Extraordinary X-men #2: Nuff Said!

Hear me, X-men fans! We are fucked. Game over. No need for debate. We are truly and utterly fucked like a Tijuana crack whore in withdraw. Inhumans are wiping out mutants. Cyclops has been turned into the worst villain since the guy who invented unskippable video ads. The O5 X-men have ditched each other and being X-men in general. No lube was applied. The X-men and the entire mutant race were just fucked with an oversized dildo. And that story is the new basis for the X-men comics in Extraordinary X-men. Granted, the first issue was lacking, but it laid the foundation for so many things that have the potential to be awesome. But can it be awesome? That's why I'm reviewing Extraordinary X-men #2 with an extra bottle of whiskey. I think that's the only way I can give X-men fans the assessment they deserve.

If mutants and the X-men are going to be screwed over, then they might as well endure it together. Hence, Magik is going on a bit of a recruitment run. She managed to drag Colossus away from a life of farm work and vodka, most likely by promising that X-Haven has better martinis. Now, she’s off to recruit Nightcrawler, who was last seen reciting Bible verses to a bunch of demons. That or he’s been re-watching Pulp Fiction. He must have misquoted because he ended up getting his ass kicked, so much so that only his tail is left behind. That’s some Old Testament shit right there.

The only one who might function in a world where mutants are this screwed is Old Man Logan. He comes from a world where the X-men are dead and not just screwed. So when Storm and Iceman come by to recruit him, he’s not all that eager to join. A few traumatic flashbacks about how he killed the X-men in his world probably makes him wish he were more senile. It’s got some emotion, but not as much as it could have. It’s still a sweet moment though.

Oh, and Cyclops is dead apparently. Yeah, Storm dropped that bomb. Don’t clench your asshole too hard though. She offers no context or detail. Dead in the Marvel universe can mean so many things. And unless a tombstone or a body is on panel, take it with a grain of salt and some watered down light beer. Still no further details on why the fuck everyone hates Cyclops. It can’t just be that he banged Jean Grey and Emma Frost. At the very least, it meant he died happy.

O5 Jean Grey is trying hard to avoid that fate. Storm came to her hoping to recruit her back to the X-men. O5 Jean told her to piss off, giving her Old Man Logan’s location for good measure. Instead, she’s hanging out at a college party, hooking up with a boy who isn’t Cyclops, Hank McCoy, or Wolverine. Can’t say I blame her, but this guy looks like an underpaid IT intern. The fact that he gets to kiss O5 Jean is probably the highlight of his life.

Also, she reveals that her and O5 Hank didn’t work out. I’ll give everyone a moment of silence to commemorate that revelation. Then, I’ll smoke a joint, raise a glass, and dance happy with everyone else who felt that relationship was a contrived pile of dog shit.

Don’t expect this new relationship with Mr. No-Name-College-Hookup to be much more meaningful. As soon as they leave the bar, he tries to carefully navigate her way into Jean Grey’s panties, as any heterosexual college male would be inclined to do. Then, she senses a couple of Donald Trump supporters beating up an innocent mutant. Being the kind of person who has a big problem with that shit, O5 Jean steps in and gives them a taste of mini-Dark Phoenix. It’s not enough to swallow a star, but it is enough to make a bunch of redneck racists shit themselves.

She succeeds in protecting the mutant. She also succeeds in ending her relationship with Mr. No-Name-College-Hookup. Apparently, she didn’t let him know that she’s a mutant. I’m guessing that slipped her mind, along with details like she has a daughter from an apocalyptic alternate future running around. Guess she was worried that would kill his boner. Now, he’s disgusted by her and will probably let every other boy at college know they’ve been fantasizing about hooking up with a mutant. It won’t stop them from jerking off, but it will definitely kill her college career.

On top of that, the mutant she saved wasn’t even a mutant. It was an Inhuman. At this point, she’s well within her right to go Dark Phoenix and give the world a big cosmic, “Fuck it!” She doesn’t exercise that right, but let’s face it. Nobody would blame her if she did.

Colossus and Magic are only slightly less pissed off than O5 Jean. They now have to find the assholes that ripped Nightcrawler’s tail off. This means heading into a sewer and fighting the same demon creatures that didn’t appreciate Nightcrwaler’s biblical knowledge. In other words, it’s just another Thursday for the X-men in a world where their kind is more and more fucked with each passing day. Hell, beating up demon creatures might be therapeutic for them.

Too bad Storm and Iceman don’t have something to attack. They return to X-Haven with exactly zero new recruits. They do get to show off their fancy new Cerebra, which happens to be built into a Sentinel. I don’t know how Forge thought that was a good idea, but I have to assume he was really drunk. They find out what happened to Nightcrawler and let Forge know that there’s another Wolverine running around. Even if Forge is still drunk, I doubt he’s all that surprised. It’s another case of muted emotions, but it does create potential for Old Man Logan to make things awkward and I’m all for that.

Storm has some nice inner monologues as she’s helping the residents of X-Haven, who are probably still adjusting to how fucked their kind is. As this goes on, Colossus and Magik continue fighting demons in the sewer. It’s a nice mix of drama and action, helping to set a nice tone. Sure, mutants are still fucked, but they’re adapting as best they can and still finding demons to beat up. That’s healthy by X-men standards.

What’s not healthy? How about Sinister? Yeah, in terms of the X-men’s health, he’s the equivalent of explosive diarrhea. It turns out he’s the one who lured Colossus and Rasputin into this fight. Nightcrawler was just the bait. I guess this answers the question whether the X-men could be any more fucked. According to Sinister, the answer is a definitive “fuck yes!”

Sinister attacks Magik and Colossus. Fighting him is nowhere near as therapeutic. However, there’s a problem with this. It ends up revealing that X-Haven isn’t just some remote location in the middle of nowhere with shitty wi-fi. It’s built right out of Limbo. And last I checked, Magik made Limbo her personal demonic playground. So anything that fucks her up in turn fucks up Limbo. I don’t know who the X-men used as a real estate broker, but their ass deserves to be fired and deep fried.

And where is Old Man Logan off in all this? He’s Logan. He’s getting drunk at a bar. Where else would he rather be? But as he’s downing enough whiskey to kill an entire battalion of Civil War re-enactors, he gets a psychic message from O5 Jean. Apparently, being around an old, drunk version of Wolverine is less dangerous than staying in college. Sure, this old version of Wolverine still probably wants to bang her. Then again, I’m sure most of the boys in college wanted to do the same so I guess it’s not that much of a difference.

So...is it awesome?

Short answer, it's getting there. Long answer, it still has a handful of WTFs to work through. We do get a taste of these answers at times. We learn Cyclops is "dead." I put that in quotes on purpose because death in the Marvel universe always comes with an asterisk. We also learn where X-Haven is. We even learn that O5 Jean Grey's efforts to hook up with someone who isn't Cyclops continue to fail. That's all well and good, but the non-sober crowd is still going to be confused.

That same crowd isn't going to overdose on feels with the reunion of Storm and Old Man Logan either, but there are signs that the cloud from the shit storm is starting to lift. Even after I sobered up, I was still excited about the direction of this series and for once it wasn't because I had an erection. I'm still confident that the extent to which the X-men are fucked will be revealed in Extraordinary X-men. Whether or not it's awesome or nothing more than toilet paper for Fox's lawyers is to be determined.

Final Score: 7 out of 10