X-23 #8 - Clash of Awesome

It's finally here! No, the Iphone 5 hasn't been announced and Marvel hasn't agreed to do day-and-date digital release to their catalog yet. And no, this isn't a late April Fools Day joke. The event that is being billed as damaged teenage girl versus sexually confused douche-bag is here! That's right, X-23 and Daken are finally set to claw the everloving shit out of each other and not in the way that gives Daken a boner for once.

This has been a match-up that's been more hyped than a Patriots/Colts game. Marjorie Liu writes X-23 and Daniel Way writes Daken. Both have been building towards an eventual grudge match between the two messed up offspring of Wolverine. One has boobs. One of them loves the occasional dip into Hershey river. Now I haven't followed Daken all that closely. I never grew very fond of him as I tend not to grow fond of anyone who is such a colossal douche-bag that they would fuck their own shadow if it had a hole. But he is a part of Wolverine's story and so I have tried to keep up. Even as X-23 ventured off into her own series under Marjorie Liu, it's been a given that these two adamantium loving Wolverine mini-mes would clash. Well Marvel seems to understand that this is the kind of bloody grudge-match that gets fans more giddy than a baby in a topless bar. And it begins with X-23 #8.

I've been a big fan of this series from the beginning. Marjorie Liu has brought new life to X-23 and taken her places that have been great for her character, even if some of those places involve Sinister with boobs. During the lead-up to this story, X-23 found out from the boobilicious Sinister that a man named Malcom Concord was trying to kick start that beat up old monster truck known as Weapon X. With help from Gambit that doesn't involve wearing shoe-string thong panties for once, she's tracked him to Madripoor. This is an environment so hostile that shotgun shells are used as currency and beating the shit out of a rival gang is a required part of your tax form. And wouldn't you know it? Daken has set up shop there. A place like this is like a mix of Disneyland and the Playboy Mansion. Since the previous issue dealt with X-23 getting to Madripoor, this issue begins with her going on the hunt.

With Gambit struggling to keep up, she starts stalking Daken like a deranged Star Trek fan living inside William Shatner's dumpster. Along the way she fights off some guy who wants to use her in a gang-bang. For all she knows, it's a gang-bang that Daken just got finished warming up in. She gets pretty close without Daken noticing. That or he's just too much of a douche to feel threatened. Then right behind her one of Madripoor's many random crimes unfolds. Some faceless guy gets abducted. Why this would surprise X-23 is strange, but she deems it important enough to halt her hunt and help out. I suppose there needs to be some balance in Madripoor in the time between cock fights and donkey shows.

It turns out this isn't just random heroics. Once she gives them the adamantium special, she tells them that they reek of a certain scent and it isn't from spending the night with Amy Winehouse. She finds out they're working for Malcom Concord. It seems Concord is giving Daken a run for his money in the douche-bag department because he's using Madripoor's "leave law and order at the door with your dignity" policy to his advantage. He's been kidnapping children and not in the same way the Disney channel does it. As much as she wants to give Daken a few new holes that he can't use to pleasure himself, she hasn't forgotten Concord. So Gambit finally contributes by saying he knows someone he can help. It's very reasonable to assume that it's someone he's boned.

Sure enough, the help comes in the form of a beautiful woman who embraces him the same way Twilight fans embrace locks of Robert Pattinson's pubic hair. She's Tyger Tyger, a hot chick who dresses like Psylocke and kicks almost as much ass. As it turns out, she has a lot of influence in Madripoor. A beautiful woman that can make men think with the wrong head goes a long ways in a place where needless brutality is an Olympic sport. She's in a perfect position to help X-23 find Daken, who she believes knows where Malcom Concord is. It's a stroke of Madripoor luck and it doesn't even require a bribe.

So the next day, they put on a bit of a show. Tyger asked X-23 how her acting skills are so when they actually visit Tyger in her office where she plays the part of the Madripoor godmother whose ring you have to kiss to set up a brothel there's a sense of mystery. They act as though they didn't meet the previous night. They basically enter as if they're just fishing for information. They ask the same question about the abductions, Daken, and Malcom Concord. Tyger writes them off as if they're lobbyist for the UN asking to cut back on the opium exports without having the decency to offer a bribe. It gets heated and Tyger makes a nice dick joke about X-23 being Wolverine's clone. Because what comic can't be made more awesome with a dick joke? Since there's no bribe coming her way, she kicks them out of her office and X-23 leaves her usual threat.

If it's an acting job it may win a Golden Globe, but not an Oscar. Yet it's enough to convince Daken, whose brain rarely gets the blood it requires since he's so busy screwing other people over both literally and figuratively. As soon as Gambit and X-23 leave, Daken shows up. He had been hiding in a secret compartment the whole time and after hearing X-23's little rant, he's acutally intrigued enough to stop enriching brothel owners.

Now this scene is a bit complicated because remember, Tyger asked X-23 about her acting skills earlier. There's the sense that the whole meeting in Tyger's office was just a show. Daken doesn't know that, but the reader knows that. It's a scene that can get confusing real easily, but if you don't read the damn comic backwards it is easy to follow. It's a rare show of dramatic irony, something that only those who didn't skip English class in 12th grade can appreciate. In a comic book, that's pretty damn awesome.

X-23 and Gambit return to the lawless streets of Madripoor, waiting for their little ruse to bear fruit. X-23 takes a moment to enjoy the exotic cuisine, admitting in the process that her sense of taste was fucked up by Weapon X and fast food while living with the X-men. It doesn't take long for Daken to finally show his face in all his douche-baggy glory. They joke a little about X-23 being a clone and whether or not that technically makes her Daken's mother. As disturbing a concept that may be, once X-23 flashes her claws shit gets real.

It finally begins! The battle against X-23 and Daken is on! It's conflicted teenage clone vs. egotistical metrosexual douche! You couldn't get a more fitting fight if you pitted Mike Tyson against Hulk Hogan.

Daken shows early on that he fights dirty and not in a way I can make a gay joke about. He's not above using special weapons to give him an edge. His glowing claw thingy is akin to a brass knuckle laced with barb wire. As soon as the Madripoor rent-a-cops show up, X-23 takes the fight out of the streets so they can maim each other without being disturbed. X-23 is basically proving that she's the clone of Wolverine and using more than just her claws. It's a powerful moment when she pins him to the ground and tells him to look her in the eye. Usually this is the part where Daken would get a boner, but this isn't that kind of fight. He throws her right off him and start ripping into each other like a sadomasochist in a knife store. It leads to a two page spread of pure awesome. We knew this fight was coming and this comic doesn't try to finish it in a single page. You may find yourself staring at the spread with such awe that your eyes fall out. No worries. That's nothing a little crazy glue and duct tape can't fix!

It gets bloody and heated. It's the kind of violence you would expect in any comic that involves Wolverine or his offspring. They fight their way up a flight of stairs and to a roof. They only catch their breath for a small panel and then they go at it again. X-23 tries to throw him off a building, but Daken makes sure she comes along for the ride. It makes for another great spread that shows just how evenly matched these two characters are. One is guided by teenage angst. The other is guided by egotistical douchiness. It's a classic example of an unstoppable force meeting an immovable object!

This is the kind if fight you don't want to see end. Sadly, this comic runs out of ink just after X-23 and Daken get a mouthful of pavement. A fall that would usually leave two people more crippled than Russian cage fighters is nothing more than a scratch to these two. They rise up and get ready to go at it again. That's where the comic cuts out. The fight is set to continue in Daken #8. It's simply too big to finish in one comic. Normally I hate waiting almost as much as I hate waking up hung over in someone else's back yard with magic marker all over my face and a dog licking my balls. However, for a battle this intense I'm more than willing to wait! This isn't something that can or should be resolved in one comic. More is needed to truly show the caliber of awesome that such a clash is capable of.

Now with all the anticipation of the Daken/X-23 fight being built up, it would have been easy for this comic to stumble. It could have turned out bland, filled with nothing but mindless slashing and no real progression. It could have turned out as a boring setup issue, having little action and only setting readers up for a cliff-hanger at the end with no real action to get excited about. But it didn't happen. The first issue of the Daken/X-23 clash struck a perfect balance between setting up the fight and carrying it out. Marjorie Liu set the stage and then blew it up in a way that floods the brain with every kind of awesome chemicals. If books like this came in pill form, the DEA would have raided Marvel's office by now and declared it a drug bust.

There are very few ways in which this book is flawed. Some may be a bit confused by the scenes with Tyger Tyger. The whole notion of X-23 and Gambit acting like they never met Tyger before she leads them to Daken may fly over the heads of some readers. It's not so convoluted that you have to re-read it multiple times. Just reading the section twice should clarify what's going on. The case can be made that some scenes act as filler, but if you were to remove those scenes the book would be a bit less coherent. At times it feels as though more pages could have been dedicated to the main fight, but even if that's true there is still a great balance within the pages and it is still plenty awesome.

I've been eagerly awaiting this comic so much that I almost went bald tearing my hair out with impatience. I'm glad it finally arrived and delivered everything I hoped it would. It's a great feeling when a book lives up to and exceed your expectations. Marjorie Liu has made that a habit with her run on X-23. That's why I give X-23 #8 a perfect 5 out of 5. You couldn't have started a major event like this any better. The fight between X-23 and Daken deserves to be epic. It's not quite on the scale of Wolverine and Sabretooth just yet, but it could very well get there! Even if it doesn't, this first issue has put the clash between X-23 and Daken on the same epic scale. That alone is a hell of an accomplishment! Nuff said.

X-23 #7 - Consoling Awesome

Well here we go. My first full review of a Marvel comic after Nick Lowe shot my faith in Marvel with a 12-gauge shotgun at point blank range. My worldview now is more jaded than a paranoid schizophrenic off his meds and high on meth. So expect this review to be a lot more cynical, critical, and disjointed. I have to be a little drunk to write this shit now because it takes a while for me to get over red herrings, fraud, and rip-off characters. Luckily, X-23 #7 came out this week. This has been one of the most consistent and well-written series to come out of Second Coming. I've enjoyed every issue so far and Marjorie Liu has ingratiated herself to me more than a struggling actress to a famous director's nut-sack. However, in my current state my usual cheers are going to be tapered. My love of X-23 and Marvel will be balanced by a burning hatred of recent news concerning the X-books. That and news concerning the Ultimate series has made me more tense than Lindsey Lohan's asshole during a cavity search.

However, I'll try to be objective when judging this book. X-23 has been a solid series, but it's still a product of the fraud that was Second Coming. So it reeks of the taint left by Hope Summers and the red herrings that have made her Germany's Nazi holocaust to Marvel's wall of shame. So while reading this issue, I did feel a twinge of disgust. I had to put a clothes-pin over my nose while reading it in order to get through it. The stench isn't as bad as other X-books, but it's still there and it's impossible to completely forget without a full frontal lobotmy.

X-23 #7 comes on the heels of the last arc that had Gambit trying to mentor X-23. He didn't do a very good job in the sense that he couldn't stop her from getting caught up in a plot involving Miss Sinister, body swaps, and slave clone children. It's part of the whole teenage girl aspect to X-23's character in that she's in that phase of her life where her frontal lobe hasn't fully connected with the impulsive section of her brain. It's not the same kind of impulsiveness that drives Wolverine. It's the kind of arrogant thick-headedness that you find in any teenager. Reading the last arc reminded me to go back in time and punch my teenage self in the gut a few times. It also set the stage for the next arc.

The new arc has X-23 following the trail of Malcom Concord, the man Miss Sinister revealed to be reforming Weapon X. Like a clueless dog going to the vet, she sets her sights on recreating the first two seasons of Dexter on this man's ass. To get there she has to go to Madripoor, a fictional land in the Marvel universe that makes Las Vegas look like a Mormon polygamy compound. I'm pretty sure that in a place like Madripoor, bestiality is not only legal but it allows civil unions between gay men and crocodiles. This issue starts off with a brief flash forward, which is a bit disorienting and a tad boring. Or that could just be my jaded side talking. In the actual present X-23 is in Singapore with Gambit, who says he can get them to Madripoor through a friend. I can only assume this is a guy who just managed to keep his daughter from sleeping with Gambit and sparing her no fewer than four STDs.

They meet up with Gambit's friend and set sale in the South Pacific, home to sharks, pirates, typhoons the size of Texas. X-23 is probably right at home. They meet up with the guy, Amar. This also happens to be the name of the guy I pay to shave my ass hairs and wipe with old copies of Ultimate comics so I'm wondering if this is where Marvel got the name. He asks Gambit about X-23. He calls her a friend. Amar doesn't believe it because like Tommy Lee in a strip club, Gambit fucks anything that has a pulse and a few things that don't. For once he says it's not like that, but I have a hard time believing he's not looking at Laura's ass in those skin tight pants she wears. He says she needs to heal and so does he. If he can keep it in his pants just this once I may just take him seriously.

Amar is still skeptical that X-23 can handle herself in an area where pirates consider skinning teenage girls an Olympic sport. She does a quick demonstration of her skills with Gambit's bow staff to show that she's tougher than your average pirate. It's a nice reminder from Marjorie Liu that X-23 may be a teenage girl, but she has the benefit of a lifetime of Weapon X training. She can basically kill a man with her pinkie toe while performing open heart surgery with her eyes closed. She's more than equipped.

So Gambit and X-23 venture onto an island in the dead of night that's bound to be swarming with gambling, violence, and sodomy. In other words they're basically walking into an episode of Oz. They arrive just in time to see a man named Indi (also happens to be the guy who shaves my balls and uses issues of Generation Hope to wipe them off) facing a pirate form of justice. Apparently he committed a sin akin to being in a gay orgy with Satan. He went to the police. Now he's going to pay the price while Gambit and X-23 have a front row seat.

Did I mention that Indi is also an informant? And in order to get to Madripoor, Gambit and X-23 have to save his sorry ass? If any part of that surprised you, I recommend you put down the Toby Keith music and focus on getting your GED again. The punishment for a traitor is pretty simple. They're going to feed him to the sharks and masturbate to the bloodshed that ensues. They try to justify it by saying he was a friend who abused their trust. It's really just a weak excuse to be a douche-bag. And just like the Sinister affair, X-23 doesn't listen to Gambit. She jumps right into the conflict and starts slashing. Again, it's part Wolverine and part being a teenage girl who doesn't look both ways before crossing the street in the middle of rush hour. It still makes for a kick-ass fighting scene that is wonderfully drawn.

All the swash-buckling and sodomy won't save the pirates now. X-23 doesn't waste time with the greenhorns either. She goes right for the lead guy who was looking to turn Indi into chum. She takes him out pretty easily, shoving him right into the shark tank and feeding him to the shark herself. It's a less than dramatic scene, but it still looks awesome. The guy didn't really have much time to make the reader feel for him so him being devoured really doesn't have much of an impact. It's just a nice way to show X-23 being a badass and look hot doing it. For this, I can't fault Marjorie Liu. It's part of why a book like this sells in the first place.

It gets messy topside because Gambit, for all his charm, isn't equipped to take down an entire hoard of ruthless pirates. So as soon as X-23 emerges with the blood of their leader still on her hands, he gets a touch of humility in the form of a blow to the head. It's cheaper than a session with a therapist if you don't mind the potential brain damage. Seeing as how X-23 sort of left Gambit hanging, it was bound to happen. This is X-23's book so you expect her to play the hero just as you expect Pamela Anderson to play the dumb blond in every role she's ever had.

This leads X-23 to her second act of badassery, this time with animal abuse. If you're a card-carrying member of PETA, prepare to send Marvel angry letters because X-23 doesn't just dive in and rescue Gambit. She fights off a shark that tries to eat her. Then she takes Gambit, digs her claws into the belly of said shark, and rides it to the surface. You could be a Green Beret who personally killed forty terrorists with a paper clip and butter knife. You'll never be that badass. It makes for a nice scene, even if it is a bit drawn out. It's easy to forget that the sharks aren't the bad guys here. It's the pirates up top and that seems to be lost on X-23 and the story for that matter.

When they emerge they finally remember why they did this job. They were supposed to save Indi. Well like a high school slut who slept through sex ed, they're late. Indi is dead. He bled out from his earlier wounds and their mission failed. This marks the second time that X-23's impulsive nature cost them. The sad thing is she's still as mature as half the teenage girls I went to high school with. The pirates still try to attack, but X-23 cuts one of them down and the attack stops. Then they leave.

Wait what? That's it? These ruthless pirates who just watched this teenage girl feed their leader to a shark let these two go? What the fuck kind pirates are these guys? Did they graduate from the pirate equivalent of Arizona State? Pirate or not, if thugs have any kind of pride they would at least try to rough these intruders up. They don't even call them assholes! Either these are the weakest clan of pirates in the entire history of sailing or the issue just ran out of ink. I don't know much about pirates, but I'm pretty sure it wouldn't have been that easy to walk away. The IRS is more ruthless than that and they have the common courtesy to harass you if you fuck with them.

I don't want to make too big a deal of that, but those are details that Marjorie Liu is usually pretty good at resolving. There is some effort to explain it seems. While riding back in a speedboat to tell Remy's friend that they let their informant get butchered, Gambit asks X-23 about what she did. She killed the lead pirate. Her justification was that this guy was going to kill Indi's family. Even if they couldn't save Indi, they could save them. It shows some signs that she's thinking before she slashes, something even Wolverine doesn't do on a regular basis. She saw something that was wrong and she tried to right it. This time she didn't kill everybody in her way. She considered those other pirates to be wounded dogs. It would have been unfair to kill them. Right, because pirates are breeding grounds for pussies. I still don't buy it. But at least there's some effort at clarity.

It ends the issue on a pretty weak note. All Laura and Remy end up doing is drifting in the boat. Just a guy and a teenage girl on a boat sounds wrong on many levels. That's how a lot of horror movies and pornos begin. Seems like they forgot why they were doing this. They're trying to get to Madripoor. Did they forget that just like they did Idie? Again, this is one of those little things that Marjoire Liu usually handles well.

X-23 #7 is still a good issue. Don't get me wrong. This is definitely a comic worth buying if you're an X-fan. It's set apart from the bullshit being played out in Uncanny and Generation Jean rip-off. It's a more personal journey and like the previous issue, it showed X-23 growing. In this issue she demonstrated that she can be more than just a blunt instrument like Wolverine. She can actually focus during a battle, make a sound moral judgment, and even show mercy when she needs to. She's a killer, but she has a heart. That's a hallmark of any hero.

However, I'm still a jaded fan who can't help but be extra critical. Some parts of the battle scene were drawn out while others were shortened. Pretty much all of the fight scenes involved X-23 fighting underwater or rescuing Gambit. There wasn't much action with the pirates themselves. Then there's the whole notion of these pirates letting them go after their leader is killed and just drifting on a boat in the middle of the night. It's one too many WTF moments for an X-23 comic by Marjorie Liu. It sticks me more than usual because I'm still pissed at Nick Lowe spilling the beans about Jean rip-off. Marvel threw red herrings and deception at it's readers and I personally don't take kindly to that shit. So I'm going to be a bit of an ass when I critique a Marvel product. Just as people tend to be an ass when they cross paths with someone who screwed them over.

X-23 #7 is a good book, but not a great book this time. This is probably the weakest issue of X-23 under Marjorie Liu to date. That's why I give it a jaded score of 3 out of 5. I'm still on board with this series. The next major arc involves X-23 finally clashing with Daken, the Wolverine inspired character who unlike X-23 is a complete douche-bag. It's a fight that I hope X-23 wins. If Marjorie Liu handles this next arc well, all will be forgiven. Nuff said!