The harbinger of demons, Repent, prepares to make the ultimate sacrifice to free an X-man from what he believes is a homicidal possession. Can the Louisiana X-Men survive the experience? It’s mutant vs. malice in a battle for their eternal souls as “Wild Ride” comes to a stunning conclusion. Uncanny X-Men #36 is written by Gail Simone, drawn by Luciano Vecchio, colored by Matt Wilson and lettered by Clayton Cowles.
Adam Reck: Austin, it is finally that time. A few of these reviews back we decided to wrap up our coverage of this volume of Uncanny with the end of the “Wild Ride” arc. How are you feeling?
Austin Gorton: Honestly, mostly just excited for what we’re doing next (find out more about that below; that’s what we in the biz call “a teaser.”)
Adam: Ooh, me too, but this review isn’t going to write itself. Let’s get into all the exorcisms and trafficker killings one issue can contain!
Railroad to Ruin
Adam: I’ll admit, when Repent said we were headed to the Iron Cathedral, I did not expect an entire Italian-language flashback establishing shot, and I certainly did not expect several pages on a train. I’m not sure we needed the former, but the latter does give us a chance to explore Repent’s mutant-possession origin story.
Austin: Full confession: I briefly toyed with the idea of translating the Italian, then decided it wasn’t worth the effort. Does that make me a bad critic?
Adam: I did run it through Google translate, and it says exactly what you think it does.
Austin: Anyways, yeah, the train stuff was fun. I’m a sucker for train stuff in stories. It’s like a more capital-R romantic version of air travel. Anything set on a train where people are hanging out in tiny transforming train car bedrooms for several days, like Murder on the Orient Express or From Russia With Love, sign me up! There are definitely worse settings for a bit of exposition about our favorite (only?) mutant exorcist, Repent.
Adam: I guess I’m still a little confused why he still has some demon in him if he successfully exorcised himself, but I do like the idea that by being partly still possessed he’s Italy’s sexiest man alive.
Austin: That made me chuckle. Plus, he’s a priest, so forbidden fruit! We get a brief origin for Repent, the idea that he was a mutant (a bit like Nightcrawler, in that he had physical signs of mutation at birth) whose mother was possessed and being exorcised when she gave birth to him, so the demon possessing her fled into lil’ baby Repent. It’s all a bit like Blade’s origin (in which his mother was attacked by a vampire while in labor) without being too derivative.
Adam: I liked it, and I hope this character appears again outside of these three issues. He and Nightcrawler would be a fun pair out on the town.
Berserker Barrage
Adam: We talked last review about Wolverine promising to kill the traffickers who had taken Howler, and I want to give credit here because before Logan goes berserk, he does give Calamity (a mutant who looks like a crossover between WildC.A.T.s’ Maul and that McFarlane/Liefeld character Overkill) a chance to explain his deal. And yeah, dude sucks. Unsatisfied, Wolverine cuts loose. Vecchio does a great job of animating this sequence, showing all the stabby movement and limb slicing.
Austin: When Wolverine first started his attack, I thought, “Oh, this is it? This is the best Vecchio can do?” And then I turned the page and was hit by that fantastic full-page spread of their fight, and I realized I never should have doubted him.
I’m glad Calamity is (seemingly) dead and (hopefully) not intended to be a recurring character. I don’t love his design, with the purple-ish skin, extra set of arms and weird back … fins? Spikes? Feeling like one too many hats on a hat.
Adam: Not to be outdone by Wolverine and Monet, Howler is hiding in the back of Col. Sanders’ limo and rips him to shreds. Did you also think that Howler’s leaping pose looked a good deal like the 1992 Jim Lee Wolverine trading card?
Austin: You’re thinking the panel at the top of Page 22 (digitally)? I can see it. Definitely more of an homage than a swipe, and there are worse things to homage.
Adam: Oh, 100% an homage, if it’s even intentional. Then, in a hilarious wrap-up to this scene of multiple homicides, cops show up, shrug and let the X-Men go because their kids go to Haven High and the X-Men saved them from aliens! Not sure exactly how that quid pro quo works, but the X-Men have murdered their way into freeing the captive mutants from their trafficking fight club. And hey, Jubilee got to blow up a whole dang house with her powers, and that’s fun.
Austin: Good showing for Jubilee all around, which is nice to see. I’m torn on the business with the cops. On the one hand, this feels very much like Simone channeling Claremont (where he’d do something like have that one cop who was saved by the X-Men one time so he doesn’t hate mutants even though the rest of the force does, or whatever) and also part of her ongoing arc involving this branch of the X-Men being embraced publicly as heroes. (Remember Mutant Disneyland? When is that going to open?)
On the other hand, the X-Men have been anti-establishment for so long (arguably since 1986) that I still bump up a little against them cozying up to the armed authorities. I do appreciate Wolverine’s parting line that the X-Men aren’t just going to accept the cops’ actions in good faith.
Adam: Listen, I appreciate that at bare minimum Jubilee didn’t try to ask any of the cops out (remember that?!). But Wolverine’s final line is a real groaner about keeping “the trigger half-pulled,” and Logan, my guy, you have claws! You’re not a gun guy, you’re a claw guy! What are you talking about?
Holy Water, Batman!
Adam: In what’s become the tradition of these arcs, “Wild Ride” wraps up fast. Gambit/Wyvern is chained to the Iron Cathedral’s table, and Repent reveals his mutant power is to make holy water. Austin, isn’t that every priest’s power? I realize Repent could, like, turn any liquid into holy water, but this is kind of like Gambit using that charged prayer card a few issues back. Why would a mutant power manifest around a religious belief?
Austin: I guess it’s a tactical advantage in that it saves him the few seconds of time it would take, as a priest, to bless regular water to turn it into holy water? But yes, this is an oddly hyperspecific mutant power. It almost reads like it’s trying to be one of Grant Morrison’s big mutant power ideas that sounds awesome until you really think about it and start to question the mechanics of it (like Xorn having a star for a brain), only it takes all of a few seconds for your mind to bump up against the absurdity of it.
Adam: Of course, holy water alone does not do the trick, so it’s up to Rogue to absorb some of Wyvern and cut out the Eye from Gambit’s chest. Which, aside from the dagger itself, does make me wonder why they couldn’t have done this at home?
Austin: 100% my reaction to it. Was that a moderately clever way to resolve the situation (essentially weaken the demon enough that it could be fully exorcised, underscored by the drama of it being Rogue taking on part of the demon to make it work)? Yes. Did it require three travelogue issues across rocky isles and Italian churches (all the while traumatizing the Outliers by apparently making them think Rogue and Gambit were gone forever)? That’s the part whose necessity I am missing. It’s the “this could have been an email” of plot resolutions.
Adam: On the bright side, Gambit is well enough that now he can trade places with his Age of Apocalypse counterpart for a miniseries, I guess?
Final Thoughts
Adam: Reviewing a book that comes out this fast is no easy feat, but it’s a piece of cake compared to how hard it must be making it on a deadline, so hats off to Gail Simone and the talented artists, especially David Marquez and Luciano Vecchio, who made it look great. I’ve been frank all along that I don’t quite understand what this volume of Uncanny is up to, but we’ve both enjoyed certain arcs, and I do think letting the book do its own thing instead of being tied to the line is actually helpful for the kinds of stories being told. I will forever remain baffled by some of the choices made in these stories, but I’ve enjoyed covering them with you, Austin. Any final thoughts about our coverage?
Austin: Somewhat paradoxically, this is one of those series where I’m probably going to end up having enjoyed the act of reviewing it more than the issues themselves. That said, this is by no means a terrible book. The art has been consistently among the best — sometimes the best — of any Marvel title (let alone the X-books) in a given week, which ensured each issue was, at the very least, enjoyable to look at. And while we’ve certainly given Simone a fair amount of grief over our time on the book, I do think her heart is in the right place. She clearly has affection for the characters and is having fun writing the book, and that’s not nothing (especially in this day and age). I don’t love some of her writing tics and story construction decisions, but the way she’s trying to emulate Claremont with meandering plotlines stretched across a vibes/hangout setting is appreciated if not always successful.
For all our gripes (and I stand by them), this and its sister title, Jed MacKay’s X-Men, are consistently the best books in the line whenever they drop (which, granted, says more about the state of the wider line). It’s always nice when the flagship books are routinely the best (I’m still not buying X-Men United as a flagship book for various reasons I can enumerate elsewhere), and all else aside, even when it stumbles, this book has always felt like a “must read” for the duration of Simone’s run.
X-traneous Thoughts
- While Austin and I are wrapping our coverage of Uncanny, stay tuned as we are hopping over to cover the brand new Jonathan Hickman and Matteo Della Fonte book, Midnight X-Men!
- It feels very weird to read Monet referring to this group as the “Uncanny” X-Men, in part because the whole vibe of the book has almost always been more “family hanging out, getting into adventures” than “tightly structured crack mutant strike force,” and also because “Uncanny” is one of those real-world marketing adjectives associated with the book that doesn’t really extend into the narrative itself (i.e. that’s not what the X-Men are usually called in-universe).
- Yes Repent, mutants existed before the Atomic Age. We have read and the characters have lived the Krakoa-era books.
- To wit, the idea of the “Darkborn” adds to a long list of ancient mutant cultures we’ve seen introduced and largely forgotten in the pages of X-Men, including but not limited to: The Neo, the Children of the Vault, Arakko, the Neyaphem and Cheyarafim (shout out to “The Draco”), Lupin mutants, Proto-Mutants, Threshold, the “mutates” (and Abhorrents, Moonflyers and Johnny Devils) of Henrietta’s time, and so on because we absolutely left a few out.
Buy Uncanny X-Men #36 here. (Disclaimer: As an Amazon Associate, ComicsXF may earn from qualifying purchases.)
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 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.
