X-amining X-Men Unlimited #15

"Second Contact"

 June 1997

In a Nutshell

Maverick takes young mutant Chris Bradley under his wing. 

Writer: Howard Mackie
Pencils: Duncan Rouleau
Inks: Rob Hunter
Letterer: Richard Starkings/KF & Comicraft
Colorist: Shannon Blanchard
Editor: Kelly Corvese

Editor-in-Chief: Bob Harras

Plot

After Chris Bradley's home is burned by an anti-mutant mob and Chris disappears, his parents call Iceman for help. Chris, however, is seeking out the help of Maverick, whom he met recently at the only clinic helping mutants suffering from the Legacy Virus. Iceman follows Chris to Maverick's hotel room, but just then, the anti-mutant mob attacks. Chris and Maverick are separated from Iceman, who enlists the help of Wolverine to track them down. As they hunt, Wolverine tells Iceman about a past mission with Maverick, when he killed his own brother to save Wolverine and Sabretooth, his teammates. Meanwhile, Chris tells Maverick of how he was taken and trained by the X-Men, but soon after they became so caught up in Onslaught's attack they weren't available to help him. Maverick is less than sympathetic, saying Chris needs to stop blaming others for his problems. Just then, the militia members catch up to them, but with the timely arrival of Wolverine and Iceman, they are defeated. Iceman once more offers to help Chris, but Chris refuses, and Maverick backs him up. Wolverine agrees with Maverick, telling Iceman the X-Men are too busy in their own affairs to give Chris the kind of friendship he needs, but Maverick can be there for him. Iceman and Wolverine thus go their separate ways, while Maverick uses his connections in Intelligence to relocate Chris' family and get his parents new identities. 

Firsts and Other Notables

This issue is effectively a sequel to X-Men Unlimited #8, the issue which introduced Chris Bradley (and was titled "First Contact"). It more or less leads into the Maverick solo series (which will launch in a few months). 

The extras in this issue comes in the form of "Theories of Relativity," a game which asks readers to correctly identity the different relationships between various X-characters. It's a wonderful depiction of delightful comic book soap opera nonsense. 

The Chronology Corner

Maverick appears here between his then-recent one-shot and the first issue of his solo series, with his flashback first meeting with Chris occurring between Wolverine '95 and the one-shot. 

Iceman appears here during his "help his father recuperate from an anti-mutant attack" leave of absence, just before returning to the X-Men for "Operation Zero Tolerance" (his next appearance is X-Men (vol. 2) #65). 

Wolverine appears here between Wolverine #114 and his brief appearance in Uncanny X-Men #342, all prior to the Hong Kong/Shang-Chi story that leads directly into "OZT."

A Work in Progress

Maverick and Chris first meet outside a Legacy Virus clinic, when Chris helps Maverick defuse a bomb left by some anti-mutant thugs. 

Chris is angry about his inability to reach the X-Men, after they told him they'd be there for him. Their unavailability can generally be attributed to their busy superheroes lives, and their pathological aversions to phones. 

Wolverine is rocking his bandana mask in this issue, thought is generally more upright and less feral, as has been the trend of late. 

Wolverine's tale of Maverick's devotion to his friends offers up another "Team X" flashback, though he leaves out (or doesn't know) the fact that Maverick was estranged from his brother at the time of his death, due to his brother's Nazi sympathies (which will later be established in the Maverick series). 

The Grim 'n' Gritty 90s

One of the militia members says they need to get home "in time for Xena [Warrior Princess]."

Also, it's pretty funny how this group of anti-mutant bigots is just randomly armed with high-tech guns and equipment. 

The Best There is at What He Does

Wolverine likens the potential of a Maverick/Chris partnership to the one he has with Jubilee. Also, he's lighting up a cigar as he says it. 

Human/Mutant Relations

Both Onslaught and the assassination of Graydon Creed are cited as events which have raised anti-mutant sentiment and made things harder for Chris' family. 

For Sale

There's an ad (randomly in black and white) for the new Alpha Flight series (volume 2, I believe). 

This ad for Aerosmith's "Nine Lives" album immediately takes me back to spring of '97; the first time I ever rode in a car with my friend Matt after he got his drivers license and we could go anywhere we wanted on our own (this was back when, once you turned 16 and got your license, you were good to go and there was no complicated tiered probationary system) was to go to Target to buy this CD (this was back when you had to buy physical media to listen to new music), then race back to his house to listen to it (this was back when the standard options for listening to music in cars was the radio and a tape deck). 

Bullpen Bulletins

Leinil Francis Yu gets a shoutout in the Bullpen Bulletins page, where he's heralded on the level of being the next Jim Lee, John Romita Jr., Joe Mad or the Kubert brothers. Curiously, it seems to suggest Wolverine #114 is his debut issue, but it was actually #113. 

Austin's Analysis
Though it doesn't feature the same creative team, coming less than three months before the launch of the ongoing Maverick series, this sure reads like a "soft open" for that book, setting up the Chris Bradley/Maverick dynamic at the center of that series. Howard Mackie is hardly the most dynamic of writers, but he does a decent enough job with that setup, effectively handing stewardship of Chris from Iceman to Maverick. There's also a fun metatextual angle, with Mackie having created Chris but not lined up to write the Maverick solo (so he is passing the character from himself to another steward, just as Iceman, Mackie's chosen steward, does to Maverick), and in the way the inciting incident of the story is Chris being ignored by the X-Men after they promised to be there for him, only for the story to conclude by basically saying, "yeah, the X-Men are too busy being superheroes to make time for a D-list character, so maybe you'll have better luck with this C-list character since he has nothing better to do." 

Where X-Men Unlimited #15 falters is in the art. Rouleau's gangly figures and messy panels are ill-suited to the more introspective/character-focused and cloak-and-dagger elements of the story (as are the eminently forgettable anti-mutant thugs with random, high-tech equipment, but Mackie probably shares some of the blame there, too). As with Matsuda over on Mackie's X-Factor, one of the issues with infusion of Joe Madureira knock-offs at this time is that they don't often end up on material that fits their manga-influenced style. Something like the contemporaneous Juggernaut one-shot is visually exhausting, but its madcap energy and larger-than-life protagonist is a better fit for Rouleau's style than this story. Joe Mad is great and all, but his style isn't perfect for every kind of story, a lesson Marvel arguably doesn't learn quickly enough. 

Next Issue
It's time for Flashback Month! Journey back to the convoluted history of Rachel Summers and the Trask family in Uncanny X-Men -1!

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