Our Kate Pryde finally gets her date with Nina. It’s a high school sporting event. Teen mutants are there. Three guesses what happens next in Exceptional X-Men #2, written by Eve Ewing, drawn by Carmen Carnero, colored by Nolan Woodard and lettered by Travis Lanham.
In the immortal words of Nils Sjöberg, this is what I came for.
Some comics (and novels, and movies) grab you with plot. You see a character, and another character, and you don’t know what they’re going to do, and you have no idea where the chain of events they set off, or the secrets they turn up, will lead.
Some don’t. That’s not the point: Those comics rock out in other ways, as this one does. Reader, it’s just so good. In this second issue of Ewing and Carnero’s From the Ashes book, Kate Pryde goes on trying to lead a normie life in Chicago; goes on a “weird first date” (as her date puts it) to her date’s “little cousin’s high school soccer game”; sees mutant teens and bigoted anti-mutant teens start a fight in the stands; stops the fight; and gets dragged once again, against her stated wishes, into the role of mentor for superpowered misfits likely too young to drink or vote. If you’ve read more than a dozen Chris Claremont X-comics, or comics committed to the spirit of Claremont, you’ll predict Page 24 by the time you read Page 3.
You’ll also be reading my favorite cape comic to come out this year, the kind of comic I buy in quadruplicate from my LCS (local comic shop) and give away to pals. Eve Ewing understands exactly what her version of Kate Pryde wants and needs and what happens to her despite her stressed out wishes. Carnero and Woodard know how to draw her: svelte but realistic, not curvy, tall-ish, Star of David necklace, looks anxious but hopeful. Rarely have I read a comic — or an anything (not counting fanfic) — that felt so much like I was reading a book about me. In other words, it’s the style, and the details, and the dialogue, and the comedic moments, and the piling up of “oh no, not again!” and the unwanted (but quickly assumed) responsibilities, and the emotional beats, that make this comic book ultra-super-special. If you’re not me, you might get bored. Who knows? I’m not you.
Also I’m a teacher with poor work-life boundaries and a history of growing up precocious. I’m someone who’s wondered for her entire life whether she ever gets to hang with peers, or just teachers and students: whether she can go for more than a day without feeling responsible, either for younger people who might be her students, or for expectations placed on her by the powerful older people she trusts. I have literally sat in stands at high school sporting events (our younger teenager does color guard) and wondered whether I’m going to get a text with an emergency. Or an “emergency.” Or both, before our younger kid has finished the flag routine.
So when Kate finishes up her very busy bartending shift, on a Saturday, at a bar where the White Sox fans almost fight with the Cubs, and just wants to go on a date, I feel a bit seen. When she talks to herself (in Tom Orzechowski-level clear, high-word-count lettering), I feel heard. When the teen mutant she rescued last issue (real name: Trista) texts her, a lot, for hangouts and mutant support, I feel seen, although I’d probably take longer than our Kate does to give Trista the very best possible answer: “you really need friends your own age.” When I see Kate, in a full-page De Luca effect, walking through a very normal city block to her very normal car, I’m there. When she leans slightly toward her date, Nina (an actor — but not an improv actor! — in a lovely purple and black top-and-dress), picks up a dumpling and says her day so far is “perfect,” I, too, am feeling perfection of an afternoon.
Did I bury the lede? Kate goes on a date with a woman. They look cute together, too. Kate took forty-odd years to come out to her real-life readers, but hey, I took that long, too. Thanks to Ewing not just for making it happen, but for making it happen organically, as just one more part of a story that’s not remotely about coming out as queer: It’s mostly about how Kate can’t get away from being the kind of person who reaches out to help teen mutants who keep on doing stupid teen things.
In a 1980s comic, she’d have to stop a bigoted gang from beating up someone purple or green or scaly. Here, though, she watches a soccer player named Thao step in to defend a mutant who looks safe, and does not actually want defending. Said mutant — who’s green, but turns purple; who’s big and burly and strong; who listens to music in Spanish (it’s “Vamos Otra Vez,” by Allison — Green Day-ish punk-pop en español!) — never removes his headphones. And he talks a would-be bully down.
Thao, however, may have read too many superhero comics (or too much manga, or seen the wrong movies). She says, to herself, “he needs help!” And she starts the fight. Carnero still reminds me of the Dodsons, except that she’s better — much better — at drawing varied body shapes and body types. She understands facial expressions, and conversations, lots of them, even the facial expressions on bystanders and background roles. This comic must have taken forever to get right, given just how many crowd scenes it folds in. And she’s got the fight right, too, when it starts.
Kate stops it. She phases headphones guy and headstrong soccer player under the bleachers. She chews Thao out: “You made a scene that created risks for everyone.” Thao runs away angry, then turns intangible (that’s her power) and gets herself stuck in a girder, so Kate talks her into the calm control of her powers needed to extricate herself from all that metal. Carnero and Woodard give us people I can believe do these things, in a place (a well-maintained school) that I can believe exists. She even draws cellphone text exchanges in a way (thanks to angles and hand closeups) that makes them no chore to read — quite the accomplishment, honestly, for a modern comics artist drawing modern, cellphone-toting teens.
That’s how we see Kate introduce Thao (who needs mutant friends) to Trista (who also needs mutant friends). They go out for bubble tea! With headphones-wearing, leather-jacketed, sorta-punk green guy! Thao wants to get political right away; punk guy, despite looking punk, just wants to live his life. It feels so real. (Also, more crowd scenes. Dear Carmen Carnero: Take care of your wrists! We need them for future comics!)
Anybody can push a few nostalgia buttons to remind us who we were and what we read when we were younger. The trick is to use the nostalgia, and the flashbacks, to show us how who we are now grows from what happened then. Ewing and Carnero and Woodard do the trick. We go back to Kate’s first appearance, in Deerfield, in a malt shop, with Ororo, who tells her about the X-Men, and we see that flashback in gauzy retro lines and colors, like something from the Saturday Evening Post.
“Is my ‘civilian’ life just going to be about becoming the baby-mutant-rescue lady?” adult Kate asks nobody in particular.
At this point, dear reader, you know the answer. So does Emma Frost, who’s been mentally messaging our Kate, and who may (or may not) have put an idea in our new teen mutants’ heads: Why not go visit your rescuer? There’s a fisheye door-lens. An unexpected visit to Kate’s apartment. And then, descending the staircase: What is this terror? What is this extraordinary excitement? “Emma?! No!” Kate says. For there she was.
Points of Pryde
- Just two of our three new mutants — the next New Mutants? — get named on page, Trista and Thao, but all three will get codenames next issue. Axo, Melee and Bronze. Which is which? Do they use Axo Body Spray?
- Carnero really, really, really gets how to draw non-spandex fabrics (in solid colors — they’re not miracle workers). And how Gen Z dresses. And how Gen Z weird kids dress, in particular: Check Trista’s outfit on the last page. We could be at a Cavetown show.
- Emma, however, wears one of the best — and one of the least revealing! — outfits she’s ever had: a pantsuit, with fluffy short sleeves and a golden belt — less fetish club than most of her famous wardrobe, more Legion of Super-Heroes. Because she expects to be around kids?
- The kids on that last page look zombie-level passive, with glowing blue eyes: Emma’s mind-controlling all three of them, possibly just to make sure Kate objects and intervenes. Uncool, Ms. Frost. Very uncool.
Buy Exceptional X-Men #2 here. (Disclaimer: As an Amazon Associate, ComicsXF may earn from qualifying purchases.)
Stephanie Burt is Professor of English at Harvard. Her podcast about superhero role playing games is Team-Up Moves, with Fiona Hopkins; her latest book of poems is We Are Mermaids. Her nose still hurts from that thing with the gate.
