A forgotten vow from one of the team comes back to haunt them all as ghastly guest stars from Marvel’s past threaten to take one of our most beloved mutants into their number forever. Can the Louisiana X-Men stop their friend from being taken to where monsters dwell? Uncanny X-Men #23 is written by Gail Simone, drawn by David Marquez, colored by Matt Wilson and lettered by Clayton Cowles.
Adam Reck: Yawn — January is so loooong, Austin. Oh wait, it’s February and that dang Ground Bear saw his shadow, which means six more weeks of awful winter weather. I’m just so tiiiiiired. Guess it’s time to curl up with a good book, or the new issue of Uncanny.
Austin Gorton: The difference in time passage between January and February is so wild. January lasts like 150 days, yet February just started and by next week, we’ll be days away from the middle of it. What I’m saying is, we’d all be a lot better off if every month was only 28 days long like February.
Adam: I mean, let’s not wish away days of our lives now! But I hear your calendar recommendation and will forward it to the people who make calendars. Anyways, hope you like Westerns, ’cuz it’s time for everybody’s favorite Marvel cowboy.
Bedtime Story
Adam: Rawhide Cowboy? I don’t get Rawhide Cowboy. He seems to pop up frequently enough that Marvel writers clearly care about the dude, and here he is ready to be hung by some bandits in the pages of an old comic book read by Marcus St. Juniors as a bedtime story for Chelsea. You like Westerns, Austin? They’re only occasionally my thing.
Austin: It’s Rawhide Kid, Adam. Rawhide Kid. He dates to Marvel’s Western-heavy Atlas days prior to the launch of Fantastic Four #1, but as you say, writers like to dust him and some of his Western contemporaries off every now and then (remember when Two-Gun Kid was an Avenger for a while, and then hung out in Dan Slott’s She-Hulk?). Rawhide Kid is maybe best remembered these days for an early 2000s MAX miniseries that was very campy and presented the character as gay. I have no idea how well it’s aged (though I suspect “not well”).
All of which is to say, yeah, I kinda dig Westerns, in comics or otherwise (I’ve had in my back pocket for years the rough outline to a Western novel that starts with the Sioux uprising in Minnesota and explores the treatment of Indigenous people in contrast with the iconography of the “classic” Western). One of the nifty things about the way this one is presented is how Simone and Marquez channel the format of a 1950s comic — it’s apparent immediately, just from the use of caption boxes as well as the tone and volume of text, that we’re not reading a “modern” comic, even as we’re wondering what Rawhide Kid is doing in this X-Men comic.
Adam: I enjoyed Matt Wilson’s retro coloring and page tone. I was even curious if Marquez was doing the art or if there was a second artist this month. And you’re not the only one who’s into Westerns. As the Outliers encroach from the hallway, Marcus begins to embellish, incorporating them into the story. As someone who loved reading to my kid when she was younger, and occasionally taking liberties, I think this is a clever storytelling trick to have our young mutants interact with a past property without time travel. I also like the idea that Marcus has read the hell out of this comic book so much that pieces are missing. This thing isn’t getting CGC graded any time soon.
Austin: And read the hell out of it so much that he doesn’t really need it, physically, to tell the story, and is easily able to integrate avatars of the Outliers into it. We’ve talked before about the structural tension in this series between the Outliers and the X-Men, in terms of it being technically an X-Men book but more often than not feeling like those characters are playing second fiddle to the Outliers. This felt like a clever way to lean into that tension, a rare case in which the X-Men are explicitly established as being the stars of the A-plot while the Outliers get the B-plot entirely (seemingly) to themselves. I’m curious to see if that continues throughout the rest of the story outside this issue, and how that impacts that tension.
Cat’s Back on the Menu
Adam: Speaking of the adult Nawlins X-Men, they stage an intervention for Gambit and his addiction to the Left Eye of Agamotto. Remy is starting to turn into the cannibal Sadurang warned he would become. Not only did he bite Rogue in his sleep, but he’s hiding a snack in his trenchcoat — a cat! You know Gambit is messed up when he’s thinking of chowing down on his favorite pets. Luckily, the cat escapes. Unluckily for the X-Men, Gambit is good at kicking ass.
Austin: I still can’t decide if this intervention felt too abrupt or was just a good in media res opening. We knew this was coming — both in terms of the Chekhov’s gun established by the deal with Sadurang in the first place and in terms of, you know, the next-issue blurb — and I don’t think we really needed to see, say, Gambit biting Rogue in the neck while she slept vs. her just revealing that. At the same time, there was a feeling of “Oh, well, I guess we’re just diving right into this now” as the X-Men assembled and made their move on Gambit.
Adam: Unlike a lot of pacing issues I often have with this book, and Simone’s habit of adding and then seemingly forgetting random plot points (yes, yes, Claremont did it, too), I had zero problems with this. Gambit is acting shifty, and we get right into why. As you said, there’s enough seeded here from past issues to make the reveal feel relatively natural, despite it not being mentioned in a spell.
It Was a Graveyard Smash
Adam: All this fighting and emoting is interrupted by the antagonists who give this arc its name, “Where Monsters Dwell.” It turns out Elsa Bloodstone is here with a team of Marvel monsters! Who do we have here, Austin? Is that the Silver Age Frankenstein robot?
Austin: I believe that’s the Bronze Age Frankenstein, star of the Monster of Frankenstein series (the furry vest is the giveaway). We’ve also got a werewolf (possibly Jack Russell, Werewolf by Night), Manphibian, a mummy (presumably N’Kantu, the Living Mummy) and Marvel’s science vampire, Morbius. Simone has said this story is her homage to the ’70s era Legion of Monsters, and this lineup seems directly lifted from those stories (plus the more modern Elsa Bloodstone), give or take a Man-Thing or Ghost Rider.
Adam: Any idea why Elsa & co. feel the need to fight the X-Men as if the X-Men are in charge of New Orleans and beating them would give them control of said city? Seems like they’re talking to the wrong people.
Austin: There’s a lot here that is unclear. Elsa Bloodstone is typically a monster hunter, and she definitely seems off in general. Characters like Frankstein’s Monster, Morbius and Werewolf by Night aren’t typically the world- (or even city-) conquering type. And yeah, it’s not like the X-Men are the Lords of New Orleans or anything. It definitely seems like Simone is A, using the notion of the X-Men as the “official” heroes of New Orleans (that’s what the mini mall comment is referencing) as a springboard for this conflict and B, leaving things deliberately vague for future chapters of the story.
Adam: There could be a tenuous connection between these monsters wanting to take over New Orleans and Kelly Thompson’s “Monster Island” volume of Deadpool, but I don’t recall this being the cast.
Austin: In the meantime, I’ll just say: As much as I like Westerns, I *love* this classic movie monster stuff. The Universal horror films, Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, the Crestwood books, “Monster Mash”; wedged between Greek and Norse mythology and comic books, that stuff was another gateway into the world of shared narrative universes when I was a kid. So I am here, in principle at least, for Gail riffing on that stuff with Marvel’s in-house riffs on those characters. How well that all shakes out for Gambit (and Jubilee, apparently) in terms of the Sadurang stuff, well, we’ll see.
Speaking of Jubes, Adam, as the internet’s unofficial No. 1 Jubilee fan, how do you feel about her getting a little bit of the spotlight here, but via the lens of her time as a vampire?
Adam: Despite one line of dialogue that seemed out of character (“You’re walking into a swamp you can’t wash off?” Come on.), Jubilee is the perfect character to identify what Gambit is going through and speak to it. That works great. I do think threatening us with more vampire Jubilee via Morbius is pretty vacuous, though. I don’t think we’re getting vampire Jubilee back, especially since I don’t think that’s how Morbius’ vampire powers work in the first place.
But I’m with you, Austin. I love monsters, I love horror movies, so this feels fun but also consequential given the Gambit stuff.
X-traneous Thoughts
- Nickname watch: It’s spread across two pages, but Rogue calls Gambit “Remy,” “Dark Eyes” and “Baby” in three consecutive speech bubbles.
- Rogue’s narration says she was just coming into her own as an X-man when Gambit first showed up, which isn’t directly contradicted by anything in the existing text (and is probably as apt as anything given the sliding timescale), but seems like a bit of a stretch, given that she’d been on the team for over 100 issues before sharing a page with Gambit and was consistently presented as one of the more “senior” members of the team for at least a third or so of those issues.
- Specifically, Gambit appears ready to munch on Oliver. Lucifer is an orange tabby and Figaro is white, whereas Oliver is the gray one. Curious what his selection criteria was.
- Really hoping Gambit hasn’t tried eating any other local wildlife before he decided on a cat snack.
- I can’t decide if Elsa’s white, pupil-less eyes are meant to be an indication she’s possessed/not herself, or if that’s just how Marquez and Wilson draw everyone’s eyes (given Wolverine’s and Nightcrawler’s eyes are the same in that sequence).
- Hey, no Mutina!
- There’s a profile of Tom Brevoort on the X-Mentions page that worried us a bit. Hope he’s OK.
Buy Uncanny X-Men #23 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.
