Wolverine and the X-men #7 - A Scientific Method for Awesome

Whenever I read stories about the human body it often reminds me that my internal organs are probably more fucked than a Bangkok whore on coupon day. I'm often amazed at the sheer majesty of the human body, especially when beautiful women allow me to observe it up close after a few shots of tequila. Stories about people shrinking themselves and exploring god's handiwork are as old as Betty White's last used tampon. So how do you add a novel twist on this plot? Three words: aliens, alien spores, and alien conspiracies. Okay, so maybe just aliens will suffice.

Wolverine and the X-men has already proven to be a wildly entertaining book without aliens. In it's inaugural arc it brought homicidal kids, an army of Frankensteins, and a living island. And yes, that was just one arc. Apparently, Jason Aaron treats his stories the same way he treats his beard. He just doesn't know when to cut it off. If anything, a plot involving aliens feels almost normal in a comic that has prided itself on being awesome in a more light-hearted way that still involves the threat of gruesome death. It may sound as awkward as an Amish hacker, but Jason Aaron has made it work in a way that would make the late Steve Jobs proud. May he rest triumphantly in Valhalla!

Mr. Aaron has taken Marvel's favorite race of hostile aliens who treat blood the same way my ex-girlfriend treats chocolate when she's PMSing (only with slightly less hostility). They have been unleashed both on the Jean Grey Institute and on Kitty Pryde's innards. In the last issue it was revealed that the mastermind behind this rather misogynistic plot that would give Rush Limbaugh a boner was orchestrated by another alien that seems to enjoy keeping the Brood as pets. Perhaps he killed one too many goldfish as a kid, but who am I to judge? This nameless alien showed up at the institute and attacked Broo and Kitty Pryde while Beast led an expedition into Kitty's body in an effort to destroy the army of mini-Brood that had been unleashed inside her. All the while, the institute is still dealing with financial issues after Angel lost his fucking mind and the Hellfire kids took control of his company. So Wolverine decided to take the most ridiculous approach towards solving this problem and dragged Kid Omega to an alien casino where he hoped to cheat his way into enough funding. I think someone needs to pull him aside and explain the merits of a fundraiser, but then again he's Wolverine. If he's not laying his dick on the edge of an axe, it's just not worth doing for him.

At the end of the previous issue, both sides were chin deep in shit. This issue begins in a way that doesn't make it smell any nicer. Kid Gladiator, the institute's resident egotistical douche from every bad 80s teen movie, thought he could handle an army of invading Brood by himself. So it's almost satisfying to see him get turned into a Brood. It sucks for Iceman, Warbird, Beast, and everyone else who are having a hard enough time trying to make sure these mini-Brood don't ravage Kitty's womb in a way almost as bad as what Tommy Lee did to Pamela Anderson. Despite Kid Gladiator acting like more of a douche than usual, Beast manages to locate the main egg sack where all the mini-Brood are coming from. It's not entirely clear if this sac is located in Kitty's stomach or lady parts. I'm guessing Marvel wants to leave explaining female anatomy to parents and internet porn.

Outside the bounds of female anatomy, a conflict is still brewing from the source of this Limbaugh-esque assault on female biology. The big, tough, imposing alien that killed a legion of SWORD agents just a few issues ago went through a lot of trouble to get to Broo in the last issue. Well he finally reached his target and he could easily grab the little critter by the neck and snap it like my 8th grade Algebra teacher snapped any fondness I may have had for numbers. But that would be too basic and bland for someone with as twisted a mind as Jason Aaron's. Instead, Broo and the mysterious alien sit down and have a little chat. They don't light a joint or anything, but they do talk seriously and it's not as fucked up as it sounds. Okay, anything involving aliens is fucked up on some levels, but you get what I mean.

The alien's name is Professor Xanto Starblood. Aside from having the most awesome name for a professor ever since Professor Ironcock Hellbone, he's an extreme zoologist of sorts. He and Broo discuss the intricate order of evolutionary biology. To him, it's fragile in a way that would make a fundamentalist Christian's head explode. So when he finds a tiny little Brood that acts very un-Brood like, he sees that in the same way as we would see Pat Robertson digging up Charles Darwin's body and butt-fucking his corpse. He sees Broo as a massive flaw in the evolutionary web of life and like a neurotic roommate, he just has to clean it up. Unfortunately, that means wiping the floor with Broo's blood. As for Kitty Pryde? She was just bait and a diversion. Because what's more distracting than a woman for whom the integrity of her snatch is in danger?

Speaking of integrity, remember how Wolverine dragged Kid Omega across the galaxy to an alien casino in hopes of cheating his way into easy money to help fund the institute? I guess when you put it like that it sounds like a dick move. Naturally, the alien heads of the casino think so as well and show once again that no matter how alien a race may be, if you try to cheat them out of cash they will fuck you up. Armed with untold billions of alien loot, Kid Omega and Wolverine try to fight their way out of the casino and towards Warren Buffet's tax bracket. Kid Omega even shows off some kick-ass new psychic skills, namely forming a shotgun out of telekinesis and taking on the aliens in the tradition of Evil Dead 2. While Kid Omega may be a way bigger douche than Bruce Campbell, it's hard to deny that he looks pretty damn badass.

Broo could use such badassery in fighting for his life. It's not your typical alien vs. alien brawl because Broo is trying to maintain his whole hippie Brood persona. It's not just my drunken labeling of his persona. It's a vital aspect of his character. Professor Starblood doesn't seem to give three tenths of a damn about his pacifism. Broo, to his credit, still tries to reason with him. He brings up a prophecy of a peaceful Broo being born and tries to paint himself as sort of a Broo Jesus. Starblood doesn't buy it. Apparently, he doesn't care much for the prophecy angle. He's sort of the alien Richard Dawkins and as such, playing the magic card won't fly with him.

While Broo is clearly outmatched and a shitty fighter for a Brood, Kitty Pryde still tries to contribute in her faux-pregnant condition. She sicks an army of bamfs on Starblood, which are basically mini-Nightcrawlers minus the charming personality. It certainly succeeds in disorienting Starblood. It probably gives him a killer headache when they drop him at high altitudes and have Karoka slam his ass into the ground. It's the first time the bamfs have contributed to doing more than just reminding readers how much they miss Nightcrawler or stealing Wolverine's liquor. It's also the first time Karoka contributes in a way that doesn't involve driving seismologists and geologists crazy.

The battle against Professor Starblood and the battle against casino security quickly begin to decline. Karoka's body slam did little to stop Professor Starblood, much in the same way every croc in the world failed at subduing Steve Irwin. At the same time, all the telekinetic shotguns in the universe aren't enough to protect Wolverine and Kid Omega from casino security. After stabbing and fighting his way through glitz and glamor of an interstellar casino, Wolverine gets his legs shot out from under him in a way that would make Robert DeNiro proud. Starblood also fights his way back to Broo and roughs Kitty Pryde up for throwing him into the teeth of a living island. And this is what sends Broo over the edge. It's one thing to try to kill him, but when you smack up a lady that you also infected with with killer aliens that crosses a seriously fucked up line. So Broo finally ditches the hippie mentality and channels his inner Brood to attack Professor Starblood and all his bullshit credentials.

It gets pretty messy, but believe or not this isn't the messiest part of the story. Inside Kitty's innards, Beast has prepared a little biological smart bomb for the alien hive that set up shop in her lady parts. So even as they're restraining Kid Gladiator, he manages to set it off. This succeeds in destroying the spores, but it also succeeds in causing Kitty Pryde to puke up more crap than all sluts that ever got wasted at Charlie Sheen's house. If you aren't used to puking in trash cans at three in the morning, you might want to look away because it's as graphic as it is awesome.

So Kitty has officially turned off every bulimic in the history of the world and purged herself of the alien threat to her womb. She also seemed to barf up Beast and the rest of the X-men, who quickly return to normal size just in time to see Broo bloodying Professor Starblood like Rocky Balboa in Rocky IV. It's remarkable that a creature so undersized can rough up someone as imposing as Starblood, but the man is a professor. Not a cage fighter. So Beast ends up having to restrain Broo before he makes the cleanup any more expensive than it needs to be. Since shit with Wolverine and Kid Omega clearly didn't go that well in the alien casino, they need to think about cutting costs.

Later on while everyone is recovering and doing their best not to puke, we get some nice resolutions. Professor Starblood is hauled off by SWORD, but he leaves with a smile because he proved to Broo that on a basic level he's no different from his brethren. That means the biological order is safe. And all it took for him to prove was the death of a few SWORD agents and some irreparable damage to Kitty's insides. Seems like a fair trade for science. Speaking of Kitty, she's obviously a little fucked up after puking her guts up and thinking she was pregnant. But it actually becomes a more personal moment. She confides to Bobby that she was actually relieved when she found out it was aliens and not a baby in her lady parts. What's that say about her aside from shit that would make her best friends with Sandra Fluke? She sees it as a sign that she hasn't grown up. So what's she do? She kisses Bobby Drake in a show of clear maturity and/or hormonal imbalance. Is that supposed to be a sign of growing up? I don't know, but it means Iceman could be getting some long overdue play...after Kitty's pussy heals of course.

In addition, the whole funding issue with the institute is also resolved. However, it's not because of any winnings that Wolverine managed to wrestle away from an alien casino. Out of the blue, there's a panel that shows Rachel discovering that Karoka is capable of pooping out big ass diamonds that sell for a kings ransom. It has nothing to do with the plots in this arc. Absolutely nothing at all built up to it either. It just comes right out of the blue, ending the whole financial difficulties plot. Maybe I'm just bitter about people finding money-making schemes that work, but I have to call bullshit here. If fixing the money woes were that easy, then what was the fucking point of Wolverine heading off into space with Kid Omega?

Speaking of which, their little scam turned out to be a complete bust. Kid Omega manages to get Wolverine out of the casino, but not before they fuck him up even more and turn his legs into pretzels. It's a pretty fucked up sight, but compared to Kitty puking earlier it's not even as nauseating as the last Ghost Rider movie. So Kid Omega and Wolverine fly back to Earth empty handed and with their asses served to them in a doggie bag. I ask again, what was the point of this plot when Karoka pretty much solved all their money woes in one panel? Was it just a means of getting Wolverine and Kid Omega to play high roller in an alien casino? It's an admirable ambition, but without purpose it's just all style and no substance. And in this day and age, it's best to leave that shit to the Lady Gaga's of the world.

There's a lot to love with the Wolverine and the X-men series. Every time I get wasted and do a review, I find another reason to get all giddy about this series. A lot of new series tend to start strong, but like cigarette companies they really stop trying once they get you hooked with those first few hits. They try to assume that the addictive nature of their product will keep you locked in. Unfortunately, comic companies don't have the luxury of working with nicotine and carcinogens. They actually have to keep the series coherent, enjoyable, and throw in a few nice twists along the way. Jason Aaron does all that with this comic while bringing a slight tear to your eye. While this issue was mostly about rescuing Kitty and funding the institute, Broo really stole the show. The lovable hippie Brood showed his vulnerable side, which also happens to be his badass side. In many ways it was almost as emotional as Kitty swapping spit with Iceman, although that could just be the faux pregnancy hormones kicking in. Even for a book that's more light-hearted than other X-books, it's a great way to really tug on the heart strings and make you actually care about the lovable creature that's so cute yet capable of ripping the spine from your body with his teeth.

It all made for a very solid ending to a rather colorful arc that went from casinos in deep space to the depths of Kitty Pryde's lady parts, all while remaining coherent. However, the resolution on some levels fell a bit flat in some areas. Wolverine and Kid Omega's venture in the casino turned out to be a bust and that's okay. But finding out along the way that Karoka can create diamonds that will essentially end the institute's funding problems seems to render the whole struggle a complete crock. Now that's not to say that this little adventure into the high-stakes world of alien gaming wasn't enjoyable, but in the end it was essentially rendered unnecessary. And nothing nullifies a great story more than making it worth the same as a Zimbabwe penny.

Never-the-less, this was still a quality issue with plenty of shit to enjoy. If you can get over Kitty Pryde puking her guts and an alien nest or Wolverine's legs getting the Joe Pesci treatment, then you'll have little reasons to complain. Jason Aaron, through either brilliance or awesome drugs that I'll never have access to, has found a way to mix alien attacks, fake pregnancies, and teen angst all into one arc. Like having a thousand dollars in unmarked bills in downtown Tijuana, it'll get you shit you'll never get anywhere else. I give Wolverine and the X-men #7 a 4.5 out of 5. A lot of people complain about how nothing is really new anymore. I say unto those whining assholes that there's a comic that has women getting pregnant with alien babies, real life issues of insufficient funding, and alien casinos. So stop whining like a bitch and enjoy this comic! Nuff said.

Wolverine and the X-men #6 - Gambling on Awesome

Certain themes work well in every story. Fun, booze, tits, and weed come to mind. No matter how mindless or poorly told, it's hard to make that shit unappealing. Wolverine and the X-men has managed to work in plenty of those themes. Between Wolverine's drinking, pretty girls in school uniforms, and and overall fun environment full of homicidal kids and living islands, Jason Aaron has set this series apart. It has taken a creative, cartoonish type approach that usually only comes after a few hits of LSD. However, Jason Aaron has managed to do it without the risk of brain damage. So what else could he possibly add to make this series more awesome? How about gambling and casinos?

Ah yes, I could start a whole new blog about why casinos and gambling is awesome. I could start another blog describing all the crazy shit you can do in Las Vegas with a few hundred bucks, a pound of blow, and a kid from MIT who can count cards in blackjack. But sometimes people don't gamble just to have fun, make money, and hang out around loose women (although that does constitute a healthy portion of it). Sometimes people have more noble reasons for gambling. The reason as it pertains to Wolverine and the X-men begins in the last issue.

Yeah, there was some crazy shit going around with Kitty's unexpected pregnancy turning into a Species II remake. That was all well and good, but another issue that doesn't revolve around shit that would get Catholic bishops riled up involves money. As in, the Jean Grey Institute for Higher Learning is running out of it. The Hellfire Kids made sure that they don't have access to Warren Worthington III's money since he lost his fucking mind in the Dark Angel Saga. Now Wolverine needs to find another way to get it and in order to do that, he has to enlist help from Kid Omega. This kid is more unpleasant to be around than a hung over crack addict in withdrawal. Yet he has to be the one that saves the school. It's not so much an odd couple situation as a fuck-it-we're-screwed-either-way situation.

Wolverine and the X-men #6 takes that gambling element I mentioned earlier and turns it into the Jean Grey Institute's best hope for survival. Armed with a space ship and a couple of tuxedos, Wolverine flies Kid Omega to the Planet Sin. It's a planet that is basically one big Las Vegas. It's laden with casinos, money, and loose alien females that have no problem with inter-species mating. It's basically heaven is what I'm saying. Armed with Kid Omega's telepathy and intellect, Wolverine wants to win enough money to keep the school open. Kid Omega, being the self-centered prick he is, will do it just for kicks and the possibility of alien poon.

From the streets of an intergalactic Las Vegas to the insides of a young, vulnerable woman...okay, when you put it like that it doesn't sound very far, but bear with me here. In the previous issue, it was revealed that Kitty Pryde's unexpected pregnancy wasn't exactly a pregnancy. Somehow she came across some Brood style germs or she bought condoms from the Catholic church, which in turn made her body a battleground with the mini-Brood laying waste to her insides. It's not unlike eating twenty extra hot buffalo wings after six beers on a Sunday night. Kid Gladiator already began whipping out his dick to prove his doucheiness when he shrank himself and ventured into Kitty's body to combat the invasion. Beast, Marvel Girl, Lockheed, Iceman, and Warbird followed. They're doing their best to hold off the invasion while Kitty deals with the resulting indigestion. I imagine it's pretty uncomfortable, but I'm still not convinced it compares to the pain of taking a shit hung over the next morning after those 20 buffalo wings I mentioned earlier.

This alien mini-assault, which resulted in a lockdown of the school in the last issue, keeps the X-men occupied so that a very special alien that showed up at the end of the previous issue can casually waltz inside. By casually, I mean he has four angry Brood on a leash that he orders to attack the institute like my neighbor at 2 in the morning does with his dog when I'm taking a piss on his tomato garden. We don't know where this guy came from, but in the last issue he destroyed an entire alien freighter and killed some hard-working SWORD agents as well. So we can assume he's a douche-bag. Since he's using Broods as pets, I'm just going to call him the Brood whisperer.

Once these pitbull Brood enter the institute, they start busting up shit in a way that's probably going to require even more money from Wolverine and Kid Omega's casino venture. They're able to hunt down Kitty in the infirmary, who was told outright to stay still so she doesn't cause them to get tossed into her intestines and shat out later with whatever she ate three days ago. Being the hardass young woman she is, Kitty doesn't listen. That and Broo, the only lovable yet still butt-ugly Brood in the Marvel Universe, warns her so she takes her faux pregnant ass and starts running. I imagine it's like trying to run a marathon when you really need to take a shit. I only hope that Kitty isn't wearing her favorite pair of underwear.

Are my jokes about shit and other bodily functions starting to make you queasy? Well, don't worry. We finally catch up with Wolverine and Kid Omega. In Las Vegas world, they're doing as well as you would expect anyone who has a powerful psychic on their side. Kid Omega is like Rain Man if Rain Man was an insufferable douche-bag. Wolverine is able to win at whatever alien blackjack this planet has, but not content to just hang back and crunch numbers he decides to shoot some alien craps. Along the way he starts winning as well and he manages to get the attention of two hot alien babes. He also gets the attention of casino security, but I'm pretty sure the hot alien babes are more pressing.

For some, a scene like this could come off as too cartoony. I mean an alien world that's one big casino? Where the fuck did that come from and why the fuck is Aaron pulling it out of his ass? Well, it's not terribly outrageous when you consider the scope of the Marvel Universe. They have introduced countless alien races over the years and most of those aliens have very human-like traits, primarily the propensity to be an asshole. And since places like Las Vegas are often founded by assholes (namely mafia), it's perfectly within the realm of Spock caliber reason that a world like Sin would emerge where aliens can go to gamble, drink, and get laid. I know it sounds fucked up. I also know I tend to bitch about shit being contrived in comics, but there is something called context and it's not exotic type of insurance fraud.

The aliens on Sin now have to summon their inner Joe Pecsi to handle Wolverine and Kid Omega. Back on Earth, Kitty Pryde has to channel her inner Samuel L. Jackson to take on the raging Brood that want to rip apart from the outside before her insides are shredded. Hey, nobody can fault the Brood for not being thorough. By the same token, nobody can fault Wolverine for stashing some guns around the institute. After leaving Broo behind in a containment field, she retrieves one of those guns and uses them to take out the attacking Brood gangster style. It should be a moment for her to catch her breath and check to make sure her snatch is still intact. Instead, that Brood Whisperer I mentioned earlier finally catches up. Apparently, he didn't care much for his pets. He just used them to soften Kitty and her friends up while he got the drop on her. Is it overly elaborate? Yes, it is. Is it effective? Fuck yes.

Since Kitty has her friends floating around within her insides, she can't phase away from the attack. So she gets tossed around like an Afghani teenage bride. That Brood Whisperer I mentioned earlier doesn't care for her condition. He doesn't even seem to care that she turned his pets into blood stains. But he does reveal that he was the one that sent those mini-Brood up into her lady parts and didn't even bother to buy her a drink. He's almost as bad Charlie Sheen minus the child support. But despite these elaborate lengths to knock her up with his broodlings, the Brood Whisperer reveals that this wasn't about her at all. Instead, he sets his sight on Broo, who Kitty trapped in a containment field earlier. Seeing as how not much has been revealed about Broo thus far, it's an intriguing and nicely timed twist.

There's no mystery involved with Wolverine and Kid Omega. No matter what planet you're on, there's a simple law to every major casino. If you win big and win consistently, casinos don't like you. And if they feel you've won too much, they'll send as many of their friendly associates (usually armed with baseball bats and brass knuckles) to introduce themselves and make you wish that you weren't so lucky. Given the scene that Kid Omega had been making earlier, it's amazing their limbs aren't already broken.

Wolverine handles this threat the same way he handles most threats. He starts beating the shit out of anyone in his way. Since he's been so lucky in this world, why not push it further? I personally wouldn't do it because even with some liquor in me, I can only break so many bones. Now he and Kid Omega have to find a way out with their winnings so they can fund the school. They may not have much of a school left though because not only does the Brood Whisperer have everyone neutralized, but the rest of the X-men are thrown yet another complication. Remember Kid Gladiator? The egotistical douche-bag who ran into the battle inside Kitty's body leading with his oversized balls? Well apparently, he ran in too quickly because he ended up turning into a Brood. So it's either alien Brood ranchers or alien casino security. I'm honestly torn as to which I would rather handle.

I know I keep beating this point home like my dick at a Jessica Alba movie, but Wolverine and the X-men is just a plain fun comic. It's not overly serious despite dealing with serious issues. Things like money shortages and aliens invading the bodies of young women could easily become a slasher flick and/or a bad porno. But Jason Aaron finds a way to make it feel light-hearted. He effectively balances the two plots with the Brood and Wolverine's quest for funds, moving them both forward and setting them both up for some heavy action that promises to extend to the next issue. You've got an alien casino world and alien invaders that are setting up shop in Kitty Pryde's lady parts. What other comic has this kind of shit? Tell me and don't say you saw it while high on shrooms because that shit doesn't count!

While the plots were nicely balanced, the plot with Wolverine and Kid Omega felt like it made more progress than the plot with the Brood. In fact, we really didn't get too many answers with respect to what the Brood is up to and what that Brood Whisperer guy was after. It was mostly just the rest of school staff fighting off the invasion inside Kitty's body while Kitty tried to avoid being the appetizer to a Brood buffet. However, it's hard to really call this a flaw because there was so much action here and there were a few twists as well with Kid Gladiator turning into a Brood. While we didn't get answers, we still got plenty of intrigue and along with a casino plot that would make Robert de Nero proud, there's just too much awesome in this book to nit-pick.

Wolverine and the X-men has gone a long ways in a short span of time. Even with Avengers vs. X-men looming over the horizon like more Rick Santorum's attack ads that compare Obama to Hitler, this series manages to maintain a solid and unique tone. It feels different from the other X-men books while still feeling like it fits into the larger scheme of things. I don't know what Jason Aaron was smoking when he came up for the idea of having an alien casino, but I want to know where I can get some! Even if I can't, I'm content to give Wolverine and the X-men #6 a 5 out of 5. You've got casinos. You've got aliens. You've got monsters. You've got a faux-pregnant lady running for her life while her friends use her innards as a battleground. You won't find something this entertaining or this unique without having to pay off a few shady figures in Tijuana. Since the price of doing business with said shady figures is getting risky and not all of us can donate our organs for the necessary funds, we'll have to settle for this comic. Nuff said!

Wolverine and the X-men #5 - Birthing True Awesome

There are very few comics that are awesome enough to enjoy both drunk and sober. There are even fewer comics are awesome enough to read with your kids/nephew/kid whose mother you're trying to bang. Granted, most modern comics are about as kid-friendly as a webcam in Snooki's bedroom. The women are grossly proportioned. The men are perfectly sculpted. No woman ever seems to bitch about having her period or complains about wearing skin-tight outfits. No man farts uncontrollably and makes hissing noises to let people know how much it stinks. I get that comics are a fantasy world because reality sucks elephant cock. But for kids, it does send a pretty fucked up impression. That's why I find Wolverine and the X-men to be such a breath of fresh air. Is it mature? Of course it is. It deals with homicidal kids and aliens and school uniforms where the skirts are several inches too high. But at least it's fun in a way that you can bullshit around with a kid. It might even get you lucky with said kid's mother or a restraining order (whichever comes first).

Wolverine and the X-men has become awesome under Jason Aaron because of his ability to create a unique tone for this comic. What sets it apart from the gritty and brooding world of Uncanny X-men that Kieron Gillen already does so masterfully is the different circumstances. Wolverine is not trying to create an army of mutant superheroes at the Jean Grey Institute for Higher Learning. He's just trying to educate mutant children so they don't have to fight. That and be able to get hammered without the fear of being called up by Cyclops to fight a sentinel. So far, it's been as disastrous as one would expect. The Kid Hellfire Club showed up. Karoka attacked. And Angel, who is amnesic after his Dark Angel Saga experience, has gone batshit crazy. Oh, and Kitty Pryde is pregnant. Yeah, you know your school is done fucked up when your headmistress is knocked up shortly after you open your doors. That shit may work in Texas public schools where sex education consists of the bible and prayers to Rick Perry, but it shouldn't work in comics!

All these problems need to be fixed. But to fix them, Wolverine needs more than just his charisma and willingness to stab people. He needs money. Yes, even in comics shit can't get done without money. This was touched on in the last issue. Iceman, the institute's resident accountant, was warning Wolverine that they were burning through cash like MC Hammer in a parachute pants outlet store. They were able to keep things going by using Angel's fortune. Since he went nuts in the last issue, he didn't seem to mind. Well Wolverine and the X-men #5 begins by revisiting that issue. The kid Hellfire Club may be a ridiculous excuse for an enemy, but they have something more powerful than all the sentinels in the world...lawyers. With those lawyers, they effectively freeze Warren's accounts and cut of Wolverine's funds. It's a dick move and the Hellfire Club makes no bones about it. It doesn't help that Warren is still acting like an eight-year-old boy at Disney land in front of the board of his family company and press folk with video cameras.

While Wolverine is dealing with the severe rectal itch that is financial problems, class at the Jean Grey Institute continue as normal. Normal being more skewed than accounts of Gary Busey's therapy sessions. Quick, what do you remember about biology class? If you answered masturbating to the pictures depicting female reproductive systems, then obviously you never went to the Jean Grey Institute. And you may have left those stains on my textbook. While they don't have the kind of money to keep the school going, they somehow have the technology for Beast to shrink his students down Ant Man style and explore the mutant body up close and more intimate than a prostate exam.

It's actually a pretty meaningful lecture on some levels. Yeah, Kid Omega uses it as a way to flirt with Idie and Broo acts like he's a tourist at Disneyland. But others like Genesis take a moment to reflect on how a simple mutation on so small a level is causing all the crap he's now dealing with. In the last issue, a good deal of time was spent showing that Genesis was new to this world of conflict. He's still taking it in and Aaron takes some time to show that he's still processing everything. He does throw in some humor with Kid Gladiator acting like a douche in saying Shi'ar DNA is so much better, but it gets the point across.

The lesson ends with a not-so-startling reveal that they were inside Toad, the resident janitor. You get the sense that Aaron is just setting him up to go on a shooting rampage at one point, but for now the school has more pressing concerns. At the end of the previous issue, Kitty Pryde started puking uncontrollably and it wasn't because she saw that birth scene in the last Twilight movie. She found out she was pregnant Aliens style. Her womb swelled up and now she's understandably freaking out. It's like a new TLC show "Fuck, how did I get this pregnant?" She tried calling up Colossus, but never said a word to him. That's too bad because if the kid is his, that opens the door to all sorts of baby daddy drama. Admit it, "The Father of my Baby  is the Juggernaut" sounds like the perfect title for an episode of Jerry Springer. But a cameo is all we get. She eventually confronts Beast and Rachel, who are also understandably freaked out. At least they don't have to worry about their snatch being permanently ruined.

Now a sudden pregnancy like this is pretty serious shit, but Jason Aaron doesn't let the tone of the book get too serious. We get to see some of the students who got to explore Toad's innards in a completely non-sexual way hanging out and reflecting on their lesson. Then Wolverine comes barging in acting like he hasn't had his daily bottle of whiskey and demands that Kid Omega come with him. He doesn't explain why. He just leads him down into the "teachers only" area of the school and tells him that he's about to have a chance to prove that his dick and his brain are both as big as he boasts. For some reason in order to do that, he has to use the institute space ship and fly off into space.

Wait a sec, the Jean Grey Institute has a space ship and a shrink device? Why the fuck do they have money problems! There's a solution right there! Paid trips into space and adventures inside the human body. If they could somehow find a way to allow people to explore the insides of Natalie Portman that would pay for the institute for 20 years easy!

But before we can go off and have a space adventure, there's still a little matter of Kitty's pregnancy. There's a lot of questions to answer, like who the hell did she bone and what kind of miracle grow was in his jizz? She laments a bit how she'll be a crappy mother, as I'm sure most women who don't remember how they got pregnant may think at some point. Again, it's somewhat glossed over. But there's a reason for this. Once she gets an exam from Beast, he makes a rather disturbing discovery that makes that Alien joke I mentioned earlier all the more relevant. She's not pregnant. She's under attack by a swarm of aliens inside her body. Why do they happen to gather inside her baby maker? Maybe they just like vaginas as much as humans. Admit it, if given the choice I can see how some men would be okay with living in a vagina.

These aren't the same Aliens that Segorney Weaver fought. These are the Brood, also known as those horrific looking aliens whose idea of a good time is brutally slaughtering innocent creatures and dining on their bone marrow. They're usually large enough for you to shoot with a shotgun, but the ones inside Kitty are small enough to dine on her cells. In many ways that's infinitely more terrifying. For that reason, Beast locks down the school and everyone has to start checking every molecule they breathe to make sure they don't get eaten alive as well. But it's fucked up with a twist if you can believe that. These mini-Brood aren't up to infect everybody. They're tailored for Kitty. He calls it an assassination attempt. It's the kind that the CIA would kill for, but it only complicates the situation. Lucky for Kitty, Kid Gladiator needs to prove that his dick and his ego are of equal size. So he uses the same shrink technology demonstrated earlier to fly into her body and start fighting off the Brood. It's a losing fight, but given how Kid Gladiator has been such a douche it's hard to really care about him as much as Kitty's safety.

Now this unusual attack on Kitty begs a pretty important question. Where the fuck did it come from? Well Jason Aaron doesn't answer that question too quickly. But he does set things up. While Wolverine and Kid Omega are flying off into space in a way that's going to somehow save the school (the methods how can only be explained by Aaron's twisted imagination), an incident aboard your typical alien ship that flew too close to Earth is unfolding. The good folks at SWORD show up like a galactic boarder patrol minus the right-wing bumper stickers. They treat them the same way Arizona treats undocumented Mexicans. Somewhere there's a political ad for Rick Santorum, but I'll leave that for whichever asshole wrote his stance on birth control.

Like any pissed off wannabe immigrant, one of the aliens lashes out and rips the SWORD agents to pieces like popcorn shrimp at a summer cookout in Baltimore. Said alien looks like a Brood that pumped one too many meds from Sylvester Stallone's pharmacist. It has a bunch of normal Brood chained to it and it may not be of their own volition either. It's hard to tell. That may be a Brood mating ritual for all I know. But it's not enough to just kill the SWORD agents and presumably all the other aliens on the ship just looking for a place to shack up or some anuses to probe. It then blows open the ship and enters the vacuum of space, but looks about as comfortable doing so as a college co-ed in Ben Rothlesburger's swimming pool.

With no pesky ship to worry about, the creature and his Brood pets start drifting to Earth. As they do so, he narrates that he's tracing a signal from a virus. Any guess as to where that virus may be? If you guessed the inside of Kitty's lady parts, then you've managed to connect the dots in this story or you masturbate to some pretty fucked up fantasies. Or both, but who am I to judge? It only offers a hint as to who may be responsible for Kitty's sudden baby bump that isn't a baby. It's worth noting that not long ago, Kitty Pryde was trapped in a giant bullet that flew through space and encountered who knows how many alien germs? Will Aaron make that connection? We'll find out in the next issue. I just hope he's nice enough to offer a warning label if we'll have to watch a violent alien birth the likes of which would only be acceptable in another shitty Species movie.

Jason Aaron has set up some pretty disturbing plots with this issue. Kitty Pryde being eaten alive by cellular Brood creatures has the potential to be more fucked up than the birthing scene from Species II. And the prospect of the Jean Grey Institute being short on cash is nothing to laugh at. Anyone who has ever had the IRS or a bank come busting in your door for not keeping up with taxes or mortgage payments will get night sweats from shit like this. Yet somehow Aaron manages to keep the same fun tone with this issue. Maybe it's just because my notion of fun is so fucked up that it has to involve hookers and no fewer than three joints of Jamaican weed. Or maybe this comic is just well-written enough to put a smile on your face even though it deals with these disturbing plots.

This issue did a few things different compared to previous issues. It took on some more dramatic elements with Kitty lamenting over what she thought was a pregnancy. However, that drama wasn't really played up as much as it could have been. Kitty being pregnant is something that had the potential to really cause some added drama with Colossus. It could have even opened the door for him to get involved. But even before we found out that it was an attack by vagina loving Broodlings, it was glossed over. Kitty was like "I'm pregnant. Fuck." That's about it. I'm not saying Aaron mishandled it, but the impact felt a bit weak. That and Angel's character has become wildly erratic. I get that he's amnesic, but even he has to understand that fucking up the school's bank account is not something to take lightly.

Overall, this book is still high quality on all the levels that Jason Aaron has done such a good job of refining. He continues to have a nice sense of flow with this book, taking conflicts like financial troubles from previous issues and working them into future issues. And the mere fact that he's using finance as an issue adds an element of realism that had never been touched on in previous X-men comics. How they deal with this and how the team deals with the Brood threat with Kitty has the potential to be unlike any story that has come before it. That sense of novelty mixed with light-hearted humor helps make this issue awesome. That's why I give Wolverine and the X-men #5 a 4.5 out of 5. It's not quite perfect because the dramatic element hasn't been developed yet. But there's more than enough potential to fix that with future issues. Until then, feel free to share this issue with a kid and explain to him why aliens that try to eat a woman inside out are a perfect metaphor for mood swings. Nuff said!