Friday 8 February 2013

Uncanny X-Men #229: Girt by Sea

Well, we've seen the damage Claremont has done to London; now it's time for him to cast his eye toward Australia, where the prospects for cheerful insensitivity, along with the weather, are that much brighter.

A group of villains known as the Reavers have set themselves up as international bank thieves, forcing Gateway, an Aboriginal Australian mutant, to make portals for them. They rob the Hoan bank in Singapore, and bring back Ms. Hoan (they call her "Tiger"), to act as their accountant. The X-Men, who have recovered from their recent death quickly put a stop to this. But they are left with the problem of what to do with the Reavers. The X-Men would quite like to keep a secret of their resurrection. In the olden days, Xavier would just mindwipe the lot of them and that would be it. Happily, Roma (the cause of their resurrection) is at hand with the Siege Perilous, which sorts things out.

We're told that these revived X-Men cannot be seen by technology, which might explain them not calling Moira to let them know they're OK? Presumably they are also immune to Sentinels. This is going to be a very strange and shadowy existence for them.

Gateway's treatment is no surprise to those of us who've read Claremont's Native American characters, but he's only a very slight presence in the story so far so there is room for him to grow. What I wasn't expecting was for Wolverine to call him an "abo". And this is not even in a context where Kitty Pryde used that word she likes, just as a straightforward derogatory term. Wolverine knows better than that, surely.

1 comment:

  1. which might explain them not calling Moira to let them know they're OK?

    That, I think, ties into the whole "make the world believe we're dead" thing. The idea being that as long as everyone, including their allies, thinks they're dead, then their allies can't accidentally slip up and become targets again (basically what Storm suggested they do in #219, only with the Adversary/Roma doing the death faking for them).

    Of course, the whole idea falls apart as soon as they face off against villains who know them and who also escape and can't get sent through the Siege Perilous, but Claremont does love his "the world thinks the X-Men are dead" plots...

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