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Uncanny X-Men # 427 "The Dead Have No Rights" Rating: Writer: Chuck Austen Penciller: Steve Kim Key Events Memorial issue for Angelo Questions Raised When will the pain stop? Inker: Morales, Green & Florea Colours: JD Smith Letterer: Rus Wooten Editor: Mike Marts EIC: Joe Quesada Date: September 2003 Featuring: Jubilee, Husk, Angel Versus: Evil Cemetary Manager Man Quick Synopsis: Warren, Paige and Jubilee stand around Skin's grave. Warren leaves to visit a nearby hospital to inform them of his healing blood while Jubilee laments that she never slept with Angelo and Paige says much the same about Warren. Two cemetery employees arrive to dig up Skin's body; turns out that since he's a mutant, the other people who have paid for plots are complaining. Jubilee argues with the cemetery manager and ultimately loses. Paige fights with one of the workers who turns out to be a mutant that is subsequently fired from his job, and Warren, by coincidence, heals the manager's kid at the hospital. Full Synopsis: Warren, Paige and Jubilee stand over Angelo's grave in Los Angeles. Jubilee starts talking about how Skin had asked her out before he died and she said no. She feels bad about turning him down and wonders what might have been. Angel feels like he's intruding and leaves. Paige complains that Warren has been distant from her since Jono left, since he thinks she might still be in love with him, but all she wants to do is "get naked with him." Jubilee says she wishes she'd have been "naked with Angelo". Their discussion is cut short by the appearance of two cemetery employees who have arrived to dig up Angelo's body. As for Warren, he's made his way to a local children's hospital where he asks to speak to whoever's in charge with an "interesting proposition". Angelo's body is to be exhumed because he's a mutant and others with plots in the cemetery are complaining. The workers say they have nothing to do with it and point the girls in the direction of the manager's office. Jubilee goes to talk to him while Paige stands watch. Warren is talking to a doctor and explaining about his healing blood. The doctor isn't sure that Warren isn't just "a nut with a glue gun and a bunch of dead, plucked chickens", but when he moves his wings, he convinces the doctor who calls for a scalpel. The manager of the cemetery is on the phone, engaged in a heated discussion with his wife. Jubilee bursts in and demands an explanation. He has trouble getting his wife off the phone so Jubilee hangs it up for him, which doesn't improve his mood. He says that Angelo "Torres" was included in the contract that his family signed, but they lied and said none of their family was affected by the X-gene. Since the cemetery is a religious-backed institution, they can deny burial to anybody they want. Angelo has no surviving family to pay for reburial, so the remains are to be cremated. At the hospital, the doctor cuts his arm and then moves to cut Warren's. They place the two cuts together, and the doctor's arm is completely healed. The doctor grabs Warren by the hand and runs down the hall with Angel in tow. Paige is still standing guard over Angelo's grave. The bigger of the two workers say that he could make her move. She says that he could try. Tensions start to escalate, so Paige "husks" into stone form. The big guy attacks, attempting to knee Paige in the stomach, but since she's made of stone, he comes off worse for the exchange. His pain causes him to lose concentration, and his flesh turns into steel, looking much like Colossus as Paige observes. He's angry that she "outed" him. Warren is brought before a very sick little girl and her mother. The doctor tells the mother that he has an unorthodox treatment that they can try, and she tells them to go ahead. Jeremy, the Colossus rip-off, grabs a tree and hits Paige with it. His friend, Larry, says that he's going to get fired for being a mutant, which is exactly why Jeremy never told anyone. Jeremy punches Paige and has apparently won the fight when Jubilee, the manager and the police arrive. Jubilee tries to convince the manager to give them a few hours to contact Xavier, who will pay for Angelo and his family to be moved, but the manager insists that this be resolved right now. He also fires Jeremy for lying about not being a mutant. The body is dug up, and Jubilee is given an urn with Angelo's remains. Warren has rejoined them, and they go to leave. He tells them about how he healed twelve children, and they discovered that blood type and Rh factor limit his healing powers. The manager watches them leave when he gets a phone call. His wife is on the phone -- the mother shown before. She tells him that their daughter has been miraculously cured. Review: Wow. I .... Wow. Okay. Deep breaths. We'll get through this. You remember how much I disliked "Holy War", right? I was pretty sure things couldn't get much worse after that. It's always refreshing to be proven so very wrong. This issue has been touted as a memorial issue to Skin. Now when you think "memorial issue", what comes to mind? Good friends gathered together to mourn the death and celebrate the life that's been lost, perhaps? That's what I think of. Regardless of the exact scenario you picture, you probably have at least some sort of preconceived notion. Whatever you thought up, you must ball it up, spit on it and throw it over your shoulder without looking back. Now you're almost ready for Uncanny #427. Next, think about the character at the heart of this issue. Skin, founding member of Generation X, best friend of Chamber, former pupil of Banshee and Emma Frost. There can be no denying that Paige and Jubilee have a place at Skin's grave, however -- and this is the important part -- they are not the only ones that should be mourning Angelo here. Jono, for cryin' out loud, actually appeared within the pages of this book just a few issues ago. He then walked off panel and seemed to vanish into Limbo. Why the heck was he not here? I don't care what he may be going through with Paige these days, he would absolutely not let that interfere with saying goodbye to his best friend. Oh, but wait. It's okay, because apparently it wasn't our Skin that died anyway. The guy they're mourning is Angelo Torres, and surely they know that his name is really Angelo Espinosa. So it must've all been a terrible mistake, let's go home and pretend this never happened. We should be so lucky. Instead, we have this memorial issue where the closest personal reflection we get is Jubilee's whining that she missed her chance to "be naked with Angelo" (yes, that's a direct quote as she's staring at his grave marker). That's it. There's absolutely zero connection otherwise. The rest of the issue is devoted to an attempt at making Angelo's death an indication of mutant rights (and lack thereof), a senseless fight with a second rate Colossus, and Warren wandering around the halls of a random L.A. hospital curing people. So here's my take on what really happened on the flipside here. Austen wanted to kill someone. Several someone's in fact. Purpose? To bring Jubilee back in an "unforgettable" way and give the X-Men personal motivation to go after the Church of Humanity. To do this, he reached into Limbo and grabbed a handful of characters. He needed recognizable names in an effort to create a connection between the reader and the situation. Skin was the focal point of this connection, which was great since Austen was bringing back Jubilee and already had Paige, so this would broaden the angst horizon. They didn't expect much of a fan backlash. After all, Skin hadn't been seen regularly in comics for years. Imagine their surprise at the outrage. Realizing that they had to try to mollify the fans, they haphazardly plotted out this "memorial". The problem is, nobody involved actually knew a damned thing about the character they had so callously knocked off for a pathetically contrived and wholly uninteresting plot. As a result, there was simply no way to do tribute to the character, so they decided to focus on some other stuff and hope that the readers would be satisfied with just the idea of a tribute. I'd almost rather they left it untouched. At least in our heads Angelo could've gotten a decent send-off. So many other things about this issue bothered me. The fact that Warren is drawn like he's 15 years old and his wings are made of Silly Putty. Jubilee's abysmally disrespectful attitude (Jubes is many things, but disrespectful of a close, dead friend isn't even on the radar). The strong implication that dating someone is about sex and nothing else (which appears to be a subtle but constant theme with Austen's X-Men), and the supposedly "cutesy" way in which it's discussed makes me want to vomit. The way the whole healing blood test thing was handled -- I don't know of any reputable doctor who would mix his own blood with someone who walked in off the street without performing a battery of tests first, let alone then take said stranger around a hospital and turn him loose on the children's ward ... I think it'd be easier to say that there was nothing I liked about this issue. I'm even hard-pressed to find a line of dialogue that worked for me, and I can usually count on Austen for at least one really good exchange. Last issue, I thought that maybe I was close to connecting with Austen's style. This issue would have been his chance to cement that, not only with me but with all the Doubting Thomas's who are reading this book month after month (or week after week, as the case is currently). Instead, we get a pointlessly rushed travesty to a good character that comes across as a slap in the face to those of us who know better. Not good. Not good at all. Quotes: Paige: Did you, uh--did you not hear the part where I said I was stone?

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