The Wolverine/Ransom two-fisted team-up takes a weird turn, as our badass heroes chase a villain to, of all places, a comic book convention in Argentina. How do they find and eliminate their target in a sea of masked cosplayers? And what if some of the cosplayers are the actual villains they are portraying? Uncanny X-Men #21 is written by Gail Simone, drawn by Luciano Vecchio, colored by Matt Wilson and lettered by Clayton Cowles.
Adam Reck: Ah, we’re back to every other week, I see. I’m kind of amazed Vecchio is keeping up with this publishing schedule. You can see a few shortcuts here and there, but on the whole the book looks great. How are you, Austin?
Austin Gorton: Back to every other week, then hiatus for three months for “Age of Revelation,” then [shrug emoji]. Publishing in the year of our lord 2025 is weird, y’all. Anyways, I’m fine, Adam, thanks for asking. How are you? Certainly doing better than Ransom, at least.
Adam: I’m doing OK! Last month we were pretty down with Logan and Ransom vs. what we were hoping was a Juggernaut cult. This month turns that pitch on its head a bit and gives us more of Ransom’s backstory. Let’s get into it.
All the Best Cowboys Have Daddy Issues
Adam: So Ransom’s dad isn’t just a jerk, he’s outright abusive. Kid Ransom isn’t allowed to have friends, has to rely almost exclusively on a chauffeur for a father figure, and we see again in flashback that he refused to pay up when Ransom was kidnapped. This guy suuuuucks.
Austin: He really does, and as in the previous issue, Ransom’s backstory is devastating, with the added wrinkle thrown in here that things sucked for him even before he got kidnapped and abandoned. Plus, it’s made clear that the half-brother who kicked off this story is the “good” son in their dad’s eyes. It’s a wonder this kid is even halfway well-adjusted.
Adam: On the other hand, by making Ransom’s dad such an asshat, it does make it all the more satisfying when Wolverine shuts the old man’s mouth and steals his car.
Austin: Is Wolverine really the kind of character who would say, “What is your major malfunction?”
Adam: Wolverine’s voice in this issue is all over the place.
Austin: Anyway, yes, the schadenfreude here involving Ransom’s dad is palpable and delightful. At the same time, I appreciate that, by the end of the story, he’s still just as much of a jerk, and it’s not like he and Ransom come to any kind of understanding or detente. Instead, it’s all used as a vehicle to affirm Ransom’s relationship with Wolverine and the X-Men in general.
Adam: Can we clarify something I’m confused about? Ransom says later in the issue that he was born without a heart. I had assumed that was part of his mutant powers manifesting. Did I miss something?
Austin: No, we can’t, because I am also confused by this. I’m even more confused, in fact; did we know previously that Ransom … doesn’t have a heart? Am I forgetting that bit of his powers/backstory? Is this like a “Xorn with a star for a head” situation? Is he being metaphorical (both in terms of not having a heart and being born without one)?
Adam: It’s definitely been mentioned before, but not as a birth thing, which raises lots of existential questions for this kid. But we’ll table that for now because …
Dress-Up Deja Vu
Adam: Wolverine and Ransom end up at a comic book convention three hours away from the bar. I’d say this is cute, but didn’t we also just do this in issue #18 with the X-Men County Fair?
Austin: We really did, right down to the inexplicable in-universe knowledge of X-Men history and lore that should really only be available to people reading their adventures and not living in the world where the adventures occur.
Adam: The bit where Wolverine is a stammering mess when a color-swapped Jean Grey cosplayer asks to take a picture together would be cute if he didn’t say, “You’re kinda dressed up as … someone I USED [emphasis mine] to have feelings for.” This smacks of Tom Brevoort throuple denialism, and I hate it. Logan didn’t used to have feelings for Jean. He has feelings for Jean. She’s just in space for some dumb reason. If she were around they could have hot tub sex. Also, since when is Logan flustered by ladies?
Austin: It’s weird because the past tense suggests aggravating throuple erasure, but at the same time, Wolverine acts like he’s still very much in love with Jean and appreciative of this reminder of that.
Adam: The setting does give Vecchio an excuse to draw a variety of costumed ladies who it’s revealed are also powered up by what appears to be an extra villain from Scooby-Doo. This isn’t so much a Cyttorak cult as it is a letdown, huh?
Austin: It really is. First of all, the Scooby-Doo villain is named Proctor, and there’s only one Proctor I recognize, and that’s an alternate reality Black Knight driven mad by his obsession with his reality’s Sersi. Secondly, we get zero sense of who this person is, what their motivations are, why they’ve assembled this cult in the first place, etc. This story was pitched as “Wolverine and Ransom fight incels,” and there’s some of that in the dialogue, but honestly, if you didn’t have that piece of extratextual knowledge reading this issue, would it be clear enough that this is a group of angry guys banded together because they’re not getting enough of the sex they think they deserve? I don’t think so.
Adam: Really is interesting how much needs to be gleaned from interviews, solicits and recently-put-on-hiatus newsletters instead of the actual text.
Austin: Like so many other books/plotlines across the X-books at the moment, this feels like a case of the story getting cut short due to the looming “Age of Revelation,” though it feels more egregious here given that, outside Jed MacKay, Gail Simone seems like the writer who would be the most in the loop as far as how much time she had to prep for that event and wrap stuff up.
He Ain’t Heavy
Adam: It’s big of Ransom to accept his half-brother after it turns out he was also abusive when Ransom was a child. You could blame this on the father, but it doesn’t really make it any better.
Austin: It doesn’t, and I do like how this complicates the entire situation. Rescuing the brother you loved and who treated you well is easy. Rescuing the asshole who tormented you but still deserves not to be indoctrinated into an evil cult is much harder, and makes Ransom a better, more complex character as a result. The moment when the brother asks if Ransom can forgive him, and Ransom says he’ll at least try, is much more believable than the usual, “well, you were a jerk but now you experienced this trauma so all is forgiven!” routine.
That said, Benicio’s face turn comes awfully fast. It literally takes him four panels to decide he wants out and to shift to trying to stop the cult’s attack, after all his page time in the previous issue was about him getting in. Again, it feels very rushed, like maybe this story needed one more chapter to give everything a little elbow room.
Adam: And clearly by the end of this issue, we’ve solidified the father-son dynamic of Logan and Ransom that I’m sure will last for decades just like Wolverine and Jubilee. Though I gotta say, I really did not like when Wolverine threatened to spank Ransom. That’s just bad parenting, Logan. Don’t you know what this guy’s already been through?
Austin: The bit with Ransom being embraced by the con-goers as a local hero is a nice touch, one that fits the story while also speaking to the broader theme of micro-level/community acceptance of mutants that Simone has been developing in the book. It’s perhaps not as strong or declarative a statement or resolution of themes as some of the other books are doing as they draw to a close, but then again, this is the rare book for which it’s pretty much a certainty it will return more or less as is after “Age of Revelation.”
X-traneous Thoughts
- Characters cosplayed in this issue include Jay and Silent Bob (unless that’s actually them), Doctor Doom, Black Widow, Loki, Black Cat, Luna Snow, Squirrel Girl, Spider-Man, Wiccan, Spider-Woman, multiple Deadpools, four(!) Savage Land Rogues, Daredevil, Angela, a Magneto toddler, Black Bolt, Cyclops, Dazzler, Doctor Strange, Ironheart, Hercules and at least one we couldn’t ID (X-Statix’s Gone Girl?). Bless Vecchio for being able to fit all them in!
- We didn’t talk about the Outliers interstitial at school, but it’s an adorable scene that also speaks to Simone’s relative certainty that she’ll be able to pick up threads more or less where she leaves them after “Age of Revelation.”
- Also, for those people complaining that this book is more “The Outliers Guest-Starring the X-Men,” this issue, in which only one of the X-Men appears alongside all of the Outliers, will do little to mollify them.
- It’s weird that someone on the letters page said they’d “even kill” to get a Temper and Ransom romance miniseries, right? Don’t do that, reader!
- Definitely seems like a once-innocuous statement of desire that has taken on some unfortunate connotations in our current environment.
Buy Uncanny X-Men #21 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.
