Evil Wonders: Wonder Woman #33

The following is my review of Wonder Woman #33, which was posted on PopMatters.com.

No matter how dysfunctional a family is, there's usually some kind of sentiment binding it together. That sentiment isn't always healthy. Many sitcoms, good and bad alike, are built on that kind of dysfunction. Add gods, demigods, and superheroes to the mix and that dysfunction takes on a level that even the trashiest prime-time sitcom can't match. Wonder Woman's family may not have that kind of dysfunction, but whenever gods and demigods enter the mix, it usually means she'll eventually start punching something.

Wonder Woman's family already has its share of complications, thanks largely to an origins story that is still muddled between clay figurines and Zeus not being able to keep it in his pants again. The events of Darkseid Wars adds another complication in the form of Grail, who is basically the anti-Wonder Woman. As the daughter of Darkseid and a self-professed daddy's girl, she exists to spit on everything Wonder Woman stands for while looking more menacing than any illegitimate offspring that Zeus could ever sire.

Grail is one of those characters who has the potential to be a true nemesis to Wonder Woman. Superman has Lex Luthor. Batman has the Joker. Wonder Woman really doesn't have anyone on that level who isn't a renegade god or demigod. Grail, after taking down the entire Justice League in Darkseid Wars, can challenge Wonder Woman on every conceivable level. Wonder Woman #33 finally puts Grail in that position and James Robinson makes the most of it.

Darkseid War introduced Grail, but offers little insight into who she is and what motivates her. She never comes off as an overly complex character. There's no effort to craft some elaborate story about how she ends up on the path of evil. Her father is Darkseid. Evil is literally in her blood and she doesn't even try to avoid that. She embraces it. Like Lex Luthor and the Joker, she is not in conflict with who she is. She's evil and she's fine with that. That kind of self-awareness may be basic, but it's oddly refreshing in an era where too many villains try to come off as tragic figures.

That simple, streamlined persona helps move the story along. Wonder Woman #33 isn't just about establishing Grail as someone who can battle Wonder Woman without relying entirely on played out themes from Greco-Roman mythology. It's about tying her story into Wonder Woman's world, specifically the ongoing conflict with her long lost brother. Again, Wonder Woman's divine brands of family dysfunction are complicated, but that makes Grail's simplicity all the more appropriate.

Like Wonder Woman, much of Grail's story revolves around her family. She isn't just driven by her dark heritage. She actively works to protect and preserve it. The recent events surrounding Dark Knights: Metal puts Darkseid in a strange, but vulnerable position. After his defeat, he reverts to the form of an infant and it's up to Grail to play the role of mother to her father. It sounds weird, but when Greco-Roman traditions involve multiple instances of incest, infidelity, and unholy unions, it barely raises an eyebrow.

Grail still embraces this role. She never shows any hesitation or reservations about helping Darkseid return to form. She's just like him, wanting nothing more than to spread death and destruction to everything she touches. Even when aiding her father means murdering various demigods, mostly the many illegitimate children of Zeus, she does so without a second thought. She never sees it as evil or inconvenient, for that matter. She's just an evil daughter helping her evil father.

This makes for plenty of brief, but brutal moments that reinforce the extent of Grail's persona. She is evil to the core and that doesn't bother her in the slightest. While this goes a long way towards establishing her as a menacing villain for Wonder Woman, it doesn't make for too compelling a plot. Wonder Woman #33 offers a great many insights into Grail, at least with respect to her role in the ongoing story surrounding Wonder Woman's brother. Beyond that, though, there aren't many complexities or revelations.

The simplicity of Grail's character may help move the story along, but it offers little else, in terms of intrigue. She has a problem, namely her father's nascent state. She has to solve that problem by killing the many demigods that Zeus sired when he kept thinking with the wrong head. She goes about solving that problem with the kind of gratuitous violence that would make any evil father proud. There's not much more to the story beyond that.

There are some characters whose evil nature needs to be belabored every now and then. Grail established during Darkseid Wars that she is not one of them. Anyone who has Darkseid for a father doesn't need that kind of effort. While giving her a defined role in Wonder Woman's ongoing narrative is important, Grail doesn't get much depth beyond that. For her to truly become the Lex Luthor or Joker for Wonder Woman, she needs more than just a desire to help her father.

Wonder Woman #33 still succeeds in exploring Grail, demonstrating just how menacing a threat she can be to anyone she faces, demigod or not. Robinson skillfully guides her into a collision course with Wonder Woman while the artwork of Emanuela Lupacchino provides the necessary brutal imagery to that journey. More than anything else, that journey ensures that any pending clash between Grail and Wonder Woman will carry a lot of dramatic weight.

The family dynamics for both Wonder Woman and Grail, as dysfunctional and divine they may be, create a unique appeal that feels right at home in the bizzare, yet lecherous world of Greco-Roman mythology. Wonder Woman still embodies the higher values that mythos, but Grail is set to embody the worse. The fact she can do all of this without being the bitter offspring of Zeus makes that feat all the more remarkable.

Final Score: 6 out of 10

Xtreme X-men #12 - Universe-Crumbling Awesome

Every so often you find yourself in a situation where a long list of shitty circumstances converge right on your asshole and make you wish you were dead, gay, or comatose. We've all had bad days, but there are bad days when you get stuck in traffic on your way to work and the kinds of days where an ex-girlfriend, an IRS agent, and a New York City judge kick in your door at six in the morning while hung over. Comic book characters have these days all the time. Hell, they're probably akin to our typical Monday. But some just have a special kind of suck that makes you wonder whether they have a good therapist or an even better pot dealer.

Dazzler just began having one of those days at the end of Xtreme X-men #11. Up to that point, things had been going pretty damn well for her. She proved herself a capable leader of her team, she took down what she believed to be the final evil Charles Xavier, and she got to hook up with a black Cyclops. So she got to kill a Nazi and piss off the KKK in the same day. Hell, that's as good as they come for a pretty blond these days. But just when it seemed like this journey was over for her, the Xavier-in-a-Jar that had been guiding her through this mission from the beginning decided to say, "Fuck it! You're all screwed!" It made for a somewhat random and incoherent ending. However, it set the stage for the final stage of Greg Pak's Xtreme X-men. It's bittersweet in that a series that turned Dazzler from just another pretty blond into a kick-ass team leader is nearing its end, but to even get to the end she's gotta have one last shitty day.

This shitty day begins in Xtreme X-men #12 with the team's arrival at another exotic location. This time they end up in an Ancient Egyptian setting. But it's not the Disney's Aladdin type setting. This shit involves slaves and back-breaking labor, basically the kind of shit that Walt Disney didn't want to show kids until they were able to become underpaid interns. Now right off the bad we're not told how they got to this point. We know Xavier-in-a-Jar linked up with Nazi Xavier and Wizard Xavier in the last issue, but we don't know why they ended up in Egypt. I'm guessing the only way they felt their egos could be sufficiently supported is with pyramids and big ass statues. It's not the first time we haven't been told how Dazzler's team showed up in a new world, but since they're already in the midst of a pretend-to-be-captured-as-slaves plan to get them close to the evil Xaviers it kind of feels jarring.

However, the plot quickly settles as we find out that the evil Xavier's are already making their mark by having slaves carve their bald heads into monuments. I assume they're planning on statues depicting their undersized dicks too, but right now the priority is their ego and tapping into a rift in the space-time continuum. I'm assuming the statues of their dicks are a close third, but that rift is poised to be their way of giving the finger to the multi-verse. As evil Xaviers, they're never content to just have an army of slaves and monuments to their dicks. They need to fuck over multiple universes. All I can say to that is their dicks must be smaller than I thought.

After watching the evil Xavier's throw some slaves into the rift and compliment one another on how big their dicks are, Dazzler and her teams maintain their cover. They allow the Xaviers to keep jerking each other off while they formulate a plan. Later that night, Dazzler muses on how she fucked up by assuming they had killed 10 evil Xaviers when they only killed 9. While she may fail math and be subjected to any number of dumb blond jokes, she is committed to making it right and her team is committed to standing by her. It shows that she really has won over this group of dimensionally displaced X-men and not because she has a great rack either.

The novelty should have worn off by now, but I can't help but take note of it every time I see it. Dazzler really has come a long way as a character since this series started. She's gone from that other cute blond not named Emma Frost to a capable leader that can fight an army of evil Charles Xaviers and still make you want to smell her panties. She's no Lara Croft or Black Widow. She's her own leader and if given the choice between following her or Cyclops, I would definitely follow her and not just because Emma Frost might castrate me for staring at her rack too much. Dazzler really has become something special and I hope that continues after the end of this series.

The next morning, the team puts Dazzler's plan into motion. It's pretty basic, boiling down to causing a slave riot and pissing off the evil Xaviers as much as possible. It really doesn't take much convincing to inspire all the slaves to rise up against their bald, baby-dick oppressors. And in the process of causing such a commotion, they give Dazzler plenty of noise to work with. Given the growth in her leadership skills, it's easy to forget that she has some pretty potent powers as well in turning noise to energy. In the desert, there are not boom boxes with Pandora radio. So they have to create their noise and it works almost as well as dubstep.

Armed with all this noise, Dazzler attacks the evil Xaviers near their Sphinx statue where the rift in the universe is growing. Evil Wizard Xavier and Nazi Xavier are unimpressed and are still probably looking forward to how big the statue of their dicks are going to be. But during the attack, Dazzler also manages to get Xavier-in-a-Jar away from them. This then allows Hercules to do to these two evil Xaviers what every gay man in the world wishes they could do to the Westboro Baptist Church and bury them under a pile of rubble.

It's not the most epic battle, especially considering how much it took to take these two evil Xavier's down in the previous issues. You could say that Dazzler has just become so proficient at hunting down evil Xaviers that it's like being adopted by Angelina Jolie at this point. It just isn't all that shocking. But in terms of epic scale, this battle is somewhat lacking even if it is still satisfying to see Hercules bury the evil Xaviers.

Even if the battle isn't all that epic, it certainly doesn't end the threat of the evil Xaviers. Xavier-in-a-Jar informs Dazzler that they had already tapped a good chunk of that power from the rift and they're as unstoppable as the IRS at Wesley Snipe's front door. In order to keep the battle semi-fair, Dazzler and black Cyclops try to use their powers to close the rift. I don't know the physics of how that shit works, but given this is a series that involves hopping across universes with a floating head I'm pretty sure I can keep using my old high school physics textbook to roll joints.

But the two evil Xaviers aren't keen on letting someone fuck up their power source. Not when they're this close to finally getting a statue proclaiming how big their dicks are. After digging themselves out of the pile of rubble Hercules buried them under, they blast Dazzler and black Cyclops away from the rift and prepare to absorb more power. They seem poised to improve their evil wizard and Nazi abilities to cosmic proportions. But like using the pages of your physics books to roll joints, physics ends up screwing them over when they're tested on it.

For reasons that would probably still get any physics student a failing grade, the rift in the continuum decides it doesn't like evil wizards or Nazis and incinerates them. It's a rather inglorious way for these assholes to go, but since there have already been a couple comics that shows these two failing in epic fashion it's not too disappointing to see them fall in such an unglamorous way. And with two more evil Xaviers dead, that means this shit is finally over, right? Well if you read the last issue, you know what that sort of attitude will get you. And unlike last issue, Dazzler doesn't even get a chance to hook up with a black man.

For more reasons that aren't explained, the rift gets pissed off and starts sucking in everything like a Kardashian back stage at the NBA All-Star game. It sucks in all the slaves and innocent people that Dazzler and her team were trying to liberate. They try in vain to save them, but Xavier-in-a-Jar has to be a dick again and just teleports them to another part of the dimensional rift. It leaves them trapped while all those innocent people are poised to suffer at the hands of whatever power was trying to get through. We don't find out what it is. We only find out that it ties into the X-Terminators event. It's not a twist like the end of the previous issue, but it sets the stage for a big event and that's just as awesome!

Remember what I said about Dazzler having to have one last shitty day? Well, I should have added one little caveat. Shitty days often come in bunches so even if you're the last leg of a mission, you can't expect any shit storm to end in just one day. It's like the heavens get constipated and have to dump their load at some point. You just gotta be ready for it and after reading this issue, I get the sense that Dazzler and her team weren't ready in the slightest. That's not necessarily a bad thing because it ended up putting them in a position to play a major role in X-Terminator. It also helped finish what they only thought they finished in the previous issue. They killed more evil Xaviers, but it would be too easy for them to just go back and have Dazzler swap more spit with black Cyclops.

Xtreme X-men #12 was solid in that it continued the theme of taking Dazzler's team to exotic locations. Maybe being slaves in Ancient Egypt isn't the most exotic place they could have gone, especially considering how they visited the old West and encountered a My Little Pony Charles Xavier at one point. But it seemed fitting when you consider a Nazi and an evil wizard are involved. Hell, it might end up being the plot of the next Indiana Jones movie if Spielberg and George Lucas directed it while on crack. However, the action was still somewhat lacking and the epic feeling that we've seen with plenty of other Xtreme X-men battles just wasn't there. It was like only watching the third quarter of a football game. The most exciting possibilities were somewhat lost in between.

With Xtreme X-men ending and Greg Pak moving on to write Batman/Superman for DC Comics, I understand that the next few issues will be as precious as Natalie Portman's breast milk. It hasn't been an easy journey for Dazzler, going from just another big-boobed blond in a comic book to being a big-boob blond that can kick ass and lead an army of slaves against an evil wizard and a Nazi. Greg Pak has flexed that twisted imagination of his throughout this journey of hers and on behalf of everyone who has ever taken a hallucinogen, I thank him for it. But this issue still left me wanting more. I know it's going to be resolved during X-Terminators, but at the same time I weep at the realization I may not read another X-men comic where a hot blond kills a Nazi for a long time. I give Xtreme X-men #12 a 3 out of 5. I guess with a name like Xtreme, this series can only go out as part of a crossover event. It doesn't involve a Nazi, but it does involve more alternate universe mischief and a version of Jean Grey that hasn't been laid in a while. In that sense, I have high hopes for the end of Xtreme X-men and the future of the X-books! Nuff said!

Xtreme X-men #11 - Counting Down Awesome

It’s no secret that comics and sci-fi regularly abuse the immutable laws of physics, biology, and common sense to tell a good story. It’s no secret that fanfiction writers will abuse those laws even further to tell even more elaborate stories, many of them ending up in homoerotic smut fics. Some stories are more guilty of this abuse than others and unlike the Vatican, they don’t have the luxury of hiding behind holy or diplomatic immunity. It is possible to be a total douche and nitpick these inconsistencies. I’ve been guilty of that in the past. But for a series like Xtreme X-men, I’m willing to take a few extra shots of whiskey and enjoy the twisted tales that ooze from Greg Pak’s imagination.

Let’s not kid ourselves. A series that has Dazzler as team leader, a gay Wolverine, and a black Cyclops in a story that involves traversing alternate universes with an Xavier-in-a-Jar is going to abuse a lot of logic. Hell, it’s the kind of abuse that would make Spock’s head explode. But that doesn’t matter because Greg Pak has found a way to make it incredibly awesome. He doesn’t just rely on the sheer ridiculousness of the series to be the appeal. He actually does maintain a common story that involves hunting down evil Charles Xaviers, being tested on a physical and emotional level, and even a little romance. And even though the story and the series is poised to end while Greg Pak jumps the Marvel ship to write Batman/Superman, it has been an awesome ride that can only be matched by riding a go-kart on an acid trip.

Keeping with the tradition of utterly obscene incarnations of these characters that usually aren’t found outside of fanfiction, Greg Pak took a page out of the Uncanny Avengers playbook and got Nazis involved in the previous issue. Dazzler and her team of X-men have faced some pretty fucked up Charles Xaviers in their quest, including an evil wizard Xavier and a My Little Pony Xavier. I could not make that shit up with all the weed in Amsterdam. But now they’re facing a Nazi Charles Xavier, who happens to be in a spat with a Japanese version of Namor. However, it isn’t as clear cut as your typical Call of Duty mission. Nazi Xavier claims to be the victim of Namor’s aggression and is trying to protect what is left of his people, which happen to reside near a sunken version of London. And as Uncanny Avengers #4 showed us, even Nazis can make valid points for being assholes.

Dazzler and her team are now stuck in between two very powerful forces that have absolutely no problems horribly maiming people and masturbating with their entrails. In Xtreme X-men #11, they end up having to rescue the innocent civilians that Nazi Xavier wasn’t lying about. I know, a Nazi telling the truth is a fucked up concept, but in Xtreme X-men you probably won’t bat an eye. On the same week when the Red Skull correctly points out all the disturbing ways America sucks, it’s pretty distressing to see Nazi’s telling the truth. They’re still assholes so Dazzler doesn’t stop attacking Nazi Xavier, leaving the safety of the civilians to her team. And you know you’ve become a strong leader when you’re willing to take on a Nazi single-handedly. But does anyone else see the irony that the characters that fight Nazi’s the most, Captain America and the unapologetically blond Dazzler, are basically the Aryans that Nazi’s love? Anyone? Or am I still drunk?

Irony aside, Nazi Xavier actually does something the Red Skull didn’t do and reminded readers of why Nazi’s suck in the first place. While Dazzler is attacking him, he gives her a brief synopsis of what happens to a world when Charles Xavier is a Nazi. This time you don’t find anything you can’t find in a Call of Duty game or a History Channel WWII documentary. A charismatic leader, who has the luxury of actually controlling minds, comes to power to save his country from corruption, invasion, and economic collapse. Basically, he’s the kind of guy the Tea Party would fucking love…except, you know, he’s a Nazi. And unlike the Red Skull, he was actually able to beat all his enemies, including Captain America. For a while, he succeeded where Hitler failed miserably. He claimed he was beloved by the free world, although he did mention that he purged his own party of people he thought were threats or just didn’t like. I’m sure it’s the kind of shit that right-wing Republicans only wish they could do so you can easily assume he was still an asshole dictator.

For a brief moment, everything is all peace, love, and Disney cartoons for everyone that isn’t a minority. Everybody had peace and order. Anything that threatened it was either dead or waiting to die in concentration camps. Then Atlantis thought this would be the perfect time to launch an attack and flood the world. Because when better to attack the surface than a time when Nazis are in charge and always looking for an excuse to blow shit up? Maybe they should have waited until hippies ruled the world. It was too late though. Xavier and his Nazi buddies blew the shit out of Atlantis in ways only asshole Nazis would. For some reason, Namor had a problem with that. And that, my friends, is why Namor wants to murder his ass. You don’t usually need an excuse to want to kill a Nazi, but it helps when you’ve got a pretty damn good one, as Namor certainly does.

Dazzler still offers no sympathy to Nazi Xavier. But she is forced to stop trying to kill him when Namor launches another attack that puts the civilians in mortal danger. For most people, saving lives and killing Nazis is a tough choice. But being the leader she’s become, Dazzler chooses to help these petrified civilians, even if they were likely brainwashed by Nazi propaganda for most of their lives. However, it doesn’t take long for them to have yet another reason to want to maim Nazi Xavier. Not surprisingly, he was pro-slavery and had a cell full of African slaves. It may have been more accurate to use Jews or gays, but I guess in this universe Nazis and the KKK have rubbed elbows (and other body parts) to favor a more racist approach. For any number of reasons, black Cyclops had a problem with this and now the race is on to see who channel their inner Captain America the fastest.

Unfortunately, Nazi hunting season is delayed by that pesky Japanese Namor who is still trying to sink the island and drown their asses. He could care less that he’s drowning innocent people as long as he kills himself a Nazi. Given what Nazi Xavier did to Atlantis, this is understandable even if it is a dick move. But Dazzler and her team aren’t in an understanding mood. So as the island is starting to crumble, they converge on Namor. Hercules adds the muscle that probably gives Wolverine a raging boner while Dazzler and Black Cyclops supply the firepower, which helps gives the readers a boner. So even if you’re not into the gay thing or voted for Rick Santorum, your dick and/or clit has no reason to not be happy.

Because of the threat posed by Namor, Dazzler and her team are essentially fighting a two-front battle. This helps add an additional element of complexity to the action, which could have easily been your typical heroes vs. Nazis gimmick. But by forcing Dazzler’s team to fight both foes instead of just one, it adds to the overall epicness of the story. It’s one thing to just fight a superpowered Nazi. It’s quite another to fight him while he’s fighting a pissed off Namor. It essentially rescinds anyone’s right to ever make a blond joke about Dazzler ever again.

But by beating Namor, they’ve effectively committed the ultimate sin in the eyes of America, short of marrying Michael Moore and becoming a spy for Iran. They helped a Nazi. While beating Namor did help keep the island from falling apart, it allowed Nazi Xavier to move in for the kill. He’s not just content with Dazzler’s team beating Namor up. He wants to kill his Japanese ass. He begins to do just that with the help of his telepathy once he’s down. Then Dazzler once again gives the finger to blond stereotypes by using her powers to guard her mind, a power which she hadn’t demonstrated before, and killing Nazi Xavier by stabbing him right in the back. I imagine there are few ways more satisfying to kill a Nazi without choking them with Hitler’s colon.

While helping him may have been necessary for their survival, the mission was still to kill another evil Xavier and Dazzler once again proved to be the antithesis of Paris Hilton by getting the job done. Hell, even Nazi Xavier is impressed, saying she would have been a great asset to an Aryan breeding program. I guess coming from a Nazi, that’s the highest compliment a woman can receive.

While Xavier is dead, Namor is still pretty roughed up. And he clearly hasn’t forgotten that it was Dazzler’s team that roughed him up. But Dazzler takes a careful and diplomatic approach in dealing with the guy who tried to sink the island. She reminds him that it was Nazi Xavier that blew up his country and it was Nazi Xavier that he wanted to kill. While he has a knack for holding a grudge (sinking entire islands definitely qualifies as an overreaction), he opts to take a rain check this time. She even offers to celebrate and/or mourn with them. He declines, indicating that this Japanese Namor may not have the same fetish for blonds that we’re used to. He leaves Dazzler’s team and the survivors. It would have been nice if he at least faked an apology to these people for nearly getting them killed, but this is Namor. Even in alternate universes, he’s not going to humble himself unless it involves a woman he wants to bone.

Later on, the adrenaline wears off and the team finally has a chance to settle with the survivors. Xavier-in-a-Jar tells the team that their mission is finally complete. They were tasked with traversing the multi-verse and killing 10 evil Xaviers and they succeeded. If it sounds anti-climatic, it is. If you think that’s really the end of it, then you must be one of those fans who sends money to Nigerian princes in hopes of recouping a lost lotto prize so this must be a sad moment for you.

Even if it isn’t, Dazzler takes some time to reflect on how far she’s come. When this series started, she was just another pretty blond who occasionally showed up in the X-books to give Emma Frost a breather. Greg Pak has turned her into a kick-ass leader and the thought of just going back to her world and back to being some Lady Gaga wannabe doesn’t sit right. This leads her to having a nice moment with black Cyclops and by nice moment I mean they decide to swap a little spit. It’s an image that would make the KKK or Tony Perkins recoil with disgust, a pretty blond kissing a black man who isn’t a star athlete or rapper. And while I’m all for hot blonds bringing the races closer together, this moment felt a little random and a bit hallow. Granted, Dazzler did admire black Cyclops in the previous issue. But the kiss still feels a bit rushed. There’s no sense of high drama or anything. It could have been much more powerful for the both of them, but it ends up falling a little flat. But still, it’s Dazzler getting a little action and yet more proof that the power of Cyclops’s penis span’s universes.

While the Cyclops/Dazzler kiss was rushed, things get even more contrived at the end. Remember that anti-climatic moment where Xavier-in-a-Jar just says they’ve succeeded and can go home? Well, there’s a reason you shouldn’t have been too shocked, namely because it was total bullshit. For some reason it takes Sage’s supercomputer mind way too fucking long to figure out they’ve killed only 9 evil Xaviers. That leaves one more. Then in a very sudden and very random twist, Xavier-in-a-Jar reveals that Evil Wizard Xavier isn’t dead and Nazi Xavier comes back to live to make a super triple-powered evil Xavier. Even if you read that previous sentence over completely, it’ll still make no sense. Greg Pak has shown a tendency to throw in major twists during his Xtreme X-men run. Hell, this is the guy who made an evil My Little Pony Charles Xavier. Yet he’s usually succeeded in having those twists not feel too forced. This is one that is just thrown out there as if it were a blindfolded baseball pitcher. While it does hint at a very eventful finale for this series, it just doesn’t have the impact of previous twists.

Going back to my point about this series regularly abusing certain laws, I threw common sense in the mix for a reason. Lately, I’ve been trying to place a greater emphasis on comics making at least half a fuck worth of sense. It’s that utter lack of coherence that both ruins stories like Avengers vs. X-men and earns you a DUI if you try driving home from a bar at three in the morning. Greg Pak has had to work harder than most writers to ensure his stories make some level of sense. How else can you get around My Little Pony version of Charles Xavier? For the most part, he has succeeded, but the ending of this issue leaves plenty to be desired.

Now I’m not going to say it was overly shocking to find out that their mission wasn’t over. I knew as soon as Dazzler’s team started relaxing and hooking up for a little post-victory sex, shit was about to go very badly. But aside from Sage's supercomputer of a brain taking so long to surmise that they had only killed 9 Charles Xaviers, the sudden emergence of two more evil Charles Xaviers crosses that incredibly blurred line this series has crafted in the logic department. Maybe I’m missing something. Maybe I need to read this comic sober a few times. But the ending with Xavier-in-a-Jar just felt too random and even in comics where crazy shit is the only law of the land, that’s just a bit too crazy.

As crazy as it was, it didn’t detract from the well-organized battle between Nazi Xavier and Namor. Pak utilized a solid balance of action and conflict where Dazzler’s team struggled to figure out who they would help. He didn’t have them pick a side so-to-speak, but he didn’t have them twiddling their thumbs like dipshits either. Dazzler once again showed that she’s become a competent leader and led her team in a way that resulted in a successful mission, at least temporarily. They killed the evil Charles Xavier and saved a lot of innocent people in the process. That aspect of this comic was well-done.

Pak even did a good job playing up some of the dramatic elements. He’s taken Dazzler through a lot of character development since this story began. I’m glad that he had her actually step back and reflect on that. It certainly sets the stage for Dazzler to take on a very different role once she returns to 616 (assuming the writers don’t just forget about her like they did with Tessa). But throwing in that kiss with black Cyclops was a bit underdone. Granted, she did check him out in the previous issue. It just felt as though not enough was done to build towards the kiss. You don’t need to build that shit up when you’re doing a porno and since nobody showed their tits in this issue, I think that build-up was necessary.

Overall, this issue was still solid in that it moved the story forward and set the stage for the home stretch for this series. Dazzler’s mission is almost over and even if it didn’t make a lot of sense, Greg Pak made it clear that killing the last Charles Xavier is going to be her greatest challenge yet. In addition, any time a Nazi loses in a story, it’s a great “America! Fuck Yeah!” moment in a week where Uncanny Avengers already gave us our fair share. It was an issue that still left much to be desired and with Xtreme X-men crossing over in to the upcoming X-Terminator event, it has plenty of room to make up for it. So I give Xtreme X-men #11 a 3 out of 5. Another Nazi has fallen, but now we’re back to evil wizards and magic. Which would you rather face? At least with a Nazi, you can shoot them and they won’t turn the bullets into a giant dildo. Nuff said!

Xtreme X-men #10 - Axis of Awesome

A few years ago, some asshole judge thought I had anger management issues because beating up the brain-dead hipster who gave me a decafe mocha late instead of a double shot espresso at Starbucks was a symptom of “serious issues.” His words, not mine. I can safely say that the experience was akin to being strapped to a chair and being forced to listen to Barney the Dinosaur sodomize an elf for three weeks. The problem wasn’t the information itself. I honestly didn’t know visualizing Santa Claus could help calm someone down. It was the burned out hippie running the class who made me want to shove my balls into a broiler. He was this annoying, touchy feely type guy who wanted every man in the room to surrender their testicles, put on a dress, and slow dance to classical music for the rest of the day. Needless to say, I punched the guy in the face the last day of the class and my anger issues were solved.

This kind of touchy feely leadership, if done with the same incompetence as the anger management teacher that now has a black eye, is almost infuriating enough to make someone want to vote for Rick Santorum. On the flip side, those uptight drill-sergeant leaders that grow up to be drill instructors or gym teachers are just as infuriating, except you probably won’t get away with punching them in the face. These are the extremes of leadership and for the most part, leaders not named after a dictator or a cult leader are somewhere in between. For a new leader like Dazzler in the pages of Xtreme X-men, it’s a matter of determining where in that spectrum she wants to be and how willing she is to risk getting punched in the face.

Since Greg Pak revitalized Xtreme X-men from the ashes of Chris Claremont’s genius, he’s made this inter-dimensional mission to hunt down evil Charles Xaviers a Dazzler-centric story. Because why the hell shouldn’t a story revolve around a hot blond who can sing, kick ass, and put on her own light show without having to smear glitter on her tits? As the mission has unfolded, she has been thrust into a leadership position and must lead a ragtag collection of displaced alternate X-men against deranged Charles Xaviers that range from evil wizards to cute little ponies. It sounds pretty fucked up and it is. But Pak has found a way to make it awesome and he’s also found a way to make Dazzler more compelling than most generic blonds can ever hope to be without marrying Hugh Hefner.

In the previous issue, Dazzler successfully wrestled away a leadership role from an alternate version of her that was far more qualified on the basis of her zombie-killing skills. She even found time to knock off another evil Xavier. Now in Xtreme X-men #10, she’s free to exercise her new leadership skills. So what does she do first? Perhaps drill the hell out of her team, make them do push-ups, and threaten to unscrew their heads and shit down their neck? Nope! She orders that they all take a break from killing evil Xaviers and go swimming. Hell, if this is how my anger management classes were run, I might have actually come to a few meetings sober.

But not everybody chooses to partake in Dazzler's fun-loving leadership. Black Cyclops apparently wasn't forced into bullshit anger management classes in his universe so he basically stays back until Kid Nightcrawler teleports his clothes off and prompts him to take a dip. This sounds a lot less gay than you think because as soon as he's in his skivvies, Dazzler's mouth goes dry and all the moisture goes to her other mouth (by that I mean her vagina). I won't make a once you go black, you never go back joke. But it's the kind of scene that would piss off a member of the KKK so for that I find it extra enjoyable.

But the appeal isn't just seeing a pretty blond get moist for a big, strong black man not named Denzel Washington. In this suggestive scene that involves frolicking around in underwear, we actually get some long overdue details about who this Black Cyclops is. He showed up pretty abruptly with zombie killer Dazzler in the previous issue and his backstory really wasn't explored. But now that he's in his underwear and has a chance to bone a hot blond, he explains to Dazzler that he comes from a world where mutants were enlisted to help win a Civil War from a History Channel version of Nick Fury and Charles Xavier. He and another team of mutant powered soldiers were so effective at winning the war that both racists and his own allies started to fear him. He claims he killed 6,000 men. I'm sure that sounds like a lot, but I'm sure Wolverine would probably laugh at that figure. He kills that many people when his favorite hockey team loses.

And it isn't just Black Cyclops that gets some time to build his story. Hercules, who also showed up with Zombie Killer Dazzler, takes some time to discuss where he comes from as well. His story isn't exactly as big a mystery. We already know he comes from the same world as Wolverine and that he's playing hide the flesh rocket in the peanut butter cavern with him. We also know that he comes from a world where people like Rick Santorum are actually taken seriously because two men loving each other just doesn't fly. In his world, he and Wolverine were the best warriors, but they had to work under a Don't Ask Don't Tell policy. It was only after they killed the most powerful creature in their world, which appeared to be a T-Rex on crystal meth, that they revealed their love. Shit didn't exactly go over well. Hercules's father, Zeus, ended up throwing their bleached asses into Tartarus. I guess in his world Zeus wants his sons to favor vaginas or he's a registered republican from Texas.

Now I like that Greg Pak is taking some time to flesh out these characters. They all manage to really open up here, letting each other and the readers know they come from worlds that are pretty fucked up in their own unique way but still not as fucked up as a world where Cyclops is thrown in jail for making the world a global utopia. However, a lot of these details feel like details that it should have been revealed a few issues ago. It's nice that they can open up to one another while swimming in their underwear. I guess that may be part of Dazzler's team-building exercise, but it still seems out of place to the point of it being filler and filler belongs in a burger. Not a comic.

Filler aside, there's one aspect to Xtreme X-men that still sets it apart from every other X-book. It's one of those books where you can see twists on certain characters that aren't just unique, but they piss off the Fox News crowd. That's what happens when you make Cyclops black and Wolverine gay. But Pak isn't done pissing off the assholes who voted for Mitt Romney. He's fucked up the ethnicity and race of another beloved Marvel character. He made Namor Japanese! Okay, so maybe he's not beloved as much as he is desired by hot blondes, but it's yet another twist in a book that has had many good ones.

A Japanese Namor is just what Dazzler's team faces when their little bonding swim is interrupted by Sage, who informs them that they've discovered that this world has a nasty little alternate history that involves London being flooded. Before they could figure out how the fuck this could have happened, they're attacked by a Japanese Namor who has a hate-boner for Xavier. It marks the first solid bout of action in the comic and when Namor is involved, you can expect it to be destructive, egoistical, and panty soaking. So while he may be Japanese, he's still the same Namor. He may just care less for blondes and more for cute girls in revealing school-girl uniforms.

So if Namor is Japanese in this universe, what about Xavier himself? What could he be? What he possibly be in a series that has already had him appear as a freakin' pony? How about a fucking Nazi? If that revelation shocks you an any way, then clearly you haven't been reading this series or you've been reading it stoned. Because considering all the crazy, twisted version of an evil Charles Xavier we've seen, a Nazi Xavier actually isn't all that ground breaking.

He makes his big Naziriffic entrance after Dazzler's team battle Namor and manage to convince him that the Xavier-in-a-Jar that has been guiding them isn't the on he wants to rip apart. He shows up looking like every boss battle in every Wolfenstein game ever. Naturally, Dazzler's team reacts in the same way anyone would react if they saw a real Nazi. They try to murder his Hitler-loving ass. It becomes another glorious spectacle of a battle where Nazi Xavier flexes his Aryan superiority in ways that should make any hippie vomit. It's a fun scene, but feels a little condensed after the filler from the earlier parts of the issue.

But just like we saw with the creepy My Little Pony Xavier, this Nazi Xavier may not be what he seems. He uses his telepathy to inform Dazzler's team that he's not the same sinister Nazi that eats babies for breakfast and the innocence of little children for lunch. He claims Nazi's in this world aren't all that bad and he's trying to save the last remaining innocent survivors of a world that was drowned, presumably by Namor. It puts Dazzler's team in an awkward position because now they have to choose between helping a Nazi and helping Namor when he's got a rage boner. If ever there was a "we're fucked" situation, this was it. However, Dazzler is the leader now. She just showed she can be the nice, touchy feely leader by letting her teammates go for a swim. Now she has to show that she's also the kind of leader that can make a tough decision and make sure it's the right one. So what's it going to be Dazzler? A Nazi or a Namor? Even her tits can't help her escape this one and we won't find out what she decides until the next issue sadly.

There are only so many stories you can tell about killing Nazis before shit starts to get old. The video game industry has yet to reach this point and comics can’t seem to get enough of it either. However, as clichéd as it may be, it can still be a lot of fun and this issue proves it. The sheer diversity of Greg Pak’s universe-hopping Xtreme X-men makes it possible to create yet another world where a Japanese Namor and a Nazi Charles Xavier don’t feel like something a writer came up with while playing Call of Duty stoned one too many times. Like the evil pony of Charles Xavier, Pak is able to give this theme a unique charm that is just plain fun.

The only problem with that special charm is that it is somewhat buried in this issue. While it was nice to see Dazzler and her team get a little downtime, it had too much of a filler-like taste to it. This quiet moment was essentially used to help catch the readers up with some of the characters that hadn’t really been explored yet, namely Hercules and black Cyclops. I’m all for filling in the blanks. I’ve said numerous times before in a perfectly sober mindset on this blog that those kinds of details are what separate good comics from awesome comics. But another thing those awesome comics do is find a way to fit these details into the story. In this instance it just seemed squeezed into the story and really didn’t affect the plot with Nazi Xavier or Japanese Namor.

Because of this, Xtreme X-men #10 feels like two halves of a different book. One half is exposition and the other is the actual story. Both by themselves are decent, but putting them in the same book makes it feel disorganized. Plus, it’s a lot harder to read while stoned and I do think that’s an important issue to consider. And while the concept of a Nazi Xavier and Japanese Namor fits nicely with the theme of this series, it still comes off as more flat when compared to stories about pony Xavier’s and evil wizard Xavier’s.

But I’m still perfectly comfortable saying this book is pretty awesome. Greg Pak continues to make Xtreme X-men an entertaining interlude from the regular X-books. Where else will you find shit like Nazi Xavier’s, black Cyclopses, and Wolverine swapping spit with someone who isn’t a redhead with a nice rack? The artwork is consistently solid. The dialog is smooth and conversational. And the touch of drama adds a few extra sprinkles on the top. For that, I give Xtreme X-men #10 a non-racist, anti-Nazi 3.5 out of 5. There may never come a day where stories about killing Nazis gets old. There may never come a day where I don’t meet an anger management teacher I don’t want to punch in the face. But even if that day doesn’t come, we can still find ways to enjoy it every chance we get. Nuff said!