Gateway should be named separately from the eight main field X-Men. He is essential to the Australian period, but calling him an ordinary ninth team member suggests a relationsh…

Gateway should be named separately from the eight main field X-Men. He is essential to the Australian period, but calling him an ordinary ninth team member suggests a relationship these stories do not establish. He is an Aboriginal Australian man with his own knowledge and motives, not a recruit awaiting instructions from Storm. The Reavers' use of him in #229 introduces that difference under grim circumstances. His ability to open routes across enormous distances has made him valuable to people who exploit it. When the X-Men take the base, they inherit a relationship to understand, not ownership of the person who makes its extraordinary travel possible. His portals give the setting much of its freedom. Australia can remain the team's home while a mission takes place somewhere else entirely. Without that ability, the geographical isolation would require a very different kind of book. With it, the ghost town becomes a place from which almost anywhere might be reached. Yet usefulness isn't the same as familiarity. Gateway's silence and limited explanations leave the team without the kind of access to him they have to one another. That can be frustrating, especially for characters accustomed to solving uncertainty with a briefing, an argument or a telepathic conversation. Jubilee's arrival through the portal in #244 adds another example of how the base's boundaries do not belong wholly to the X-Men. They can believe their arrangements are controlled while someone new enters the story through the very route that makes their own freedom possible. Gateway is often still while everyone else rushes around him. The contrast is visually striking, but the distinction worth preserving is personal. He helps make the team's hidden life possible without becoming an extension of its equipment or its command structure. Any roster account should leave room for that independence.