X-Men Unlimited
#11
Writing: Scott
Lobdell and Terry Kavagh
Art: Steve Epting
and Mark Millar??
What Went Down: Melody Watkins (Rogue’s landlady from X-Men #52) is at the local Humanity’s
Last Stand headquarters to report Rogue as a potential threat to her son. Unbeknownst to her, Rogue is enjoying her
life as a Hollywood Café waitress, free of the frustrations of superheroing. On her drive home from work, she notices a
construction crew that has been working for four nights and hasn’t gotten a lot
of work done.
Once home, Melody confronts Rogue to confess that she
turned Rogue into Humanity’s Last Stand, saying she was worried about her son
and the Legacy Virus. This leads to an
attack by soldiers in power armor who try to capture Rogue. Rogue beats them all, but she stops when she
sees Bastion holding Melody’s son Stevie as a hostage. Rogue takes a laser blast to save Melody.
At Humanity’s Last Stand’s compound, a shadowy figure
named Mr. Trask tells Bastion that Rogue can’t stay. Bastion explains his plot to Rogue: he is
going to burn down the compound, murder her and all the occupants, then blame
the deaths of all the humans on Rogue.
This will then stir up anti-mutant hysteria.
Before the soldiers can carry out Bastion’s plan, one of
them starts using super powers to defeat the others and free Rogue. Bastion runs off while Joseph introduces
himself to Rogue. He explains that after
the page in X-Men #53, he joined
Humanity’s Last Stand to go undercover and hopefully run into the X-Men. Rogue, thinking this is regular Magneto,
attacks Joseph. Joseph manages to
convince Rogue of his sincerity, and the two team up to save all the compound
dwellers from being murdered by soldiers.
Rogue and Joseph defeat the soldiers, but the civilians train weapons on
them, telling them to leave. Joseph
demonstrates that he could kill the people if he wanted to before lecturing
them on prejudice and flying off.
After flying for a while, Joseph asks Rogue about his
past as Magneto. Rogue tells him she’d
rather wait until they’re around the other X-Men, and Joseph explains how
Sister Maria told him about the X-Men.
Their conversation is interrupted by an attack helicopter with Trask on
board. Joseph uses his powers to catch
two missiles, but instead of killing the humans, he just detonates the missiles
and uses the explosion to cover their retreat.
Rogue and Joseph return to her apartment to get her car. Melody apologizes, and Rogue and Stevie say
goodbye.
How It Was: Some stories like to surprise you with plot
turns and revelations that make a reader stand up and take notice. While there is one pretty big surprise in the
plot, this story still reads like a predictable, by the numbers story; you
pretty much know how it’s going to end five pages in. And that’s not necessarily a bad thing—having
one of the X-Men become fed up with the lifestyle after the previous months of
hardship is a legitimately interesting direction to go. Like most of these Unlimited stories, it’s just unfortunate that Rogue’s taste of
everyday living is all but forgotten as soon as she returns to the
X-books. Lobdell sets up and explores a
simple, if tragic, idea that the X-Man who can’t touch would crave a normal
life more than others by way of the fact that she can never really have
one.
What really works in this story is that Rogue actually
succeeds at her normal life, and it’s prejudice and persecution, i.e. other
people’s issues with her, that destroy what she’s built. Lobdell wisely avoids bringing up Gambit too
much, choosing instead to deal with Rogue’s personality—she is outgoing and
desires to be around people, but she can never get too close. He also tries to make Rogue’s landlady Melody
come off as sympathetic, constantly bringing up her concerns for her son, but
really she just comes off as stupid and unlikable; she’s going to report her
friend to this group, and they’re going to “take care of her” somehow—frankly
I’m glad when her house gets destroyed.
While Humanity’s Last Stand is the same generic bigoted
human group the X-Men always come across (this one situated as a survivalist
militia), I must admit that I do love the designs for their power armor. And the fight with Rogue is well done. The one twist of the story (ruined by the
cover) is that Joseph has actually joined the racist organization that persecutes
mutants. His idea to infiltrate the
group to learn about the X-Men seems farfetched, but if you can ignore the huge
coincidence, it’s an efficient enough means of getting them to meet.
What really feels odd is that once Rogue and Joseph fight
each other, stop the soldiers from killing everyone, and have the civilians
turn on them; it feels like the story is over.
Unfortunately, due to the format of the book, the story has to keep
going, so we see Rogue refuse to tell Joseph anything and an anticlimactic show
down between the Master of Magnetism and a metal helicopter. The end does have a nice moment with Melody’s
son and Rogue, but it feels like it would’ve meant more right after they were
turned away by the humans they helped saved.
This issue works for Rogue fans, and it goes through all the beats
Joseph needed to after his previous appearance to line him up to join the
X-Men.
X-Fans Only
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