All New X-men #20 Preview - Raging Teenage Hormones

There’s a good reason why adults are wary of allowing teenagers to make competent, rational decisions. In many cases, the concept of a “competent rational decision” for a teenager is no different than the concept of “how can I get away with this shit and not get in trouble?” I say this not to disparage all teenagers. I can only speak from my own experience. When I was 16, I was given the seemingly simple task of planning a friend’s birthday party. Yet for some reason, I thought his parents wouldn’t have any problem with having the party at Hooters. I know it’s perfectly logical to an adult why that’s dumber than mixing laxatives with sleeping pills, but at the time my brain hadn’t developed beyond the point of putting breasts into the context of everything I did.

It’s easy to forget that the X-men were once immature teenagers. Even the younger members of the team conduct themselves with a maturity that would make most parents and high school principals overjoyed. But at some point, they were at the mercy of their hormones and those hormones led them to do some pretty crazy shit. After all, isn’t being a mutant a lot like going through puberty? We go through physical changes that would make caterpillars shit bricks, we start thinking shit that we don’t know can get us arrested in most states, and we react in the most irrational way possible when shit doesn’t go our way. That’s part of why All New X-men has been such a compelling book. It takes some of the most developed characters from the history of X-men and reverts them to their immature teenage selves…except for Iceman since he was always immature.

That immaturity has been the driving force behind so many plots since All New X-men began. And it’s not just the reactions that naturally come with learning that some of them end up dead while others end up killing Charles Xavier. Like a teenage girl whose parents just found birth control pills hidden in their sock drawer, they react to other situations in ways so illogical that Spock would probably shit himself. There really was no logic behind O5 Jean Grey’s decision to push O5 Cyclops away and jump into the arms of the first person who entertained naughty thoughts about her. There’s also no logic behind O5 Angel ditching his team the first chance he gets after he finds out that his older self goes batshit crazy. I imagine that if he found out he got to bang a hot Asian girlfriend, he would probably think it was worth it.

But for O5 Cyclops, he has managed to remain fairly controlled in terms of his emotions. He might as well be to teenage maturity what Peyton Manning is to playing quarterback in the NFL. Everybody hates him for what he becomes, the love of his life pushes him away, and his older self grows up to be the asshole that kills Charles Xavier. Yet he still maintains the boy scout persona that his adult self probably lost in Emma Frost’s vagina. He has tried to make things right. He has been trying to write a tortured love letter to O5 Jean Grey since the beginning of the series. But at some point, even a mature teenager succumbs to the power of hormones.

This process has already begun for O5 Cyclops. In All New X-men #18, he actually started entertaining the idea that he could hook up with a woman who wasn’t Jean Grey or a clone of her. He still left the door open for hooking up with clones of Emma Frost, but I don’t think teenage hormones can ever be blamed for that. And according to the cover of All New X-men #20, he’ll do way more than just entertain the idea. Well today, Marvel released an unlettered preview for All New X-men #20. And while it’s too easy to come to any conclusions from unlettered previews, especially when stoned, it’s pretty much a given that teenage hormones will be a far more daunting threat than the Purifiers.

CBR: All New X-men #20 Unlettered Preview

Marvel is pleased to present your first look at the action-packed All-New X-Men #20, from the blockbuster creative team of Brian Michael Bendis, Brandon Peterson & Mahmud Asrar! There’s a new student at the New Xavier School – and she’s not too happy her new “campus” is housed inside a former Weapon X facility! X-23 wants answers – and she’s not going to ask nicely. But before she gets then, she and the All-New X-Men must face down a heavily armed squad of mutant-hunting Purifiers! And Laura may just find comfort in the arms of one of her new teammates – young Cyclops of the All-New X-Men! It all starts this December in All-New X-Men #20!

So I guess it’s official. X-23 is back in the X-men comics and I just felt some tears of joy on my eyes. That or my ex-girlfriend mixed hot sauce in my whiskey, in which case I’ll be finishing the rest of this blog entry on the toilet. It’s also official that X-23 still hates Weapon X facilities and it may be a shitty idea to bring her to one, even if it has been converted into a school. Her reaction to waking up in such a setting wearing only slightly more than what Miley Cyrus wears in her music videos has to be pretty distressing. But she was a teenage prostitute at some point. I have to believe she has woken up in way shittier situations amidst much more disturbing smells.

While her reaction to the Weapon X facility is expected, her interaction with O5 Cyclops is somewhat less so. She doesn’t exactly look inclined to kiss him and let him cop a feel in the preview. Then again for all we know, O5 Cyclops is asking her if she charged extra for anal. That’s the drawback of these unlettered previews. Drunks like me are left to make way too many crazy assumptions. But at the very least, it seems O5 Cyclops takes it upon himself to reach out to X-23. Considering she’s a hostile teenage girl with anger management issues and the clone/daughter of Wolverine, that alone makes O5 Cyclops the bravest motherfucker in the history of the universe. And perhaps this is what lays the foundation for that kiss, if of course the cover doesn’t turn out to be total bullshit as so many others have.

I'll bet Wolverine is PISSED that this wasn't fake.

If it does happen, I don’t think O5 Cyclops would try to resist. He may still be in love with Jean and he may still be a boy scout, but he’s still a teenage boy and X-23 is an attractive teenage girl. And for whatever reason, a sizable number of teenage boys get a boner around an attractive girl that could kill them in their sleep. Teenage hormones will be the driving force in this story and it will likely add to the ongoing drama between O5 Cyclops and O5 Jean Grey. He already saw her breasts in X-men: Battle of the Atom and she saw him shirtless. That creates a volatile cocktail of teenage hormones that makes TNT look like expired soda.

For all we know, this is like two ex-lovers trying to one-up each other. O5 Jean wants to hook up with O5 Beast or O5 Angel, then that’s fine. O5 Cyclops will respond by swapping spit with X-23. They’re pushing each other away, but they can only push so far. The integrity of the timeline kind of needs them to hook up at some point, barring another deal with Mephisto. And unless Marvel wants to resort to that bullshit again (and they might), they’re going to have to overcome these teenage hormones at some point. It’s just going to be an uphill battle to say the least. Hell, that battle will definitely be more exciting than any battle against the Purifiers. At least they only want to kill mutants. These hormones are going to drag them to the brink of insanity by their genitals. Nuff said!