Uncanny X-men #22 Preview - Enter A Pissed Off Blonde

As Hugh Hefner can attest, pretty blondes help make life worth living. They are one of God’s way of making all the annoying drive for heterosexual men to spread our seed worth it. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that hot blondes get away with some pretty fucked up shit. Just look at Anna Nichole Smith. Hell, my penis still misses her. But in addition to having undeniable sex appeal, they can be pretty badass. I would rather run from a T-rex than run from a pissed off hot blonde. They might not be able to maim me to the same extent as others, but they’re way more likely to get away with it. I’ve yet to meet a pretty blonde that hasn’t been able to charm her way out of a speeding ticket.

In the context of X-men, most of my remarks regarding hot blondes involve Emma Frost. And while she is a major player in Uncanny X-men and the X-men comics as a whole, she’s not the only pretty blonde with a high profile (who aren’t also clones). Dazzler, a character once associated with disco and roller skates, managed to claw her way back to relevance thanks in large part to her development in Greg Pak’s Xtreme X-men. She seemed poised to cash in when Maria Hill enlisted her to join SHIELD as their mutant liaison. She would get to fight the good fight and run around in a sexy skin-tight white uniform. That’s as close to win-win as can be without involving bacon and Jack Daniels.

Then she got cast aside again, but this time not because of negligence. After her first mission ended up a bust, Mystique drugged her and took her place. Since then, she has been playing with SHIELD’s vast resources the same way monkey plays with a machine gun. And when she’s not squandering taxpayer money, she’s creating a new mutant community in Madripoor and using MGH created from Dazzler’s blood to fuel it. This kept Dazzler out of the picture until Uncanny X-men #21 when she was finally rescued by Magneto. Now she’s finally back and able to contribute and a preview from Comic Book Resources shows that she’s more than pissed off enough to make a difference.

CBR: Uncanny X-men #22 PREVIEW

• The war between the Uncanny X-Men and S.H.I.E.L.D. heats up!
• Can Cyclops and his team track down the source of this new brand of sentinels? And is S.H.I.E.L.D. really behind these attacks?

It’s a beautiful and horrifying thing when a beautiful blonde gets pissed off at the right people. Even if those on the other end of her wrath have killer robots at their disposal, they’re still at a disadvantage. While the Mysterio knock-off behind the Sentinels might or might not be responsible for what Mystique did to Dazzler. She needs to take it out on someone and it might as well be the asshole who has been attacking mutants with Sentinels since this series was relaunched.

 

It’s also a beautiful sight to see Magneto’s little side-plot converge with the Sentinel plot. At one point, Magneto’s story took a completely different direction. He left Uncanny X-men and did his own thing in his solo series. Those things usually involve more gruesome murder, but he’s found a way to make it work for him. Along the way, he saw what Mystique was building on Madripoor and was more sickened than a vegan in Ted Nugant’s trophy room. That gave him more than enough incentive to free Dazzler and fuck up Mystique’s operation. Maybe now he can do the same to the Sentinels.

 

While the outcome of that battle promises to be pretty damn lopsided, I’m more interested in the aftermath. Dazzler tried employing her new skills at SHIELD and the only thing she accomplished was being added to the long list of women Mystique has turned into her bitch. Would she really be willing to give it another try? And would SHIELD even be willing to trust someone who let themselves get replaced by a shape-shifter? I’m pretty sure Secret Invasion made that a job requirement at SHIELD. If not SHIELD, then why not Cyclops’s team? Or why not head back to the Jean Grey Institute? Wolverine is going to be dead soon. They’ll need someone else in a leadership role besides Storm and a pretty blonde makes a great leader to a bunch of teenage mutants. My old history teacher, whose bra size still enchants my dreams from time to time, can attest to that. Where will Dazzler go? What will she do? I don’t know, but she’s a hot pissed off blonde and that alone should generate plenty of possibilities. Nuff said!