Uncanny X-Men #347

Uncanny X-Men #347

Writing: Scott Lobdell

Art: Joe Madureira

What Went Down:  On a weird alien planet, Gambit gets a rude surprise by being whacked in the face with a giant lizard tail.  He is being attacked by Grovel—a giant shape-shifting lizard thing, and his partner Spat—a woman who is cursed to age in reverse after taking a mystic blast for Gambit.  Both of them are bounty hunters, and both have been assigned to bring Gambit in for his mysterious crimes that are yet to be revealed.  Gambit then helpfully recaps the previous events in this story because it’s been two friggin’ months since it progressed at all. 

In a weird sequence that looks like they’re coming through a portal, Beast and Trish Tilby crash land on the planet in a broken section of the ship.  They wonder where the X-Men are, but are interrupted by Beast feeling sick and slumping over.

In the sewers of Manhattan, Marrow is trying not to cry while she sits with the injured Calisto, who is bandaged with leaves for some odd reason.  Calisto tells Sarah that she needs more in her life than rage, and asks her to remember when she was younger and had hope; she recalls seeing Angel stuck to a wall during the Morlock Massacre.  Calisto asks Marrow to help the X-Men because they will be needed to save all mutants.  Marrow agrees, but she can’t promise she won’t kill anyone.

Back on the alien planet, Joseph and Rogue wake up next to each other.  Rogue tries to fly up in the air, but hits something solid and assumes it is a forcefield.  Joseph uses his powers and reveals that the alien world is an illusion and that they are really inside a cave.  Joseph discovers the cause of these illusions—a mutant named Landscape with the power to make people see landscapes…no really.

Gambit laughs at his captors and asks if the world was Landscape’s work.  Gambit tries to charm Spat, but she has been previously hurt by him, and brings up that Gambit’s mistakes have cost others their lives.

In South Carolina, at the town where Rogue met Joseph, the mutant named Maggott is continuing his search for Joseph.  Some rednecks confront him because they don’t appreciate strangers asking about mutants.  Maggott’s pet slugs eat one of the bully’s trucks, and this scares them all away.

At the cave, Rogue is carrying Landscape, and he won’t stop whining.  They run into Gambit and his captors.  Just as Gambit frees himself, the heroes are confronted by Nanny—the former robot servant of Magneto, and an army of cybernetically augmented animals—including bats, gorillas, and what looks like maybe an octopus?

How It Was:  Well after two months away, we return to the X-Men lost in space.  This story is obviously setting up the X-Men learning about Gambit’s mystery relationship with Mr. Sinister which has been hinted at for about two or three years now.  That’s a perfectly acceptable direction to go.  Unfortunately we can’t get to that right away.  Instead we have to deal with a bunch of boring, and frankly out of place, characters from Gambit’s history, as well as the “exciting” return of Nanny.  Plus the X-Men are separated, so we know it’s going to be a couple of issues before they can reunite and further the plot some more. 

I can’t say enough how uninterested I am in Spat, Grovel, and Landscape.  It seems like a major misstep to take a story that is supposed to emphasize Gambit’s tragic and very serious past, and create these absurd, cartoony characters to put in this story leading up to it.  I have no idea what a little girl with a spear and a weird lizard thing are doing in this story.  And while we’re on it, Grovel looks nothing like the reflection of the zebra thing that Madureira drew in the water last issue.  It’s obvious that this story has been thrown together rather quickly.

That’s about it.  There’s no real characterization other than for Gambit, which is kind of interesting.  I like how he goes back and forth between crippling guilt and wanting to forgive himself, between putting his past behind him and facing consequences for his actions.  It’s a really good arc for a tortured character like Gambit, but of course this is also less effective since most of this soul searching is taking place with Spat and Grovel in the background.  Maggott’s also still wandering around, which would be interesting if it went anywhere, but it doesn’t; Maggott doesn’t really get interesting until Joe Kelly starts to write him, so right now he’s still just a generic mystery figure.  Outside of that, nothing’s really going on, and the two-issue wait definitely hasn’t helped the pace.  Even the illusion of the world they’re on, which the narration describes as very alien, looks like a normal jungle that might be the setting for any super hero story.  I am quite ready for these X-Men to get out of those costumes and back to some actual X-Men stories.

D+