Tuesday, July 2, 2013
Scanned Thoughts: X-men #2
Every week I induce severe head trauma and ingest various mind-altering substances before reading a comic. Then I write out the thoughts that emerge. They're not always coherent, logical, or healthy. But I've long since destroyed the part of my brain that gives a shit. So here are those twisted thoughts associated with X-men #2. Read on if you dare.
In a book already dripping with boobs and estrogen, it's only fitting that the big baddie in this series be the pissed off sister of John Sublime, Arkea. First, she hitched a ride on a cute little baby that derailed a train in a way that didn't involve crying like a banshee having his nuts squeezed. Then once at the Jean Grey Institute, she jumped into a much more capable body in Karima Shapandar, aka Omega Sentinel. It's basically a killer robot with boobs and her first act is to pwn Beast and hack the Jean Grey Institute. It's as awesome and sexy as it sounds.
As a result, the entire Jean Grey Institute goes all PMS on the X-men. Yes, that was a lady parts joke. Get used to it. It's an all-women comic. Sublime basically warmed them about this shit and they didn't listen. John Sublime may be a total douche-bag, but even a broken clock is right twice a day I guess. And Arkea even adds to the pwnage, making the computer systems actually laugh at Rachel Grey when she tries to override her shit. That's basically like a hacker flashing a picture of your girlfriend blowing him. It's cruel, but effective adds a nice touch of humor. And few things are more enjoyable than laughing with a raging boner.
Arkea is enjoying the benefits of her little surprise attack. That's the benefits of hopping a ride on a baby. Nobody suspects a baby of being evil, outside a Chucky movie that is. But once the surprise wears off, Beast manages to at least partially inflate his now collapsed scrotum by opening the door to his lap and leading Rogue to Arkea. So he's still getting a woman to do his fighting for him. I guess the Feminazis will have something to bitch about after all.
But it's still a pretty awesome fight. Rogue, being the heavy hitter of the team, roughs up Arkea. But keep in mind she's still in Omega Sentinel's body. That means it's two beautiful women beating the shit out of each other in an ape man's lab. It sounds like a masturbatory fantasy from Stephen Hawkings. It's still pretty damn awesome. And it's not like Beast does nothing. He does try to knock Omega Sentinel out with a little morphine. But that does jack shit against Akrea, who sounds like Martha Stewart on Adderall. So this issue now has beautiful women and drugs. Add some bacon to the mix and it would be the perfect comic.
While this hot girl on cyber-girl action is going on, the rest of the X-women try to get some answers out of John Sublime. He basically tells them that she moves through technology. In the process she learns all she can and then destroys everything in her way before moving on. She's basically like Brainiac, but instead of a freaky robot she's a collection of bacteria that hops into hosts that include babies and hot cybernetic women. I'm just going to call it here. Arkea would bitch slap Brainiac in a second. For that reason, John Sublime offers his help. Yeah, he's still a douche-bag, but he's a douche-bag that's terrified of his sister. So I guess that also makes him a pussy.
The plan now amounts to slowing Arkea down before she can get too much data. And since Kitty Pryde has a talent for fucking up machines by phasing through them (which is probably more efficient than dropping them in the toilet), she's best equipped to handle this. But Arkea gets wind of this and decides to fight back. At this point she has already taken down Rogue, who is the heavy hitter like I said. So Kitty Pryde might as well be trying to convince a man to take her to her grandmother's house on the day of the Superbowl.
But unlike Rogue, she tries to beat her in ways that don't just involve beating her up. Rachel encourages her to try and reach out to Omega Sentinel. That involves threatening her by saying that if she phases through her, she'll effectively kill Omega Sentinel and possibly Arkea. It's the kind of threat you don't usually expect to see in a cute little girl like Kitty Pryde. But just because you want to fuck her doesn't mean you would want to fuck with her. Arkea knows this and just opts to ditch her and the Jean Grey Institute. Is it cowardly? Fuck yes. But is it smart. Definitely.
Now Arkea's on the loose and the X-women have to track her down before she derails more trains or blows up more schools. But since she's still in Omega Sentinel, that means she's moving fast and probably not going to slow down unless it's to give them another big fuck you. If that weren't hard enough, they need John Sublime to tag along for the ride. He's a douche and he looks like the kind of guy who will betray them, wave his dick in their face, and ditch them the moment they take care of his crazy, genocidal sister. But they're basically stuck with him. He might as well be herpes.
Then Jubilee decides to join the mission. But wait...doesn't she now have an adopted baby to take care of? I can understand her wanting to tag along with the mission. She's a vampire teenager with poor impulse control. But what bothers me here is that Storm and the rest of the X-women actually fucking let her. It's not like the baby is now key to stopping Arkea...as far as we know. But she just points out that she's involved and somehow that's reason enough to have her go on this dangerous mission and take the fucking baby with her? I'm all for occasional child endangerment, but this is just fucking irresponsible. And that's coming from a drunk.
Even if it is irresponsible as fuck, it does lead to a nice moment where John Sublime confronts Jubilee and apologizes for basically stalking them in ways that only the Catholic Church could equal. He also informs her that the baby is now perfectly healthy since Arkea has jumped ship. She even called him Jubilee's son. It makes for a nice, emotional moment that shows Jubilee demonstrating the kind of maturity that we never saw in two seasons of 16 and Pregnant. Suck it, MTV!
Yet to this point, there's still no mention of the fact that Jubilee is still a fucking vampire. She hasn't even shown her fangs yet. I'm glad this issue focuses on Jubilee more as a character, but when one of her defining skills involves being a bloodsucker, that's a pretty tough thing to overlook. Plus, she's caring for a fucking baby now. Isn't anyone in the X-men going to point out how fucked up that is?
They may figure it out enough. But right now, they've got more shit to deal with. The Jean Grey Institute is in ruin...again. And Kitty Pryde is sitting the mission out to help with the clean-up efforts. The problem is that Arkea wasn't exactly done fucking with the X-men before she left. Before she took off, she apparently hot wired a ticking bomb of sorts. Now it's not clear if it's the kind of bomb that explodes in a big ass fireball, but given the Jean Grey Institute's propensity to being blown up I think it's a pretty safe bet.
Something is about to go boom and for once it isn't my dick. This issue is lighter on the drama compared to the first, but more than compensates by having Rogue kick some serious ass. Jubilee's role is still not clear. She hasn't even flashed her vampire fangs or allowed me to make a Twilight joke. I guess I'll have to stick to 16 and Pregnant jokes now that she has a baby. That's fine by me and those are my twisted thoughts on X-men #2. Nuff said!
I'm generally intriguied by the action and the artwork, but there ARE issues here. Besides the Jubilee thing, the writer also seems to be under the impression that Rogue still has her Ms. Marvel powers that she lost ten years ago. These might seem like nitpicks, but it would be like showing Wolverine with bone claws.
ReplyDeleteAlso had to roll my eyes at the forced drama of "Oh no, can we really kill Karima?" Take a dramatic arc that has already been done to death with the X-Men (A vs X does it like, 3 or 4 times alone), plus the hand-wringing over a AI's "true self" that's been milked out of countless Vision/Jocosta/Danger/Sentinel scenarios, PLUS the fact that Karima has already been declared "dead" before this story began (otherwise it makes that Hellion story REALLY pointless), and it all adds up to a big case of YAWN.
Finally Sublime seems WAY too inexplicably genial here. Under Morrison's pen he was a manipulative smarmy bastard, even at his "nicest."
Again there's some fun to be had here, but, y'know PROBLEMS.
I think you're being overly picky here. Yes, there are some elements that have been done before. You could say that about anything these days. What matters is whether they're done in an awesome way. And this issue succeeded in that respect.
DeleteJack