Emma Frost, trying to save her newest pupils, gets stuck in Mister Sinister’s mind. Who will come out on top? Why is everyone dressed like Dracula? Can even this serious series make Sinister something other than slightly silly? Find out in Exceptional X-Men #10, written by Eve Ewing, drawn by Carmen Carnero and Federica Mancin, colored by Nolan Woodard and lettered by Travis Lanham.
This book looked like the winner among the From the Ashes crowd when it launched 10 issues ago, and guess what? It still is, for plenty of reasons. Here’s one: Carmen Carnero, here assisted by Federica Mancin, knows how to draw women’s bodies, and other AFAB (assigned female at birth) bodies, without making them all look alike, and how to distinguish faces, too. After so many otherwise competent or even beautiful X-books of decades past where all the women had one height and build, I’m not yet tired of seeing who’s here.
It’s a talent thrown into sharper focus now that the teen mutants show up in red-and-black hero costumes, rather than letting their fashion senses distinguish them. Carnero’s, Mancin’s and Woodard’s sense of fashion, how to draw and ink and color fabrics and drapery and trim, comes across again here anyway, since half the issue takes place in the creepy Edwardian dress-up garden of Mister Sinister’s mind. Check out Axo’s overwrought outfit, or the impish mini- Sinister’s Young Sir suit.
Here’s another reason that Exceptional’s still, well, exceptional: Eve Ewing’s spotlight shifts, not jerkily but smoothly, among the handful of main characters. When it began it was Kitty’s book for sure: the story of how she can’t help teaching, safeguarding, training young mutants, even in her periodic retreats to her happy place, Chicago. And it worked as a belated sequel to the last Kitty solo book, also set in Chicago with educational overtones after a team implosion: the still controversial Mekanix, though now it’s 2025 and Kitty, on panel, can kiss a girl. Kitty knows what she wants at this point: Teen mutants come first, her dating life second, her attempt to be “normal” not at all. She’s made up her mind (and she’s picked a new costume to boot).
And that’s why we get another issue from Emma Frost’s point of view: It’s Emma’s turn to reflect on herself as a teacher, on what she’s done, on how she’s changed. If she’s got self-doubts, she’s not going to share them with students. But — thanks to the miracle of text boxes containing internal monologue — she’ll share them with us.
Last month, Emma liberated the teenage empath Axo from Sinister’s grip but got trapped in Sinister’s mind. That’s where we start: It looks like a gross chartreuse swamp, with grainy mosses, vines and mists to match the ick inside Sinister’s memories. But it sounds like Emma’s confidence as she reflects on her various selves. She’s got, as she says, one hell of a reputation. But with her new Chicagoland pupils — the three kids she shares with Kitty — she can start fresh: She can be not just fabulous but honestly the dedicated teacher that Kitty’s own teenage example inspired. Meeting Kitty — trying to mind-control, if not seduce, Kitty way back in New Mutants (1984) #14-15 — showed Emma “fortitude. Integrity. Chutzpah.” It’s that moment — not her early 1990s coma, not her experience co-leading Generation X — that started her on the road to actual heroism, without derailing her high-femme wardrobe or boundless self-regard. Kitty has mattered to Emma for just that long.
Not much time to reflect on it, though: Emma’s trapped in fantasized Dracula-meets-Elvira getup within Sinister’s rotten-cake, Alice-in-Havisham mind-space, where she’s supposed to attend a mini-Sinister’s birthday party. Ew! Also yay: It’s the kind of dialogue, and the kind of setting, that fits this essentially childish villain’s constantly scheming, distractable, monologue-driven inner life. No longer disguised as the techbro Sheldon Xenos (i.e. S.X.), Nathaniel Essex/Sinister can behave like a pre-teen’s idea of a storybook baddie, arrested at age 11, as the original Claremontian conception intended Essex to be. He looks like he’s 11, and like he’s come from aristocratic 19th century England, as he has, and he proposes to his new “friend” Emma that they throw stones at a workhouse and kill bugs with ether. You know, for kids.
Essex’s psychic powers match Emma’s: There’s no way she could get out herself. Just as the first Exceptional arc made an argument about Kitty — she can’t stop being a teacher; she ought to embrace it — this arc ends up with an argument about Emma, and about teaching. You can’t help the kids if you can’t accept help yourself: Good teachers can’t do it all on their own. So here, as — in Essex’s ruined lair — Axo, Melee and Bronze decide they have to defy the adults, be real X-Men and rescue the White Queen. Which means that Axo (cue technobabble about a telepathy machine) will have to climb inside Sinister’s swamp-vision, don formalwear and use his empathic powers to break down Essex’s psychic defenses and let Emma out.
Which happens, but I’m not going to tell you how. It’s touching, and it’s funny — the best Sinister stories are always funny — and it’s a lovely primer regarding the difference between understanding someone’s feelings and simply reading their mind. It’s also another Claremontian callback, since it involves (fine, I’ll tell you a little bit) some age regression. And a lovie (don’t call them stuffed animals; that’s like calling people meat bags). It’s perfect.
Also perfect: Emma’s reaction when she sees that her student has taken it upon himself to rescue her. “Sweetheart, when someone makes a noble sacrifice for you, stealing their moment is unbecoming. It’s like wearing white at a wedding. Which, obviously, I would do and have done, but that’s beside the point.” (She didn’t wear white at her own wedding, but she’s certainly worn it at others.)
Oh, there’s also a physical fight in the lair. Two fights, really. One against a team of cloned super-dogs in which Kitty, Bobby, Bronze and Melee get to punch things; another against the reawakened Sinister, in which Kitty, Bobby, Bronze and Melee get to punch him. Chaos! Revelry! OK, maybe not revelry. But a fun dust-up. And it ends fast.
This series, this issue, once again follows the 1980s rule that modern comics sometimes ignore: Every Marvel comic could be someone’s first. It’s not an ideal jumping-on point, but it’s also a story you could follow after a couple of minutes googling Emma and rejecting AI’s wrong answers: All you need to know is that Essex sucks, Emma’s a teacher, these teens are her students, and Kitty’s her former rival and student and kidnapping victim and now runs the de facto school.
Carnero and company know how to show bodies in motion, momentum and impact. You don’t get (well, you shouldn’t get) a job in Big Two comics without knowing that. But, once again, look at how this book presents faces. Melee looks delighted, because they enjoy punching things and defending their friend. Bronze looks scared, and courage means doing the thing even when you feel scared. And Kitty? She looks like she’d rather be anywhere else. But she knows she has to be here.
Points of Pryde
- Next issue brings an encounter with Ironheart. Good news from a Watsonian perspective because Ewing made her Marvel name by writing Black Chicago and Ironheart. Even better news from a Doylist perspective, because it means we’re going to get at least three arcs with Ewing writing this series. I hope we get 700.
- In-universe it’s only been maybe an hour since Kitty, back in Exceptional #8, blew off her non-mutant girlfriend Nina to rescue Axo. How does Nina feel? Can this situationship be saved?
- Emma tells us that Kitty’s teenage integrity changed Emma’s sense of how she could live. Will she ever tell Kitty? Don’t bet on it. Unless she already told Kitty back on Krakoa, when they used to ride horses together.
- Is that really Lockheed? Or is it a Lockheed clone? I’m betting on the former, but I wouldn’t be shocked if somebody made it the latter.
Buy Exceptional X-Men #10 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.
