts for a big chunk of the book, Bressan has tons of room to make his layouts as dynamic as possible. 

Austin: The whole sequence with the kids is the best part of the issue. Like you said, Simone seems to really enjoy these characters, and their dynamic is very reminiscent of the New Mutants, in terms of everyone being in over their heads but still finding a way to succeed. The way they slot into different “team member” archetypes — Jitter taking charge, Calico charging into action, Ransom as the reliable heavy filling in the gaps, Deathdream the wild card finding a way to pull out the win in the end. It’s all vastly better than anything involving the actual X-Men.

Absolutely Not

Adam: We need to talk about two things (aside from Kurt’s religiosity) that really bugged me in this issue. They both happen on the same page as Wolverine and Jubilee arrive on the scene at the shopping mall. The first is that Wolverine allows himself to be stopped by a police barricade. The mutant kids he’s been mentoring are potentially getting murdered by Sentinels and he’s letting a cop tell him he can’t go in, forcing Jubilee to reason with the cop. Wolverine isn’t stopping for anybody! He’s a one-man unstoppable killing machine! You’re telling me a dude with a nightstick and an aluminum fence is going to hold him back? 

Austin: I just have to assume he was merely going to walk away from the cop and jump the barricade somewhere else. 

Adam: The second thing that happens immediately after this made me so angry and confused I’m still seething over it. After the cop, who has gray temples, a square-top crew cut and just pointed a nightstick in Wolverine’s face, “lets” them through the barricade, Jubilee (deep breath, Adam) flirts with him?! Actual line: “I’m single at the moment, by the way. Sorta.” Jubilee, who in a recent issue had at least passing concerns over the fact that her son is a dragon in Otherworld, is flirting with a graying, uggo police officer who is trying to keep her from saving her fellow mutants. WHAT IS GOING ON HERE?

Austin: I really have no idea, Adam.

Incidentally, not that it’s the most maddening element of this, but why is she “sorta” single? 

Adam: Great question, Austin! Jubilee isn’t “sorta” single. She’s 100% single! The last person she dated was Chamber back in Christina Strain’s Generation X. I can’t with this. 

OK, one more weird scene. As Podcaster Ellis figures out that Larry Trask wasn’t responsible for the Wolfpack’s attack, she’s very concerned about the PR consequences. If you’re at all concerned about the PR consequences of Sentinels in any form … maybe don’t make them? She then throws the random lab guy who did send out the Wolfpack into her own Graymalkin Prison, making sure to demand forced labor in the Danger Room. 

Austin: “Won’t someone please stop to think about how the murderous robot dogs we created tearing people apart will look on live TV?!?”

It’s hardly the most evil thing a supervillain has done to a lackey, but given that Ellis is trying to operate with a veneer of legitimacy and public good, it seems like imprisoning an employee in your private prison isn’t the best HR move. It’s just another example of the confusion inherent in the character: Is she a mustache-twirling supervillain or a bigoted, ill-informed functionary of the “normal” establishment?

Adam: I ranted in our last installment about the tone-deaf ways this book and the line in general handle characters of color, so I’ll jump over those developments to get to a very weird line from Larry Trask. When asked if he sent out the very robo-dogs he developed, he says, “You think, with my family history, that I’d murder kids?” 

Larry might be referring to that time his time-traveling sister disappeared in childhood, but this line definitely seems odd coming from a guy who definitely attempted to sterilize all of humanity to eliminate mutantkind for good. Austin, I know you know your X-Men and your Avengers history. What did you think of all this mess?

Austin: It makes zero sense. Maybe this is a reference to Sanctity, as you said, but that seems like a deep cut for a series that is still running with “Nightcrawler = church.” I’d ping this as more trading card writing, except I’m pretty sure right after “wears a giant medallion” on Trask’s bio would be “wants to destroy all mutants.” I guess this could be an attempt by Simone to give Trask some nuance and dimension, that he’s anti-mutant but doesn’t want to kill kids, even mutant kids, except it’s presented as something that is driven by a past event that as near as I can tell, doesn’t exist. Is it a reference to Sentinels and Juston Seyfert? Like so much else in Uncanny X-Men #10, it’s simply mystifying.   

X-traneous Thoughts 

• For folks who weren’t around in 1989, All Dogs Go to Heaven is the fourth full-length animated Don Bluth movie about (get this) a German shepherd who returns from death to get revenge on the gangster dog who killed him, only to befriend a little girl and learn about kindness or something.
• Calico’s powers allow her to conjure flame armor. I have no idea why she manifested samurai armor this time around, but I wish there was a story-motivated reason. 
• Minor quibble but there aren’t cobblestones on Roosevelt Way outside the Orpheum Theater in New Orleans, and a very quick search on Google Maps would have provided easy photo reference for the street scene and the facade of the Roosevelt Hotel across the way. 
• For folks who weren’t around in 1841, Rogue and Gambit have just seen Giselle, a ballet based on Victor Hugo’s poem “Fantômes” about a woman torn from her lover by death and inducted into a gang of man-killing lady ghosts. Giselle saves her former love from her fellow ghosts and frees herself from them in the process. Sounds rad! 
• They are also being stalked by a scaly green arm. Who could it be?!
• I immediately guessed the Abomination (it’s almost certainly NOT the Abomination). 
• That panel of Wolverine slicing a dog Sentinel in half is pretty awesome! 
• Next issue promises X-Manhunt: Part One (Don’t call it an Alpha even though there’s an Omega)! Wherein Professor Xavier, who murdered a bunch of guys (oh wait, no, just clones so I guess that’s OK) (wait a minute — that’s still murder!) and then turned himself in to be put in a prison (wait, no, not that prison the Graymalkin prison) and then decided to stay in said prison when his students came to break him out, has decided he’d like to break out for … crossover reasons?

Buy Uncanny X-Men #10 here. (Disclaimer: As an Amazon Associate, ComicsXF may earn from qualifying purchases.)

Adam Reck

Adam Reck is the cartoonist behind Bish & Jubez as well as the co-host of Battle Of The Atom. Follow him @adamreck.bsky.social.

Austin Gorton

Austin Gorton also reviews older issues of X-Men at the Real Gentlemen of Leisure website, co-hosts the A Very Special episode podcast, and likes Star Wars. He lives outside Minneapolis, where sometimes, it is not cold. Follow him @austingorton.bsky.social.