I want YOU for the Uncanny X-Men.
The third volume of Uncanny X-Men was launched in 2013 as part of Marvel's Marvel NOW! relaunch. Written by Brian Michael Bendis, the volume takes place after the events of Avengers vs. X-Men with the mutant gene restored and with it the status quo. Mutants are being persecuted as they awaken and the X-Men are divided. Cyclops has become the face of a Mutant Revolution in order to prevent past tragedies from repeating, bringing him into conflict with old allies and The Avengers.
The students' character sheet can be found here.
The third volume provides examples of the following tropes:
- Academy of Adventure: Cyclops' New Xavier School and Wolverine's Jean Grey Institute of Higher Learning.
- Accidental Kidnapping: Cyclops is kidnapped by some bounty hunters mistaking him for Havok (their client didn't bother to mention he wanted the Summers brother who has blast rings coming out of his chest and hands}.
- Adaptive Ability: The new Sentinels are modified to counter any mutant power they have encountered previously.
- All for Nothing: In the final issue, Cyclops begins the mutant revolution - a peaceful demonstration that shows that mutants can co-exist with regular humans. After the 8-month Time Skip following Secret Wars (2015), mutants are going extinct because of Terrigenesis and are hated more than ever and Cyclops has gone missing.
- All Girls Want Bad Boys: Maria Hill is attracted to Cyclops, despite trying to arrest him for technically being a criminal.
- Anti-Hero: Cyclops, and the team in general, barring the students.
- Back from the Brink: Due to the efforts of Scarlet Witch and Hope in Avengers vs. X-Men, this happens to the entire mutant race, due to the reactivation of the mutant gene from the destruction of the Phoenix Force.
- Badass Teacher: Magik is now a teacher and has become even more powerful.
- Berserk Button: Seeing all the Mutant Growth Hormone floating around in Madripoor and Mystique having the audacity to claim it was their new Genosha sent Magneto on a rampage. He literally dropped a building on her in the end.
- Big Bad: Regarding the whole S.H.I.E.L.D. VS X-Men thing, it's revealed that Dark Beast was behind the conflict.
- Big Damn Heroes: Hijack, in issue #22, during S.H.I.E.L.D.'s attach on the Jean Grey school. He single-handedly ruins Dark Beast's plans.
- Broken Ace: Magneto, Cyclops, and Emma. Also, Magik, as eventually revealed.
- Dazzler too, after being captured and used for months without any help.
- Black Magician Girl: Magik. Even moreso after training with Doctor Strange in the past.
- Category Traitor: Dazzler to Cyclops' group. More so to Mystique, who imitates her and causes no end of problems for them.
- Charm Person: Part of Benjamin's powers.
- Characterization Marches On: Benjamin/Morph originally had hints he was attracted to Magik. Then when protesting against using his powers to seduce a random woman, he reveals he's gay.
- Class Trip: The Uncanny Kids get sent to Tabula Rasa for training. It ends with some time-travel induced trauma for Eva and Hijack being kicked off the team.
- Continuity Snarl: The arc dealing with Xavier's testament started before Wolverine bit the dust and ended after it...which results in him being present on the beginning, but mysteriously vanishing after, which doesn't make any sense, considering that it didn't take that long in the end and the involvement of other characters (like Kitty Pryde) in both storylines. This seems to be invoked as the story involves history being changed during the story, indicating in the previous timeline, Wolverine would've been fine, but after the change, Wolverine died shortly before the events of it.
- Coordinated Clothes: The Stepford Sisters rock this for some time, but began to differentiate.
- Covers Always Lie: The solicitations for this run were notoriously unreliable.
- Crazy-Prepared: Scott had a program set to ensure that the students could get to safety in the event of his, Magick, and Emma's deaths.
- Curb-Stomp Battle:
- Tempus vs. The Avengers. They couldn't even land the first hit!
- Magneto vs. Mystique and her bunch. What makes it even more awesome is that Erik is injured and has his powers broken and still gives the scumbags a run for their money.
- Deadly Training Area: The Danger Room, naturally. Tabula Rasa as well.
- Despair Event Horizon: As of issue 31, Cyclops now seems to have reached it. He shuts down his school and asks Ororo to take in his students.
- Distracted by the Sexy: Benjamin is distracted by Magik. His power also works like this to some degree (he's able to make people trust him by subtly shifting to resemble them, becoming someone they would trust and/or be attracted to).
- Elaborate Underground Base: The New Xavier School.
- Emotion Control:
- The Stepford Sisters are ordered by Emma to take away the group of new mutants' collective fear in order to deal with the demons in Issue #6, averting Mind over Manners, since this was basically a Godzilla Threshold situation.
- Irma does it later in Issue #17 to calm Triage down, but he doesn't mind.
- Evil Cripple: Dark Beast is revealed to have become one of these thanks to years of experiments on himself.
- Fantastic Racism: In full-force now that the Mutant population has started to rise up again.
- Slightly subverted in that mutants are also receiving far more visible support than ever before from humans; as seen in both Uncanny and All-New, a good number of humans (primarily college-age and teens) are romanticizing the idea of being a mutant, and Cyclops, while wanted by the authorities, is treated as some kind of messiah by a good number of citizens for the well-intentioned acts he did while Phoenix-up'd, prior to being driven mad by the power and the fight with the Avengers.
- After running into a newly awakened Inhuman, the team questions whether or not they will be the victims of racism against the Inhumans, since, as they point out, it is hard to tell the difference between an Inhuman and a mutant.
- Fantastic Recruitment Drive: Guess.
- Fights Like a Normal: Cyclops and the others train the students to do this.
- Flat Character: Matthew Malloy. Despite his rather tragic backstory, he mostly served as a living plot device and the fact that Bendis had him worf several popular characters just to establish him as a threat annoyed many fans.
- Forced to Watch: Dormammu forces Magik to watch as he orders his demons to kill her friends/students in Issue #6.
- Frame-Up: The mysterious Bubble-Head is framing Maria Hill for the attacks against Cyclops' team so as to get them to go to war with one another. Both sides suspect something is amiss and believe a third party is in play, but neither one can trust that the other isn't guilty.
- Fugitive Arc: Due to being led by the wanted criminal Cyclops, the characters are hunted by and take their lumps from humans and other mutants alike.
- Godzilla Threshold: With no choice left in dealing with Dormammu, Magik had to take the entirety of Limbo inside of her and jump back in time to see Doctor Strange for help.
- With no one able to hold Malloy in check, Eva pulls Professor Xavier from the past and into the present. And they stop him from ever being born.
- Guest-Star Party Member: The O5 X-Men and Kitty Pryde, who joined the team, but were only in a few issues before going into space for the "Trial of Jean Grey" crossover with Guardians of the Galaxy. Since coming back, they stopped appearing in this series. However, Uncanny's cast appears in All-New.
- Have You Tried Not Being a Monster?: Fabio's parents hit him with this in Issue #8 and Eva's mother gave her a lighter version in Issue #3. Not overt about it, but they think it's something Church can fix and don't accept it.
- Healing Hands: Triage has this as his mutant power.
- Heart Is an Awesome Power:
- Fabio can and does earn the team's respect when he starts using his balls as projectiles, knocking back a brand-new Sentinel.
- Benjamin, whose power isn't so much useless as it is not for combat, learns that his power isn't just shapeshifting, but the power to make people feel good about themselves and hinder technology, making him suitable for infiltration or calming down hostile situations (which saved Celeste's life at one point).
- Heel–Face Turn: Exodus, of all people, makes an
incredibly wasted one by joining up with S.H.I.E.L.D. as the commander of their Psi division, only to be trashed by new villain Malloy a few panels later. The hows and whys are never explained, and are ultimately made moot when Malloy and the whole storyline is tied up via Ret-Gone. - Heroic Comedic Sociopath: Emma and Illyana, who both make light of maybe robbing a casino.
- Hot for Teacher: Eva for Cyclops initially. It's so obvious that all the other students picked up on it.
- Benjamin originally had hints that he was hot for Magik, but turns out to be gay.
- Human Resources: Guess where all that Mutant Growth Hormone in Madripoor is coming from? It's being harvested from Dazzler by Mystique.
- I Am Not Left-Handed: In Issue #19, when the team somehow had their mutant powers nullified, Magik resorts to using the spells that she learned from Doctor Strange.
- Involuntary Shapeshifter: Benjamin, at first.
- It's All My Fault: Issue #29 is full of this:
- Magneto blames himself for not noticing Cyclops had a breakdown after killing Xavier and for putting them in harm's way by going too far in recruiting Malloy as a Well-Intentioned Extremist.
- Malloy blames himself for killing all those people.
- Scott for Xavier.
- Kill and Replace: Or "Drug and Replace in this case: Mystique has taken over Dazzler's role within S.H.I.E.L.D. without them knowing it. She's been locked up and kept sedated so Mystique can use her blood.
- Killed Off for Real: After close to 20 years of being a reliable C-list mutant Mad Scientist in the background, Dark Beast is finally taken out. Comic Book Death kicks in a few years later, of course, but at the time his death was treated as permanent.
- Legacy Character: Benjamin Deeds is an unusual case. He takes the codename of Morph, who 90s fans will instantly remember from his appearances in X-Men: The Animated Series. That Morph was in turn an adaptation of a character from the comics named Changeling, who was never called Morph (the character's name was changed for the cartoon to avoid any legal issues involving the Teen Titans character Beast Boy, who at the time was going by Changeling).
- Mistaken Identity: Scott is mistaken for Alex by interstellar bounty hunter Death's Head in the Annual Issue.
- Not a Morning Person: Emma Frost, who has told her students to never wake her.
- Plot-Relevant Age-Up: In Issue #17, Eva ends up lost in time for a bit and comes back after over seven years in 2099, becoming a mother, and a trip through time from the beginning to the future and then the present again.
- Police Brutality: The cop in Issue #8 promptly shoots a mutant and threatened to do the same to his girlfriend.
- Police also randomly beat the crap out of Goldballs when he is introduced, just to further hammer the nail in that police are apparently Always Chaotic Evil.
- Power Incontinence: Anyone who had been taken in or doused with the Phoenix Force has had their power altered and fluctuated, the Phoenix Five and Magneto being the main ones.
- Matthew Malloy can't initially control his powers, so he winds up killing everyone in a ten miles radius.
- Eva ended up going through time by a number of several millennia because she lost control of her powers.
- Psychosomatic Superpower Outage: Apparently this is the case with Emma, because the moment she learned Scott was killed, she regained her telepathy while in grief.
- Rabid Cop: All the police are treated this way, making it as clear as humanly possible that mutants in this run live in the Oppressive States of America.
- Ret-Gone: Xavier and Eva eventually settle the whole Malloy issue by stopping his parents from meeting, making it so he was never born and undoing the damage. This crosses a line Scott was highly uncomfortable with.
- Same-Sex Triplets: The Stepford Sisters. Although Irma decided to cut her hair and dye it black while Phoebe decides to go and become a redhead.
- Schmuck Bait: The Pro-mutant rally. Emma even said it was a trap and this was after Magneto, who they were aware is playing double agent, urged them to send a message back. It wasn't intentional by either S.H.I.E.L.D. or the people, but a new type of Sentinel did drop down and attempt to kill them.
- Screams Like a Little Girl: Triage, on the field trip to Tabula Rasa, because he saw a fist-sized spider-slug thing. Note he didn't scream like that when he was sent to Limbo or facing a Sentinel.
- Screw This, I'm Outta Here:
- Fabio wants out after having to deal with the demons in Limbo. He comes back an issue later.
- Magneto, who went off into his own series. He pops back up every now and again.
- Eva decides she's graduated to the point she can do whatever the hell she wants and leaves the school.
- Secret Relationship: The infamous Retcon that Professor Xavier secretly married Mystique (the murderer of his previous lover Moira!) originates from the Last Will and Testament of Charles Xavier story in this run. Incredibly, it's Played for Laughs.
- Secret Test of Character: Issue 17, which opens with Magik teleporting the students to an unfamiliar location (Tabula Rasa) and telling them to "Have fun." The test was to see what kind of survival skills and character the students have. Only one of them failed because he deliberately kept his phone despite being warned that S.H.I.E.L.D. would track them to it, which they did in 15 minutes.
- Set Right What Once Went Wrong: Eva's ideal for the Malloy problem and to stop Cyclops from potentially making a huge mistake. She goes back to the past, years ago when Charles Xavier was still alive and then brings him into the future, before stopping Malloy from being born.
- Sexy Mentor: Emma Frost decides to wear a sexy punk-ish outfit when comforting Benjamin after his fight with Scott. It just makes him incredibly uncomfortable since he's only wearing a towel at the time.
- Ship Tease: Irma and Triage have a bit of this going around.
- The Stool Pigeon: David Bonds' girlfriend, Karen, promptly tells the Police when confronted that he was a mutant. Then she acts shocked and horrified when they shoot him.
- Stop, or I Will Shoot!: The Police are insanely aggressive and don't hesitate to shoot when given the chance. Given how mutants are generally hated and feared, and law enforcement officials have historically been rather hostile to discriminated groups, if not part of the hate groups themselves, this should surprise no-one, though it's still cranked up even by traditional Marvel U standards.
- Straight Gay: Borders on But Not Too Gay; Benjamin/Morph claims to be gay when arguing with Emma in issue 14. At no point prior to this was there any indication he was gay, and actually seemed to have some attraction to Magik. He spends the whole issue basically flirting with every man and woman Emma can find for him to practice his abilities.
- Superpower Lottery: Tempus can pull a Time Stands Still in a specified area and has the potential to be a Time Master, Triage has Healing Hands that can heal even the dead apparently (including himself), Benjamin is a Shapeshifter with bonus powers, David Bond is a Technopath, and Fabio... can shoot balls from his body.
- And then, beating them all out, is Matthew Malloy, who is stated many times over to be the Strongest Mutant Ever over the course of three issues of the Last Will and Testament of Charles Xavier story arc. He can teleport, read minds, and annihilate matter, among other powers.
- Taking You with Me: The goal of Dark Beast, who is dying and wants to take as many X-Men down with him as he can before he goes.
- Talking the Monster to Death: Cyclops gets Matthew to simply talk to him before he uses his powers to hurt anyone else. Then SHIELD kills him and Magik for a few issues.
- The Bus Came Back: That white-faced guy who tags along with Bennet du Paris/Exodus? That's Headlok, a bizarrely-unrelated-to-Deathlok C-List Fodder villain who was last seen 11 years earlier in the first volume of Thunderbolts.
- The Glasses Come Off: When these come off in Issue 1 every Sentinel attacking Cyclops' group was wiped out.
- These Hands Have Killed: Malloy certainly thinks so.
- Time Stands Still: Eva Bell a.k.a. Tempus can do this to a localized area.
- Took a Level in Badass: All the kids gradually improve:
- Fabio not only bravely stood up to, but even knocked back the very challenging Blockbuster Sentinel with a bombardment of balls.
- Benjamin calmed an highly-advanced race of telepathic creatures in Tabula Rasa without fear after they put down Celeste.
- Tempus can move them throughout time to avoid attacks.
- Magik deserves mention too since started studying magic with Doctor Strange. In one possible future, she will have become Sorcerer Supreme of the Galaxy.
- Hijack started out being able to turn on cars and stuff... And can now hijack Helicarriers that themselves are already hijacked.
- Took a Level in Jerkass: Dazzler of all people, who unlawfully takes Fabio into S.H.I.E.L.D. custody. As he pointed out, they did kidnap him, although S.H.I.E.L.D. has done worse and her interrogation wasn't violent. That being said, Mystique doesn't do wonders for her reputation afterwards since she's intent on taking down both S.H.I.E.L.D. and Cyclops.
- The general staff of JGS at times, but Iceman just can't help but shoot barb after barb at Cyclops.
- To the surprise of everyone we have Eva Bell, who blames Cyclops for the Malloy incident (which he had nothing to do with since that was in motion long ago) and threatens him to get his shit together or she'd make it so his parents never met and he wasn't born.
- Used to Be a Sweet Kid: The students find a picture of the original New Mutants and are astounded at how normal Magik used to be.
- Villain Decay: In the same issue as his first appearance, no less, the villain behind Cyclops' kidnapping goes from sipping wine and acting regal and menacing to being a complete pushover who can't stand up to his hired Elite Mooks.
- Walking Techbane: Part of Benjamin's powers.
- Well-Intentioned Extremist: Cyclops is turning into one. He was content to be a martyr or a political prisoner, but after he witnessed a mutant being killed and the warden of the prison orchestrating it, he allowed Magneto to break him out in Avengers vs. X-Men, which sets up the premise for the series. There's more focus on the well-intentioned part though; all he wants is to protect mutants at all costs and doesn't wish to harm anyone, but refuses to back down when he sees anyone attacking mutants or mutant-supporting humans.
- What the Hell, Hero?: Scott to Captain America when they encounter each other in Issue #3.
- What Kind of Lame Power Is Heart, Anyway?: Fabio and Benjamin. Although, see Heart Is an Awesome Power.
- The Worf Effect: A few examples cropped up over the course of the run:
- The Avengers get taken out by Tempus, a new mutant who hasn't even come into her powers for more than a week at best.
- Inflicted upon the incredibly powerful Exodus by Matthew Malloy as a quick and easy way for Bendis to demonstrate how powerful he was.
- Worthy Opponent: Magik has repeatedly shown she has a large respect for Doctor Strange's prowess in the mystic arts despite being on opposite teams at the moment. She even takes lessons from him in the past to control her powers better.
