Extraordinary X-men #1: Nuff Said!

There's no way around it. Mutants are fucked. Thanks to Disney, movie rights, and Bryan Singer, we can safely assume that Marvel's main mission moving forward will be to fuck over the mutant race in ways even the IRS would find excessive. They survived Secret Wars, but just in time for the Disney-owned Inhumans to kick their asses. They're going extinct...again. They've been sterilized...again. Someone hand me a flip phone because this feels like 2005 again. Jeff Lemire has been given the keys to this shitty Buick of a franchise and is expected to make it awesome in Extraordinary X-men #1. Not saying it's impossible. I'm just saying he's playing with house money in a casino owned by a meth head version of Joe Pesci.

Storm knows the odds. She knows how fucked the X-men and the mutant race are. She laments from behind a desk at how fucked they are. She says the X-men have lost everything, including Cyclops somehow. Not sure what the fuck that means, but if he’s more fucked over than he already was, then what hope is there for mutants?

As she’s musing over this, it looks like for a moment that she’s talking to Charles Xavier. But don’t worry. Nothing THAT fucked up happened during the 8-month gap. Xavier is still dead. The Xavier she’s talking to is all in her head. Usually, that’s a sign of someone losing their shit. Given how fucked mutants and the X-men are, I think Storm deserves a pass here.

As for Magik, she doesn’t need no stinkin’ pass. She’s got magic, a nice rack, and a big ass sword. That’s more than enough to take on an army of mutant-hating gunmen in India. Hell, that’s enough to get in Hugh Hefner’s will these days. There’s more subtle hints at what mutants are doing to everyone. Apparently, now they think that mutants spread disease. Granted, only the innocent mutant girl looks sick, but when has that ever stopped bigoted assholes before? To be fair, Magik does give them a chance to be reasonable. She then makes it clear she’s as reasonable as a pissed off teenage girl can be.

She teleports the girl away to safety just as the asshole bigots try to solve this problem with machine guns. It doesn’t work in Apocalypse Now. It doesn’t work here either. While I would’ve loved to see Magik give every one of these assholes a proctology exam with her sword, she opts to save the scared mutant girl. She might be a pissed off teenage girl, but she’s a pissed off teenage girl with a heart, which is more than I can say for 95 percent of the girls I graduated high school with.

But where exactly did Magik take her? Where is it still safe for mutants to wake up in the morning and not worry about angry asshole bigots attacking them with machine guns? That’s something else that isn’t answered. The Jean Grey Institute is still there, but now it’s in some place called X-Haven. Where the fuck is X-Haven? I have no fucking clue. It’s not on Google Maps or Craigstlist. It might not even be on Earth. But I don’t see any asshole bigots armed with machine guns so I’m guessing it’s still an upgrade for most mutants.

So while all these mutants are suffering, what’s O5 Jean Grey up to? She’s attending a fucking lecture. Now I’ve got nothing against higher education, but she’s one of the most powerful mutants on the planet and she’s listening to college professors bitch about rich people? Seriously, does taking a break from the X-men mean being a callous bitch? I want to have sympathy for her. I really do. But this is someone who can’t stop hugging people. And she’s going to just shrug her shoulders at the current state of mutants?

She tries to make excuses. She claims something happened to Cyclops that fucked her up so much that she would rather attending boring lectures than be an X-man. We don’t know what the fuck it was, which makes it pretty hard to even fake sympathy. Then, Storm lets O5 Jean read her mind and she sees for herself just how fucked they are. It’s not enough that everybody hates mutants and are using them for target practice. But the Terrigen Mist that’s killing them is also sterilizing them. Somewhere out there, Wanda Maximoff is rolling her eyes and sighing in relief.

But O5 Jean isn’t the only one who apparently doesn’t give enough fucks anymore about mutants. Colossus also decided to ditch the X-men and the mutant race to work on a farm. That’s actually a lot more respectable than attending boring college lectures so I’m not going to give him the same crap I gave O5 Jean.

He’s had a busy day plowing fields in ways rap lyrics have ruined over the years. Then Magik shows up. There’s a nice little reunion. There’s still not much anger or animosity between them, which was addressed in Uncanny X-men #600 anyhow, albeit poorly. But he’s generally aware of what Storm is doing with X-Haven and doesn’t give enough of a fuck to help. He just reveals that at some point, the Terrigen Mists started fucking up mutants and Beast is working on a cure. He’s still an asshole, but at least he’s trying, which is more than I can say for Colossus.

There’s a nice, lengthy chat about their history as a family. There’s even vodka involved. How can any family chat not be made more awesome with vodka? But as nice as it is, Magik says the X-men need him. Things with mutants are just too fucked to NOT have someone as strong as him. Eventually, Colossus agrees. That or he’s out of vodka. I’m going to just assume he was low on vodka.

So is there any MIA X-man who is actually doing more than sitting on their ass? Well, Nightcrawler is at least trying to be productive. He’s caught up in some battle against a bunch of demonic creatures. It looks like a shitty level of World of Warcraft, but it is by far the most action this story has managed. We don’t know who these assholes are or why Nightcrawler insists on fighting them while reciting bible verses. I’m guessing he watched the Charlie Brown Christmas Special one too many times or something. We don’t even get any hints were. We just know Nightcrawler gets his ass kicked and that’s about it.

Back with O5 Jean, she still needs to be convinced to ditch boring college lectures and join the X-men. Seriously, if you have to be convinced to do shit like that, then being a disillusioned teenager just isn’t enough of an excuse. She rightly points out that staying in the X-men means she’s going to die multiple times. I feel like someone should point out that she’ll die by boredom if she stays in college, but I guess that goes without saying.

She’s still reluctant. Storm and Iceman are very close to saying “fuck it!” Then, O5 Jean finally relents. She finally accepts that the risk of multiple deaths is worth not having to sit through another shitty college lecture. She doesn’t flat out agree to join the team, but she does say that she has picked up on a few things that might help.

One of those things is a cantankerous, wrinkled old holdover from Battleworld. But it happens to be one of the best parts of Battleworld that doesn’t involve Ultron fighting zombies. That’s right, it’s Old Man Logan. He’s now stuck in 616 and he’s choosing to pass the time fighting Sentinels. Personally, I’m surprised he’s not getting plastered in every bar in Canada, but I guess this is how he stays sharp in his old age. When Storm confronts him, it’s a beautiful thing. But fuck if it still leaves a lot of unanswered questions.

So...is it awesome?

Well, if you're a Cyclops fan, fuck no. This issue might as well be an omen on par with the Pacific Ocean turning to blood. This new era of X-men is going to SUCK for Cyclops. Having him kill Xavier was bad enough. Now, he's basically a bipolar Magneto on crack and off his meds. At least, that's the impression that's conveyed here. It's so bad that O5 Jean decided to say, "fuck it!" and leave. It seems fitting that with Wolverine dead, Marvel needs someone else to screw over and Cyclops is the odd man out.

Beyond Cyclops fans, this issue has its moments. And by moments, I mean a whole lot of "What the fuck is going on here?" I've blacked out before. I've woken up in strange places and unknown zip codes. But I've never blacked out for 8 fucking months so there's a lot of missing information here. Without that information, it's really hard to understand the state of the X-men. We're just left to assume they really are that fucked. And sadly, that seems like a pretty safe assumption.

Final Score: 5 out of 10