Uncanny X-Men #189

By Marissa Sammy
January 18, 2010

Uncanny X-Men #189
Writer: Chris Claremont
Pencils: John Romita, Jr.
Inks: Steve Leialoha

Two Girls Out to Have Fun!

This cover shows Amara and Rachel facing off against Selene, a fairly pointless villain. Amara looks like her head is on fire, and Rachel is dressed like a reject from Mortal Kombat. This is gonna be epic, y'all.

We open with the two girls visiting the Statue of Liberty, admiring New York in their own ways — Rachel with her skewed post-apocalyptic memories of the city, and Amara as a resident of Nova Roma, which I know nothing about except what the name just told me about the place. Oh! But there's a handy explanation: "A city founded nearly 2,000 years ago by a party of expatriate Romans, in the Andean highlands that spawn the headwaters of the Amazon." Err. I'm ... going to ignore that.

While Amara looks around, no doubt wondering if the servants could catch her some pigeons and make a delicious dish of their tongues for her to enjoy before toddling off to the vomitorium, Rachel has a much less whimsical flashback to the days when she was used as a "hound" by the government. Her telepathic powers in high demand to track down other mutants, confined in a studded bodysuit and treated like a dog to match, she located a woman and her two kids so that the government troopers could cut them down with gunfire. Only three in the myriad of mutants who met their ends due to Rachel's involvement, and it makes her start crying right there; Amara asks what's wrong, and Rachel hedges, but her friend can tell she's lying and hiding something. She's not going to push right now though, and instead points out a big cruise ship upriver, asking if that's the one Ororo's on.

We pop over to the cruise ship, where amidst the fond goodbyes the Professor takes yet another moment to shill for Logan and Kitty's miniseries. Kurt ridiculously suggests that Ororo wait for them to return before taking off, but she says no way. All of the Xs are dressed like (relatively) normal people except for Kurt, who is in full Joel Grey Cabaret top hat, tails, and cane. What the fuck.

He opens a bottle of champagne, and Xavier can't pass up the chance to echo Forge and inform Ororo that she's supposed to sip it instead of socking it back. Ororo's got the Professor's ticket, though, and distracts him with a kiss on the cheek that causes him to look all goofy and goony, eiw. She tells him that as she's bereft of her powers now and not a fit leader for a team of mutants, she needs to rebuild a life elsewhere, and that place is Africa. Everybody hugs and says goodbye, but it's like watching a main character leave in a sitcom or something — not particularly sad, because you know they'll have to come back.

From here we head to the South Street Seaport, where we rejoin fisherman Jaime Rodriguez and the Magical Necklace He Got Out of a Fish. The Necklace keeps telling Jaime that in exchange for his soul it will give him the world, and Jaime is having a hard time resisting. Understandable, as he's not a very complicated fellow, which you can tell by the fact that he has a tattoo of an anchor on his bicep. That's as hokey a tattoo for a seaman as a "tribal barbed wire" tattoo is for a frat boy.

Amara and Rachel have reached the Met, and I see Rachel was serious about her earlier comment that she wanted to go shopping, because they're both in entirely different outfits even though it's the same day. Rachel decides it'll be fun to stroll down the Roman history section, which makes Amara depressed because although the New Mutants apparently saved her from a fate worse than death (literally, that's what she says), she misses her home and her family. Amara has not yet learned that being friends with Rachel, just like being friends with Illyana, means that you always lose at the "my life sucks" sweepstakes, as Rachel thinks to herself that at least Amara has a place and family to miss.

Rachel's distracted from being smug over her greater angst by a familiar thought pattern nearby, and she takes off running, right out the door of the Met and onto the sidewalk where she can tell the person has gotten into a limo. Hot on her heels, Amara wants to know what the heck is going on, and Rachel explains that she thought she sensed Selene there. "Pluto, it cannot be!" Amara thinks, which is probably the cleaned-up version if the Roman cuss words I heard Titus Pullo using are anything to go by. Startled by Amara's unvoiced recognition, Rachel blurts out that she can see Selene's face in Amara's mind and gleans the knowledge that Selene is also from Nova Roma, which pisses Amara off — she doesn't want anybody in her head, even a friend. Rachel apologizes and then says that Selene killed her mom, rendering anything Amara's angry or hurt about moot. Welcome to Kitty Pryde's world, Amara.

The girls follow the limo for a couple blocks until it pulls up at a mansion. Then they leave Shaggy and Scoob in the van while they sneak into the servants' entrance and dress up like "common household slaves", as Amara puts it. Rachel's a little freaked out at the idea of wearing a collar again, and who can blame her. Due to the place having super-strong psychic baffles in place, Rachel doesn't even notice that the butler's approaching; he orders one of the girls to go upstairs and the other to come with him.

Meanwhile, in the mansion's secret catacombs, Selene strikes a dramatically silly pose while being introduced to Sebastian Shaw as "the new Black Queen", which Shaw hems and haws about.

Only too pleased for a chance to prove her might, Selene causes the stone floor to surge up and encase Shaw where he sits on his throne, and he just barely manages to break free. Shaw's unsettled that Selene chose one of the few methods of attack (passive, as he absorbs and feeds on kinetic energy) that could defeat him, and while he's chewing his nails over this Selene takes the opportunity to repair his throne and sit her own ass on it. Then Selene announces that her people's custom is to present a gift to a host "as a gesture of fealty and respect", then asks that Sebastian be patient for a while and she'll come back with a prezzie for him. Then she disappears, and Tessa disjointedly says, "Kind words — from someone who feels neither", which because of its awkward pacing makes it seem like she's referring to her own statement instead of Selene's, and she's saying that Selene feels neither "kind" nor "words". I am bothered by this somewhat inordinately, considering Tessa's a waste of space.

Shaw takes a page from King Uther of Albion and freaks out at Selene's apparent use of sorcery to disappear, squalling, "Where did she go, is the witch a teleporter?" Tessa explains to him very slowly that Selene hypnotized them very briefly and just ran out the door while they were dazed. This is only one of the reasons I never understood why the Hellfire Club was made out to be such a big deal; they seem entirely comprised of boastfulness and fail and people sitting around in dumb costumes with evil smiles on their faces not actually doing anything. Kind of like people who roleplay vampires.

Rachel seems to agree with me, because she finally escapes her chore of serving tea to a roomful of club members and has a little laugh in the hallway at the utter ridonkulousness of them all, from costumes to their innermost thoughts. She's snapped out of it by Selene showing up, though, and bangs her tray into the woman's face before whammying her with telekinesis. Unfortunately, it turns out that Selene had transformed Amara to look like her, and that's who Rachel KO'd; Selene then siphons out enough of their souls to be able to control them, and takes the girls back to present to Shaw. Tessa can't believe her eyes when she sees Rachel — the splitting image of her mom — and mentally urges Shaw to take the girls as gifts and use the Phoenix power to destroy Selene.

From there we jump to some exposition about what's going on with Rachel when she wakes, and I'm pretty horrified to find that Claremont describes the straight line tattoos on Rachel's face in her "hound" persona as her "Maori mask". Uh, no. I can't even say more than world of no. Anyway, Rachel manages to come to herself within her head, but is doubtful that she can manage to take control of her body back. Instead, she decides to inhabit Amara's body, hoping that Selene won't be psi-monitoring her the way she is Rachel.

She jumps into Amara's mind to find her friend lounging around under a statue of Selene in a recreated New Roma, but Amara doesn't recognize Rachel and starts fighting her and causing earthquakes, transforming to magma in Rachel's grip. Amara gets righteously pissed and starts screaming in anger, but Rachel's plan worked — she's come back to her senses and melts the fuck out of the Selene statue, breaking the sorceress' control over the both of them.

We zap back to the action outside their heads to find that Amara's on the verge of shitcanning the whole building and everybody in it, and Sebastian Shaw telling Selene that the girls are her gift so she has to deal with them, hee! But despite Shaw piddling himself, the girls are not in that great a situation; if Amara keeps up her quakes, innocent people might die, and if she backs off then Selene might capture her mind again. So Rachel bawls for Xavier to come "a'runnin'", because everybody is still pretending like Xavier was never confined to a wheelchair.

Xavier sends Nightcrawler on ahead to help, and then the rest of them arrive in a truly awesome campy chorus line of jazz hands. God, I feel like this story has been going on forever.

Xavier prevents Amara from killing Selene, Shaw just wants them to leave his sooper seekrit special club, and Rachel and Amara aren't thrilled at the idea of strolling around outside in their dumbass French maid costumes. "Y'all're in New York, hon," Rogue quips, "who'd notice?" Hee! I love you, Roguie. Rachel performs one of her momma's party tricks and telekinetically gives them new outfits, and they all laugh and go home or some shit.

But lest you think the fun has ended! Jaime Rodriguez hangs around in the subway with his magic necklace, planning to destroy it by removing the gems, hamming them into powder, and melting the metal in a friend's furnace. Here's a hint, buddy: throw it on the subway track that's right next to you. Anyhow, his handy-dandy "Watchman" shows him news about Dazzler's new movie, the details of which I will spare you, and due to this Jaime doesn't notice that some street punk comes up behind him and stabs him. Punk loser grabs the necklace, which immediately immolates him, and the necklace squeals, "Free! At last, Kulan Gath is free!"

Please contain your excitement until next month.

Next: An Age Undream'd Of! Perhaps it's wherever that second "e" got off to.

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Pointless Logan Pandering: Dude's off somewhere in his own book and people are still yammering about him.

Best Line: Amara: "No one should look twice at a pair of common household slaves."

Crossover That Would Amuse Me Most: Amara being from a version of Rome that was more like the HBO series. Instead of sedately exclaiming, "Pluto, it cannot be!" she could storm around smashing shit up and screaming, "I AM A DAUGHTER OF HADES! I fuck Selene in her ass!" Come on, you know that would be awesome.