Uncanny X-Force #29 - Emo Noir Awesome

When I was in high school, there was this girl who was so pessimistic about everything that my friends and I would play this game to see just how she could take any kind of news and turn it into Zoloft commercial. One time we told her this guy in the neighborhood who just lost his house won the lottery. She scoffed and said, "Big whoop. Now he'll just be a rich douche-bag that'll overdose on blow. This world sucks." Another time we told her that one our asshole gym teachers got fired because he came to work drunk and took a piss on the principal's desk. She said, "Big whoop. Now they'll just hire some old drill sergeant to bust our ass for the rest of the year. This world sucks." At some point, we ran out of things to tell her. She was just that much of a downer and didn't have the good sense to do what the rest of us do and get drunk to forget how much the world sucks.

I find myself thinking about that girl a lot lately because she reminds me a lot of Psylocke in Uncanny X-Force. Now I don't know what sort of crazy shit that girl from my high school went through to make her such a pessimist, but Rick Remender has documented Psylocke's descent into this dark world of Marilyn Manson-esque goth quite extensively. She lost the man she loved in the Dark Angel Saga. She had to kill her own brother in Otherworld. She even slept with Fantomex because for some reason she just couldn't bring herself to get drunk enough. Now in the current arc, she finds out that she's going to be the leader of yet another dystopian world where she treats any kind of disorder the same way Catholic nuns deal with young boys who keep Playboys under their desk.

Uncanny X-Force #28 had X-Force on the run yet again as they tried to navigate a dystopian future where their whole policy of pre-emptive killing became law. It's as if they entered a world where George W. Bush became dictator of the world. But when Psylocke found out that she was playing the role of Dick Cheney, she did what most reasonable women do when they get news that bad. She runs off and tries to kill herself. But unlike these pussy ass teens that only cut themselves with a razor blade, Psylocke jammed a fucking katana through her abdomen. By all accounts, it's a lot more effective.

Uncanny X-Force #29 has her on her last gasp of life, but in doing so she did to this twisted dystopian future what Marty McFly almost did to the space time continuum when he almost boned his mother. Time is a real bitch, but in the Marvel universe it's more like that annoying rectal itch that you can smear with lotion and ignore. The lotion (or maybe the rectal itch) is the Punisher in this instance. After he and the rest of Psylocke's peace through murder crew sense someone is butt-fucking father time, he hunts down Psylocke and stops her before she can twist her katana to finish the job. So in the future, even the act of killing yourself is regulated. It's disturbing how probable that is given the current political climate.

Like every politician during election season, bitch Betsy's dystopian forces are quick to attack any threat to them being unseated from power. After the Punisher rips the katana out of her hand before she can gut herself any further, she tries a different approach in throwing herself off a building. Perhaps she should have led with that. I know there's the whole belly cutting thing from kung fu movies, but when there's a dystopian future at stake I think the gods understand taking a less glamorous approach. Unfortunately for Psylocke, Cable shows up and catches her. Psylocke yells at him for allowing this fucked up future to happen. Like any guy who has no other hobbies aside from shooting people, Cable claims that her iron fist in the future is what holds society together. For most people, that's like keeping you in line by crazy gluing fire ants to your asshole.

But before Cable can take Psylocke away to put her on suicide watch, AOA Nightcrawler shows up to teleport her away from Cable's clutches. They surmise in as reasonable a way a kill squad can that giving Betsy over to the people working for her twisted counterpart is a bad idea. Bitch Betsy's forces attempt to get her back, but non-Bitch Betsy continues to tap her inner emo by grabbing one of Deadpool's gun and trying to shoot herself. You may think this suicide stuff is getting a bit excessive, but keep in mind you're reading Uncanny X-Force. This is the same series that shot a kid in the head in the first fucking arc. If anything, I'm surprised Remender didn't play up this angle earlier. Add a Linkin Park album and some goth makeup and you've got yourself a story that Edgar Allen Poe himself would approve of.

But like the asshole that walks in on the girl when she's in the process of slitting her wrists, Betsy's crusade of self-destruction comes to an abrupt end when her older bitchier counterpart gets through to her and uses her telepathy to shut her mind down. Now less we forget, Psylocke does not have a healing factor. So that nasty self-inflicted wound to the gut is still bleeding profusely. So it's not like making her take a nap is going to save her life. The timeline of this dystopian future is still unraveling faster than OJ Simpson's alibi. So both X-Force and Bitch Betsy's forces know they have to save her less Father Time butt fucks them back.

At this point, Psylocke blacks out as she's hovering at that thin line between life, death, or taking way too much acid. There might be some acid in the mix because while walking this line, she has one of the nicer near death experiences that doesn't involve seeing all your old relatives or getting sodomized by Satan's minions. She meets up with Angel again. Well, a dream version of him anyways. They go on this nice, pleasant journey through what looks like a beautiful field that would get bulldozed and paved for a Wal Mart in a second if it were real. This is where Remender really plays up the emotion where Warren essentially tells Psylocke she needs to stop obsessing over what happened to him and live on. He's essentially giving the finger to every Evanescence song ever written.

Emotion in a series like Uncanny X-Force may seem out of place on the surface, but Rick Remender has been known to utilize it before and he definitely does that here to great effect. He doesn't just do it so readers have a chance to stop dry heaving from all the violence either. This moment plays off all the emotional turmoil Psylocke has been experiencing since the Dark Angel Saga. It actually feels like a logical progression of the story, which may not sound like much if you read comics hammered and just look at the pages with the most tits. But it is definitely the mark of a comic that sets itself apart by being extra awesome.

After Psylocke has her moment with Angel, she wakes up in Bitch Psylocke's domain. She's understandably pissed, but Bitch Psylocke is about as relaxed as Tom Brady after he knocks up another supermodel. This scene plays up emotion of a very different kind. They start discussing the merits of imposing this peace by essentially scaling up X-Force's strategy of kill first and ask questions after you've had time to get drunk. What's interesting here is neither Psylocke convinces the other that they're right. They just make their position clear and they're left to prove themselves.

But what about the rest of X-Force? Did Bitch Psylocke just bring her back to have a little chat with herself in a way that isn't a symptom of mental illness? Maybe that would happen in comics that sucked, but this is Rick fucking Remender. The rest of X-Force came with them and along the way they learn more about the circumstances that led to this dystopian shit stain of a timeline. Bitch Psylocke's people aren't interested in seeing their timeline fall apart so they tell them more about the event that led to this future, which was hinted at in the last issue. It involved the new Brotherhood of Mutants and their influence over an impressionable kid Apocalypse. If they want a shot at any future, they need to find a way to stop these assholes and they can't do that if they go back knowing the timeline they create is this shitty. It's sort of a catch 22 for this dystopian future, but that's as close as you'll get to hope in any dystopian future I guess.

So Bitch Psylocke sends X-Force back in time to take on the Brotherhood and Kid Apocalypse. It seems like X-Force is coming full circle. This series started with them taking on a kid Apocalypse. It seems it'll have to end with them taking him on yet again. But visiting the future does tend to create some unusual wrinkles as every episode of Dr. Who has shown. This future offered an ominous yet strangely boner inducing hint at the end. After the team leaves, Bitch Psylocke and Bitch Wolverine share a kiss that would only be disturbing if you pictured them doing it naked. Or maybe you may be into the whole elder porn shit, but even if you aren't it definitely has an impact. Given all the other emotional shit Remender has thrown into this book, the emotions of every reader should be more beat up than a Mexican in Joe Arpio's jurisdiction.

I'm not usually too emotion unless I'm watching a football game I bet money on. There's a time and a place for emotional stories and there's a time and a place for savoring reckless violence and getting drunk with your buddies in a bar you later trash when they try to serve you light beer. Rick Remender has had plenty of blood-soaked issues of Uncanny X-Force that would make even Bill Belicheck raise an eyebrow, but every now and then he does reserve a few issues here and there for emotions. This issue was one of those issues and like the many other he's done to this point, he does it with the kind of skill that soak the panties of every woman that ever bought a copy of 50 Shades of Grey.

Psylocke's emotional journey took center stage here, not just from her present self but from her future cold-hearted bitch self as well. All the emotions going back to losing Warren up until the clusterfuck that also involved fucking Fantomex is given a greater context. In a sense future Betsy sees what all the murder, heartache, and stench from Fantomex's semen has caused her. In a ways Remender shows the reader how Psylocke got to this point and what makes it compelling is that she and X-Force left without a clear indication that it'll change. The end left an ambiguous hint that Psylocke was still on this path, but her kissing Wolverine (a guy whose Asian fetish is only as famous as his redhead fetish) also hints that something else happened along the way. It's the kind of depth that Avengers vs. X-men had until very recently and one that makes this issue one that will make you feel for Psylocke in a way that almost makes it hard to jerk off to thoughts of her in a kimono...almost.

The emotion in this issue was still coupled with some action. However, that action was a bit light and underdone. That's okay though because the focus on this issue was the emotion. Sometimes it was left too ambiguous, but it leaves the door open for other emotional plots to be revisited after X-Force is done bathing in the blood the new Brotherhood and putting another bullet in between the eyes of Kid Apocalypse. Uncanny X-Force has many different elements and Remender has explored almost all of them in recent issues. Uncanny X-Force #29 helps tie together a story that has been evolving wonderfully since the end of the Otherworld arc and for that I give it a 4.5 out of 5. So if you want an epic story that's so epic that the writers actually forget the point of actually telling, read Fear Itself or the latest issue of Avengers vs. X-men. But if you want an epic story that's epic because the writer is actually sober (or high) enough to make it a worthwhile story, read Uncanny X-Force. Nuff said!

Wolverine and the X-men #4 - A Typical Day of Awesome

A typical day of school is like a traditional bout of diarrhea. No matter how much you may be used to it, you still despise the experience and you're left with a burning asshole at the end of it. Or maybe that's just what I get for coming to school drunk and stumbling into the girl's bathroom. So when a comic book comes along with the central premise of young misfit kids going to school, it has about as much appeal as sticking one's penis in a toaster while drunk (I can't be the only one). However, this isn't just any comic book. This is Wolverine and the X-men by Jason Aaron, one of the best things Marvel has invented since Emma Frost's tits. This may be the best and only chance that a day of school doesn't come off as painful as untreated rectal cancer.

Wolverine and the X-men has not only established itself as one of Marvel's best new titles. It's established itself as an X-book with a very different feel from the always dire and constant extinction threats so typical of X-books. The first arc introduced the Jean Grey Institute for Higher Learning and told a fun story about young mutants adjusting to a new school and homicidal kids trying to destroy that school with a living island. For once, I don't even have to make a joke about that or use a lame metaphor. That's actually what happened and you know what? It was pretty fucking awesome. It wasn't just a good story. It was fun, light-hearted, and hopeful. It actually made readers have faith in the future. In this day and age, that's a pretty novel concept. There are enough comics on the market that require a Prozac prescription to enjoy. It's refreshing to have a book that makes you smile without having to use the pages to roll a joint.

Wolverine and the X-men #4 continues the early growing pains of the Jean Grey Institute. The school was just attacked, damaged, and repaired. The students were likely scarred for life, but no worse than they would be if they went to a public school in Baltimore. It begins with Wolverine doing some narrations that describe how fucked up his job is. By day he's a mild mannered school headmaster. By night he's a ruthless killer with a drinking problem. It's like Superman if he was a crackhead. But some of those activities involve his work with X-Force and as was demonstrated by the end of the Dark Angel Saga (a saga you should have read and jerked off to several times by now) his night life is now affecting his day job. His staff are all understandably restless, but Wolverine isn't done making them wish they had dropped out. 

Once again, X-men Regenesis has helped some books mesh with others. It's the kind of coherence you don't usually get even while sober. But it's like the hot sauce of comics. It makes everything taste better. Remember those activities I mentioned with Wolverine and X-Force? Well one of them led to a young, pre-tyrant Apocalypse. Only now he calls himself Genesis. Rather than surround Genesis with the gritty world of secret mutant kill squads, Wolverine decides to enroll him in school. I honestly think he's better off with the kill squads because pretty much everyone seems to notice how he looks. Not many have lips like his that look like someone shot Stephen Tyler with bee venom and got him stoned. Needless to say, the others aren't too welcoming and that's probably not a good thing for an aspiring tyrant.

But Genesis isn't the only relic from Wolverine's late-night debacles with X-Force. At the end of the Dark Angel Saga, Warren emerged completely changed. He wasn't Arcangel anymore, but he wasn't Warren Worthington III either. He's completely amnesic and has no memory of who he was. So he looks in the mirror, sees that he has wings, and makes the perfectly logical conclusion that he's a real angel. I personally would have assumed that I just took a bad hit of LSD, but I guess angel works just as well. It's not enough to just look the part for him either. He has to act the part as well. So he flies off and finds a father and two kids who just went through the traumatic experience of burying a pet dog. Warren digs him up and offers to bring him back. Not only are the kids not very enthusiastic about this, but I'm pretty sure they'll need therapy for the rest of their natural lives.

But these are just the regular antics of new students in a new school. My old school didn't have angels and teenage tyrants, but if an angel or a kid that looked like Genesis showed up it wouldn't gain nearly as much attention as what the seniors did to the incoming freshmen, which usually involved crazy glue and thumb tacks. For this new school, Jason Aaron takes some time off from making shit blow up and homicidal kids and actually depicts a lecture with the students at the Jean Grey Institute. He even brings in yet another relic of Uncanny X-Force in Deathlok. He's only about as intimidating as my 10th-grade algebra teacher and he gives the students a lecture about the future. Since the X-men deal with the future (sometimes literally) on a regular basis, it's not an unreasonable thing to educate the kids about.

This may not be as exciting as seeing the X-men take on an army of Frankenstein monsters or a living island like they did in the first arc, but it has some real relevance here. It offers insight into what life is like in the Jean Grey Institute. Now the shallow douche-bags of comic fandom may thumb their nose at that, but stuff like this helps add depth to the X-men because it shows just what they're doing on a non-heroic basis to make the world better. I agree. Fighting monsters is more exciting, but it helps when there's reason behind why they need to kick the asses of said monsters. Deathlok goes through the class and tells them the odds of them going one path or the other. It gets to the heart of what Wolverine wanted for this school, which was means for mutants to be themselves and not listen to aspire to be Cyclops's bitch.

It's not without drama though. It's worth noting that not everyone seems to know of all the shit that went down during the Dark Angel Saga. Iceman, who established himself as one of Wolverine's most trusted X-men, is among them. He's also one of Warren's oldest friends. So when he finds out that Warren flew off to mentally scar a family, he gets understandably upset. He doesn't offer to pay the therapist bills for the kids, but he does get Warren away from them and finds out that Warren has no idea who he is or who the X-men are. For any number of reasons, this upsets him because it shows that despite being one of the Original Five he hasn't exactly been kept in the loop. Now he probably regrets wasting time on snowmen and internet porn.

It's not the only dramatic moment in the issue. While Deathlok is revealing the potential futures for some students, he hesitates to predict the future for Genesis. When he's confronted, we get a brief flash-forward of a potential future that involves Deathlok being burnt to a crisp and Idie being a mature, very boneable leader. That future also shows that going to school didn't stop Genesis from becoming the Apocalypse that gets a boner every time someone inflicts mass genocide.

This is somewhat of an odd scene because it's not entirely clear if this is a real Days of Futures Past type future or just something Deathlok is conjuring. It may certainly rub some readers the wrong way to see Kid Omega and Idie coddling under Genesis's wrath. It doesn't help that Kid Omega seems to have the emblem of the Phoenix Force on his costume, this before the events of Avengers vs. X-men are resolved. Given all the alternate futures in Marvel, this just seems excessive and cliched. However, it does send a message. Genesis still has the potential to be dangerous and school won't exactly help. Again, a kill squad sounds like a viable alternative here.

In many ways, Genesis's potential future and Warren's new state are a microcosm of what the Jean Grey Institute is facing. Not everybody is okay with it. Iceman confronts Wolverine about it and makes his anger about Warren painfully apparent. He doesn't seem to care that Wolverine was keeping X-Force alive. He only cares that doing so seemed to have mind-fucked his friend. Wolverine doesn't mince words. He explains both in words and in narration that the school is about hope and nourishing vulnerable minds before they become genocidal tyrants. He reveals that Warren has been enrolled in the school. Never mind that Warren has to be older than the rest of the student body. Hell, he was banging Psylocke in Uncanny X-Force and it's really not clear if Psylocke is like those teachers that can't help but bone their students. It's almost as if Warren was de-aged. Jason Aaron doesn't offer any explanation to this and it would be nice if he did, but the point of this conclusion is to show what the Jean Grey Institute represents and in that respect he succeeds. And wouldn't you know it? He does it without blowing shit up.

Once Wolverine is done with his little monologue, everything ends on a fairly upbeat note. But Jason Aaron just seems more impatient than a crackhead in withdraw and offers a preview into the next storyline. It starts with Kitty Pryde being sick and throwing up during class. Usually that's just the result of someone who couldn't sleep off a hangover, but this is something more serious. When Kitty stumbles into the bathroom, she makes a shocking discovery. Apparently, she didn't have a note on her panties that said "don't be a fool, wrap your tool." She also appears to have miracle grow in her uterus because she's pregnant. I now leave the readers for a moment of silence to mourn the eventual destruction of Kitty's snatch.

So an ending full of hope turns into a scene from Species. Now someone getting pregnant in school is nothing new. We live in a country where 15-year-olds get knocked up in locker rooms all the time. What makes Wolverine and the X-men an awesome book is how it presents these issues. It's not done in a dire, world-ending sort of manner. There's conflict, but there's hope. There are assholes, but there is heart. Wolverine and Deathlok both come off as assholes in this issue at times, but it's always balanced with a genuine desire to make this school work. That's the main theme of this issue. It shows the day-to-day bullshit that the X-men have to deal with in order to function. It takes time from islands that want to devour schools and shows just how this new school functions. It also sets up a pretty fucked up story after and one that is sure to require the world's greatest gynecologist when all is said and done.

The only area that may turn some readers off is the tone of the issue. It's organized like one big setup. Some may not appreciate that Jason Aaron is trying to slow down here and show how the Jean Grey Institute functions on a logistical level. Some just like it when shit blows up. They may or may not be future NASCAR fans, but they may have a point on some levels. This issue mostly set up plots for the future. It established Genesis as a new character with an uncertain status. It established Warren as someone whose mind has been fried, frozen, and reheated. It also established that Kitty Pryde may or may have some kinky tastes that would make great Japanese anime porn. But it didn't do much with any of this. And some may not like the tone of Deathlok's vision of the future. In the end this issue is like an extended trailer for an action movie, but without shitty 80s rock music in the background.

I can't fault Jason Aaron for easing into the next arc. Kieron Gillen did the same thing with Uncanny X-men, although one could argue that he did it in a better way. This issue does a great job of exploring the less obvious aspects of the Jean Grey Institute. Aaron's style is as engaging, enjoyable, and fun as ever. It just lacks the same impact that Kieron Gillen gave Uncanny X-men #4. That's not a criticism. Not everyone can raise the bar, less the air grow too thin and everyone suffocates. Wolverine and the X-men #4 is a worthy and entertaining addition to this amazing series. That's why I give it a 4.5 out of 5. It's almost awesome enough to ease the childhood trauma of my own school experience. Almost being the operative word. Nuff said!