Uncanny X-Men #3 Review: The New Mutants Get a Deep Dive While Wolverine Has a Striking Battle

The line between filling your reader in on key information in a comic book story and simply doing exposition drops has always been a fine one. In the past, a lot of what readers (myself included, copping to that right now) attributed to writer tics regarding characters repeating their powers during fights was due to a Marvel editorial strategy that required writers to work both characters’ names AND their powers into each issue, with the theory being that every issue could be someone’s first issue, and thus you needed to make sure they knew all the players at all time. That’s a noble goal, to be sure, but the end result was some clunky dialogue at times, and modern comic books have taken a better approach to that sort of thing. A really good example of how to do these things right occured in the latest issue of Uncanny X-Men, which gave us a rundown on the four new mutants who will be working with and taught by Rogue’s X-Men team in a compelling fashion that didn’t disrupt the overall narrative.

Uncanny X-Men #3 is from writer Gail Simone, artist David Marquez, colorist Matthew Wilson, and letterer Clayton Cowles, and it continues to work these interesting new mutants into the series, while also giving spotlights to the classic members of the team, as well, especially Nightcrawler and Wolverine.

How were the new mutants’ backgrounds worked into the issue?

One of the first things to spotlight when it comes to the four new mutants on the team (Ransom, Jitter, Calico, and Deathdream) is the importance of David Marquez and Matthew Wilson on these characters, as SO much of what makes the characters’ pop in this issue is due to Marquez and Wilson giving each character a distinctive art style for their spotlight page. It is really remarkable just HOW much character work that Marquez does in these pages. You can see it just in this preview page alone, where we see how the four of them sleep…

While that goes a LONG way towards making the four character spotlight pages in the issue work wonderfully, we can’t forget, of course, how good of a job that Gail Simone does on these pages. The conceit is that Nightcrawler has arrived to help start the training of these four new mutants, and since they are living in a house in Louisiana, and not in a high tech X-Mansion anymore, the “Danger Room” is something as simple as Nightcrawler making them get a belt from him. As the four of them “battle” Nightcrawler, we cut away to single-page spotlights for each of the four new mutants, with their backgrounds filled in (while during the fight itself, we get to see how awesome Nightcrawler is, as well).

What I loved about the background pieces is that they weren’t just, like, Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe-style recaps of their powers and backgrounds, they were told in their own voices, so there was a lot of information left out, as they are naturally wary about telling their stories, but enough included that we get to know them a lot. It’s an excellent mixture of Simone and Marquez using their respective talents to really throw us into the lives of these characters, and make them feel truly “lived in,” which is naturally something that you are going to struggle with when you introduce four new characters at once, so it was very impressive how well it worked.

How did Wolverine fare in this issue of Uncanny X-Men?

One of the downsides of certain characters becoming more popular is that they get their own solo book, and it feels like their team appearances therefore take on less of a weight in terms of the character’s development (I have a whole feature on just examples of characters being pulled out of team books because of the demands of their solo titles), so that is why Wolverine’s role in this issue stands out so much.

Rogue, who doesn’t have her own series, is allowed to be basically the focal point of this series, and Simone uses her to great effect, as Rogue is our POV character, but Wolverine gets a lot more character development in Uncanny X-Men that we have come to expect in team books featuring the iconic mutant (outside of instances where, say, Benjamin Percy was writing both his solo series AND his appearances in X-Force)…

So much of Wolverine’s scenes early in the issue read like a case of a character being set to be written out, and it’s interesting how this sort of thing would happen all the time in old comics where the character was obviously never leaving, but with someone like Wolverine, there IS always the tension about whether he MIGHT get called away, so when Wolverine “leaves” the team in this issue, you really believe it, and instead, it ties into Wolverine getting an epic spotlight battle against the new villain, Sarah Gaunt, who is introduced in this issue, the twisted mutant hunter that has driven the four new mutants to Rogue’s team (and who has a mysterious past with Charles Xavier).

Marquez and Wilson just take things to a crazy level of awesomeness in Wolverine’s battle with Gaunt (who I THINK is going by the name, Hag), as it is an absolute blur of claws. It’s really well-handled, and sets up next issue extremely well. We’re used to teams having to rally around its members when they’re in danger, but it’s rare that it is WOLVERINE who needs to be saved, and that is a great hook.

Source: Marvel