X-men #35 - Brainwashing Awesome

At some point in our lives, we all join a cult of some kind. It may not be the kind of cult that requires you to shave your head, eat nothing but grass, and give your daughters and sisters to some charismatic leader that claims salvation flows through his penis. But it can be every bit as irrational. When I was a kid, I spent times in cults such as Power Rangers and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. I'm pretty sure there were fans that would have waged a second civil war on the merits of why Rapheal was cooler than Leonardo or why the Green Ranger could kick the ass of every Red Ranger that ever existed. Maybe we're just wired to take a nose dive into Lake Bullshit and savor the stench before it threatens to give us permanent brain damage. Unfortunately, there are cults out there like the aformentioned cult leader who tries to base an entire religion around his penis. And those peoples' brains are damaged beyond repair.

Brian Wood introduced us to a cult with more than their share of brain damage in his last issue. Fresh off the mediocre yet enjoyable proto-mutants arc, he has Storm and her security team investigating this freaky cult that's being run by this guy who looks uncomfortably similar to Jesus Christ. I'm sure Brian Wood has gotten his share of death threats from devout Christians with too much free time on their hands, but probably no more than I get on a weekly basis for the religion jokes I tell on this blog. This cult is basically a mix of Heaven's Gate, Mormonism, and Rastafarianism. They believe in seeking perfection with a capital P. And for some reason that Wood hasn't explored just yet, Domino has a history with them. Both she and Psylocke infiltrated a cruise ship full of followers in hopes of tracking down the leader and the exotic substances he's seeking to exploit thanks to guys you probably don't find on Craigslist. Now they have to channel their inner blasphemy to end this shit so these people can go back to slightly less crazy cults that only demand you worship books written by Bronze Age goat herders with epilepsy.

X-men #35 depicts a volatile situation involving a volatile guy with gullible followers and a shit ton of guys with guns. It's essentially David Koresh and the Branch Davidians all over again, minus any apparent polygamy. And in the post 9/11 world, the United States government is a little wary when it comes to crazy religious cults that don't fund the Family Research Council or support Rick Santorum. Storm tells Psylocke, who managed to tap the cult leader's Asian fetish in the last issue, that cruise missiles are on their way. And the cult leader doesn't seem to give a shit. He claims he'll become immortal by using the samples from the proto-mutants that Wood introduced in the previous issue as an energy drink. It's not unlike Pat Robertson's energy drink, but in this case it actually works without having to send him money. It sounds pretty fucked up, but it actually fits nicely because it ties this arc into Wood's first arc. And like having pot dealers that know good hookers, those connections go a long ways.

Whoever this cult leader is, he must have really done something to piss off the American government. Apparently, politicians and military folk are a bunch of pussies in the sense that a crazy cult leader with a bio-weapon derived from proto-mutants gives them a tummy ache. Rather than chug some Pepto Bismal like most normal people, they decide to fire a cruise missile at the cruise ship with all those innocent people who were just too gullible to stick to traditional Bronze Age mythology. Because if there's one thing George W. Bush taught us, it's that no problem can't be solved with the proper application of cruise missiles and children's do learn.

This forces Pixie to once again upstage every teenage girl who ever lived by flying out of the comforts of the plane and getting to the missile before it reaches the ship. Meanwhile, Domino managed to work her way up to the deck and look damn sexy while doing it. She's quite eager to shoot the cult leader, but Storm reminds them that they need that proto-mutant sample. And since the son-of-a-bitch drank it, they can't go blowing his brains out. I'm pretty sure Domino is thinking Storm is the biggest killjoy since Mitt Romney.

As you would expect, chugging a bunch of proto-mutant DNA like jello shots tends to fuck a guy up. The cult leader pulls a gun on Psylocke and points it right at her while boasting how creepy glowing eyes are his idea of perfection. Makes me wonder what he considers to be a the perfect size for a pair of breasts. But the man is clearly undergoing a fucked up transformation and Domino's plan to blow his brains out becomes increasingly more appealing. However, Storm reminds them that they need that sample of proto-mutant DNA. She talks about how this shit could do more than just give cult leaders boners after they're tired of marrying underaged girls. It could actually help mutants in the same way stem cells help the people who don't give money to radical anti-abortion nutjobs. So they have to be gentle with this deranged zealot and get a sample of his blood.

It turns out not to be quite as difficult as it sounds. Domino is probably disappointed that she didn't get to use her gun. I'm sure that dries her pussy up faster than a picture of Rick Santorum's anus. But with Psylocke, this battle is over with a quick psionic blade to the head. The cult leader demonstrates no crazy powers. He doesn't shoot fire from his nose or fart energy blasts. He just boasts for a while how this proto-mutant stuff has made his dick bigger, but then Psylocke takes him out. But while the fight itself may not be very exciting, something intriguing does happen along the way. It's not as fun as watching two beautiful women beat the shit out a Jesus wannabe, but it's still compelling.

While they're attempting to get a blood sample, Domino suggests they just throw the sample in the ocean and let sharks shit all over it. Now why would they want to do that after going through all this trouble and dressing like New Age nuns? Well Domino points out that Storm hasn't exactly been too honest lately. She's been lying to Cyclops and the rest of the team has gone along with her because she's fucking Storm. She's also a competent leader and can shoot a lightning bolt up your ass if you don't get with the program. But Domino points out that by continuing this lie, they'll only doom themselves to more missions like this. So it may be best to just nip it in ass right now and ditch the sample, despite all the help it could do. It may sound extreme, but it actually shows signs that Storm's lies and deception are having an effect. It's a different kind of drama that goes beyond which character is trying to bone the other. It hints at a larger internal conflict with Storm's team and one I hope Brian Wood pursues, if for no other reason than to see Domino, Psylocke, and Storm fighting each other, preferably while naked and covered in oil. What? Don't tell me that thought hasn't crossed your mind.

Eventually, Psylocke decides to risk taking the sample. That pretty much guarantees that Domino will get to say "I told you so, bitch" in a later issue. But once this little debate is done, we do get some more classic action in the form of Pixie stopping the cruise missile. It's not as visually appealing as seeing two beautiful women beat the shit out of crazy cults, but it helps fill the action void. Brian Wood may favor more subtle means of action, but there will never be a substitute for seeing a teenage girl teleport a cruise missile to the arctic circle and watching it blow up. It's like stoners with aluminum foil, minus the lower sperm count.

When all is said and done, Storm's team returns and they give a quick report to Cyclops. Storm continues to follow the same theme established since Wood took over in that she doesn't give Cyclops the full story or even hint at what her intentions will be from here on out. She only tells him they have the sample and aren't returning to utopia. But she does it in a coy, playful manner that any man with a functioning dick would find hard to ignore. It still confirms what Domino pointed out earlier. They're now pretty much stuck in Storm's little personal vendetta here and that's bound to get them neck deep in more shit. She already seems to have the next round planned as she contacts Sabra, who has been helping her since the previous arc. Now she wants to invite more shit into this conflict. Apparently, being neck deep just isn't enough for her.

The comic could have easily ended there, but Wood throws in a few juicy extras. It's not a coupon for a free lap dance at a strip club, but it's right up there. He shows that while Storm may have succeeded in her mission, she's starting to lose the loyalty of her team. Domino, who has never been one to just let shit slide be it a mission or a chance to get laid, is shown confronting Colossus who also hasn't been too fond of Storm keeping Cyclops out of the loop. Storm believes she's missing a piece of the puzzle and Domino knows they're going to be the ones that have to find it. So whatever this piece may be, someone is going to try and screw someone over and the money shot is bound to be extra messy.

For most new writers on a series, they try to start things out with a bang. They're like that guy that yells, "Sex! Now that I have your attention..." to open a speech.  Wood didn't use those tactics. At times, I think he should have. In reviewing his issues, I've often been underwhelmed. His proto-mutant arc wasn't bad, but it wasn't going to give anyone a boner they couldn't get from watching reruns of Nip Tuck. It never crashed and burned, but Wood clearly had a plan and he stuck to that plan. I think I can finally say it has paid off with this issue.

The story surrounding the proto-mutants linked up nicely in this short two-issue arc. It wasn't apparent in the previous issue, but Wood did a good job of tying up the loose ends in this issue. He didn't go light on the action either like he's done in previous issues. This issue had Domino fighting her way through a cruise ship, Pixie diverting cruise missiles, and Psylocke showing cult leaders that they'll need to find some other creative way to get gullible people to give them money and pussy. It all makes for a very satisfying conclusion that also continued Storm's growing theme of keeping Cyclops out of the loop. Since this shit happens before Avengers vs. X-men, it's clearly a prelude of sorts that Storm is prepared to turn on Cyclops, her husband, and pretty much anyone she damn well pleases.

The issue isn't without its faults. The ending was left a bit overly ambiguous. Wood is clearly not done with the proto-mutant story, but he doesn't really set anything up here. And overall, the mystery surrounding the proto-mutants really hasn't been explored any further other than showing that cult leaders love to take short cuts to becoming more crazy. Moreover, the cult leader was pretty damn inept. You never got the sense that he was a real threat that the X-men were going to struggle with. So while there was plenty of insight, there wasn't a whole lot of suspense. Your bladder and your colon are pretty much intact with every page.

None-the-less, this is by far the best issue of X-men that Brian Wood has written to date. He continues to show that while he may start slow, he's capable of catching up for those who have patience. In this day and age where peoples' attention span is only as long as their last Twitter post, that may not be a good long-term strategy. But for this issue, it works. I give X-men #35 a 4 out of 5. Let this be a lesson to all you folks out there looking to join a new shady religious group. If he demands complete devotion, walks around with body guards, and talks about perfecting the human spirit or some shit like that, he's either crazy or just wants to fuck you and is too cheap to get a hooker. Nuff said!

X-men #24 - Blood Sucking Awesome

Whenever a comic company tries to reinvent a character, it falls into one of two categories. It's either the grim and gritty version, the kind that makes a character look like they need therapy more than plot. Then there's the being-so-fucking-different-that-it's-hardly-the-same-fucking-character variety that's not just demeaning, but insulting to any readers who actually gave a damn about the character. Some characters need a reinvention. Some don't. Some are handled well. Most are horribly fucked up. Vampire Jubilee in Victor Gischler's adjectiveless X-men is the one glowing example where Marvel has reinvented a character in all the right ways.

Don't get me wrong. I loved Jubilee before she was a blood-sucking True Blood wannabe. But her character hadn't been interesting since she lost her powers in House of M. She was like David Hasselhoff of the X-books. She wasn't doing anything. She wasn't contributing anything. She was just there. If she just got her powers back, then she wouldn't have changed much. Becoming a vampire has opened the door to all sorts of new stories that have helped make her character more compelling than ever. Some of those stories have played out in the pages of Marjorie Liu's X-23 series. Others have played out in recent arcs of Victor Gischler's adjectiveless X-men.

The previous arc, the first of the post-Schism regenesis era, had her play a role that wasn't all that vital. She fought alongside Psylocke, Storm, and Utopia's official security team as they teamed up with War Machine to stop an international incident involving sentinels. While that conflict was resolved, Jubilee was abducted in the battle and completely disappeared. She was taken by another vampire named Raizo Kodo, a character that was introduced in an earlier issue when Xavier was telling Jubilee of his travels back before he was the discredited mentor he is now. Now usually when a creepy guy with a Japanese name abducts a teenage girl, it turns into the kind of story they make into anime porn. This isn't like that (sorry hentai fans). X-men #24 takes that story and continues it.

It begins in your typical vampire dungeon (again, not in the anime porn tradition so all you hentai fans really need to leave). Jubilee is prisoner in Raizo Kodo's fancy digs. He comes to her cell not claiming that her escape lies in his penis. He comes offering her animal blood, which for a vampire is like offering tofu to Ted Nugent. She's a vampire. She craves human blood and to this point she kept that under control because Wolverine gave her his blood to fight the effects. Well Wolverine isn't around and she's now in full vamp mode, meaning she's not going to settle for the Edward Cullen diet. She wants blood and Raizo can't do shit about it.

The man won't give Jubilee what she wants. She reacts in the way you would expect any teenage girl to react. She lashes out and tries to brutally murder Raizo. It's not quite as violent as a 16-year-old attacking her mother for taking away her iphone after she was caught sending pictures of her boobs to the guy with the neck tattoo that works at Costco, but it's close. Unlike said mother, Raizo is a veteran vamp and is able to fight back. He's as gentle as you would expect a vampire of his caliber. He takes her down, but makes clear that he's not trying to torment her or turn her into a Bella Swan fantasy. He's actively opposing her killer vampire instinct, which makes him more Twilight than True Blood minus the gayness.

That still begs the question. What the hell is this guy after? What's his motivation? Well he's not alone in his endeavor to turn Jubilee in a vampire vegetarian. He has his own crew of vampires that apparently went through the same process, learning to resist the urge to drink humans like a Slurpee. They call themselves the forgiven. They come off as born again Christians minus the homophobia and televangelism. They're the vampires who repent from their evil ways and for whatever reason, they want Jubilee to be one of them. Okay, I'm sure the fact that she's a hot teenage girl plays a part, but it may not be the entire reason. Just 80 percent of it. He and his crew aren't big on indoctrinating her either. They want her to choose this path, which once again makes them way more tolerant than Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson. But they're still trying to wean a teenage girl off her natural instincts. They might as well try to teach a fish not to swim.

Razio tries again to talk some sense into Jubilee. He tries to play the role of a vampire Freud, explaining to her that her desire to feed on humans is part of a deeper longing to recapture what is left of her humanity. It's less creepy than the Oedipal complex or Freud's theory on penis envy, but Jubilee takes it about as seriously as most people take Ron Paul. So when he won't give her the blood she wants, she tries a different method besides wining. She tries kissing him and when that doesn't work, she tries to use the power of her vagina. Because what man can't resist the allure of teenage pussy? Well apparently Razio can. He does his dick a disservice and turns her down, leaving her to struggle with her hunger.

Now for some this may seem OOC for Jubilee and it is on many levels. Jubilee's vampirism hasn't been dealt with like this before and to this point, she's never shown this kind of struggle. It's only been mildly touched on how using Wolverine's blood has fought off her transformation. Now it hasn't just been brought to surface. It's been overplayed without any build-up. In the last issue she was just your normal blood-sucker. Now she's having all these issues with her new instincts. Both her fangs and her vagina are working against her. It's a twist on her character that's intriguing, but it happens really fast and without any development from the other X-men. They haven't even been mentioned yet and at this point in the comic, it's starting to feel like less an X-men comic and more Marvel's way of saying "Take this True Blood and Twilight fans!"

OOC or not, Jubilee is left in her dungeon with a glass of animal blood. She still looks like a girl who has been given time out for showing her boobs to a school bus of 3rd graders. All her efforts to beat/seduce Razio have been ineffective. Now normally this is the point where you start to suspect that a guy like Razio has an ulterior motive and it's only a matter of time before he goes from Edward Cullen to Eric Northman. But the more he talks, the more sincere he sounds. He's like the Professor Xavier of vampires, trying to get vampires off their murderous ways and on a more righteous path. Since Jubilee is an X-man, it would help if she's on that path. However, she's not going to make it easy on anybody.

Eventually, another one of Razio's Forgiven vampire buddies attempts to chat up Jubilee. He tries opening with a joke about sunshine and unicorns. It goes over about as well as a Britney Spears T-shirt at a Pantera concert. This guy ends up being as ineffective as Razio and twice as incompetent. He allows Jubilee to get the jump on him and she attacks, knocking him out and taking the fancy solar deflecting necklace that allows vampires to walk in broad daylight. With this she runs out of the dungeon and into the wild where she can prey on as many gullible humans as possible. Since she's a cute Asian chick, it's almost a given that they're going to be caught off guard.

While most would be pissed enough to cut off heads when a prisoner escapes, Razio doesn't show much concern. He doesn't even chew out his buddy who was dumb enough to get bested by a teenage girl. He claims that Jubilee will come back on her own and that being an X-men made her too good to start randomly eating strangers. It sounds like Iran saying "We don't have any nuclear bombs! We're just trying to make nuclear power!" But it's not long before Jubilee gets her chance. She finds some random male villager who like most young men are thanking the gods when a cute teenage girl randomly walks up to them. She attempts to seduce him and feed on him, but at the last moment she stops when she doesn't see her reflection in a mirror. This becomes the alcoholic equivalent of a moment of clarity for her. I've yet to have one, but I hear they're pretty fucked up.

Showing that she hasn't become a blood-sucking psychopath just yet, Jubilee leaves the boy undrained and runs back to Razio. So his suspicions about her were right. She is halfway decent enough to not go on a killing spree. He takes her back with open arms, not coming off as too creepy. She asks for his help. Usually, that's another chance for a captor to say to a teenage girl that all the help she needs resides within his penis. But he still hasn't resorted to that trick. Too bad because it works great on girls who have had a few too many drinks. He continues to claim that he wants to help her. Not a lot has happened to indicate that he has any other plans. It would be nice if there were because it makes him come off as too good and too boring at times. This is an X-man comic, or it's supposed to be. When a random stranger claims to help, that's usually a sign that he's going to screw you over in a way that would put Bernie Madoff to shame.

It isn't until the last fucking page that the X-men finally show up. They don't really do much and we haven't seen any hint of what they've been up to. We just see a few panels that show them beating up a bunch of vampires in their search for Jubilee. Really, that's about it. They don't come up with any clues as to where she is. They just restate their intent to find her. So nothing really happens. And the title of the book is X-men. Not Jubilee and her Blood-Sucking Buddies. While the story with Jubilee was nicely fleshed out, the near absence of the X-men and their utter lack of progress in this story just feels off. It leaves some hope for the next issue, but it ends this issue with a feeling of missed opportunities.

Now I appreciate what Victor Gischler is trying to do here. Hell, I don't blame him for it. Vampire Jubilee was his creation. He's the one who turned her into the source of so many Twilight jokes on this blog when he made her a blood-sucker in his inaugural Curse of the Mutants arc. Her transition from awkward mutant teen into awkward teen vampire/X-man has been one of the most compelling aspects of adjectiveless X-men. So telling a story that centers around her vampirism catching up with her makes sense. But the way it's told in this issue is done in a way that makes this feel like less an X-man comic and more an anomaly of sorts.

Don't get me wrong. It's a well-told story on Gischler's part. He just doesn't effectively mix it with the overall theme of this series. It's supposed to be X-men, namely the Utopia security team led by Storm and Psylocke. The last arc demonstrated this perfectly. This issue might as well be in another time zone. The X-men don't even show up until the final pages. We get no sense of what they're doing or how others are reacting to Jubilee's disappearance. Pretty much the whole issue is spent showing Jubilee struggling with her vampire while Raizo and his crew try to wean her off her sadistic tendencies. It's compelling and all, but part of what made the last arc so great was how Gischler fit it into the larger X-men universe. This doesn't seem to fit at all. It may fit with later issues, but this issue on it's own is really weak in terms of feeling like a full X-book.

There's still a lot to like about this issue. If you're a Jubilee fan, this issue should give you a fairly large boner. If you're an X-men fan in general, you probably won't find much to get excited about. It's still a decent story, one that mixes Marvel's world of vampires with the X-men. It just doesn't mix it very well. I like what Gischler is doing here and I think his work now is better than it's been at any point in this series. But for X-men #24, I can only give a 3 out of 5. It's a good story, but it's very narrow and doesn't feel like it belongs in an X-book. Vampire lovers will probably find this as a nice go-between until the next season of True Blood. X-men fans will just read this and continue thinking "When the fuck is Avengers vs. X-men going to get here?" It has potential, but it'll need more than Twilight jokes to realize it. Nuff said!

X-23 #19 - Heart Shattering Awesome

Teenagers are complicated, irrational creatures. One day they're so frail that the mere thought of taking a quiz in algebra class sends them into crying fits. The next they're so cold that they'll casually tell their parents that they choke small animals in their spare time. As a former teenager with more than his share of poor impulse control, comics like X-23 resonate with me. They don't just remind me that being a teenager sucks ass. They remind me that while it helps to have a healing factor and adamantium claws, you learn how to make tough decisions and live with them before you're too old make up for it.

X-23 under Marjorie Liu has been more a teenager than she has been a mutant or a Wolverine clone. It's been a boon for her character, so much so that it should be a federal crime that this series is getting cancelled. But I'd rather not go on that rant again. I'm still hung over from too much eggnog. Under Liu, X-23 has gone through some tough phases. She left Utopia, crossed paths with Sinister, took on Daken, and went through a self-mutilation phase. She even dabbled a bit in cosmic threats with the FF. Now she's taken a slightly less outrageous mission in the form of babysitting the children of Reed and Sue Richards. Wait...did I say that was less outrageous. Man, I am hung over!

Not surprisingly, this babysitting endeavor goes horribly wrong. The Richards children accidentally open a portal that takes them across the universe where a crazed fanboy with advanced technology and too much free time, abducts Franklin and Valeria. All the while, X-23 is dealing with her on-again/off-again boy toy Hellion. He was a bit of a jerk to her, but in his defense X-23 didn't say shit to him. She just visited him and left. He tried to catch up with her. A dragon and a time warp got in the way. That's pretty much par for the course in comics. However, I would argue it's no more serious than meeting your high school girlfriend's father and finding out he's a rabid NRA supporter whose eye twitches at you every time you stare at him for too long.

But I'd rather not relive memories of my ex. I'd rather focus on how this story continues with X-23 #19. In the last issue, X-23 met up with the Collector in his fancy ship only to find out that the Richards kids are now floating helplessly in space in a couple of bubble-like orbs. They're low on oxygen and time. The Collector, who seems intent on adding a Wolverine clone to his collection, decides to screw with her a bit by giving her a chance to rescue them. He gives her this fancy space suit and dares her to go after them. Hellion certainly doesn't like it, but X-23 is the babysitter if I recall. She's gotta get those kids or she doesn't get paid.

It's X-23 vs. the vacuum of space in an effort to get two pesky kids who got her into this shit by playing with dimensional portals. It seems more fair than it should be, but Hellion doesn't see it that way. He's still inclined to kick the Collector's ass for putting the girl he seriously wants to bone in this kind of danger. He continues to give him even more reasons because while he has him by the neck, he tells him that the fancy suit he so generously lent X-23 had a 'batteries not included' label. So like my ex-girlfriend's vibrator, it doesn't have the juice to get the job done and X-23 is that much more vulnerable.

What happens next is a test in physics. Pop quiz all you wonderful readers. What happens when you put someone in a vacuum? Answer, they suffer and choke in agonizing pain. For anyone else, that's death. But keep in mind that X-23 has lived a good deal of her life in agonizing pain. Hell, she was brought up in a lab where some guys probably jerked off to her suffering. So much to the Collector's chagrin, X-23 doesn't let a little something like a lack of oxygen stop her. Even with her healing, the vacuum of space is going to win that battle and even she knows it.

This is where it pays to be stuck with a guy who is seriously trying to bone you. When X-23 manages to break the air lock and send them both flying out into the vacuum of space, Hellion channels his inner Green Lantern and uses his telekinesis to save X-23. He's even nice enough to get Franklin and Valeria back to safety. Now I'm not sure if that's just nice or if that's his way of inching closer to getting inside X-23's panties, but it's probably the first real honest act of heroism that he's done in quite a while. I think there's a hidden message here. When teenagers are assholes, they're assholes to an amazing degree. But when given the potential for pussy, they'll be as heroic as Superman. Take note, parents! That's definitely something useful.

Once they're back in the ship and in the presence of sweet, wonderful oxygen, X-23 turns her attention back to the Collector. It's one thing to abduct Valeria and Franklin on her first babysitting run. It's another to trick her into flying out into space and then cutting off her air supply. Then he decides to go for the trifecta by attempting to kill Hellion for screwing his plan up. That's a no-no for X-23. Even if this kid is a jerk, he did save her life. While that may not get him into her panties, that will get him a vengeance kill. So even with a body that's still clearly fucked up from getting dangerously close to going down on the grim reaper, she takes on the Collector. At first he boasts how he's superhuman and immortal. She decides to test that claim by chopping off the guy's fucking head. Given all the crap he's put her through, a drawn out battle just wouldn't seem appropriate. When you piss a teenage girl off that much, decapitation is probably the most merciful fate one can hope for. Again, another lesson for would-be parents.

The Collector is dead. They're all still alive and in one piece, despite an unpleasant trip into space. So using the Collector's own gear, Valeria and Franklin program a portal that not only sends them back to New York it also sends the dragon back where it came from. See? Kids aren't completely psychopathic. They make it back to the lab only to see that it's royally fucked up. But these are the Richards kids. They're smarter than the average per-pubecant horrors and can clean up a lab in under 10 minutes. So since X-23 and Hellion were nice enough to save their lives and all, they do just that. So by the time Reed and Sue get home, they're both sleeping peacefully on the couch and you would never guess that they just got back from an adventure in space with a psychotic collector. But given their experience, they probably just assume it and shrug it off as another normal day.

X-23's first stint into babysitting is done. She leaves the FF understandably exhausted and probably jaded about a career in babysitting. But there's one other immature tyke she has to deal with and that's Hellion. He's waiting for her outside and he's intent on talking to her in the way she's been avoiding since this shit began. Now remember, she's the one that visited him at the institute when this arc began and she didn't do shit. She just showed up and left. So it's actually understandable that Hellion would want to talk to her to get some answers. But she still doesn't budge. Then he tries kissing her. It's not a very subtle kiss either. It's not the kind that X-23 is repulsed by. But then when it's over and he tries to get emotional, she just flat out says she doesn't want him. She doesn't care about him. She staying in the city, but not for him. It's probably the coldest, most dickish thing she's done in this comic and that includes the decapitation scene. So Hellion is understandably upset. He calls her out for being a machine that can't feel. It's harsh, but in this case X-23 deserved it.

This scene effectively ends the X-23/Hellion relationship, but in a way that's hardly clean. Marjorie Liu is great at writing teen drama and she does a great job of showing just how conflicted Hellion is. However, X-23 is so utterly stoic that I have a hard time making sense of this. She shows up, drags him along, and then breaks his heart? I know teenage girls can be cruel, but WTF? It's not that X-23 dumped Hellion in the middle of a street that bothers me. It's that she says so little and there's nothing in her expression that says anymore. She doesn't offer an explanation. She doesn't explain or even imply her motivations. She just flat out says "I don't want you. Now leave." It actually makes her seem like more of a douche than Hellion and that's saying a lot.

Now Hellion has even more reason to be emo, but X-23 doesn't seem to give too much of a damn. She just goes out for pizza where she meets up with Gambit. As he's done for much of this series, he offers X-23 some insight into what she's going through. It's not the most insightful bit of advice. To her credit X-23 does admit that Hellion meant something to her before, but it had changed. Gambit says that's normal and it is. Sometimes feelings get stronger and sometimes they don't and you have to move on. It sounds like the kind of message you get from a John Huges movie, but it's kind of hard to believe that coming from Gambit because he's been hung up on Rogue since the fucking Clinton administration. He says it's easier said than done, but that's like saying you can fix a nuclear reactor with a fucking wrench. The man has no credibility in this department and maybe that's the point.

Gambit takes X-23 home where she can do whatever teenage girls do after they break the heart of a teenage boy. I always imagined that they summon demons and swap blood with them so they can enjoy the suffering they inflict. Or maybe that's just my ex or that bitch that said I had too many pimples to go the prom with her. Whatever she had planned, those plans change when she arrives to find that she already has a guest. A few arcs ago, X-23 made her first real BFF in the form of Vampire Jubilee. She's the kind of girl that is such a stark contrast to X-23 that I'm pretty sure that Chuck Lorre is working on a sitcom based around this presence. So even with this series nearing it's end, Marjorie Liu sets us up for one last arc that involves trained killers and vampires. Sounds like fun to me!

So X-23's first venture into babysitting isn't a booming success or an epic failure. She does manage to keep Valeria and Franklin safe, but only after they make it exceedingly difficult for her by getting them caught up with an asshole like the Collector. While that turned out well, her pep talk with Hellion did not. I know there are some rabid Hellion/X-23 shippers out there and this issue is probably a dagger to the heart. X-23 makes it clear. She doesn't care about Hellion anymore. She's not all that conflicted about it either. She said so little to Hellion early on and gave so little indication as to what she felt for most of the story. It's still not clear if there was something else at work or if she was just being cold as teenagers tend to be. Either way, that romance is pretty much dead and given how much of an asshat Hellion has been since he lost his hands it may be for the better.

This was a great issue in terms of action and drama, but the lack of substance to X-23's interactions with Hellion is what really brought it down. Hellion was the emotional one here. All X-23 did was show up, stare blankly, and say she didn't want him in the end. I get that teenage girls have fucked up emotions, but the lack of insight here has me scratching my head. I honestly don't know what to make of X-23's actions here, but it looks like she has other drama in her life with Jubilee entering the picture again. In a way it sounds like she would get along a lot better with someone like Jubilee, a blood-sucking vampire that has to control her urge to kill just like X-23. Whether or not they talk about boys is basically moot at this point because the lack of detail here just makes it seem meaningless.

Everything else in this issue was solid. Marjorie Liu's writing is as good as we've come to expect. The art is beautiful. The action and the pacing all work nicely. It's just that emotional flatness on X-23 that brings this issue down. It ends the arc on a solid note, but it still feels like it's lacking. So with that minor detail, I give X-23 #19 a 4.5 out of 5. If you're an X-23/Hellion fan, you're probably going to hate this with the fire of a billion suns. But if you're just a fan of teen drama mixed with aliens and dragons, you'll have plenty to enjoy. Nuff said!

X-men #21 - International Incident (of Awesome)

There are very few things in this world that mixes well with politics. It's a standard law of the universe that if you really want to fuck something up, throw politics into it. It'll do more damage than inviting Charlie Sheen to your bachelor party. Politics fucks up with religion. It fucks up the economy. It fucks up society. So why wouldn't it fuck up comics? Well politics is like nitroglycerine. It doesn't take much to set it off, but if properly administered it can make the awesome explode off the page. Civil War proved this. So Marvel actually has some credibility when it comes to mixing politics with their books and after the events of X-men Schism, there ought to be some political undertones. I can only imagine the kind of rants Glenn Beck goes on when he discusses mutants. The drawings on his chalk board would probably make most people gouge their eyes out in disgust.

Victor Gischler's adjectiveless X-men kick started their new venture into Regenesis with a pretty solid issue. I gave it a 3.5 on this blog and made it clear somewhere within my drunken ramblings that it had the potential to be much better. Well X-men #21 must realize that potential as my attention span has been shredded by years of LSD use. It builds on a political conflict that was set up in the previous issue. It's not so convoluted that readers need a shot of adrenaline to follow it. The fictional countries of Latveria and Symkaria are in a dick-measuring contest over a region called Puternicstan. I don't even want to know how that's pronounced or what it refers to. I'll assume Marvel is making a poop joke of sorts. The X-men get involved when Domino discovers some of the dick-measurees jack a sentinel from the black market. Since they just experienced the business end of one too many sentinels during Schism, they have plenty of reasons to stop this shit before it starts.

This is the first mission for the X-men's new security team. Storm leads Colossus, Psylocke, Warpath, and Vampire Jubilee on a mission to locate Domino and unplug the sentinels. Along the way they encounter War Machine, who is acting as the dick measuring tool trying to keep the peace in the area before it turns into Saddam Hussain's old backyard. He tells them to back off. They don't. So they start fighting. At the end of the last issue, War Machine blasts Colossus a couple of football fields down. In the beginning of X-men #21, he returns the favor by ramming him in the back. That's perfect continuity right there folks!

A superhero slap fest always benefits the assholes behind the curtain. In this case that asshole also has breasts. In the previous issue, we were introduced to the governor of Puternicstan. She's basically Hillary Clinton if she became a dictator (which I'm sure is on her to-do list). She's the one that swiped the sentinel from the deal Domino eavesdropped on. She's also the one that ordered the attack on Domino that ended with her getting more roughed up than a stripper at Pacman Jones's bachelor party. She's now a prisoner and an asset because they're not out for using these sentinels for fighting mutants. I mean seriously. They're giant freakin' robots and they're a country surrounded by other asshole countries. Surely, even the government can come up with more creative ways of using them.

The prospect of a country hacking sentinel tech is pretty serious so it's a good thing that War Machine and the X-men decide to kiss and make up. It is a team-up series after all. It happens a bit abruptly though. After shooting at each other and beating the shit out of each other, now they're practically roommates in drug rehab. War Machine, despite being a more no-bullshit and non-pussy obsessed reflection of Iron Man, overlooks the many international laws the X-men are breaking and decides to work with them. It's not terribly contrived, but given how by-the-book War Machine usually is it seems somewhat glossed over.

The one getting screwed over most by this scuffle is Domino. She's supposed to be the lucky one yet she still wound up on the business end of a sentinel's wammo blast. And no, that's not a prison rape joke. The underpaid government scientists that retrieved her think she's dead. They describe how they're going to perform an autopsy, presumably after they loan her out to a few necrophiliacs. I'm sure there's a market for that in Europe somewhere. But while Domino wasn't lucky enough to avoid getting plastered in a way that doesn't involve Russian vodka, she does survive. That usually means the guys that want to cut her up are in deep shit.

With War Machine's help and Psylocke's telepathy, the X-men track down Domino's signature. They encounter the kind of random guards you would expect, the ones who always get their ass kicked in every superhero comic. It's a pretty standard flow of action so we'll take a moment to honor their sacrifice. It doesn't get dragged out more than it needs to because the X-men eventually find what their looking for.

Actually, I'm just fucking with you. Seriously, when does it ever go that smoothly? They find a whole fucking army of sentinels. And this after just one nearly killed Domino. This time the governor ditches the underpaid security guards and brings in her version of Seal Team 6. They're the same guys who managed to steal this tech in the first place and now they have it at their disposal. So it's really a much fairer fight than usual. It forces War Machine, Storm, and Colossus to try an air assault and hope NATO doesn't mistake them for weather balloons and try to cover up their wreckage.

While these fireworks are going off, Domino surprises her would-be morticians. She's not too fond of their eagerness to dissect her so she grabs a scalpel and plays the role of psycho bitch. She even manages to tie up one of the doctors. Now usually when a beautiful woman ties you up, that either means you paid extra or you're about to get screwed in all the wrong ways. In this case it's the latter because Domino breaks free and even takes their coffee as an extra fuck you. For someone who was nearly killed in the last issue, it's a great way to redeem her badassery.

All this action is being closely watched by Hillary Clinton wannabe from your standard observation deck. She actually goes into a little history surrounding this fictional country to show she's not quite as evil as Hillary Clinton. She was a little girl in a country that was essentially a whipping boy for other countries with bigger guns. Even Poland probably fucked them up a bit when they got bored. Well she decided that they weren't going to take that shit anymore. And who can blame her? What country wants to be the international equivalent of a semen encrusted sock underneath a 16-year-old boy's bed? Giant killer robots actually seems viable as twisted as that sounds.

Now some may think this background info is a useless waste of ink that could be otherwise utilized for more action scenes. But this is actually something Gischler hasn't done much of in the past. He's been good with providing style, but not a lot of substance. This is the kind of substance that may have saved Curse of the Mutants. It's overdue, but it was worth the wait!

It helps bring the next scene together in a perfectly harmonious way. As Storm, War Machine, and Colossus come in to aid Jubilee, Psylocke, and Warpath the sentinels are activated. This time they don't go on their usual 'destroy all mutants' schtick. Well, they do except their programming has been tweaked so that when they see War Machine, they think he's a mutant. Granted, there are probably mutants out there that look like men in a suit of armor, but it sets an ominous precedent. Now this country that's been everybody's bitch for so long has sentinels that will attack whoever they tell them to attack and that includes War Machine. So we've got a small robot versus a big robot. Unlike certain lies women say about penises, size does matter and War Machine is left in deep shit as the sentinels start to flex their muscle in preparation for the next issue.

Earlier in this review, I talked about unrealized potential. The last issue threw a lot of pieces into place, but this issue really brought them together in a way that even politics couldn't fuck up. It's not often I'm this impressed by Gischler's narrative, but I'm okay with saying he didn't just realize that potential. He made it his personal bitch. The political undertones with Puternicstan using the sentinels worked perfectly with the themes that were already set up in recent stories. It almost makes you wonder why some corrupt government didn't think of this sooner. It seems so obvious! Tweaking sentinels to attack non-mutants and testing it out on War Machine. Then again, anyone who has ever been ignored at the DMV knows corrupt governments aren't known for being proactive.

There was plenty of action and suspense to go around. Domino showed once again that she's more than a little lucky and not just because that uniform of her is able to contain her breasts. The X-men displayed a more subtle type of badassery as they attempted to rescue Domino only to find out they had yet another sentinel army to deal with. They did manage to make up with War Machine, albeit in an overly convenient sort of way. It was light on drama, but practical when you get right down to it. When killer robots are on the louse in a politically sensitive area, you really don't have time to be too elaborate. Gischler understood this and focused on setting the stage for another killer robot assault. I know it's been done before, but if it keeps working why change it?

This is the most complete issue of the adjectiveless X-men series in a long time. I knew Gischler was capable of this kind of awesome. He just never reached it. Well with this issue, he's made good on many promises and delivered the kind of story that you might not expect to be engaging on the surface but still is very enjoyable once you actually sit your ass down and read it. There's not much keeping it down other than some erratic pacing at times, but it still works in the end. That's why I give X-men #21 a 4.5 out of 5. You've proven yourself, Mr. Gischler! I know I already owe Kieron Gillen and Jason Aaron a lot of beers for their recent work. Don't worry! I'll make sure I save some for you when the time comes. Nuff said!

X-23 #17 - Teen Drama Awesome

I usually don't need an excuse to drown my sorrows in booze, but when I have a damn good one I milk that excuse for all it's worth. If I sound like I'm hung over, then congradulations. You just won the award for understatement of the century. Right now I feel like Superman and the Hulk are having a tap-dancing contest inside my skull. That's the kind of hangover you get after you find out a quality comic book series like X-23 has been cancelled. That's right. It was made official earlier this week. This series, which happens to be the only series Marvel has going that features a female lead, is ending at issue 22. Way to strike a blow for feminism, Marvel!

There's no way around it. This news sucks. Anyone who has followed this blog for any length of time knows that I'm a big fan of X-23 under Marjorie Liu. It's a different kind of X-men comic with it's own unique blend of awesome. It isn't all about women in skin-tight outfits fighting killer robots. It's a coming of age story for a teenage girl who happens to be Wolverine's daughter/clone. It's a story that won't have the same theatrics as Schism or Fear Itself, but it'll develop a character that deserves developing. Now it's ending and I'm left saddened, hung over, and maybe a little emotional. Excuse me while I question my masculinity.

But hung over or not, I'll still review this series! It's not over yet so the women of the world can enjoy a Marvel comic with a female lead for just a bit longer. Marjorie Liu has a story to tell to the testicle-driven world of comics and she sure as hell is going to tell it. She's coming off an arc where X-23 made some new friends with the FF and some new enemies with interdimensional tyrants. It was one of those out-there type stories that was confusing at times, but an entertaining spectacle not unlike watching your uncle with a spastic colon light his own farts. Now X-23 has new allies that happen to have a lot of awesome connections and a new appreciation for cosmic forces. Where could she possibly go after shit like that?

X-23 #17 begins by using a similar tactic that the previous arc used. It revists a plot that was touched on early in the series. This one involves our old friend Julian Keller, aka the tempramental teenage boy that wants to bone Laura. Now I can appreciate having such a death with, but he's undergone some changes since that early arc. First he lost his hands and now has to slam the ham with telekinesis-driven prosthetics. Then in Wolverine and the X-men #1 he was shown to be part of the newly found Jean Grey Institute for Higher Learning. Apparently, he's not all that friendly with his new surroundings. He's a reclusive dick cheese and Wolverine doesn't like that. So he decides to sit down with him and have a chat because the institute is fucked up enough without hostile teenage boys. Wait a minute...that makes it no better than my old high school! WTF?

Since Wolverine doesn't appear to be making any progress with this kid, he brings in the only force capable of reaching the stubborn mind of a teenage boy...a teenage girl. Suddenly, Hellion realizes that living like a pig and acting like an ass makes a guy stink in the eyes of a girl that may or may not be willing to bone him. Wolverine seems confident that X-23 can get Hellion to open up, if for no other reason than to inch his way closer into her panties. But this isn't just a case of Wolverine pimping his clone/daughter to one of his messed up students. Anyone who followed X-23 in the early arcs knows that X-23 and Hellion have a history. By history I mean they seem to want to bone each other, but shit keeps getting in the way. X-23 fought Hellverine to save Hellion (does that count as irony), but she didn't even say goodbye to him before she left. So there are some unresolved feelings here that are finally getting explored.

They finally start talking and Hellion stops talking as if his penis is seven feet long. He essentially tells X-23 about why he's been so pissed off lately. Never mind that he had his hands blown off. He had to to seriously hurt people (see the post-Second Coming arc of X-men Legacy) when no one else was willing to. He admits he does some lousy shit and he's a bit of an asshole, but he sees himself as a necessary asshole. He's also not so self-absorbed that he think he would last long outside the institute or Utopia by himself. Everyone thinks he's a danger and even he seems to believe it now. But if anyone can understand what it's like to be dangerous, it's X-23. It makes you sense that if there's anyone who would shack up with him in a way that isn't out of pity, it's X-23.

Unfortunately, X-23 doesn't offer much input on her own. In fact, she doesn't offer much of anything. Once Hellion finishes venting, she turns around to leave. So she goes through the trouble of coming back to the institute to see the boy she never said goodbye to that wants to bone her and then she just leaves? That's two WTFs. I honestly don't see the point of her showing up if she's not going to say anything. However, that doesn't excuse what Hellion does in response. Granted, he has somewhat of a right to be upset, but when he grabs in in a very Ike Turner sort of way he crosses the line from sympathetic asshat to just plain asshat. His only saving grace is that Gambit shows up to tell X-23 that she has a call from the FF. He also makes it a point to tell Hellion that if he touches X-23 or any other woman like that again, he'll need an electron microscope to find what's left of his penis.

Now some those who have been following the X-23/Hellion soap opera may be taken aback by this. Hellion is an ass, but he seems to cross a line here by getting rough with X-23. Never mind that X-23 could probably kill in ten times before his body hit the ground. This is a low for him that really comes out of nowhere in the context of this relationship. Earlier in this series, he went out of his way to save her. Now he's getting outright hostile with her. I get that he's been fucked up since then, but that's no excuse and it just doesn't seem to fit.

X-23 leaves Hellion to ponder his collapsed scrotum while Sue Richards of the FF ropes her into babysitting Franklyn and Valerie. Now you would think hiring a teenage Wolverine clone with a long list of issues sounds like shitty parenting, but seeing as how X-23 earned the FF's trust in the past arc and Sue exhausted all their options they give her the benefit of the doubt. So she and Reed don't come off as complete assholes. Gambit drives X-23 to the FF building on his way to a date. I have no idea where the date came from, but it's Gambit. For some reason women can't resist the urge to throw their panties at him.

When she arrives, it's very simple in the Marvel sort of way. Reed and Sue give X-23 the standard rundown and lecture his kids on not causing any trouble. Of course for them, trouble can involve a science experiment that blows up several time zones so it's not as typical as it seems. Knowing X-23 has handled inter-dimensional tyrants, you would assume she could handle herself. But when you really think about it in a less than sober mind, she's probably more safe taking on the inter-dimensional tyrant.

Babysitting the Richards children sounds as twisted as you would expect. By some accounts X-23 is a cool babysitter and not because she wears skin-tight clothes. She lets Franklyn and Valeria use their patented time window so they can see into the past. It's their version of picking a movie to watch. Then Franklyn says he wants to go into the past and pet the dinosaur, but to do so would require the energy of a half-megaton nuclear bomb. This is where X-23 draws the line. That doesn't make her less cool. It just makes her sane.

As was the case with my old babysitter, X-23 gets a call from her brooding boy toy. Unlike my old babysitter, she doesn't run up the phone bill by having phone sex with him. It's Hellion and he's trying to apologize for being a total dick-cheese. He also happens to be standing outside the FF building because he's the kind of guy that would follow a girl he got rough with, further adding to his douche-bag factor. X-23 resists the urge to fall into every babysitting trap ever made. She's still not saying much to Hellion other than he didn't hurt her and she doesn't want him to come up. You get the sense that she has more to say, but like Wolverine words are not her foray. Cutting shit up with her claws is.

Well luckily or unluckily, her chat with Hellion gets cut short because the Richards kids insist on being mischievous once more. They just can't resist tampering with the FF's technology. This goes about as well as you would expect. And if you expected that the tampering would cause the time window to rupture and free an angry dragon, then congratulations. You're both correct and you clearly got into my stash. At this point X-23 has to cease being a babysitter and start playing guardian. She also gets a chance to work off any anger she may feel towards Hellion without cutting off more of his limbs.

We get a nice shot of Reed and Sue, who appear to be having a nice time on their date. For once, they don't have to be in the thick of the shit storm when monsters from other dimensions emerge. For once, they can leave it to the babysitter that used to be a former living weapon. Needless to say, the dragon quickly makes a mess of things. It grabs both Franklyn and Valeria and X-23 grabs onto it's tail for a ride. There's a lesson about babysitting superhero kids in here somewhere. Or maybe it's just a lesson about dragons being douche-bags. Either way, it makes much more sense than the whole cosmic storyline from the previous arc and it's that much more enjoyable.

So I guess it's safe to say that this issue was a return to basics. When you can't tell a convoluted story about cosmic forces and inter-dimensional tyrants, just go with killer dragons and babysitting mishaps that could fit into any 80s teen movie. It's a simple contrast that's not too down to Earth by Marvel standards. And once again, Marjorie Liu demonstrates remarkable coherence in having the previous arc fuel the events of this arc, even if it is just the FF looking for a babysitter. That ended up being more relevant than X-23's unresolved drama with Hellion. Although between Hellion and the dragon, I would still say X-23 is better off dealing with the dragon.

That leads me to the main crux of this issue and it has nothing to do with dragons. The relationship between X-23 and Hellion has been poorly developed, but the chemistry was certainly apparent. Marjorie Liu had a great opportunity to really develop it, whether it brought them together or tore them apart. She opened up some old wounds with Hellion, but it seemed somewhat inconsistent with his recent developments. If you read Wolverine and the X-men #1 where Hellion showed up and then read this issue, you would have a hard time identifying them as the same character. In addition, Hellion came off as a wife-beater in training. Against someone like X-23, that's tantamount to waving your dick in the face of a hungry grizzly. Even he has to understand that it doesn't work and it paints the relationship between the two characters in a very unsavory way, which in my drunken opinion doesn't fit as it currently stands. But it looks like that problem is going to be worked out somewhere between babysitting and dragon slaying in the next issue.

Issues involving relationships are always somewhat messy. It's like being a maid at Gary Busey's house. You'll run into some fucked up things. But everything else around it was nicely developed. Using the FF again and setting X-23 up to face the horrors that the Richards children can unleash was done in a charming manner. Fans of the Hellion/X-23 relationship will definitely want to stick around to see what happens with them in the next issue. Fans of seeing X-23 beat the shit out of snarling monsters will want to see it as well. See! Everybody's happy! Congress can learn a lesson from comics, amongst other things. That's why I give X-23 #17 a 4.5 out of 5. It's not missing too many pieces. But it has a dragon in it so that's more than enough to deem it awesome. Nuff said!

Generation Hope #13 - Generational Awesome

Don't mistake my drunken rants as evidence of my political affiliation. I treat politics in a way similar to my penis. I don't whip it out in public and I don't force it down peoples' throats. I try to do the same with religion. That's exactly why I think it's an appropriate approach for a series like Generation Jean-Ripoff. It's a series that involves a messiah figure that doesn't involve crazy people from Texas running for President. Yet at the same time, it's been more erratic than Rick Perry's brain farts. Some issues have been awesome in ways that blow the mind and shrivel the scrotum. Others have been more fucked up than an Lady Gaga's dresses. So when a new writing team enters the fold, they're coming into an orgy that has just as much potential of being awesome as it does gruesome.

James Asmus takes over for Kieron Gillen at a time when all the X-books are undergoing big change. Schism has passed. Lines have been drawn. Sides have been taken. Balls have been busted. Every series is adjusting a mutant race that can no longer go clubbing in downtown San Francisco during gay pride week. Among the teams most effected were Jea-I mean Hope Summers's lights. Their so-called rescue team couldn't rescue their heads from their asses as Idie became a killer. Yet they still proved that they could kick ass against the Hellfire Club's fancy new sentinel so with Pixie joining in to take Idie's spot (and swapping spit with a few members already) the new team is set to move forward in the new world of Regenesis. I would hope that they along with Asmus treat it as well as I treat my penis.

Generation Hope #13 presumably takes place after the dust has settled from Schism and everybody is getting their butt-cheeks unclenched. Now with a depleted island, Cyclops sees fit to make sure that Je-I mean Hope (sorry, daylight savings fucked me up) are still capable of kicking ass. Sure, they handled a sentinel, but for X-men that's like saying you banged Madonna. It was something to brag about a few decades ago. Now it's no big deal. So to test their wits, Cyclops pits them in an exceedingly lopsided battle against Colossus, Psylocke, Namor, Magneto, Storm, Illyana, and Meltdown. So I guess Cyclops was that unimpressed with their performance in Schism. That roughing up a bunch of teenager mutant wannabes is their way of spending an afternoon.

Overmatched or not, Jea-I mean Hope (daylights saving plus booze does not a coherent brain make) and her lights hold their own. In fact, they do better than hold their own. They actually make the X-men regulars look like they belong in the minor leagues with JaMarcuss Russel and Ryan Leaf. Gabriel is able to outrun both Psylocke and Meltdown. Pixie teleports Colossus to what I assume is a crack den in Moscow while casting a spell on Namor that doesn't involve him fantasizing about another hot blonde. Teon even manages to diss Cyclops by saying Namor is the alpha male.

Now this is a little unbelievable in some ways because these Lights are all still very young. In fact, they haven't been X-men for the comic book equivalent for more than a few months. Yet they're able to go toe-to-toe with the regulars? It's one thing if they were holding back, but it's a bit too competent for a bunch of young mutants getting instruction from someone who may or may not be housing the "city in Arizona" as Cyclops calls it.

Eventually, the regulars get tired of this shit. When Kenji takes on Magneto and uses that Akira rip-off body of his to face-rape the master of magnetism Aliens style, he stops holding back. He pulls a few magnet tricks to rip Kenji's malleable body apart in a way so graphic that even Quentin Tarantino wouldn't put it in his movies. Needless to say this stops the exercise and Magneto gets a good lecture from Cyclops. Magneto reminds him that he's fucking Magneto. He used to want to make meat coats out of humanity. He's not going to go easy on a Japanese kid who tries to face rape him. Yet he still manages to be a douche about it, but again it's Magneto.

What follows next is some potentially interesting insight into Kenji. There really hasn't been much done with him other than show just how creepy he is. But after he pulls himself together, Kenji begins to speculate the more philosophical aspects of being a mutant/living glob. He says every form of his body is linked, but if he separates it does that means he's separating his soul? It's the kind of shit only a stoned artist would make after he found out he's being evicted. But Kenji IS an artist. That's part of his character and this is the first time it's really being explored. I applaud Asmus for this. I'm tempted to applaud how he touches on Gabriel and how using his powers seems to make him age, but Gabriel's been such a douche-bag lately with how he lets his dick do all the thinking that it's hard for me to give three tenths of a shit.

As if Kenji hadn't proven himself creepy enough, he decides to take a page from Gabriel's playbook and do some flirting. But who would he go after? Maybe Surge, another fellow Japanese mutant? Fuck no! That would make too much sense. He goes for Martha Johanssen. Who is Martha Johanssen? Well she's not Scarlet's cuter, more accessible little sister. She's a brain in a jar. No, that's not a lead-in to a Sarah Palin joke. That's what she is. And for some reason, Kenji is attracted to it. I'm tempted to go into elaborate details about how fucked up this is, but Kenji is from Japan. This is the country that gave us tentacle rape porn and panty vending machines. A brain fetish is actually pretty tame for a teenage Japanese artist.

There's so much horniness going around that even Teon gets in on the action. He decides to tempt the Stepford Cuckoos. Let's face it, three hot blond triplets in school girls uniforms will have every man's instincts going into overdrive. But once Hope (there, take that daylight savings!) arrives to spare the Cuckoos one too many semen stains, she finds out they were tracking a mutant in Pakistan that she didn't know about. This pisses her off because she's leader of the rescue team. She's supposed to know about every mutant signature in case they need rescuing. This is one the Cuckoos kept from her and since they won't give her details, she does what any reasonable teenage girl would do and pretty much blows them off in a completely non-porno way.

Now for those of you who haven't kept up with recent events in the X-books, this isn't coming from nowhere. That mutant signature is a result of a fairly recent arc of Uncanny X-men. In that arc, Emma Frost went through a great deal of trouble to slip Sebastian Shaw under the radar of everyone including Cyclops and Namor. She managed to ship him out to Pakistan where she mind-wiped him and hoped she would never have to deal with his sorry ass again. Well now Hope Summers, who just a few issues back threatened to burn Emma Frost to a cinder, has found out about him. You can imagine why this would fuck a lot of shit up.

After using the Cuckoos's own powers, she assembles her lights. Kenji even brings along Martha for good measure because a brain on a stick is just SO useful on a trip to Pakistan. Now Laurie tries to explain to Hope that in this time period Pakistan is about as welcoming as a horny pit bull at a daycare center. But she doesn't listen. She doesn't care if there are terrorists in this part of the world that routinely bomb girls schools for just showing their eyes, let alone walk around naked like Laurie. She doesn't know that this is Sebastian Shaw they're dealing with. She thinks this is another mutant that needs to be stabilized. So she splits the team up to look for him, even putting Gabriel with Pixie just because she needs to keep his penis confused. If you've read Uncanny, you know Hope is walking into a metric fuckton of trouble.

We finally get a chance to dig deeper into these hormone issues. At this point there's mostly talking and not much action. There's a moment where Hope hints that Laurie is attracted to Kenji, but that's so random that even in Pakistan it would be considered fucked up. It's just random talking and it's not the kind of talking that hasn't been done in previous issues, so it kind of drags here. Then Gabriel just talks about how he's a fucked up teenager in a body that's rapidly aging every time he uses his powers. He tries to justify his hormones as being part of his bone-headed decision making when it comes to flirting with anything that even resembles a pair of breasts. Pixie basically tells him off for trying to make her the skank. It isn't until they encounter some guys with guns that the conversation actually starts to get interesting. Really, that's all they do. They talk until people start shooting at them.

It eventually does pick up when Kenji's new squeeze, Martha, finds the signature they're looking for. It's their old buddy Shaw, but they don't know it's Shaw and it's not even clear of Shaw knows he's Shaw. Confused yet? It gets a lot simpler. As the Lights all converge around him, he does something that would be extremely unexpected if it were taking place in any other part of the world. He reveals that he has a bomb strapped to his chest. And since he's Sebastian Shaw and he's in a part of the world known for that sort of thing, it's not terribly surprising when he blows himself up. Now he doesn't give a reason. That's essentially left for the next issue, as are most of the plots revealed in this issue. But it's an explosive way for the issue to end. It finally shoots an enema of action into a comic that didn't really have much and this is the kind that you don't have to lie to your proctologist about.

Now I can already hear the ACLU and the Community for Islamic Relations suing Marvel. It's one thing to have a mission in Pakistan. It's quite another to cater to all the stereotypes about shanty towns, goat farms, and suicide bombers. Please, Marvel. Let's not give Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity anything else to jerk off to when the cameras are off on Fox News. So what if they're accurate. This is the age of political correctness! Truth be damned!

Political correctness aside, this issue was a solid setup issue at the very least. At the most it was one of those charming stories that starts with a mistake and turns into a fiasco that's just awesome to unfold. It's like watching Mike Tysons beat the shit out of Darrel Strawberry. You're not sure why they're beating each other to a pulp, but you're pretty sure they deserve it. James Asmus shows that he has a good handle for these characters. He even dug a little deeper with some elements that Kieron Gillen only touched on like Gabriel's aging and his flirtation with Pixie. He even introduced some new elements like Kenji having a strange fetish (at least by non-Japanese standards). It all culminated in the encounter with Sebastian Shaw at the end, which quickly turned explosive. The man doesn't know who he is, but he's the kind of guy that will blow shit up whenever he gets a chance and that always makes for great X-men stories.

While the setup was nice, it was just that...a setup. I get the feeling that Asmus spent too much time setting shit up and not enough time moving shit forward. There's only so much shit you can set up before it's starts to smell. Now the stench wasn't overpowering here, but it was apparent. Some elements like Gabriel's assessment of his attraction to Hope and Pixie seemed a bit contrived. Laurie's attraction to Kenji just came out of nowhere. I'm not sure if those were setups, but they felt a bit random and that had me scratching my head a few times. Luckily, the picture of a big ass explosion at the end made it all worth it!

Now I try to avoid scoring books on a curve. Setup issues are hard to overly praise because they only put the story in a position for action. At the same time they're a necessary part of every story. Not every issue can start with the characters neck-deep in shit. It's necessary to show them wading through the sewage. In that sense Generation Hope #13 is more than sufficiently awesome. There's a bit too much talking at times, but it succeeds in making the reader want to see the next issue and since Marvel is in the business of selling shit last I checked I can safely say they succeeded. That's why I give Generation Hope #13 a 4 out of 5. Hope and her team have stumbled ass backwards into a fucked up secret that certain people in the X-men don't want revealed. At the rate this story is going, it looks like Jerry Springer will need to make a comeback in order to assess it. Nuff said!