Wolverine and the X-men #28 - Flat-Footed Semi-Awesome

Sometimes it takes a number of painful lessons to get a point across and more often than not, it takes even more to get those lessons across to hormonal, whiney teenagers. I know I harp on teenagers a lot on this blog, but I’m only speaking from both experience and personal trauma. Reading Wolverine and the X-men and seeing mutant teenagers experience trauma in the form of a trip to the Savage Land doesn’t make me feel a lick of sympathy. It only makes me envy the students of the Jean Grey Institute for at least having something to brag about that didn’t involve banging one of the art teachers.

Despite my envy, I’ve enjoyed Jason Aaron’s efforts at giving the students of the Jean Grey Institute some obscenely harsh life lessons in the Savage Land. Hell, they’ve been a lot harsher than even he planned since his asshole brother, Dog Logan, decided to show up from the future, rough him up, and fuck with his students. If that weren’t enough, a number of high tech poachers have also joined the lesson and have decided to add mutants to their list of things they want stuffed and mounted on their wall. It may have some subtle hippie rhetoric from PETA and the environmental douche-bags that scold you whenever you order a steak, but it’s still plenty entertaining.

Wolverine and the X-men #27 showed Wolverine’s lesson plan for his students going horribly wrong. His students, who are a bunch of inexperienced teenagers who have yet to shit out their excessive hormones, didn’t exactly become Superfriends in their efforts to survive. They didn’t even ask questions when Dog Logan showed up and offered to be a substitute. It’s odd how teenagers will always question authority when it comes to sex, pot, and borrowing the car. But when it comes to creepy bearded guys with serious daddy issues, they just shrug their shoulders and go with it. And that, my friends, should tell you everything you need to know about teenagers.

The lesson continues to unfold in Wolverine and the X-men #28, but not without another quick preface from the past. Throughout this arc, Jason Aaron has sprinkled in a few quick flashbacks to add some context to the overall story. And like sprinkles on an ice cream sunday, they can sweeten the deal. But like piss in your coffee, it can also make it suck (see the first arc of Cable and X-Force). In this instance, thankfully, it’s the former. We see Wolverine musing over how much he wants to protect these kids. Given that he’s been such an unapologetic douche-bag lately whose sole purpose is to find new ways to hate on Cyclops, it’s a welcome shift. He does genuinely care about more than Jean Grey’s pussy and I think that sort of sentiment is long overdue for a guy like him.

But that isn’t the only flashback we get. Like a drunk Doc Brown we skip ahead just a little bit to reveal another little tidbit that also helps improve Wolverine’s douche-factor. In previous issues, you could make the argument that Wolverine was just playing the part of a sadistic gym teacher that got caught screwing the principal’s wife and was stuck teaching gym for the rest of his career. Throwing his students in the middle of the Savage Land without much preparation certainly puts him up there with those same teachers that threw basketballs at your head if he caught you nodding off in the middle of class. But apparently, he had a little meeting with Broo shortly after they arrived to let him know where the X-jet was in case shit got heavy. It’s like a gym teacher keeping some morphine on hand in case he gets too rough. He’s still a douche, but he’s prepared to make up for it, which is more than I can say for half the teachers I ever had.

The only problem is that it still doesn’t address what the hell even happened to Broo a few issues ago. That has been an ongoing problem with this arc since it began. Wolverine and the X-men #25 ended on such a dramatic note with Broo waking up from his coma and Wolverine swapping spit with Storm. Yet we’ve had absolutely no fucking explanation or hint of any juicy pillow talk that transpired after. It been all about teenagers trying to survive attacks by dinosaurs. Granted, that’s probably more entertaining, but fuck if it isn’t a gross oversight. At the very least, this scene shows that Broo hasn’t completely lost his shit.

This information does come in handy because Broo manages to lead Idie to the X-jet by swapping her bible. While I doubt Wolverine expected that he would have to deal with his dipshit long lost brother, Dog Logan, I’m sure he’s glad he had a backup plan. That’s usually the kind of shit that only Cyclops thinks of. It came in handy here because it got Idie to the X-jet. It also ensured that she was there when he clawed his way half-digested out of the stomach of a T-Rex. And no, that’s not a colorful jungle metaphor or a poop joke. Wolverine actually had to do that. Who else aside from him could handle being digested by a T-Rex and clawing his way out? He’s a douche, but he’s still more badass than we mere mortals can ever hope to be.

Back with the other students, they’re basically getting a new lesson now with Dog Logan. But like learning calculus from Paris Hilton, it doesn’t exactly sink in. And like the schools Paris Hilton thinks she went to, it eventually devolves into a bunch of teenagers bitching and moaning. Because of this, they’re not exactly prepared when one of the high tech robot poachers that have been chasing them decides to target them the same way a hungry grizzly targets a wounded dear. So not only is Dog Logan a douche, he’s a really shitty teacher.

But this scene accomplishes something other than showing that Dog Logan doesn’t know how to reach teenagers. It shows that these young mutants are still teenagers at heart. As such they don’t take kindly to authority, they incessantly bicker with one another, and they couldn’t degree which direction was north if they all had a compass glued to their wrist. And some, like Eye Boy, get fed up and decide to lash out at the machines before they attack by becoming badass just long enough to shoot them. But sadly, the rest of the team is too busy bickering to notice. It’s a painfully accurate portrayal of how teenagers are and is sure to give me nightmares of third period English during my junior year tonight.

Dog Logan, having such limited experience in dealing with teenagers, gets exceedingly pissed off that these punk teenagers aren’t listening to him. That only means he’s failing once again to prove his dick is bigger than Wolverine’s. It makes for a nice moment that shows just how big a douche Dog truly is. He’s getting pissed off at a bunch of teenagers for not listening to him. He might as well get pissed off for the sky being blue or for his shit being brown. That or Wolverine actually did a halfway decent job of conditioning these students to have decent bullshit detectors. It may not help them survive in a jungle full of dinosaurs, but it will go a long ways to avoiding assholes whose lessons are best left ignored and/or forgotten. There’s another nightmare about one of my old English teachers in there, but I’ll skip it and just take a bong hit to help avoid further recollections.

Having failed to fuck with his students, Wolverine eventually catches up with Dog. Idie and Broo are with him and he’s understandably pissed. Nobody is allowed to torment his students but him and given the whole sibling rivalry, they have plenty of incentive to beat the everloving shit out of each other. It has all the makings of an epic battle that the rest of the students get to watch. It sure beats the hell out of watching your typical violent TV shows that don’t involve animated coyotes or road runners. But it’s not all that epic in the end. The battle between Cyclops and Wolverine in Schism was a trillion times more awesome in scale. It’s still satisfying to see Dog get his ass kicked, but not as satisfying as you want it to be.

The not-so-epic battle ends in a not-so-epic manner when the guy with the iron mask NOT named Tony Stark catches up with them. He’s stopped taking out his frustrations on the Jean Grey Institute students and decides to focus on the guy who looks like he belongs on a sex offender registry. It took him long enough to do something that made some fucking sense and Dog reacts like a total pussy and once again whines about his daddy issues. Then he uses that special crystal his future self gave him earlier in the arc and disappears.

In terms of not-so-epic resolutions, this is right up there with it all being a dream from having eaten one too many tacos and had one too many shots of tequila. There’s no real resolution here. Dog just runs away and Wolverine treats it like a fucking hangnail. Usually when shit from his past comes back to haunt him, it’s a lot more dramatic. For it to just vanish, it doesn’t just feel underwhelming. It makes all that brutality seem worthless. Now I’m usually all for mindless brutality, but it makes for a lousy resolution to a story.

As underwhelming as it is, the ending isn’t completely without some ominous complications. Not every student in the Jean Grey Institute stuck around to watch the battle between Wolverine and Dog. Glob Herman, despite looking like a walking lava lamp, chickened out like a little bitch and ran off. He basically ditched school and decided that falling in with the wrong crowd was the way to go for him. Except in this instance, the wrong ground involves Sauron, who offers him a spot a welcoming little place called the Hellfire Academy. So the seeds of the next conflict have been sewn and hopefully this one isn’t completely ignored like the last arc.

As for the students who did stick around, there’s a nice yet still underwhelming moment where Wolverine basically tells them they passed the course, as if it’s possible to get a C- for a course that involves surviving dinosaurs and asshole brothers. At the very least it reinforces that Wolverine does care for his students. It also helps reinforce that he’s a better man than Dog. Then again, that’s like saying your dick is larger than a two-year-old’s. It’s not a fair comparison.

And as for Dog, he basically just ends up getting the shit beat out of him by his older self. It’s a very flat and bland way to end a story that he was practically rushed into. It could have been much more epic, but now he’s just back to being a whiney old bitch with daddy issues. In other words he’s right back to where he started. He would have made more progress just getting drunk and watching reruns of Two and a Half Men. That alone should kill any possible sympathy you might have for this character.

I liked this issue, but only to the extent that I like cold pizza. I’ll still consume it. It won’t make me throw up and if I’m stoned, I’ll even enjoy it. But it’s not like biting into a freshly baked cookie or licking ice cream off Jessica Alba’s ass. It’s a somewhat bland taste that’s utterly forgettable. It still gets the job done. The students of the Jean Grey Institute, minus Glob Herman, learn a few valuable lessons about survival. Dog Logan is defeated. There’s some nice insight into Wolverine’s dedication as a teacher. But overall, it falls flat.

This arc had a fun premise and plenty of nice moments, but this issue really didn’t end it on a satisfying note. It was disorganized and chaotic at times. It failed to address pretty much every major issue that emerged in the previous arc where so many characters hooked up in a helping of juicy schoolyard drama. And it was really had to take Dog Logan seriously as a compelling character. He hates Wolverine, blames him for everything, and wants him to suffer. I mean why don’t you just make him a teenage girl who takes it up the ass for five bucks because her daddy didn’t pay attention to her? While it was still satisfying to see him defeated, the resolution felt incomplete and bland.

There was still a number of things to like about this issue. It continued the theme of showing that Wolverine isn’t a complete douche-bag in that he genuinely cares about protecting these kids and is willing to throw them in the middle of an inhospitable, dinosaur-laden wasteland to teach them. Okay, so he is still a douche-bag on some levels, but there was purpose behind this lesson. And Jason Aaron also did a great job of showing repeatedly that these students are still irrational, ill-tempered, ill-mannered teenagers. They all behaved as you would expect teenagers to act if they had superpowers. They have egos. They don’t care for authority. And some think having pink hair actually looks cool. It was enough to give a guy like me flashbacks/nightmares of my own high school experience, but in a good way for once.

Wolverine and the X-men is still a fun series with a distinct theme that focuses on mutant students trying to survive life at the Jean Grey Institute. Wolverine and the X-men #28 maintained that theme for the most part, but failed to make it as compelling as previous arcs. Too many details were just poorly developed. Dog Logan came off as the least interesting wannabe badass since MC Hammer tried to make it as a gangster rapper. And the overall resolution was just under-developed and overly rushed. The art was still awesome and so where the characterizations of everyone not named Dog Logan. For that, I give Wolverine and the X-men #28 a 3 out of 5. So nearly every student managed to pass this twisted course in the Savage Land. I guess it’s all downhill from here. Once you’ve survived attacks by dinosaurs, a calculus exam is like a massage and a blowjob. Nuff said!

Savage Wolverine #4 - Too Savage To Be Awesome

Disclaimer: Yes, I know I didn't review Savage Wolverine #3. Yes, I know this disrupts the flow of reviews. But don't blame me. Blame God for not dedicating a day for reviewing comics. If you're going to bitch about this, please note that I'll respond by deleting your bitching in all forms. That is all.

We like to pretend that discovering ancient secrets is as awesome and exciting as Harrison Ford led us to believe in every Indiana Jones movie. We think it’s all exploring hidden temples, surviving ancient traps, and killing a few Nazis in the process. The reality is probably a billion times more boring. I imagine real archeology is like watching a couple of dead flies decompose in slow motion. You dig through piles upon piles of dirt, fine jack shit 99 percent of the time, and are lucky to recover artifacts that aren’t completely decomposed. It’s right up there with Snooki’s gynecologist in terms of jobs I don’t want.

Wolverine isn’t an archeologist, but he has a way of attracting shit that wants to kill him and sometimes that leads to discovering ancient secrets. It doesn’t lead to it very often, but for a guy as old as Wolverine the law of averages has to catch up at some point. And it caught up with him in a very painful way in the pages of Savage Wolverine. He’s been fighting along-side Shanna the She-Devil, trying to escape an unforgiving island of savage cavemen that may or may not be racist by uncovering ancient technology on an island. It has been eventful and entertaining so far, even with the somewhat random appearance of Amadeus Cho. And while there are no Nazis, I’m sure Indiana Jones would be right at home in a setting like this.

Part of the charm of Savage Wolverine has been a return to basics. Wolverine is no headmaster of a school or leader of a team here. He’s just the lovable savage brute we know and love, surviving in a dangerous wilderness full of dinosaurs, cavemen, and death. There’s no bullshit about his past, no ninjas, and no piss poor love triangles. Throw in Shanna’s rack and there’s very little reason not to enjoy this book on the surface, but it’s been dragging a bit lately with this whole ancient artifact bullshit. Frank Cho has been building towards some answers for the past few issues and is this the issue we finally get them? Well, I’m here to get drunk and review comics last I checked and since I’m currently low on booze, that leaves me with one option!

In Savage Wolverine #4 we get a nice glimpse into a ritual that for once doesn’t involve human sacrifice to appease goat-headed gods with a thing for the blood of virgins. Instead, it involves actually saving a life. In this case, that life belongs to Shanna the She-Devil. In the previous issue, her rack was not powerful enough to save her if you can believe that. She sustained an injury that…well, killed her. But if that at all worries you or your penis, take comfort in the knowledge that Marvel never kills hot female characters not named Jean Grey and keeps them dead for long. But do to that, Cho convinced the chief of the savages to save her in a ritual that involves Man-Thing. Or at least it looks like Man-Thing. Cho is as confused as the readers. And seeing as how Cho himself also randomly appeared in this story without an explanation, I guess we shouldn’t be too surprised when we don’t get one. Yet still, an explanation would be a damn good thing to have at some point.

For now, an explanation takes a back-seat to bringing Shanna back to life. Marvel knows that it just can’t let a beautiful woman with a great rack just go to waste. But in order to bring her back to life, she has to bath in some strange green liquid that comes gushing out of that thing that looks like Man-Thing. There’s a joke about the healing properties of semen in there somewhere, but given all the inappropriate comments I’ve made about Shanna’s breasts I think I’ll hold off.

The important part is the ritual works. It revives Shanna so that she’s as good as new and back to being exceedingly bonerific. However, the whole resurrection-by-glowing-water ordeal comes off as both bland and a blatant rip-off of the Lazarus Pit from Batman. Only this comes off as much more disconcerting because it involves shit that oozes from something that looks like Man-Thing. Hell, for all we know that green stuff is his semen and Shanna just got the most twisted bukakke in history. While it’s nice to see Marvel avoid killing another character, it comes off as both bland and unoriginal.

Things get even less creative as Cho keeps Shanna from lashing out at the savages who killed her. They also have a long and somewhat unnecessary conversation where Cho explains how she ended up alive again. He also reminds readers of why calculus class sucked ass in school because he spends some time just surmising the output of the ancient machine that’s supposed to be the central focus of this whole damn arc. We don’t learn much about it other than it powered the dampening field that knocked out the SHIELD aircrafts and has the power of three H-bombs. That’s about it. Cho didn’t have to reinforce another Asian stereotype to prove it, but he did anyways and it still doesn’t tell us jack shit about this alien gizmo. I bet Indiana Jones would have probably figured this shit out by now.

Unfortunately, Wolverine is no Indiana Jones. As such, he probably hasn’t figured out how powerful the ancient machine is or that Shanna is still alive again. All he knows is that he’s pissed off that someone killed another hot chick before he had a chance to bone her and having already been tormented by his failure to taste Jean Grey’s pussy, he’s not going to let this stand. So still armed with some explosives and an intent to blow up the machine, he makes his way to the temple. He meets some armed savages along the way who attempt to slow him down. But this is a Wolverine who is pissed off and cock-blocked. They might as well try to keep an army of stoners away from a pool filled with Twinkees and cookie dough.

The savages may know this on some level because after all their best warriors are dead, they keep trying to stop him by attacking him with giant killer gorillas. It’s exactly as awesome as it sounds. In a land that is basically a glorified Jurassic Park, why not throw a little King Kong into the mix? The savages somehow have tamed these giant apes and they don’t much care for cock-blocked Canadians so they rip into Wolverine. Because if a bunch of determined savages aren’t enough to stop a pissed off Wolverine who just saw a hot chick die, shouldn’t a bunch of oversized apes be able to succeed?

The short answer is no. The long answer is something that PETA supporters will probably be disgusted by because Wolverine does to the giant apes what he did to the savages. Hey, at least you can’t claim he treats humans and animals differently. He shows them the same sort of savage brutality. He’s all for equality in that respect.

But what makes this sort of brutality all the more enjoyable is just how detailed and drawn out it is. While this issue may not have provided many answers about the machine and blatantly ripped off Batman, it does continue a general theme of putting Wolverine in battles that just allow him to be his badass self. It’s the kind of bloody brawls he just doesn’t fight as often anymore because he’s too busy rubbing elbows with the Avengers or running a school named after a woman he never got to bone. That sort of action is one of the best selling points in Savage Wolverine and this issue maintained that at the expense of apes and savage cavemen.

Once Wolverine is done ripping through angry natives and gorillas, he’s pretty roughed up. We even get some nice internal monologue that helps detail what happens when you’re attacked by three angry gorillas (might be handy information if you’re planning a trip to the zoo with a drunk). But he moves forward, driven by the anger over Shanna dying before he could see her naked. He reaches the temple and the strange alien machine, which he intends to blow up. Shanna, having learned from Cho why that is a shitty idea, manages to reach him just in time to stab him in the stomach to prevent him from detonating the device. That’s right. Wolverine gets stabbed again and this time by a hot woman. I don’t know why, but something about that is extra satisfying.

It seems like all is well. Wolverine didn’t blow up the alien machine (which looks like a fancy box mind you) and Shanna lets him know she’s still alive. The stab wound I guess is just extra reinforcement. But it seems as though this should be the end of it. Then the Hulk appears. No really, that’s what happens. The Hulk just fucking appears. I had to wait to sober up a bit to make sure I wasn’t reading this issue after taking too many hits of LSD. But apparently, this is how the comic ends. The Hulk appears out of nowhere, just like Amadeus Cho did a couple issues ago. We don’t get an explanation. We don’t even get a clue. We just know the Hulk is here and shit is likely to be smashed in the next issue.

I’ll need more than a few bong hits to make sense of this comic. I’ll probably also need a few to try and ignore the blatant parallels between the Lazarus Pit in Batman and whole resurrection bit with Shanna and Man-Thing blood. Since I’m low on weed, I’ll still do my best to break it down and it comes back to there being too many fucking blanks to fill in. This issue had some entertaining (and violent) moments that PETA supporters will bitch about, but in terms of overall plot it is still akin to that stoner buddy of yours who lays passed out on your couch and refuses to watch anything other than reruns of Scooby Doo. It just won’t move forward and even when it does, it comes off as something we’ve already seen before in one too many Batman comics.

But beyond the Batman parallels, this issue just threw too much shit into the pot without letting it cook. And I’m not just talking about the Hulk’s appearance at the end either. Man-Thing (or something that looks just like it) showing up early on raises more than a few eyebrows and not much of an effort was made at giving an explanation. The same can be said for the machine, which Cho tries to break down with his science-babble. And if you flunked 11th grade physics, it’s probably not going to make this machine that’s at the center of the whole damn plot any less mysterious. We still have no fucking clue what this machine is. We know it’s what caused the SHIELD ship to crash, but beyond that why the fuck is it such a big deal if it doesn’t even melt the faces of Nazis?

Despite these flaws, this issue still retains some of the elements that helps make Savage Wolverine a solid book. It’s still Wolverine at his most basic, kicking ass in the jungle and getting roughed up in ways that would paralyze anyone else not named Chuck Norris. The battle against the natives and the giant apes was classic Wolverine-style brutality. It was well-crafted and the internal narration definitely added something extra special to the bloodshed. If you only read those portions of the comic, it’s still worthwhile. But in terms of the overall story, it’ll have you both scratching your head and rolling your eyes in ways no amount of bong hits will help.

Savage Wolverine may be one of the few X-books right now where Wolverine isn’t an insufferable douche-bag. It has a lot of appeal, but it has a lot of fucking holes in it as well. Aside from reading a Wolverine you don’t hate and Shanna’s rack, this issue didn’t add much to that appeal. Savage Wolverine #4 fell short in way too many ways to be awesome. I can only give it a 2.5 out of 5. I’m okay with leaving some things to the imagination. A peep show in Amsterdam or my parents wedding night come to mind as good examples. But that shit just doesn’t work for a comic. For this series to be awesome, some of those blanks need to start getting filled in. There’s just only so much power that Shanna’s breasts have. Nuff said!

Wolverine and the X-men #25 - Savage Lessons in Awesome

When I was a kid, I loved field trips in school. It didn't just mean getting out of a classroom where underpaid, overworked teachers read from a government-prepared lesson plan that slowly killed my will to live. It meant actually being in the world that I would later need booze and weed to cope with. And I always had a strong appreciation for that real world experience. Sure, some of them ended with me taking a piss on a fish tank at an aquarium or throwing oranges at a gorilla, but it beat the hell out of taking tests on material I would never have to use again in my adult life.

I imagine the field trips with the X-men are a lot more pragmatic, a lot more exciting, and don't involve getting suspended when you leave monkey shit in your teacher's purse. There's no way around it really. Aspiring X-men need to get out in the world and experience the fucked up threats that will attempt to wipe them out every other week. And since you can't exactly schedule a trip to a place where killer robots will attack (although I'm sure Wolverine is working on it), you can go to some of the more exotic locales in the Marvel universe to hone your skills. It's not the same as a trip to the zoo where you can sneak in booze, but it's right up there.

Jason Aaron's Wolverine and the X-men has attained a new level of awesome thanks in large part to its emphasis on the teaching aspect of the X-men's mission. Ever since the Jean Grey Institute was opened, he has taken time to show how Wolverine and his staff struggle to teach a new generation of mutants how to function in a world that enjoys throwing killer robots at them. In the most recent issue, that task gained some new complications as some of that staff can no longer keep it in their pants and started hooking up. Kitty is now swapping frosty semen with Iceman and Wolverine is now getting tipped in pussy after giving Storm a haircut. Yet as important as it is to get their loins wet, they still have students to teach.

But as with every great teacher, there must also be a great obstacle. Those obstacles usually involve having to deal with kids more interested in smoking pot and screwing everything with a pulse, but for Wolverine that obstacle comes in the form of one of the many relics from his past that want to see him die a terrible horrible death. That obstacle’s name is Dog Logan and anyone who has read Wolverine Origins knows why he wants Wolverine dead. But for some reason that isn’t clearly explained, he’s been biding his time by hanging out in a cabin, eating meat from animals he hunts, and presumably jerking off reruns of I Love Lucy. It takes a visit from his time traveling future self to get him off his ass to hunt down Wolverine, who he’s told is in the Savage Land. I won’t go off on another rant about how overplayed the whole time travel gimmick has been, especially since the events of All New X-men. I’ll just say that if Dog needs a visit from the future to become relevant again, either he has piss poor motivation or Marvel stopped caring about how much they fuck with the space time continuum.

This latest time fuck promises to complicate what Wolverine deems to be a very important mission to a select group of students from the Jean Grey Institute that include Idie, Kid Omega, Glob Herman, Shark Girl, Genesis, the eye guy, and some new chick with silvery skin that could fly. It may sound like Fox’s latest reality show, but it actually accounts for a nice slice of the student body of the Jean Grey Institute.

They arrive in the Savage Land where they’re greeted with the warmth of jungle humidity and hungry dinosaurs. He then explains to them that this is the ultimate pass/fail class. They’re expected to not just survive in the Savage Land, but to work together along the way. If one of them fails, then all of them fail. It’s enough to almost make algebra class appealing…almost. And Wolverine doesn’t make it easy for them either. Once he gives them their assignments, he proceeds to attack a T-Rex and ditch them. It’s a dick move, but still not as bad as my freshman gym teacher.

Now why is Wolverine doing this? In the previous issue, he got a kiss from Storm and possibly some pussy. He should not be feeling this vindictive in the slightest. Well unfortunately, the effects of Storm’s pussy is not really explored in this issue. But through a convenient flashback, we see Wolverine having a conversation with the new and improved Beast. He basically tells them that these kids need a trial by fire. Between Cyclops’s revolutionary team and the Hellfire Club, they need these kids to be ready to hold their nose when the shit starts hitting the fan.

It’s still a dick move, but Wolverine isn’t wrong. The pages of Wolverine and the X-men have already revealed some pretty fucked up threats and it would be fucking stupid to not prepare the kids in some obscene sort of way. In addition, we also find out what happened to Broo. While others were swapping spit with fuck buddies in the previous issue, Broo woke up from his coma and was understandably pissed. Unfortunately, we didn’t get to see Idie’s reaction or anyone’s reaction. We just find out that Broo is stuck in an angry, feral state and now Idie is lugging him around like a dog that needs to be put down. Bring him to the Savage Land is a questionable decision, but at least we get some connections to the previous issue. There really isn’t much mention of anything else from that issue otherwise. The issue still feels a little choppy as a whole, but those small connections help tie it together at least on some level.

But the point of this issue isn’t to dwell on relationship issues and who is boning who. The point is to show how this random assortment of students from the Jean Grey Institute handles themselves in the fucked up situations that only X-men encounter. It makes for some entertaining and colorful action of mutant teenagers fighting hungry dinosaurs. It an overly simple premise, but it’s still fun as hell. What actually makes their struggle even more fun is that they really don’t handle themselves like X-men. They handle themselves like teenagers, namely by incessantly complaining about how life isn’t fair and when their lunch break is. Some, like Glob Herman, actually enjoy it more than regular class. Others, like Kid Omega, are just annoyed as hell by it. It’s the full range of responses from immature teenagers and if you can get over the painful flashbacks they may cause from your own horrific teen years, there’s plenty to enjoy.

As the hapless students of the Jean Grey Institute continue to struggle, we get another quick flashback. It takes place aboard the X-jet on their way to the Savage Land. Along the way, Wolverine confronts Kid Omega who is being his usual douche-bag self. Here, we get another light tie-in to recent issues, namely the psycho circus issue. In that issue, Kid Omega actually helped save the X-men. And this is from a kid who regularly belittles them like a drunk Mel Gibson during Passover. Wolverine also pointed out that in one of his last living acts, Charles Xavier nominated Kid Omega to be class president. He essentially dared him to step up and be more than a raging douche-bag and you know what happens to douche-bags when somebody dares them. Hell, get enough liquor in them and you can get them to lick a tiger’s balls.

It’s another nice little connection to an earlier issue of Wolverine and the X-men and one that helps highlight Kid Omega in a way beyond what a raging douche he is. He’s a character that has played a major role in this series since it began. Usually, he’s just the asshole that reminds readers of the guy who always claimed to bang the entire cheerleading squad in high school. But while he has all the means to become a painful rectal wart for the X-men, he’s stuck with the school. Wolverine points this out to him and dares him to be the leader that Charles Xavier dares him to be. For a character whose sole purpose has been to piss people off since he was introduced, that’s a pretty big dare and one his character sorely needs.

Flash back to the present and Kid Omega tries to make good on the dare. He stands up and decides to take charge of his fellow students. He starts barking orders, taking on the role of a leader. He tells them to scout around, find food, and locate firewood. Overall, they’re not unreasonable requests. However, he makes them in such a way that his fellow students look at him the same way they look drunk hobo taking a piss in the middle of the road. He’s no Cyclops, that’s for sure. It’s shows that being a leader isn’t easy, but watching someone like Kid Omega fail at it is wildly entertaining.

Rather than listen to Kid Omega’s bullshit, they all separate. Genesis flies up into the trees with the new girl, Idie seeks shelter with Broo under a rock, Shark girl starts looking for food, and Glob Herman is in the process of throwing up the maggot-filled dinosaur meet he ate. Again, these are all reactions that are perfectly logical for teenagers. Some become all emo and hide under a rock. Some try to eat their problems. For some, it’s too much and they start throwing up. Maybe Jason Aaron is trying to send a message here about adolescence. I think most of us get that being a teenager sucks and these are pretty extreme examples, but that’s part of what makes the story and the whole premise of this assignment so much fun. Because no matter how old you are, seeing teenagers trip over themselves endlessly is fucking hilarious.

However, Wolverine has since stopped laughing. He’s been keeping an eye on his students from afar. I assume he was banging his head against a tree at times watching these kids fumble about in a land more unforgiving than a thousand calculus classes. He starts to question that maybe it wasn’t a good idea to throw a bunch of teenagers into the Savage Land. He of all people should know the only outcome could be that of a slasher or a porno. But as he’s contemplating cutting this lesson short, he gets shot and for once it isn’t from Cyclops. Dog Logan, following the advice of his future self, has finally caught up with his old rival. He’s prepared to draw out this twisted assignment even more and make sure Wolverine has all the more reasons to grade on a curve. If only all my old teachers had a homicidal family member from their past. I would have been a straight-A student in school and I might actually have a career that affords me more booze and comic money. Alas, we’ll never know.

Since it began, Wolverine and the X-men established itself as a book that is as ridiculous as it is fun. Jason Aaron has used this series to tell the kinds of stories that are high on absurdities while throwing in a touch of drama wherever he can. It helps make for a book that doesn’t get too serious or too convoluted. The whole premise of this issue revolved around a twisted survival class in a land where anything that doesn’t run fast enough is a dinosaur’s lunch. There’s no mutant revolution or world-threatening menace that needs to be destroyed. It’s just about a bunch of students who are forced to come together and screw up in a way you would expect of most kids when tasked with something so utterly ridiculous.

Whereas the previous issue helped refocus the story on some of the relationship dramas that have been unfolding between the panels, Wolverine and the X-men #25 refocused the story on the students. That was the whole point of this series and the founding of the Jean Grey Institute, to get back to the whole schooling aspect of the X-men. This issue nicely depicts the natural chaos that comes along with tasking inexperienced kids with any complex task, let alone a life-or-death struggle. Moreover, it helps bring into context some of the other recent events in the X-books such as the events surrounding Uncanny X-Force, Cyclops’s new team in Uncanny X-men, and the Hellfire Club attacks. The time for these kids to learn survival skills is now damn it! And while it was chaotic and disorganized, it was done in a way that was completely appropriate. Chaos and disorganization seem to be what Jason Aaron does best.

What wasn’t quite as good were some of the details that Aaron glossed over, namely with Broo and the events of the previous issue. Aside from Broo becoming an enraged dog in need of neutering, nothing from the previous issue carried over. There was no mention of any of the relationships that were developed. Storm wasn’t mentioned. Kitty and Bobby weren’t mentioned. I get that the main focus of this issue was the students, but the lack of continuity between this issue and the first is pretty jarring even by Wolverine and the X-men’s twisted standards.

Another detail that bothered me was Dog Logan himself. Don’t get me wrong. I’m glad Jason Aaron reached into the deep bag of shit that is Wolverine’s history and retrieved this old story. It hasn’t really been touched on since Wolverine Origins and the Savage Land is the perfect setting for him and Dog to clash. But using time travel to get Dog off his lazy ass just seemed twisted for the sake of being twisted. Has he really just been sitting on his ass, eating deer meat, and watching TV Land all this time? Why the hell is a visit from his future self the only thing necessary to get him off his ass? I know from Wolverine Origins that Dog has his reasons for wanting to feed Wolverine to a T-Rex. What I don’t understand is why now of all times when not long ago he had his fucking legs broken for trying to cheat at an alien casino.

These details don’t take away from just how fun the issue is. The character interactions between the students was done beautifully. The way this twisted field trip played out was wildly entertaining. And seeing Kid Omega get frustrated to the point where he wants to melt Wolverine’s brain is always good for a laugh. The subtle details may be lacking, but the larger details that help make it so entertaining really make this issue work. I give Wolverine and the X-men #25 a 4 out of 5. However this story turns out, I think each student of the Jean Grey Institute will gain some valuable life lessons about survival and how not to deal with a hungry dinosaur. They’ll certainly get more out of it than I ever got in school. And they’re still probably safer in the Savage Land than they’ll ever be in my old gym clash. Nuff said!

Savage Wolverine #1 - Jungle Loving Awesome

What is it about the untamed wild that gives some people huge boners? I know people who will wake up at four in the morning, put on loin cloths, grab a hunting knife, and run into the woods giggling like ten-year-old girl that just stole her older sister's tampon. They say it's liberating, being able to escape from civilization and enjoy a simpler existence. Then they have to take a shit and they run back to the nearest working toilet as fast as humanly possible. So while they'll rave on and on about the wonders of nature, when it comes to giving up the ability to shit in a toilet and not have to wipe their ass with dry leaves that's a deal-breaker.

I'll go on record as saying the hippies, the environmentalists, and Ted Kazinsky are full of shit. Civilization is awesome. I like sitting in an air-conditioned room eating food I didn't have to kill with a bow and arrow and shitting in a toilet. I would much rather saw my legs off and dive head-first into a pool of dog piss than go camping in the wilderness. And anybody who wants to bitch about how civilization has dehumanized us needs to either start shitting on trees or shut the fuck up.

That said, some people actually thrive in the wild. These are the kind of people who could be dropped bare ass naked in the middle of the African Serengeti and three weeks later, he's made every lion his personal bitch. You don't come across too many people like that these days, but in comics these guys aren't just more common. They embody that wild style of wild nature that gets us in touch with our own inner shit-throwing primate.

Of all the characters who would thrive in a jungle and treat it as a weekend in Vegas, Wolverine is the ultimate wild man. He doesn't just survive in the wild. He makes it his personal mission to make every single predator's balls shrivel off and make every potential prey shit themselves in terror. But lately, he hasn't been able to get in touch with his wild side. He's been too busy blowing the Avengers, screwing over the X-men in Avengers vs. X-men, and trying to fight the urge fuck a teenage Jean Grey. But as part of the Marvel NOW! relaunch, Marvel is attempting to get Wolverine back to his roots before he was the unofficial man-whore of comics. As part of a new series by Frank Cho, the Savage Wolverine promises to ditch the whole "I want to fuck the redhead" or "I want to gut Cyclops" plot and puts him back in his element. For a guy who already looks like he took a bath in Rogain every day since he was two years old, it's the perfect change of pace.

The tone is set in Savage Wolverine #1 with an all-too familiar scenario. Some dipshit, civilization-loving assholes think they can fly their fancy, high-tech gadgets into the Savage Land and not have something go horribly wrong. That’s like smoking two packs of cigarettes a day while working in a Chinese coal mine and expecting not to get lung cancer. In this case it’s a couple of SHIELD agents investigating an island with an insanely creepy mountain-sized sculpture. They’re tracking some mysterious energy that they’re hoping to investigate. They’ve also got Shanna the She-Devil with them, who is acting as a guide while also saving them the need to bring porn on the mission. But seriously, when has approaching an islands with a creepy face carved into a mountain ever led to anything other than disaster? For that reason, it’s hard to feel bad for the SHIELD agents when their aircraft starts going down. Maybe they just expect too much from dangerous islands that don’t have giant signs that tell them to stay the fuck away.

Enter our old friend Wolverine. Unlike the dipshit SHIELD agents who thought they could bang karma and get away with it, he wasn’t stupid enough to fly a high tech jet into the Savage Land and expect it not to crash. Instead, he just wakes up in the middle of the Savage Land without any memory of how he got there. He was either tricked or he went on one hell of a bender, or maybe a little of both.

But this apparently happens eight months after the SHIELD agents disappeared. There’s really no lead-in as to how he ended up here and maybe that’s for the better because it means Wolverine can get right to channeling his inner animal. That becomes somewhat necessary because he’s immediately attacked by Jurassic Park style raptors when he wakes up. In the Savage Land, that’s about as common as getting beat up in a mosh pit at a Metallica concert.

In addition to killer raptors, it’s also a guarantee that a visit to the Savage Land will also land you in the crosshairs of some hostile Neanderthal types with a lot of pent up aggression and no internet access to harass total strangers on message boards. But Wolverine decides to get proactive for once and hunts down a group that happens to be carrying one of the wounded SHIELD agents, most likely for human sacrifice or for a Hannibal Lecture style feast. Wolverine opts to not ask politely and proceeds with cutting them up like strips of bacon at a Five Guys. It’s brutal. It’s bloody. It’s violent. It’s just what you would expect from a book with the word “savage” in the title, no more no less. There’s some nice narration in here as well that helps make it a little less bland, but it really doesn’t add much to the scene.

After Wolverine completes his casual slaughter, he finds out from the dying SHIELD agent the location of their crashed ship. He gives the agent a proper burial so he doesn’t have to go through the indignity of being shit out by a T-Rex and then makes his way to the crashed ship where he finds a few various notes and a clear sign that these SHIELD agents were too incompetent to guards against an army of cavemen. But while he’s trying to figure out why SHIELD would want to visit a place where stepping in dinosaur shit is a real concern, he’s confronted by the one person who wasn’t stupid enough to get roughed up by cavemen and that person has an awesome rack.

It’s Shanna the She-Devil and she has to first stab Wolverine with a spear before she recognizes him. I’m guessing that’s not the worst thing a woman has ever done to him so it’s probably an easy thing to forget, especially when she’s wearing a loin-cloth bikini. I try not to take too much pleasure in Wolverine getting horribly wounded, but given what a massive douche he’s been since Avengers vs. X-men this scene still put a smile on my face.

Once the awkwardness of having stabbed Wolverine wears off, Shanna explains why a couple of SHIELD agents were stupid enough to visit the Savage Land. It’s actually exceedingly predictable, almost to the point where King Kong could probably sue. They suspected there was some ancient technology on the island and when they got to close, they encountered a disruption field that caused their ship to crash. After trying to be Bear Gylles for a while, they attempted to sail away only to get attacked by sea monsters. So it’s basically your standard vacation package to the Savage Land. Both SHIELD agents ended up captured, but they still suspected that there was some ancient technology in the mountain that they could use. They were planning to reach that technology with a very low-tech solution that involved blowing shit up.

It’s a story we’ve seen countless times before and parodied even more. A group of civilized people have their civilized gizmos fail them and they end up in a very uncivilized part of the world. Sometimes they end up being sacrificed or eaten. Sometimes they train monkeys to be butlers. Sometimes they make it into a porno. It’s a very basic and very clichéd plot. While it fits nicely with a Wolverine story, nobody with a handful of brain cells will find it too groundbreaking.

The premise may be basic, but it still involves blowing shit up so that means it has both the promise of explosions and more pictures of Shanna’s rack. So there’s still plenty of reason to follow this story. Wolverine and Shanna quickly work out a plan that involves finishing what the SHIELD agents started, minus the part where they got killed by cavemen. They intend to blow up the base of the mountain and use the ancient technology to call for help. However, this is still the Savage Land. That means there are a long list of creatures looking to maim them. That includes a hoard of Pterodactyls. Before they can even entertain thoughts of blowing shit up, they have to fight them off in another visually stunning yet predictable scene of jungle slaughter.

Part of that predictability involves Shanna demonstrating the toughness of a hardened jungle woman with PMS. She beats Wolverine to the punch in terms of recklessly attacking the Pterodactyl hoard. It forces Wolverine to shove her out of the downed aircraft, while probably copping a feel in the process (no straight man would blame him). Shanna doesn’t like this because it leaves them out in the open and vulnerable. And once again, a woman is shown to be right while the man is shown to be stupid because one of the Pterodactyl’s grabs Wolverine and flies him up high in the air before dropping him. Perhaps it’s another lesson for Wolverine in how to better deal with women, aside from boning them and hitting on the ones that are married. But again, it’s rather predictable. The comic ends with the prospect of him hitting the ground head first in a way that would turn most people into a blood stain on a T-Rex’s foot. But he’s Wolverine. You know he’s going to survive. So don’t expect to be biting your nails off wondering how this shit is going to play out.

I didn’t originally intend to do a review of Savage Wolverine when I first heard about it. Then after a few drinks and a few bong hits, it finally dawned on me. I said to myself, “You know what? This is just what Marvel comics needs! A book where Wolverine isn’t being a total dick cheese to Cyclops or playing the part of an Avengers groupie! Now where the fuck can I get more of this pot? It’s awesome!” After reading the first issue, I can say with or without a bong hit that this comic succeeded in delivering a welcome change-of-pace for Wolverine. But is it compelling enough to make a whole series out of? That’s something that’s difficult to answer even with a bong hit.

I enjoyed the issue. But Frank Cho really didn’t bring anything new to the table. The premise of the story has been overdone more than Joan Rivers’s face. Someone tries to explore the Savage Land, they crash land, and they get roughed up by a group of jungle savages that still shit in pots. That shit hasn’t just been done in Marvel comics before. This is shit that’s been done in every King Kong knock-off for decades. So if you’ve seen even some of those, including all the porn parodies, you won’t be surprised at all by what you see in this comic.

It was still awesome in that we get to see Wolverine going back to basics, surviving on his animal instincts and crossing paths with a hot jungle chick. The team-up between Wolverine and Shanna is definitely the most compelling aspect of this comic. It’s a team-up that makes perfect sense. She’s a tough, hard-nosed woman who is more at home in the jungle than Charlie Sheen at a Columbian whore house. Wolverine is an equally tough, ill-tempered brute who gets along better with angry animals trying to kill him than his own fellow X-men at times. Fuck, this is the perfect theme for either a porno or a new reality show on Bravo.

This first issue may have been basic and predictable, but it successfully established the conflict and set up the partnership between Wolverine and Shanna. Now it’s not yet clear if that partnership will include the exchange of a few bodily fluids down the line, but it is clear that there’s a story to be told here. Savage Wolverine #1 may not have a novel concept, but Frank Cho still makes it entertaining enough to be enjoyable. I give Savage Wolverine #1 a 3 out of 5. This comic didn’t change my opinion on camping or the whole back-to-the-wild bullshit that hippies love to whine about. Maybe I would find it more tenable if a beautiful woman like Shanna tagged along, but I know it would still go downhill the moment we ran out of toilet paper. So I’ll be leaving the survivalist shit to Wolverine and the idiots preparing for the zombie apocalypse. Nuff said!