Fix the Future: X-men Battle of the Atom #1

The following is my review of X-men Battle of the Atom #1, which was posted on PopMatters.com.

Fifty years ago, Stan Lee and Jack Kirby introduced the Uncanny X-men and the timing couldn’t have been more fitting. It was during an era when the Civil Rights movement was in full swing and the future of minorities was in question. It’s difficult to imagine how hard it was for racial minorities at that time, not knowing whether the dream Martin Luther King Jr. spoke of was attainable. It’s even more difficult to imagine how much harder it would have been if opponents of their dream had killer robots on their side. But that’s what mutants have had to deal with in the pages of Uncanny X-men for five decades.

The Civil Rights movement is now a cornerstone moment in history for minorities. There are still significant conflicts, which have since expanded to other groups such as homosexuals and Muslims. However, they’re still a long ways away from having to worry about killer robots. It could be endlessly argued as to just how much of Charles Xavier’s dream has been realized over the past 50 years, but there’s no denying that the X-men’s struggle to achieve that dream has resonated with generations of readers.

Everyone can appreciate the drama, sorrow, and hardship that the X-men have endured. They haven’t just fought for peace in a world that hates and fears them. They have fought for their very right to actually have a future. That future is fittingly at the core of X-men: Battle of the Atom #1. The minorities of the past may never have had to worry about some random stranger reading their thoughts or some angry teenager freezing them in a block of ice, but the struggle for peace goes hand-in-hand with the struggle for the future.

As the first issue of a 10-part event, X-men: Battle of the Atom #1 covers a lot of ground. The X-men have a long, convoluted history that is as confusing as quantum physics and as dramatic as every Julia Roberts movie ever made. The stage was set last year when the Original Five X-men that Stan Lee and Jack Kirby began with traveled to the present. They saw the future that their struggle had wrought and didn’t like it in the slightest. And despite the potential damage they could do to the timeline, they decided to stay to make things right. That decision lit a long fuse on a ticking time bomb. That bomb blew up in everyone’s face in this issue in a way that undermines the very future the X-men are fighting for.

In the post Age of Ultron Marvel universe, time travel is no longer akin to a cheat code in a video game. Influencing the past now has consequences in the future that could destroy the timeline in ways that no version of Dr. Who could hope to repair. The original X-men managed to avoid doing too much damage since their arrival. However, an ill-fated mission in X-men: Battle of the Atom #1 gave the X-men a painful reminder about how one simple mishap could destroy the future.

It is probably the clearest instance of Marvel following the strict temporal guidelines of Back to the Future. Frank Cho’s artwork actually gives the impression that time itself is trembling at what happens in this battle. It is akin to Father Time himself waking up with a bad hangover and the X-men were the ones that got him drunk.

The timeline is saved just barely, but it is way too close for comfort for the X-men of the present. The future of their kind is already tumultuous enough. The Original Five are only doing more damage with every moment they remain in the present. They’re essentially betting with house money at a casino. Sooner or later, the odds will catch up to them and they need to cash in their chips before they’re in a debt they can’t repay. But the Original Five X-men already know there’s no jackpot waiting for them in the past. Jean Grey knows that she still ends up dead. Cyclops still knows that he murders Charles Xavier. To them, this is not the dream they fought for. To them, the timeline is worth risking to make things right.

This conflict, along with the incredibly high steaks, fuels a special kind of drama that is unique to the X-men. It isn’t enough to just struggle for survival. They aren’t the Avengers, whose struggle never goes beyond the next battle with Hydra or the next clash with Thanos. Like any minority, they seek a better future for their people and the weight of that future now threatens to destroy them all.

The convergence of past, present, and future help make X-men: Battle of the Atom #1 feel like a love letter of sorts to the earliest issues of Uncanny X-men. It has a lot of the same elements as those early comics such as dangerous new mutants manifesting powers and mutant-killing robots. But the major conflict for each team of X-men feels both contemporary and compelling. It’s the kind of story where emotions run high for both the characters and the readers while avoiding excessive melodrama. At no point does X-men: Battle of the Atom #1 feel less like X-men and more like the Vampire Dairies.

At its core, X-men: Battle of the Atom #1 embodies by Jean de La Fontaine often ignored warning, “Our destiny is frequently met in the very paths we take to avoid it.” The very future of the mutant race is at stake in a ways that covers the past, present, and a potentially dire outcome. It effectively connects with the vast history of X-men into one event that really does feel like it was 50 years in the making. Whatever may happen in the next 50 years for the X-men and the struggle of minorities, the message that Stan Lee and Jack Kirby sent in that fateful first issue will continue to resonate in a way that is, if nothing else, truly uncanny.

Final Score: 10 out of 10

Baltimore Comic Con: Meeting Charles Soule

This was another awesome encounter I had at Baltimore Comic Con 2013. I got to meet Charles Soule, writer of the upcoming Superman/Wonder Woman series. He recently got some flak for some comments he made about romance in comics and I did an article in response to it. He was an awesome guy to talk to and I'm really looking forward to Superman/Wonder Woman. Thank you, Mr. Soule!


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Baltimore Comic Con 2013: Meeting Frank Cho

This was by far one of the most exciting moments of the Baltimore Comic Con for me. I actually got to meet the one and only Frank Cho! We all know him as the artistic genius who loves to draw women with disproportionate beauty. It pisses some feminists off, but it makes for some pretty awesome comics. Recently, he drew Savage Wolverine and X-men Battle of the Atom, a comic that I gave a perfect score. He was as awesome as his art. Thanks, Mr. Cho and keep drawing awesome comics!


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Scanned Thoughts: X-men Battle of the Atom #1

What happens when a big comic book event comes along and a drunk takes the time to review it in between hangovers? Well it leads to some interesting night terrors and twisted tastes in hookers, but it also leads to blogs like this. I take it upon myself to offer a drunk's perspective on comics because let's face it. Sober people are boring as fuck. All their stories end with them with their pants still on. Well my pants are already off and my dick is already hard for an X-men event 50 years in the making. What follows is my drunken review of X-men Battle of the Atom #1. Enjoy it now because my liver isn't going to last another 50 years.

In the post Age of Ultron era, taking a glimpse at the future is on par with trying to smuggle drugs out of Gary Busey’s house. Nothing good can come of it and Marvel is finally trying to stop making time travel the comic book equivalent of a cheat code in a video game. But Magik is still a teenage girl that is heavily influenced by the demons that Pat Roberson only thinks exists in homosexuals. She still hasn’t learned the difference between rules, laws of physics, suggestions, and dares. Because of that, she takes a peak into the future and sees that for all their efforts, they’re stuck with yet another apocalyptic scenario. Given how many the X-men have had over the years, I don’t know why she or anyone would be shocked. But it at least offers a glimpse of the future X-men that are destined to fuck shit up in the past. I guess teenagers don’t have a monopoly on giving rules the finger.

The present is fucked up enough. Aside from O5 Iceman trying to start a food fight, they pick up on a new mutant signature. It gives the O5 their first opportunity to help a newly emerging mutant in the future. To this point they have just been trying to get over being so shell shocked about how fucked up their future was, but they’re still X-men. When a fellow mutant is in danger, they must be there and Kitty Pryde knows this. I guess she figured it couldn’t hurt to help them exercise their X-men skills in the most basic.

But the reason they’re going after this mutant isn’t just to give the O5 some badly needed refinement in their superhero skills. New mutants have been popping up in the X-men comics left and right. So why is this one special? Well this happens to be a ridiculously powerful mutant that has the ability to summon demons like Magik. And since Magik is about as well-adjusted a mutant as Miley Cyrus is right now, that’s not a good thing.

Kitty Pryde leads the O5 to Phoenix, Arizona where they confront this overpowered mutant. And as it just so happens, this demon-loving mutant is just like Magik in that she happens to be a fucked up teenage girl. O5 Jean Grey does a quick scan to project just how fucked up she is. Yet for some reason, Iceman is still smitten with her. Having been a teenage boy myself at one point, I can sympathize with being drawn to a hot young demon-loving girl. But I’m now old enough to remember that it didn’t take much to give me a boner back then. It’s still nice to see that O5 Iceman can still be lovably reckless.

But beyond O5 Iceman’s infatuation, Jean’s projection offers a nice understanding of this woman. In the span of a single page she reveals that she has a fucked up home life that consists of everything Bill O’Riley bitches about. She also has a rebellious streak and a criminal record. She’s basically the kind of girl my teenage self would desperately try to bone. It does more than give the character a personality. It shows an attention to detail that helps make Brian Michael Bendis such a great writer. After how shitty the last issue of All New X-men was, it’s refreshing to see he can still be more thorough than Matt Fraction or Chuck Austin ever was. Plus, it’s another pretty girl in the X-men comics. And Odin knows we can never have enough of those.

But what should have been a simple after school special for a disturbed teenage girl turns into yet another classic conflict for the X-men. As they’re trying to subdue said disturbed girl, a bunch of Sentinels attack. This sounds random, but given the events of recent X-men comics it actually fits nicely. A new Sentinel program has been active since Uncanny X-men #1 and so far nobody seems to know who the fuck is behind it. I personally think the new North Korean dictator who was sick of playing with toy robots that didn’t blow shit up, but it’s nice to see Bendis working in an ongoing conflict into this event. Does it matter that it’s a conflict that is as old as the X-books itself? Fuck no, if anything it’s perfectly fitting.

The arrival of the sentinels puts the O5 X-men in a different conflict and one they’re not so good at. Not long ago in All New X-men, they couldn’t stop tripping over their own asses in a simple Sentinel program in the Danger Room. And while they do somewhat better this time around, that doesn’t stop O5 Cyclops from making a foolish yet insanely heroic decision. The Sentinels may be programmed to kill mutants, but they never seem to give too many fucks when innocent people get caught in the crossfire. And while the rest of the team take the pussy approach by holding onto Kitty Pryde for her intangibility powers, O5 Cyclops runs out into the line of fire to save two innocent people. He gets roughed up in the process, but that’s part of what he does. He’s fucking Cyclops and he’s more than just the guy who got drunk on Phoenix Force and killed Charles Xavier. He’s still a fucking hero and O5 Jean’s concern shows that this still gets her panties wet.

O5 Cyclops was hurt, but not badly. He remained in the crossfire of the Sentinels where he stared them down the same way I imagine Ivan Drago stares down the dealer at a poker table. And before they can shoot him again to finish the job, they get some help in the form of Cyclops’s revolutionary team. Again, this isn’t as random as it sounds. The previous issue of Uncanny X-men had Cyclops’s team confronting yet another sneak attack by a Sentinel. They’re just as pissed at whoever is behind it and is looking for some answers. So when a bunch of Sentinels show up around a new mutant, they’re going to fucking notice.

It doesn’t take any convincing whatsoever to convince Kitty Pryde to team up with Cyclops’s revolution team. There isn’t even any bitterness between O5 Angel and the rest of his teammates, who he ditched in favor of Cyclops’s team in the pages of All New X-men. This is somewhat glaring given how Kitty Pryde was among those telling Cyclops he needs to get his ass back to jail for the murder of Charles Xavier. And I imagine that the O5 would not be too fond of O5 Angel for ditching them. But I guess when giant robots are blowing shit up, those personal vendettas have to be set aside. I suppose there are less appropriate situations where this would apply.

Regardless of how pissed everyone is at future Cyclops, they work together in a beautifully crafted battle against the Sentinels that combines past and present X-men alike. Given how many killer robots the X-men have faced over the years and how many different teams they’ve had, it’s a pretty awesome sight. It feels so appropriate for the X-men’s bit 50^th birthday. The two teams are able to work together and essentially scrap the Sentinels. That overpowered mutant from earlier was even so impressed that she just threw her hands up and surrendered. She figures that if demons and killer robots aren’t going to stop the X-men, she might as well be throwing water balloons filled with Pepsi at them because she’s not going to do jack shit.

It all seems to be going so well. Then shit goes very wrong yet again. One of the Sentinel heads becomes active and gets off one lucky shot that hits O5 Cyclops point blank. This time, he doesn’t just get injured. It looks like he’s fucking killed. I guess that means it saved Wolverine the trouble, who entertained the idea of killing his sorry ass more than once. But that doesn’t mean he can swoop in and start banging Jean Grey just yet because with O5 Cyclops mortally wounded, that essentially triggers the exact shit that everyone was so worried about when the O5 decided to stay.

The events that follow are a testament to Frank Cho’s artwork and not just because he draws every woman with awesome tits (although that doesn’t hurt). O5 Cyclops is apparently dead. As a result, his future self disappears. And the timeline seems to be having a seizure. It’s a very powerful moment that represents the sum of all fears for the X-men, second only to Jean Grey hooking up with Beast. But they manage to prevent the timeline from completely unraveling Back to the Future style when Triage, one of Cyclops’s new mutants, puts his healing powers to work and saves his life and probably the space time continuum.

It even leads to a nice moment where O5 Jean Grey actually shows some concern for O5 Cyclops. This is a lot of concern for someone she claimed she wasn’t in love with recently. That’s another thing about this comic that makes it even more awesome. There’s none of the bullshit between Jean and Beast that emerged in All New X-men. I usually don’t like it when writers ignore major details. But this is one detail I’m content to overlook in the same way I’m content to overlook the advice I get from AA meetings.

This event ends up being more traumatic for the X-men than watching home movies with Jeffery Dahlmer. Cyclops and his team leave as quickly as they can. Even though they almost fuck up the timeline, they probably understand that nobody has changed their minds about wanting to throw them in jail. They’re also probably just as traumatized and would agree completely to send the O5 back to the past. Even some of the O5 agree. Only Cyclops and Jean don’t agree because they know if they go back, their future is fucked. And they don’t want that. Kitty Pryde rightly points out that is pretty damn selfish, but then again she isn’t the one that ended up dead multiple times and she didn’t end up murdering Charles Xavier. But since they’re the adults, they feel they’re inclined to make the decision for the O5. And for teenagers, they might as well have decided that they’re not allowed to watch internet porn. It’s a losing argument.

But before any of the O5 can channel some teenage melodrama, the time cube that Beast used to rip the O5 from the past becomes active on its own. And from it, another group of time traveling visitors arrive. They’re the same future X-men that Magik saw earlier and they are there to agree with the adults in the room. The O5 X-men must be sent back to the past and they’re not looking no for an answer. So now both the future and the present are conspiring against the O5 X-men. It’s like a house party in high school getting raided by the police, the DEA, and the CIA. It’s a clusterfuck of epic proportions and yet I never get the impression that it’s enough to change O5 Cyclops and O5 Jean Grey’s mind because Teenagers are just that fucking stubborn.

A good way to measure the awesome of a comic is to either measure how fast it gets your heart racing or how hard a boner (or pussy boner if you’re a girl) ends up getting. After reading X-men Battle of the Atom #1, my heart and my dick were in perfect harmony. And that doesn’t usually happen outside the VIP room of a German brothel. This was an issue where the past, present, and future of the X-men collided in a way that made me actually feel like Father Time was about to slip me the date rape drug. It left me feeling so excited that I thought I had just used up my secret stash of blow, but it’s still there last I checked. So I guess the only logical conclusion was that X-men Battle of the Atom #1 is just that awesome. I give it a perfect 10 out of 10. If it were a woman, she would be so perfect that I would circumcise myself with a chainsaw to see her naked. Nuff said!

X-men Battle of the Atom #1 PREVIEW!

Waiting for a big event in a comic book is like waiting for the weed to kick in. It's agonizing as hell, but if it's done right it's totally worth it. Several months ago, Marvel announced X-men Battle of the Atom, the event that celebrates the X-men's 50th anniversary. It's hard to believe that it has been nearly 50 years since Stan Lee and Jack Kirby teamed up and put together their collective brilliance to create one of the most awesome team of superheroes to ever exist. Sure, they totally ripped off Doom Patrol, but they only did what Apple does. They took something that already existed, made it ten times more awesome, and made a fuckton of money off it. That's success, bitches!

Not much has been revealed about Battle of the Atom beyond the typical shit we hear from every major Marvel event. It'll be big, blah blah. It'll change everything, blah blah. Someone's going to get killed and brought back, yada yada. The event itself is always more entertaining than listening to Marvel's talking heads play charades while trying to describe it. That or I just suck at charades. All we do know is that the event involves X-men from yet another apocalyptic future coming back to the present to tell the O5 that they need to get the fuck back to the past. It's actually more logical than it sounds. At least, it's as logical as any time travel story can sound without giving Dr. Who an aneurysm. It's actually following the recent precedent Marvel set with Age of Ultron in trying to make time travel have some actual consequences for once. Until recently, time travel was like knowing which hookers a senator was screwing. Nobody really had to worry about the laws of nature applying to them. Well now that shit is changing and it promises to bring the X-men of the past, present, and future together in a temporal orgy that would give Stephen Hawking a boner. And today, CBR released the first lettered preview pages.

So what can we glean from these previews? More than anything else, we can surmise that somebody fucked up the future again, Frank Cho's artwork is awesome no matter how big the boobs are on teenage girls, and Iceman is horny. I don't like to make predictions that don't involve fantasy football, but I'm going to surmise that Beast did something to fuck up again. He's the one that brought the O5 into the present. It makes sense that he'll be at least indirectly responsible for fucking up the future. Others have warned him about it and he has just brushed it off the same way that NSA brushes off the Constitution. I say it's about time his douche-baggery catches up with him. All he has done is bitch and moan about Cyclops while fucking up the space time continuum. He used to be so much more likable than that. I'll be shocked if I don't have more reasons to hate him after this. Next week can't get here fast enough. Good thing I've stocked up on sedatives! When you're this excited about an event, making the time go by faster is worth a little brain damage. Nuff said!

Savage Wolverine #4 - Too Savage To Be Awesome

Disclaimer: Yes, I know I didn't review Savage Wolverine #3. Yes, I know this disrupts the flow of reviews. But don't blame me. Blame God for not dedicating a day for reviewing comics. If you're going to bitch about this, please note that I'll respond by deleting your bitching in all forms. That is all.

We like to pretend that discovering ancient secrets is as awesome and exciting as Harrison Ford led us to believe in every Indiana Jones movie. We think it’s all exploring hidden temples, surviving ancient traps, and killing a few Nazis in the process. The reality is probably a billion times more boring. I imagine real archeology is like watching a couple of dead flies decompose in slow motion. You dig through piles upon piles of dirt, fine jack shit 99 percent of the time, and are lucky to recover artifacts that aren’t completely decomposed. It’s right up there with Snooki’s gynecologist in terms of jobs I don’t want.

Wolverine isn’t an archeologist, but he has a way of attracting shit that wants to kill him and sometimes that leads to discovering ancient secrets. It doesn’t lead to it very often, but for a guy as old as Wolverine the law of averages has to catch up at some point. And it caught up with him in a very painful way in the pages of Savage Wolverine. He’s been fighting along-side Shanna the She-Devil, trying to escape an unforgiving island of savage cavemen that may or may not be racist by uncovering ancient technology on an island. It has been eventful and entertaining so far, even with the somewhat random appearance of Amadeus Cho. And while there are no Nazis, I’m sure Indiana Jones would be right at home in a setting like this.

Part of the charm of Savage Wolverine has been a return to basics. Wolverine is no headmaster of a school or leader of a team here. He’s just the lovable savage brute we know and love, surviving in a dangerous wilderness full of dinosaurs, cavemen, and death. There’s no bullshit about his past, no ninjas, and no piss poor love triangles. Throw in Shanna’s rack and there’s very little reason not to enjoy this book on the surface, but it’s been dragging a bit lately with this whole ancient artifact bullshit. Frank Cho has been building towards some answers for the past few issues and is this the issue we finally get them? Well, I’m here to get drunk and review comics last I checked and since I’m currently low on booze, that leaves me with one option!

In Savage Wolverine #4 we get a nice glimpse into a ritual that for once doesn’t involve human sacrifice to appease goat-headed gods with a thing for the blood of virgins. Instead, it involves actually saving a life. In this case, that life belongs to Shanna the She-Devil. In the previous issue, her rack was not powerful enough to save her if you can believe that. She sustained an injury that…well, killed her. But if that at all worries you or your penis, take comfort in the knowledge that Marvel never kills hot female characters not named Jean Grey and keeps them dead for long. But do to that, Cho convinced the chief of the savages to save her in a ritual that involves Man-Thing. Or at least it looks like Man-Thing. Cho is as confused as the readers. And seeing as how Cho himself also randomly appeared in this story without an explanation, I guess we shouldn’t be too surprised when we don’t get one. Yet still, an explanation would be a damn good thing to have at some point.

For now, an explanation takes a back-seat to bringing Shanna back to life. Marvel knows that it just can’t let a beautiful woman with a great rack just go to waste. But in order to bring her back to life, she has to bath in some strange green liquid that comes gushing out of that thing that looks like Man-Thing. There’s a joke about the healing properties of semen in there somewhere, but given all the inappropriate comments I’ve made about Shanna’s breasts I think I’ll hold off.

The important part is the ritual works. It revives Shanna so that she’s as good as new and back to being exceedingly bonerific. However, the whole resurrection-by-glowing-water ordeal comes off as both bland and a blatant rip-off of the Lazarus Pit from Batman. Only this comes off as much more disconcerting because it involves shit that oozes from something that looks like Man-Thing. Hell, for all we know that green stuff is his semen and Shanna just got the most twisted bukakke in history. While it’s nice to see Marvel avoid killing another character, it comes off as both bland and unoriginal.

Things get even less creative as Cho keeps Shanna from lashing out at the savages who killed her. They also have a long and somewhat unnecessary conversation where Cho explains how she ended up alive again. He also reminds readers of why calculus class sucked ass in school because he spends some time just surmising the output of the ancient machine that’s supposed to be the central focus of this whole damn arc. We don’t learn much about it other than it powered the dampening field that knocked out the SHIELD aircrafts and has the power of three H-bombs. That’s about it. Cho didn’t have to reinforce another Asian stereotype to prove it, but he did anyways and it still doesn’t tell us jack shit about this alien gizmo. I bet Indiana Jones would have probably figured this shit out by now.

Unfortunately, Wolverine is no Indiana Jones. As such, he probably hasn’t figured out how powerful the ancient machine is or that Shanna is still alive again. All he knows is that he’s pissed off that someone killed another hot chick before he had a chance to bone her and having already been tormented by his failure to taste Jean Grey’s pussy, he’s not going to let this stand. So still armed with some explosives and an intent to blow up the machine, he makes his way to the temple. He meets some armed savages along the way who attempt to slow him down. But this is a Wolverine who is pissed off and cock-blocked. They might as well try to keep an army of stoners away from a pool filled with Twinkees and cookie dough.

The savages may know this on some level because after all their best warriors are dead, they keep trying to stop him by attacking him with giant killer gorillas. It’s exactly as awesome as it sounds. In a land that is basically a glorified Jurassic Park, why not throw a little King Kong into the mix? The savages somehow have tamed these giant apes and they don’t much care for cock-blocked Canadians so they rip into Wolverine. Because if a bunch of determined savages aren’t enough to stop a pissed off Wolverine who just saw a hot chick die, shouldn’t a bunch of oversized apes be able to succeed?

The short answer is no. The long answer is something that PETA supporters will probably be disgusted by because Wolverine does to the giant apes what he did to the savages. Hey, at least you can’t claim he treats humans and animals differently. He shows them the same sort of savage brutality. He’s all for equality in that respect.

But what makes this sort of brutality all the more enjoyable is just how detailed and drawn out it is. While this issue may not have provided many answers about the machine and blatantly ripped off Batman, it does continue a general theme of putting Wolverine in battles that just allow him to be his badass self. It’s the kind of bloody brawls he just doesn’t fight as often anymore because he’s too busy rubbing elbows with the Avengers or running a school named after a woman he never got to bone. That sort of action is one of the best selling points in Savage Wolverine and this issue maintained that at the expense of apes and savage cavemen.

Once Wolverine is done ripping through angry natives and gorillas, he’s pretty roughed up. We even get some nice internal monologue that helps detail what happens when you’re attacked by three angry gorillas (might be handy information if you’re planning a trip to the zoo with a drunk). But he moves forward, driven by the anger over Shanna dying before he could see her naked. He reaches the temple and the strange alien machine, which he intends to blow up. Shanna, having learned from Cho why that is a shitty idea, manages to reach him just in time to stab him in the stomach to prevent him from detonating the device. That’s right. Wolverine gets stabbed again and this time by a hot woman. I don’t know why, but something about that is extra satisfying.

It seems like all is well. Wolverine didn’t blow up the alien machine (which looks like a fancy box mind you) and Shanna lets him know she’s still alive. The stab wound I guess is just extra reinforcement. But it seems as though this should be the end of it. Then the Hulk appears. No really, that’s what happens. The Hulk just fucking appears. I had to wait to sober up a bit to make sure I wasn’t reading this issue after taking too many hits of LSD. But apparently, this is how the comic ends. The Hulk appears out of nowhere, just like Amadeus Cho did a couple issues ago. We don’t get an explanation. We don’t even get a clue. We just know the Hulk is here and shit is likely to be smashed in the next issue.

I’ll need more than a few bong hits to make sense of this comic. I’ll probably also need a few to try and ignore the blatant parallels between the Lazarus Pit in Batman and whole resurrection bit with Shanna and Man-Thing blood. Since I’m low on weed, I’ll still do my best to break it down and it comes back to there being too many fucking blanks to fill in. This issue had some entertaining (and violent) moments that PETA supporters will bitch about, but in terms of overall plot it is still akin to that stoner buddy of yours who lays passed out on your couch and refuses to watch anything other than reruns of Scooby Doo. It just won’t move forward and even when it does, it comes off as something we’ve already seen before in one too many Batman comics.

But beyond the Batman parallels, this issue just threw too much shit into the pot without letting it cook. And I’m not just talking about the Hulk’s appearance at the end either. Man-Thing (or something that looks just like it) showing up early on raises more than a few eyebrows and not much of an effort was made at giving an explanation. The same can be said for the machine, which Cho tries to break down with his science-babble. And if you flunked 11th grade physics, it’s probably not going to make this machine that’s at the center of the whole damn plot any less mysterious. We still have no fucking clue what this machine is. We know it’s what caused the SHIELD ship to crash, but beyond that why the fuck is it such a big deal if it doesn’t even melt the faces of Nazis?

Despite these flaws, this issue still retains some of the elements that helps make Savage Wolverine a solid book. It’s still Wolverine at his most basic, kicking ass in the jungle and getting roughed up in ways that would paralyze anyone else not named Chuck Norris. The battle against the natives and the giant apes was classic Wolverine-style brutality. It was well-crafted and the internal narration definitely added something extra special to the bloodshed. If you only read those portions of the comic, it’s still worthwhile. But in terms of the overall story, it’ll have you both scratching your head and rolling your eyes in ways no amount of bong hits will help.

Savage Wolverine may be one of the few X-books right now where Wolverine isn’t an insufferable douche-bag. It has a lot of appeal, but it has a lot of fucking holes in it as well. Aside from reading a Wolverine you don’t hate and Shanna’s rack, this issue didn’t add much to that appeal. Savage Wolverine #4 fell short in way too many ways to be awesome. I can only give it a 2.5 out of 5. I’m okay with leaving some things to the imagination. A peep show in Amsterdam or my parents wedding night come to mind as good examples. But that shit just doesn’t work for a comic. For this series to be awesome, some of those blanks need to start getting filled in. There’s just only so much power that Shanna’s breasts have. Nuff said!

Savage Wolverine #2 - Baited Awesome

Beautiful women can be a confusing mix of contrasts to both a man's brain and his penis. Some of them claim they want to be appreciated more for their personality and intellect than their tits and ass. Some claim there's too much pressure for them to look beautiful, whereas butt-ugly rock stars and Hugh Hefner can still get more pussy than a door-to-door gynecologist. Yet I've often been extremely confused when some of the women make these arguments while wearing push-up bras and thong underwear.

Now I know I'm going to have my balls busted by angry feminists who think this generation of men should pay for the bullshit generations past, but men and women are wired differently. I know. That's not politically correct and anyone who says that is brushed off as someone who listens to Sean Hannity too much. But as someone who fantasizes about Sean Hannity and men like him suffering endless bouts of explosive diarrhea, I can say without hesitation that I'm not against all the tenants of feminism. I just acknowledge the cold hard fact that men are wired differently than women. They cherish the visual appeals of big breasts, a tight ass, and lips that you could use as a pool toy.

It's this visual appeal that makes characters like Shanna the She-Devil in the pages of Savage Wolverine so appealing. Wolverine's name may be in the title, but you can guarantee that the male readers of this book will scrutinize the images of Frank Cho's artwork on Shanna far more than they will with Wolverine. They'll do it for the same reason they'll buy a subscription to Sports Illustrated only to get the swimsuit issue. While the brain does most of the thinking, the penis has power of attorney. It's for that reason that the premise of a Wolverine story that involves him teaming up with Shanna has so much appeal and makes plenty of sense. Wolverine is a battle hardened survivor with a feral side while Shanna is a battle hardened survivor with a feral side and tits. Feminists may not like it, but you can't fuck with that sort of logical coherence unless you're a creationist.

Savage Wolverine #1 took Wolverine away from his duties at the Jean Grey Institute and the Avengers and brought him back to his roots. He found himself in the unforgiving landscape of the Savage Land where a couple of SHIELD agents enlisted help from Shanna to locate alien artifacts on a forbidden island. Well, this artifact clearly didn't want to be found because it led them to crash land in the middle of the fucking jungle where a tribe of blood-thirsty (and possibly racist) savages want to carve off their skin and sacrifice it to their bull god. The SHIELD agents didn't stand a chance, but Shanna and Wolverine's paths eventually crossed and now they're in it together. They hadn't had a chance to bone yet, but you definitely get the sense it's on their to-do list.

But before any boning can be contemplated, a new complication enters the conflict and that complication’s name is Amadeus Cho. If it sounds rather random to anyone who hasn’t been reading Hulk comics, it is. I guess the brutal slaughter of the SHIELD agents in the previous issue left a void that threatened Marvel’s usual slaughter quota. But Cho is a very odd and very different choice compared to the SHIELD agents and that’s a good thing. For one, it means we don’t have to read the same damn story of a bunch of unfortunate agents shitting themselves as they try to survive in a brutal jungle with racist archetypes chasing them in hopes of using their blood as anal lube. We don’t get much of an explanation on why he ended up in the Savage Land, but then again we didn’t get much explanation on why Wolverine ended up there as well so at least the plot gaps are consistent. And if you do happen to be racist or an avid listener of Rush Limbaugh, you should enjoy watching a bunch of jungle savages try in vain to beat Cho with sticks.

We then finally pick up where the last issue left off, which was basically Wolverine plummeting to the jungle floor after being mauled by a pterodactyl. I know it’s usually wrong to feel a certain level of glee in someone’s misfortune, even if they are fictional, but since Wolverine can heal I don’t think it will make Jesus cry. And like the previous issue, Frank Cho uses some internal monologues with Wolverine to help give a better description of the pain he’s in. For a man with serious anger issues and an inability to tame his penis around married women, his thoughts are pretty coherent. Wolverine may be in a fuckton of comics, but we rarely see this kind of narration so it helps give this series something unique. But as articulate as his thoughts may be, it eventually drifts back to hot women with nice tits. He remembers Shanna is in trouble and for her sake and that of his penis, he ignores the pain and runs off to help her.

This is usually where you expect to get all badass and be that character that so many fans complain is overexposed. You assume he’ll swoop in, save the day, shed plenty of blood, and soak the panties of any woman within a half-mile radius. In a comic with Wolverine’s name in the title, it’s hard not to expect that shit. But that actually doesn’t happen this time. Instead, Frank Cho adopts this radical idea that a guy who just fell from the sky with poor impulse control and no sense of strategy actually might not fare too well against an army of hungry pterodactyls. While he manages to catch up with Shanna, who is still in one piece while battling these hungry creatures that make creationists cry, he does a shitty job of fighting them off. He only manages to get himself hurt even more. It takes Shanna picking up a gun left by a SHIELD agent and shooting them before Wolverine’s ego and balls are permanently wounded.

This may sound like a rather unspectacular display of action, but it actually provides a different approach to Wolverine that doesn’t often get told in a world where so many of the writers at Marvel have a man-crush on Wolverine that would make any gay man jealous. Frank Cho actually shows Wolverine as being clumsy, incompetent, and overmatched. And this isn’t fucking Apocalypse he’s facing. These are just hungry dinosaurs. They’re just a level above the masked guards that James Bond uses as target practice. Yet it makes perfect sense that a man who vehemently hates guys like Cyclops who actually strategize and has serious anger management issues would struggle. It’s only here that we actually see it. I’ve berated Marvel many times, drunk and sober, about shit not making sense. This is one instance where they actually make sense in a way that is pleasantly surprising.

Back with Amadeus Cho, he’s clearly gotten bored with roughing up the angry natives. At least that proves he’s not a member of the KKK because they would probably never get tired of that shit. As he’s assessing his situation, he finds out about the dampening field surrounding the island that was mentioned in the previous issue by the SHIELD agents. It has negatively affected his ability to communicate with the outside or tap the full extent of his powers. His AI, Calvin (basically a more nerdy version of Jarvis from Iron Man), informs him of the artifact that’s causing all the disruptions. His best bet is to find it, get rid of it, and get his ass back home in time watch She-Hulk take a shower. He also notices that some of the natives have marks from dead SHIELD agents so he can expect to be as welcome as a bad case of herpes.

For Wolverine and Shanna, they don’t get to enjoy that kind of boredom. After they recover from their battle against the angry Pterodactyls, they begin to discuss their plan to infiltrate the temple and disrupt that artifact. And by discuss I mean coordinate with the same efficiencies as two drunk monkeys trying to hump a coconut. Wolverine can’t get Shanna to shut up and Shanna can’t resist pointing out how short he is, comparing him to Hugh Jackman in a very nice reference to the movies. She even finds a way to throw in a little poop joke about drinking jungle water. And whenever a hot chick makes a poop joke, it’s a very special thing.

These two clearly aren’t on the same page and the possibility of Wolverine getting into Shanna’s panties are dwindling at a surprising rate. It actually makes for some nice drama on top of the action to show that their partnership isn’t following the usual plot you would expect, given Wolverine’s luck with women. It’s another example of Wolverine not being depicted as the alpha dog he usually is. It also gets progressively worse when it starts raining (it’s a fucking jungle, mind you) and they end up falling down a cliff. And Wolverine, looking more like Homer Simpson than an X-man, tumbles down in a way that is as humiliating as it is hilarious.

When they land, both Shanna and Wolverine’s pride is almost as wounded as Mante T’eo’s credibility. But they don’t have time to sulk because they just happened to land in the den of some angry raptors and like an off-duty cop whose home you just stumbled into while drunk, they’re not too pleased. And this time, Shanna doesn’t have any big ass guns (not counting her tits) to fight off these aggressive creationist nightmares. It’s a fairly typical situation in the Savage Land. It seems like you can’t take a piss in a bush without it being home to some flesh-eating monster. But what makes it entertaining is how Frank Cho sets it up. It’s like the Three Stooges, except there are two and one of them has a great rack. It’s as entertaining as it sounds.

As Wolverine and Shanna are making the same mistake, Amadeus Cho is trying desperately to stop the angry natives from making more. He’s been remarkably patient with them, not using his power to slaughter them and use their bones to make dildoes. Yet they remain painfully slow at realizing that hitting him with fucking sticks isn’t working. It’s like trying to reason with Ann Coulter. It’s a losing battle. But eventually, Cho does manage to get his translator working. This allows him to communicate with the chief of the natives. It’s a little sluggish at times and the whole Elvish language used to depict the natives talking really doesn’t make for an interesting conversation. But when he does finally crack their language code, he makes clear that he comes in peace and is powerful as fuck. Their natural reaction is to worship him as a god.
Now I’m trying not to make too many comments on race here because I’m already on thin ice with Al Sharpton, but this is something that has the potential to piss a few people off. You’ve got a population of people who fit the stereotypical depiction of a savage and an enlightened westerner armed with superpowers shows up and they worship him as a god. Maybe some people won’t take as much offense to that as they will a speech about women’s rights by Todd Akin, but it is somewhat clichéd and a bit of a dick move. However, it could have been much more offensive so I’m not going to make a bigger deal of this than I need to.

The prospect of Amadeus Cho being worshipped by the natives as a god ends up being more exciting than Shanna and Wolverine escaping the raptor den. The action isn’t quite as entertaining as the earlier battle against the pterodactyls. They’re still comically uncoordinated, but they escape and continue making their way to the artifact. They continue to bicker as well. You get the sense that boning is now no longer as high up on their to-do list as initially thought. But it still makes for a rather bland ending to the issue. They just fight off more dinosaurs, struggle to get along, and basically continue down the same path they were when they began. But they don’t know that Cho beat them to the punch. So there are still plenty of reasons to look forward to the next issue and there are plenty of memorable moments in this one. The ending just isn’t one of them.

I often hear fans bitch and moan about how Wolverine is so overexposed. Those same people also frequently bitch and moan about how he’s made out to be too perfect in the sense that he’s a badass, he’s overly competent, and he gets to bone way too many hot chicks. To some extent they have a point. Wolverine does get almost as much love as Emma Frost’s tits at Marvel. But that extent is only as long as Tim Tebow’s passing stats last year. Because this comic, in what may be a subtle middle finger to the Wolverine-haters, tells a Wolverine story that doesn’t make him out to be Marvel’s alpha male. It’s a story where Wolverine is incompetent, clumsy, and downright stupid at times. Hell, the way he’s carrying himself, Shanna’s panties are getting dryer by the second. And you know what? It actually feels like this is how Wolverine is supposed to be depicted. This is how you would expect someone to carry himself who heals from anything, has poor impulse control, and couldn’t strategize even if Jean Grey’s pussy depended on it.

Savage Wolverine is quickly turning into a Wolverine comic for fans who don’t like Wolverine. It’s similar to how the movie Bad Santa was a movie for people who really hate Christmas. While that movie had touching messages like “Shit Happens When You Party Naked,” this comic has a clear message in that a beautiful woman will use your ass as bait for hungry dinosaurs if you’re going to be a dick. Both are good messages, but Wolverine’s new role as bait offers something different compared to previous Wolverine titles. When I first heard about this book, I made many of the same assumptions my fellow Marvel addicts made in that will likely be just another Wolverine title that tries to find new ways of making him seem awesome. Well, that’s not what Frank Cho is doing here. He’s showing a different side of Wolverine in that while he can survive in a jungle, he would have long since become T-Rex shit were it not for his healing. He gets pwned more in this issue than he has in any comic where Cyclops hasn’t shot him and given his recent actions, that’s saying something.

While I enjoyed Frank Cho’s approach to characterizing Wolverine, there were parts of this comic that dragged. The side-story with Amadeus Cho was a nice touch, but it seemed needlessly spaced out by having him fuck with the natives until he could translate their language. Aside from just flexing his powers, he didn’t really do much. In addition, there wasn’t a whole lot of progress made in Wolverine and Shanna’s mission to find that ancient artifact. They basically just tripped over their own asses for most of the issue. It was entertaining and all, but it really didn’t move shit forward. And the ending was pretty weak and pretty abrupt. So while the theme of the book and the action was enjoyable, it was poorly organized and didn’t come together very well in the end.

If you liked Savage Wolverine #1, then Savage Wolverine #2 will give you even more reasons to enjoy it. Despite the rather chaotic pace of the story, Frank Cho’s artwork is as beautiful as ever and the sight of Wolverine getting mauled by dinosaurs has yet to get old. The strong dialog also adds plenty of value to this issue and the movie references are a nice bonus and give women more reasons to want to bone Hugh Jackman. Savage Wolverine is quickly turning into a different type of Wolverine comic and for all the right reasons. I give Savage Wolverine #2 a 3.5 out of 5. At the rate this comic is going, Wolverine actually might not get laid in the end. That would be a monumental milestone in the history of Marvel and a clear victory for anyone whose girlfriend cheated on him with a tattoo laced biker wanted in four states. But most importantly, it also sends a clear message to the Wolverine haters that they can stop bitching and moaning now. And like shows sponsored by Glenn Beck, this world needs less bitching and moaning. Nuff said!

Savage Wolverine #1 - Jungle Loving Awesome

What is it about the untamed wild that gives some people huge boners? I know people who will wake up at four in the morning, put on loin cloths, grab a hunting knife, and run into the woods giggling like ten-year-old girl that just stole her older sister's tampon. They say it's liberating, being able to escape from civilization and enjoy a simpler existence. Then they have to take a shit and they run back to the nearest working toilet as fast as humanly possible. So while they'll rave on and on about the wonders of nature, when it comes to giving up the ability to shit in a toilet and not have to wipe their ass with dry leaves that's a deal-breaker.

I'll go on record as saying the hippies, the environmentalists, and Ted Kazinsky are full of shit. Civilization is awesome. I like sitting in an air-conditioned room eating food I didn't have to kill with a bow and arrow and shitting in a toilet. I would much rather saw my legs off and dive head-first into a pool of dog piss than go camping in the wilderness. And anybody who wants to bitch about how civilization has dehumanized us needs to either start shitting on trees or shut the fuck up.

That said, some people actually thrive in the wild. These are the kind of people who could be dropped bare ass naked in the middle of the African Serengeti and three weeks later, he's made every lion his personal bitch. You don't come across too many people like that these days, but in comics these guys aren't just more common. They embody that wild style of wild nature that gets us in touch with our own inner shit-throwing primate.

Of all the characters who would thrive in a jungle and treat it as a weekend in Vegas, Wolverine is the ultimate wild man. He doesn't just survive in the wild. He makes it his personal mission to make every single predator's balls shrivel off and make every potential prey shit themselves in terror. But lately, he hasn't been able to get in touch with his wild side. He's been too busy blowing the Avengers, screwing over the X-men in Avengers vs. X-men, and trying to fight the urge fuck a teenage Jean Grey. But as part of the Marvel NOW! relaunch, Marvel is attempting to get Wolverine back to his roots before he was the unofficial man-whore of comics. As part of a new series by Frank Cho, the Savage Wolverine promises to ditch the whole "I want to fuck the redhead" or "I want to gut Cyclops" plot and puts him back in his element. For a guy who already looks like he took a bath in Rogain every day since he was two years old, it's the perfect change of pace.

The tone is set in Savage Wolverine #1 with an all-too familiar scenario. Some dipshit, civilization-loving assholes think they can fly their fancy, high-tech gadgets into the Savage Land and not have something go horribly wrong. That’s like smoking two packs of cigarettes a day while working in a Chinese coal mine and expecting not to get lung cancer. In this case it’s a couple of SHIELD agents investigating an island with an insanely creepy mountain-sized sculpture. They’re tracking some mysterious energy that they’re hoping to investigate. They’ve also got Shanna the She-Devil with them, who is acting as a guide while also saving them the need to bring porn on the mission. But seriously, when has approaching an islands with a creepy face carved into a mountain ever led to anything other than disaster? For that reason, it’s hard to feel bad for the SHIELD agents when their aircraft starts going down. Maybe they just expect too much from dangerous islands that don’t have giant signs that tell them to stay the fuck away.

Enter our old friend Wolverine. Unlike the dipshit SHIELD agents who thought they could bang karma and get away with it, he wasn’t stupid enough to fly a high tech jet into the Savage Land and expect it not to crash. Instead, he just wakes up in the middle of the Savage Land without any memory of how he got there. He was either tricked or he went on one hell of a bender, or maybe a little of both.

But this apparently happens eight months after the SHIELD agents disappeared. There’s really no lead-in as to how he ended up here and maybe that’s for the better because it means Wolverine can get right to channeling his inner animal. That becomes somewhat necessary because he’s immediately attacked by Jurassic Park style raptors when he wakes up. In the Savage Land, that’s about as common as getting beat up in a mosh pit at a Metallica concert.

In addition to killer raptors, it’s also a guarantee that a visit to the Savage Land will also land you in the crosshairs of some hostile Neanderthal types with a lot of pent up aggression and no internet access to harass total strangers on message boards. But Wolverine decides to get proactive for once and hunts down a group that happens to be carrying one of the wounded SHIELD agents, most likely for human sacrifice or for a Hannibal Lecture style feast. Wolverine opts to not ask politely and proceeds with cutting them up like strips of bacon at a Five Guys. It’s brutal. It’s bloody. It’s violent. It’s just what you would expect from a book with the word “savage” in the title, no more no less. There’s some nice narration in here as well that helps make it a little less bland, but it really doesn’t add much to the scene.

After Wolverine completes his casual slaughter, he finds out from the dying SHIELD agent the location of their crashed ship. He gives the agent a proper burial so he doesn’t have to go through the indignity of being shit out by a T-Rex and then makes his way to the crashed ship where he finds a few various notes and a clear sign that these SHIELD agents were too incompetent to guards against an army of cavemen. But while he’s trying to figure out why SHIELD would want to visit a place where stepping in dinosaur shit is a real concern, he’s confronted by the one person who wasn’t stupid enough to get roughed up by cavemen and that person has an awesome rack.

It’s Shanna the She-Devil and she has to first stab Wolverine with a spear before she recognizes him. I’m guessing that’s not the worst thing a woman has ever done to him so it’s probably an easy thing to forget, especially when she’s wearing a loin-cloth bikini. I try not to take too much pleasure in Wolverine getting horribly wounded, but given what a massive douche he’s been since Avengers vs. X-men this scene still put a smile on my face.

Once the awkwardness of having stabbed Wolverine wears off, Shanna explains why a couple of SHIELD agents were stupid enough to visit the Savage Land. It’s actually exceedingly predictable, almost to the point where King Kong could probably sue. They suspected there was some ancient technology on the island and when they got to close, they encountered a disruption field that caused their ship to crash. After trying to be Bear Gylles for a while, they attempted to sail away only to get attacked by sea monsters. So it’s basically your standard vacation package to the Savage Land. Both SHIELD agents ended up captured, but they still suspected that there was some ancient technology in the mountain that they could use. They were planning to reach that technology with a very low-tech solution that involved blowing shit up.

It’s a story we’ve seen countless times before and parodied even more. A group of civilized people have their civilized gizmos fail them and they end up in a very uncivilized part of the world. Sometimes they end up being sacrificed or eaten. Sometimes they train monkeys to be butlers. Sometimes they make it into a porno. It’s a very basic and very clichéd plot. While it fits nicely with a Wolverine story, nobody with a handful of brain cells will find it too groundbreaking.

The premise may be basic, but it still involves blowing shit up so that means it has both the promise of explosions and more pictures of Shanna’s rack. So there’s still plenty of reason to follow this story. Wolverine and Shanna quickly work out a plan that involves finishing what the SHIELD agents started, minus the part where they got killed by cavemen. They intend to blow up the base of the mountain and use the ancient technology to call for help. However, this is still the Savage Land. That means there are a long list of creatures looking to maim them. That includes a hoard of Pterodactyls. Before they can even entertain thoughts of blowing shit up, they have to fight them off in another visually stunning yet predictable scene of jungle slaughter.

Part of that predictability involves Shanna demonstrating the toughness of a hardened jungle woman with PMS. She beats Wolverine to the punch in terms of recklessly attacking the Pterodactyl hoard. It forces Wolverine to shove her out of the downed aircraft, while probably copping a feel in the process (no straight man would blame him). Shanna doesn’t like this because it leaves them out in the open and vulnerable. And once again, a woman is shown to be right while the man is shown to be stupid because one of the Pterodactyl’s grabs Wolverine and flies him up high in the air before dropping him. Perhaps it’s another lesson for Wolverine in how to better deal with women, aside from boning them and hitting on the ones that are married. But again, it’s rather predictable. The comic ends with the prospect of him hitting the ground head first in a way that would turn most people into a blood stain on a T-Rex’s foot. But he’s Wolverine. You know he’s going to survive. So don’t expect to be biting your nails off wondering how this shit is going to play out.

I didn’t originally intend to do a review of Savage Wolverine when I first heard about it. Then after a few drinks and a few bong hits, it finally dawned on me. I said to myself, “You know what? This is just what Marvel comics needs! A book where Wolverine isn’t being a total dick cheese to Cyclops or playing the part of an Avengers groupie! Now where the fuck can I get more of this pot? It’s awesome!” After reading the first issue, I can say with or without a bong hit that this comic succeeded in delivering a welcome change-of-pace for Wolverine. But is it compelling enough to make a whole series out of? That’s something that’s difficult to answer even with a bong hit.

I enjoyed the issue. But Frank Cho really didn’t bring anything new to the table. The premise of the story has been overdone more than Joan Rivers’s face. Someone tries to explore the Savage Land, they crash land, and they get roughed up by a group of jungle savages that still shit in pots. That shit hasn’t just been done in Marvel comics before. This is shit that’s been done in every King Kong knock-off for decades. So if you’ve seen even some of those, including all the porn parodies, you won’t be surprised at all by what you see in this comic.

It was still awesome in that we get to see Wolverine going back to basics, surviving on his animal instincts and crossing paths with a hot jungle chick. The team-up between Wolverine and Shanna is definitely the most compelling aspect of this comic. It’s a team-up that makes perfect sense. She’s a tough, hard-nosed woman who is more at home in the jungle than Charlie Sheen at a Columbian whore house. Wolverine is an equally tough, ill-tempered brute who gets along better with angry animals trying to kill him than his own fellow X-men at times. Fuck, this is the perfect theme for either a porno or a new reality show on Bravo.

This first issue may have been basic and predictable, but it successfully established the conflict and set up the partnership between Wolverine and Shanna. Now it’s not yet clear if that partnership will include the exchange of a few bodily fluids down the line, but it is clear that there’s a story to be told here. Savage Wolverine #1 may not have a novel concept, but Frank Cho still makes it entertaining enough to be enjoyable. I give Savage Wolverine #1 a 3 out of 5. This comic didn’t change my opinion on camping or the whole back-to-the-wild bullshit that hippies love to whine about. Maybe I would find it more tenable if a beautiful woman like Shanna tagged along, but I know it would still go downhill the moment we ran out of toilet paper. So I’ll be leaving the survivalist shit to Wolverine and the idiots preparing for the zombie apocalypse. Nuff said!