Scanned Thoughts: Uncanny X-men #24

I get a lot of shit for being brutally honest sometimes. I’ve been slapped in the face, kicked in the balls, and insulted in ways that would earn most people a hefty fine from the FCC. But I don’t apologize for being honest. If I think someone looks fat and ugly and should never take their shirt off in public, I’m going to point that out. I think I would be a much bigger dick if I just flat out lied and claimed they had the body of The Rock. Maybe it’s just the drunk in me, but I think keeping secrets tends to do more damage than any other illicit activities that people bitch about. Secrets can destroy families and ruin reputations. Hell, one President was almost impeached for lying about a blowjob. People take this shit pretty seriously. Now that’s not to say that Charles Xavier’s secrets are as innocent as a blowjob, but he got lawyers involved and whenever lawyers get involved in a secret, someone is about to get screwed over in ways that rival only the IRS. Original Sin has finally tied into the pages of Uncanny X-men and that means Xavier’s last will and testament is about to be revealed. Perhaps he knew it would piss a lot of people off so he made sure someone like She-Hulk was present to read it. I guess he didn’t trust a Johnny Cochran wannabe to defend himself from pissed off X-men. Now these secrets, which were only teased in the previous issue, are supposed to be revealed in Uncanny X-men #24. I’m going to assume that if Clinton can’t get away with lying about a blowjob, then Charles Xavier has no chance of not kicking up a shit storm.

The problem is that shit storm can’t even start to stink until Cyclops is present and at the moment, most of the staff in the Jean Grey Institute hate his guts and want to piss on his grave. But this isn’t as big a problem as it seems. Beast, who has since become the hairiest douche-bag not used on a 70s porn set, reveals that he knows where Cyclops’s base is located and he has always known. He just chooses not to do jack shit with it, even though he has been the one bitching and moaning that Cyclops should be thrown in jail.

Get ready because I’m about to go on another anti-Beast rant. I know some loyal readers of this blog are sick of that shit, but I can’t help it if this hairy dipshit keeps making it necessary. It’s one thing to just piss and moan about Cyclops for making decisions that nobody else could make while doing jack shit to give him more options. It’s quite another when he has the information he needs to get what he wants and he doesn’t do shit with it. The man could just text the info to Maria Hill and she would be on Cyclops’ ass within 10 minutes, probably with a bottle of lube. But he doesn’t because he doesn’t want his life to be dictated by Cyclops’ life? I don’t care how fucking smart he claims to be, that’s the dumbest shit ever said by someone not named George W. Bush. He’s not just a douche now. He’s fucking lazy too. Do we really need any more reasons to hate his guts?

I’ll ease up on the meth and get back to the more pressing issue at hand, which is Xavier’s will. There is another problem and for once, it has less to do with Beast’s douche-baggery and more to do with Wolverine’s douche-baggery. It turns out he didn’t think he would be too successful as the headmaster of a school. He probably figured no good headmaster ever succeeded with a drinking problem and anger management issues. So he decided to sign the Jean Grey Institute over to Charles Xavier when he was still alive, assuming he was going to fuck it up at some point. Given his history, I can’t say that’s an unreasonable precaution to take.

For some reason, this surprises She-Hulk. She apparently wasn’t watching when Cyclops went Dark Phoenix, waged war on the Avengers, and killed Charles Xavier in a rage. To be fair, the Phoenix tends to fuck people up and he was provoked, even by Xavier. Even Rachel tries to point that out, but with Hank McCoy in the room, his douche-baggery will completely overshadow that fact. I would think She-Hulk would at least have seen this shit trending on Twitter. Plus, she’s friends with plenty of Avengers who saw it. Hell, she’s even slept with a few. And she didn’t know? I don’t care how hot she looks in a pants suit, she has no excuse.

She-Hulk’s ignorance aside, this situation only became a problem when none of them considered the possibility that Cyclops might be the one that kills Charles Xavier. For that reason, everybody starts assuming that Xavier left the school to Cyclops. Again, it’s not wholly unreasonable. Wolverine already admitted that he’s not confident he’ll be a competent headmaster and at the time, Storm was married to Black Panther and queen of a whole fucking country. Why wouldn’t he leave it to his most trusted students? It makes too much sense, which is why it’s probably bullshit. But they don’t realize that and She-Hulk says they need to bring him over anyways because the law is nothing if not inconvenient.

While this legal clusterfuck is just getting warmed up, there’s another side-plot going on that may or may not be involved in said clusterfuck. In the previous issue, we were introduced to a new mutant whose powers involve just blowing the shit up around him. He’s basically a walking Mythbusters re-run. Naturally, this is the kind of mutant that everyone can point to and claim Sentinels are both necessary and less scary. The sad part is they might even have a point. I still argue it’s not as scary as having to deal with SHIELD and Maria Hill. After the previous arc, I’ve no confidence in her ability to deal with mutants.

That doesn’t stop her from trying to deal with this guy. His name is Matthew Malloy and he’s in the process of shitting himself after blowing up a busy street in North Carolina. He has no idea what’s happening to him and Maria Hill is talking to him like a fake news caster on Saturday Night Live via drone. She doesn’t try to befriend him or calm him down. She just starts asking him about all the damage he’s caused. She might as well walk into a doctor’s office and ask some guy about his explosive diarrhea.

Once again, Maria Hill fails miserably at containing a mutant issue. She even manages to lose a couple more SHIELD agents in the process. She might be qualified to run an organization like SHIELD, but she would suck as a counselor, a hostage negotiator, or a suicide hotline rep. It’s still not entirely clear who this Matthew Malloy is or why he’s losing his shit at a time like this. His new story doesn’t seem to fit a story that’s supposed to be about Charles Xavier revealing his deepest, darkest secrets. But if nothing else, this scene helps show why Dark Beast was able to fuck with SHIELD so effectively in the previous arc.

While Maria Hill is finding another way to fuck up mutant relations, the Jean Grey Institute staff arrives at Cyclops’ not-so-secret base in Canada. It’s not pleasant. It’s about as pleasant as a hangover on Monday. It’s so unpleasant that Cyclops thinks it’s a trick at first, which would be a new low even for Beast, but Magik verifies that lawyers have gotten involved. And even Beast’s douche-baggery hasn’t gotten to the point where he’ll get a lawyer involved just to fuck with him, although at the rate he’s going he’ll get to that point soon enough.

Lost in the midst of this bitterness is Dazzler’s new look. In the previous issue, she decided she was too fucked up by what happened with Mystique to be the preppy disco queen pop star. So she decided to go all Courtney Love, minus the heroine and yeast infections. And nobody fucking notices? I get that Xavier’s will is more pressing, but most people notice when a pretty blonde becomes a pissed off goth. Hell, I’m pretty sure half the movies on the Hallmark Channel are built around that premise.

At the very least, Dazzler doesn’t completely fade into the background. After the rest of Cyclops’ team voice concern about him traveling alone to an institute full of X-men who hate his guts, some decide to go with him. This includes Kitty Pryde, Magik, Emma Frost, and the new-look Dazzler. It’s not nearly enough to oppose the kind of douche-baggery that Beast will probably confront them with if shit goes south. But at least Cyclops can say he’ll go into battle with four beautiful women by his side. Even if he loses the battle, he can still say he wins on some levels.

Cyclops arrives at the Jean Grey Institute. She-Hulk is there waiting for them, probably eager to get this shit over with and collect her obscene legal fee. She starts reading the will and that’s where we finally get the first of Xavier’s ball-busting revelations. What could it be? Did he mind-fuck Jean Grey into wearing a G-string? Did he put a video camera in Emma Frost’s shower? Did he secretly water down Wolverine’s whiskey? It’s actually something way more fucked up. He married Mystique.

Let me say that again in as sober a tone as I can manage. Charles Xavier married Mystique, as in the same shape-shifting Mystique whose idea of a fun afternoon involves tormenting the X-men. Now this might not qualify as a completely WTF type revelation. It was already revealed in All-New X-men that Xavier knocked up Mystique at some point. While most people don’t bother getting married to get knocked up these days, much to the dismay of the Rick Santorums of the world, it’s not completely unreasonable to believe that they didn’t end up married, if only because of a few too many tequila shooters in Las Vegas.

This revelation has everyone in the X-men putting on their best WTF face while Emma Frost is laughing hysterically. They might not even have heard the part where She-Hulk mentions that because she’s legally Xavier’s widow, she by default inherits the institute. That’s right. Fucking Mystique now owns the X-men’s main base of operations. I want to say that’s fucked up, but I can’t stop myself from laughing and for once it isn’t because of the weed. Now this raises a lot of fucked up questions, namely how the fuck Xavier ended up marrying someone with a rich history of screwing over the X-men. But that’s probably a story that would require more lawyers than the state of New York could provide.

Yet somehow, this is not conveyed as Charles Xavier’s most fucked up secret. Maybe at the time, him being married to Mystique wasn’t as fucked up as he thought. The way he wrote it into his will, he was almost casual about it. He’s like, “Yeah, I married Mystique. So what?” I was expecting to have another reason not to respect Charles Xavier, but now I can’t help but respect him more. Anyone who can convince Mystique to marry him deserves Jay-Z style street cred. But there was another issue he considered more serious, which he recorded in a hologram. And it’s an issue that hints the side-plot involving Matthew Malloy might actually mean something after all. I still can’t bring myself to give too many shits about that guy. I’m still laughing my ass off at the idea of Xavier marrying Mystique and I’ll probably keep laughing for the rest of the week. Guess that means I’ll save some money on weed for once.

Well in the end, Xavier definitely kicked up a shit storm, but it wasn’t the kind of fecal typhoon anyone was expecting. A part of me was like, "Holy fuck, Xavier married Mystique?!" Then after a few shots of tequila, I was like, "Holy fuck, Xavier married Mystique...nice!" Let’s face it, Mystique is pretty fucking hot. She’s also an unstable, unrepentant sociopath. Now I’m not going to justify some of the sick shit she’s done, but I will point out that crazy bitches like that tend to be awesome in bed. And for a guy who used to be paralyzed, I can’t say I blame Xavier. This strikes me as one of those Kurt Cobain/Courtney Love type relationships, one where the circumstances are so destructive yet they find a way to make up for it. Only this time, there was less heroine involved. Now I know there will be a certain segment of fans that have already punched their computer screens or strangled a puppy in their rage, but let’s face it. This is not the most fucked up secret Xavier could have had. Compared to mind-fucking his students and lusting after a teenage Jean Grey, this should come as a relief. The man got to bone Mystique before he died. Nobody can say he didn’t live a complete, fulfilling life. It might not have been his worst secret, which STILL hasn’t been revealed, but it certainly made everyone’s asshole within a five mile radius clench. In addition, we now know why we should give a fuck about Matthew Malloy. There are still some inconsistencies, many of which have to do with Wolverine and Beast’s rage boner for Cyclops. But if nothing else, this comic provides some entertaining “Oh fuck!” moments that can be enjoyed both drunk and sober. For that, I give Uncanny X-men #24 an 8 out of 10. Just how bad can the secrets of a man who married Mystique end up being at this point? Xavier could reveal that he bathed in the blood of baby kittens on a dare. It still wouldn’t matter. He got to marry, bone, and knock up Mystique. That’s an epic win if ever there was one. Nuff said!