X-men Legacy #267 - Hulked Out Awesome

There are some women out there that look hot no matter what they do. You could have a picture of Natalie Portman and Pamela Anderson taking a shit in a gas station restroom and chances are it'll still give most men a boner. The women of Marvel comics and pretty much all comics for that matter are usually more stacked than Jenna Jameson and more ripped than Janet Jackson on steroids. And it's not just the women either, if only to appease the angry feminists among fanboys and fangirls. As men like Namor have shown, comic characters are designed with the intent to tighten pants or soak panties or both if you're a hermaphrodite. So the range with which they can flaunt their hotness is pretty broad and Rogue is among those characters that finds many novels ways with which to enduce boners and bad fanfiction.

X-men Legacy has showcased Rogue's hotness on more than one occasion and in more than one way. That hotness has taken a few serious blows lately after she developed a wrinkly scrotum fetish and shacked up with Magneto. However, she's been earning her way back into the perverted fantasies of fanboys everywhere under Christos Gage as he has taken her role to the Jean Grey Institute. She continues to flaunt her power and press plenty of buttons along the way, so much so that she's earned a place on Wolverine's shit-list right below Cyclops and just above watered down whiskey. During the events of Avengers vs. X-men, she seems to be making an effort to pull back to some extent. She was among Jean Grey Institute staff who chose to stay out of the shit storm that is Avengers vs. X-men, opting to protect their students and teach them new coping methods for dealing with the world coming to an end every other week. Weed and Angry Birds works for me, but then again I'm not a teacher.

This pacifist approach lasted all but a few pages because the Avengers decided it was a good idea to fly She-Hulk, Moon Knight, and Falcon to the Jean Grey Institute and essentially watch over them like that guy in a bar you know is somehow related to the girl you're trying to bang and is just waiting for the right opportunity to cut off your balls with a broken beer bottle. For any number of reasons, the X-men had a problem with this. So Frenzy came out and started trash-talking with Moon Night like Rex Ryan does before every game against the Patroits. The Avengers end up throwing the first punch. Rogue tries to break it up, but then some of the students get caught in the crossfire and that's the point where they give the finger to pacifism and start the arduous process of expelling the Avengers from the Jean Grey Institute. And they didn't even need to hide blow in their locker.

X-men Legacy #267 ditches the trash talk and gets right to the fighting. There's no aside. There's no recap and no inner musing over how they got to this point. It's just Rogue, Mimic, and Gambit taking on She-Hulk, Falcon, and Moon Knight in a fight that I'm sure beats the shit out of any class minus a sex ed class by Emma Frost. It's pretty standard, yet well drawn. But what really throws you off is the sudden appearance of Iron Man. In Avengers vs. X-men #4, he was busy at Stark Tower trying to come up with a technological solution for their little cosmic problem. Now he just ditches this very important project to join a fight at a school? I mean I know the man thinks with his dick and liver more often than he should, but fuck. Even I'm not drunk enough to overlook that and I've put a few transexual hookers through college.

The fight is pretty basic and pretty standard at first. Mimic, who only recently joined the Legacy cast, carries himself like the first guy who ever fought Mike Tysons. He gets his ass kicked by Falcon, which forces Rogue from the hot girl-on-girl action she has going on with She-Hulk to help him out. On behalf of all heterosexual men with functioning dicks, I protest. But she does get another power out of it, namely Falcon's. She uses it to sick some birds on to disorient him before she introduces his hedonistic ass to her knee. Then she goes back to fighting She-Hulk, which is really the only fight with substance to it. And by substance I mean just two super-strong women beating the shit out of each other. Is it shallow? Will it piss off feminists everywhere? Fuck yes on both counts, but it's still entertaining.

With the way this battle is unfolding, it's easy to forget that it's unfolding right on the front lawn of the Jean Grey Institute so naturally others are going to take notice. Most of the students are probably watching and filming it with their camera phones to upload to youtube in hopes of making Epic Mealtime money. Others like Kitty Pryde see a fight that the X-men are losing and as co-headmaster, it's her job to at least try and tip the balance. It's actually quite a shift since Kitty Pryde hasn't done much since swapping spit with Iceman and shitting an alien Brood army out of her twat in Wolverine and the X-men. But it's nice to get additional X-men involved, especially those who seem to have been ignored in other books.

Kitty doesn't enter the battle fast enough to prevent Rogue from making a very costly and very stupid mistake. You would think that someone with absorption powers would know not to try and absorb the powers and mind of someone with a history of mental illness and piss poor coping skills. But that's exactly what Rogue does with Moon Knight. This is the same guy who in the last issue was taunted into making an ass of himself by Frenzy's trash talk. So when Rogue absorbs him, she starts hearing the kind of conflicting thoughts that would make Deadpool squeal with joy and maybe give him a boner or two. It has the makings of a great inner struggle, but the details are extremely light and not very compelling if you've seen a woman get extremely pissed off and frustrated before. If you haven't, then grab your wooden stick and go back to your cave in the mountain because you've evolved beyond the need for comics and women.

The whole absorbing a deranged mind doesn't cause much conflict aside from reminding Gambit that he badly wants to bone Rogue. It only further pisses her off and gives her another excuse to bunch Iron Man in the chest. Wait...didn't she already do that earlier? Actually, she just kicked him. But the impact is pretty much the same. Rogue is in Hulk form so that means that she's going to get angry, strong, and relentless. In that sense she's a lot like January Jones with PMS.

While it's always fun seeing Rogue kick ass, it's starting to become apparent at this point that there's really not much to it. At least in the previous issue, the X-men were given a reason to fight when the Avengers roughed up some of the Jean Grey Institute students. Those students were barely touched on here aside from showing them returning to the school. There's no talk aside from the standard "I shall beat you in ways that will make you feel like 15-year-old's dick after he discovers internet porn!" It's the kind of battle that fits in nicely with the Avengers vs. X-men VS series, but this X-men Legacy damn it! A little purpose behind the brawling would definitely go a long ways.

The battle doesn't really change that much once Kitty Pryde gets involved. She tries to run in and phase through Iron Man's armor to short it out. She didn't contemplate for a second that a guy smart enough to build a suit of armor and fuck every Maxim cover model since 2002 wouldn't be smart enough to have effective counter-measures. And yet she's the one teaching at a fucking school. What kind of message is this sending to her students? That thinking an attack through is for pussies? That guys with too much money and free time will find ways of countering your every attack? I've given many mixed messages to kids regarding substance abuse, dating, and sex. Even I try to teach more common sense than that. Again, all it does is piss Rogue off even more. Seeing a pattern yet?

That pattern finally culminates with Rogue going full hulk on the Avengers. It's like Hulk's strength having dirty sex with Wolverine's berskerer rage and shitting out a super hot girl with green skin and a horrendous hormonal imbalance. The Avengers really don't stand a chance here. Again, if you like seeing Rogue this scene will put a smile on your face. If you're looking for a more profound story, stick to jerking off to 50 Shades of Gray. It's good eye-candy, but lousy story-telling. When it's over Rogue has successfully vented and manages to calm down just enough to realize that there's nothing left to smash. It's an overly simplistic way to end a battle and even if it works, it's still pretty bland.

Rather than shave the eyebrows off the Avengers and draw dicks on their faces, the X-men kindly put them back in their jet and program it to fly them home. Right, because keeping them around and tracking them for intel would just make too much sense. Not much else is said here. Gambit tries to get a little closer to Rogue to remind her that he still wants to fuck her, but there's little time for swapping body fluids. Rogue comes to the stirring conclusion that the X-men can't stay out of this battle with the Avengers. They have to play a part in this struggle. It makes sense, but should it really take an entire fucking issue to figure that out? I would argue there are more efficient ways to have such an epiphany, but they involve magic mushrooms and I suppose Rogue's method involves killing fewer brain cells.

When a woman gets angry it has the potential to be either a great porno or the first shot of World War IV. Giving Rogue hulk powers and pitting her against the Avengers is effective in creating an eventful brawl that you can still masturbate to, albeit with the aid of a turkey baster (if you don't know how then you obviously don't watch enough internet porn). It's also effective in continuing the struggle that began in the last issue. It's not unlike how the brawls in other tie-ins like Uncanny X-men and Wolverine and the X-men have unfolded. Unfortunately, this issue lacks something many of the other tie-ins have at least attempted. It lacks adding some actual plot to the battle. I'm not saying the battles have to be a fucking metaphor in a Chinese proverb. But it would be nice if the struggle in this issue did more than just turn Rogue green and help her realize that they need to fuck with the Avengers if they don't stop fucking with the X-men.

It certainly didn't help that some of the details of the battle were pretty inconsistent. Like where the fuck did Iron Man come from? Even if that's addressed in another tie-in, this is one instance where at least a reference would be helpful. And while Christos Gage was able to mix things up a bit by showing Rogue learning first hand why you shouldn't absorb the mind of a mentally unstable basket case like Moon Knight. Aside from pissing her off more and giving Gambit an opportunity to weave his way back into her panties, it really didn't amount to much. It was too predictable if not downright bland.

I didn't hate this issue, but I wasn't all that entertained by it either. Compared to Wolverine and the X-men #11, which actually did help fill in a sizable plot hole in the Avengers vs. X-men story, this didn't do anything aside from give the Jean Grey Institute staff more reasons to side with their fellow X-men. Then again, it wasn't like that shit was ever in doubt. Hell, it would have been more interesting if at least some on the team entertained the notion that helping Hope take on the Phoenix Force was a shitty idea. For some reason, that didn't happen. While the spectacle was nice and all, in an event full of spectacles it might as well be wet fart in a forest of assholes. I give X-men Legacy #267 a 2.5 out of 5. If you have a fetish for hot women with green skin, then this comic will give you something to jerk off to. If not, it's just something to read while taking a shit and not much else. Nuff said!