Generation Hope #17 - A Generation of Awesome

Reviewing comics can a real test of your sanity and sobriety. Sometimes the very premise of a comic requires that you be a little bit high to effectively review it. For most inherently awesome comics, the need for getting wasted is minimal (even if the want is more than sufficient). For comics like Generation Hope, it can be hit or miss. Sometimes you have to have a bag of weed on hand just to make sure you're in the right state of mind for a thorough assessment. I've reviewed pretty much every issue of Generation Hope since it came out. It seems so long go that I was constantly referring to this series as Generation Jean Rip-Off. I still think of it that way, but I try to avoid using it in my reviews so I can make room for more boner jokes. Whatever twisted assessment I use, I've come to look upon this series as an anomaly of sorts. It's one of the most inconsistent yet important X-books in recent memory. So when it gets canceled prematurely, I'm left more conflicted than Rush Limbaugh at a feminist rally.

It was announced only recently. Generation Hope was ending with issue 17. It wasn't by choice (at least that's what Marvel claims). The sales for this book just weren't soaking enough panties and that's not terribly surprising. Books with entirely new characters rarely outshine their established counterparts. Readers just aren't going to give as much of a shit about some fish girl as they are about who Wolverine is boning. It also doesn't help when certain characters are clearly blatant ripoffs of others, Hope being Jean Grey and Kenji being Akira. I've spent nearly every issue of this series struggling to tell Hope and Jean apart. For this review, I've stayed sober enough to make that distinction. It's only proper since this will be the last issue and it will be an important milestone both for this group of mutants and for Hope before she goes nuclear.

The other notable rip-off, Kenji, has been by far the least stable new mutant since the series began. Hell, the guy went on a rampage in downtown Tokyo in the first arc. He's never been all that mentally sound, as eccentric artists tend to be. For crying out loud, the kid got a boner from a brain in a jar! So it's only fitting that Kenji is the one that closes out this series by finally losing his shit and attacking Hope. He's made his resentment very clear over the past few issues. He's among those who really don't like the influence Hope is exerting over the Lights and over mutants in general. He doesn't see her as a messiah and he spent much of last issue setting her up for a very public crucifixion, but not after using that fucked up body of his to rally others to his madness.

Now Hope is in Kenji's deranged and perverse clutches. What about the other Lights that haven't turned on her? Well in the last issue, Gabriel once again started thinking too much with his penis and got frisky with Pixie (who I guess is just thinking with various other parts of her body that don't involve her brain). Teon, never one to be bothered from his never-ending quest to eat, fight, and mate was subdued by the Cuckoos when he couldn't keep it in his pants. Generation Hope #17 starts out with Teon living in this fantasy world that the Cuckoos created for him so that he would stop trying to hump their legs (amongst other things). But while in this fantasy, the usually lovable oaf starts having some coherent thoughts. It's somewhat unusual for him, but he's done it before and it shows that he has more intellect than a horny pit bull. This is especially important because Hope has to use that special leash of hers to call for help and also like a horny pit bull when a female in heat calls, he springs into action.

We then go from every primal male's fantasy to a nightmare only made possible with exotic blends of mushrooms. Except this isn't so much a nightmare as it is a theatrical production where the director is an angry drunk. Kenji reveals he went to elaborate lengths to keep some occupied while using that Akira rip-off form of his to psychically influence others. He doesn't actually call it influence. He calls it simple nudging and with some like Emma Frost, he really didn't need much. So taking a page out of a certain 2000-year-old holy book from the Middle East, Kenji is prepared to crucify Hope. In his artistic mind, she's not the messiah. She's saving those who didn't want to be saved in the first place and her influence on people is too disturbing even for an eccentric Japanese artist. The sad truth is, he's not entirely wrong.

Kenji is fully prepared to destroy the savior who once saved his life. For him, she didn't save him. She corrupted him. And no one seems inclined to help Hope. However, there are a few holdovers. The first few pages showed that Teon in his lovable simple-mindedness is not easily influenced by Kenji's bullshit. He springs into action like any good un-nuetered pet and seeks to help the pretty girl that gives him so many boners. He quickly recruits Sebastian Shaw, who now looks less like a Black King and more like someone's prison bitch. But he doesn't remember who he is and Hope did vouch for him. So he has plenty of reason to repay her. However, the biggest ally that Teon doesn't get help from is the same ally that Kenji clearly went out of his way to bone in the last arc.

Martha Johanssen was once a brain in a jar. No really. She was. In the annuls of Marvel comics, that's hardly the most fucked up premise for a character. She's a powerful telepath that Kenji created a body for using that same Akira rip-off form of his that he's using to fuck with everybody's minds. Except Martha's mind is a bit more coherent. She and Kenji are able to chat because her body is basically his body and not in the traditional Taliban sort of way either. She senses he's up to some crazy shit and even if he did give her a body again, she isn't cool with it.

She's not the only one either. Kenji's flirtation with Sweet Lady Insanity is too much for even Laurie to take anymore. In the previous issue, she and Kenji had a heart-to-heart where they debated the control Hope had on them. It wasn't a debate she won because not long ago during X-men Regenesis, she pulled a fucking gun on Hope. She doesn't like her influence over him either, but she doesn't like Kenji trying to reenact the crucifixion in the Mel Gibson tradition either. Kenji tries to coax her into going along with this gruesome ritual, but she has enough sense to be repulsed by human sacrifice. Kenji doesn't take kindly to that and decides to throw her to the mind-controlled (pardon, subtly nudged) X-men that are just itching to give Hope one more thing in common with Jean Grey.

Laurie may be overmatched, but she ends up getting some backup. Teon was not only able to enlist Shaw's help, he was able to tear Gabriel and Pixie away from one another before they swapped too many bodily fluids. Sharing Laurie's aversion to human sacrifice, they attack Kenji. He's hardly worried though. He's already corrupted a good chunk of the X-men so he has plenty of defenses. The Lights and Shaw are just as overmatched as Laurie, but they're able to at least somewhat fuck Kenji's shit up. At the very least, they stop him from getting too much of a boner for having so many X-men under his control and their mutant messiah ready to slaughter like a deer on Ted Nugant's kitchen table.

Kenji still maintains control over Hope, which is somewhat appropriate given that she's been controlling the Lights in such an uncomfortable manner. He's able to rough her up in ways that would soak Emma Frost's panties if she weren't already satiated by Cyclops's penis. That doesn't stop her from getting her shot at Hope. Now it's not entirely clear here how much of this is Kenji's influence and how much of this is all Emma. In recent issues, Emma hasn't needed any nudging to hate Hope. She never needs any nudging when it comes to hating a redhead with a fiery personality. It's never fully explained, which is disappointing because once again it ensures that Emma will come out of this conflict untainted and uncorrupted. While that's bullshit, she at least gets the shit punched out of her by Sebastian Shaw. Now I'm not a misogynist and I won't make any Rush Limbaugh style remarks here, but given Emma and Shaw's history it's quite fitting if not timely that Shaw comes through to give her the Rick James treatment. Shaw is still a douche even if he doesn't remember how big of a douche he is, but at least there's a bit more balance in such douche-baggery.

But fighting off Emma's attempt at another mind-rape is only the fifth most pressing issue confronting Hope. Kenji is still number one and using the same creative dreamscapes he used in the first arc, he takes Hope to another dreamworld where they debate on the merits of manipulating people and training teenagers like soldiers. It shouldn't come as too great a surprise that Hope loses that argument. For Kenji, not knowing what the fuck you're doing and fucking up along the way isn't an excuse. So he's prepared to end her shit so he can be free of her influence. He's not entirely misguided with his anger. That's the most fucked up part without citing Japanese anime porn.

There's just one problem. Kenji was stupid enough to get a boner for a brain in a jar. Remember Martha? The girl who he created a creepy yet oddly alluring body in the last arc? Well she also has a problem with human sacrifice and creating mind-controlled mobs that aren't sanctioned by Rick Santorum's campaign manager. So using her telepathic talents, she attacks Kenji both in his mind and in the real world. It results in a clash that ends with a hell of a bang. By that I mean Kenji fucking explodes. It's every bit as messy as it sounds. Kenji explodes and all that Akira rip-off shit goes with him. That's right. The final issue of Generation Hope ends with one of the lights suffering a death by explosion. It may be a rough way to go, but as an artist I doubt Kenji can call it inglorious.

Now the death of a character is always a tricky thing to handle. It's almost as tricky as tying up loose ends in a series that's been prematurely canned. Seeing as how Kenji was the one that went crazy in the first arc, I think it's actually fitting that he's the one that dies in this final issue. It gives the series a sense of finality. However, that's the only finality we end up getting. After Kenji blows up, the influence he held on everyone fades. We don't see everyone looking around in confusion. We don't see Emma trying to explain to Cyclops that she knocked him out because of Kenji and not because she just wanted an excuse to fuck up Hope. And Martha is back to being a fucking brain in a jar. That fucked up yet functional body of hers is gone again. And all the Lights really do about it is sit around and listen to Hope apologize for screwing up.

This is by far the best indication that this book was canceled before it's time. All these lingering issues are glossed over. The tension between Cyclops and Emma is once again completely overlooked. Martha is right back where she started. All we're really left with is a scene where Hope tries to save a little face with the mutants she herself helped create. I get the importance of having a nice dramatic moment with Hope and her lights at the end, but it lacks closure because so little of the aftermath from Kenji's attack is addressed. It's underwhelming when it should be emotional. I was ready to get all misty eyed knowing this series would end like Michael Bay's credibility after he announced his retcon for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Sadly, it never came. That or I was just too drunk.

In the end, the remaining lights give Hope the old "No hard feelings. You just almost got us killed" speech. It's more than a little lame, but James Asmus does throw in a few cherries on top of what has otherwise been a messy yet tasty cake. Within the Sebastian Shaw file that Hope was looking at in the beginning of the arc is a familiar face. Actually, she's so familiar you might mistake her for Hope or vice versa. It's Jean Grey, or at least a picture of her in her Dark Phoenix glory. If the hint in X-Sanction #4 wasn't blatant enough, here's yet another reminder that Hope is poised to go nuclear on the Marvel universe. I know my memory has been shot to shit by drugs, booze, and Fox News. But seriously, Marvel. I don't need another reminder!

And so my presumably sober friends, Generation Hope has come to an end. Someone had to die, someone had to become a brain in a jar again, Emma had to get smacked around a bit, and someone had to throw in yet another Jean Grey reference. What can we make of this? Do we have to be sufficiently high to assess a series that has clearly been canceled before it's time? Well no, but it certainly helps. As one of the most vocal critics of this series I think I can reasonably draw a few conclusions, at least as reasonably as any admitted drunk.

This issue and this series as a whole was about conflicted youth finding out they were mutants. It harkened back to the very early days of the X-men and that's part of what made it appealing. Like all teenagers going through that incredibly awkward stage where hormones launch tactical nuclear strikes on your senses, there were plenty of mishaps and hiccups along the way. Some were done better than others. Overall, Kieron Gillen and James Asmus did a good job of capturing that struggle. It just wasn't very consistent at times. Some stories just didn't have a good enough impact and some were just poorly organized. The past few arcs have been somewhat stronger, but they only help balance what has otherwise been a pretty unbalanced series.

Generation Hope #17 does a nice job of carrying itself as the final issue. The biggest problem is that it's painfully apparent that this ending is premature. It may be the second worse instance for something to be premature (you know what the first is if you lost your virginity to a drunken prom queen) because certain parts of the issue felt rushed. We never saw what happened with the mutants Kenji influenced. We never saw Emma explain to Cyclops why she knocked him so he missed all the messianic blasphemy. And Kenji's death left Martha right back where she started. So any potential she had in this new body of hers is officially shot to shit. We didn't even get to see Namor's reaction to Shaw being alive (if he even knows). There's so much left dangling that it's like free seniors day at a nude beach. Even if Generation Hope #17 makes itself a solid ending issue, it feels abrupt and incomplete.

I still have mixed feelings about Generation Hope. Overall, I really liked this issue. I thought it was a decent ending, even with so much left unexplored. The series as a whole had a lot of shortcomings, but the intent of the series was pure and Marvel clearly put a great deal of effort into making it work. For that, I commend them. I also commend James Asmus for finishing this series off on a painfully short run. He did a nice job with the characters, the dialog, and the action. I can't help but wonder what else he would have done if he had a few more issues to work with. Sadly, we'll never know. I give Generation Hope #17 a 3 out of 5. So much lost potential and not enough sales to justify realizing it all. It may not even matter since Hope is poised to rub elbows with Dark Phoenix soon enough. We may not know until the end of AvX what the true value of this series has been. For now, it's akin to a lap dance that had all the potential to be hot, but only left you semi-hard in the end. Nuff said!

Generation Hope #16 - Messianic Awesome

I tend not to make a big deal of comics that use the kind of messianic metaphors that make Pat Robertson, the Family Research Council, and James Dobson whine like little girls stuck in a room with a spider. I enjoy blasphemy as much as the next guy, but let's face it. The story has been done to death for the past 2000 years. However, the messianic story surrounding Jea-I mean Hope Summers (my memory sucks when I'm drunk) is not a story you would expect to hear from Middle Eastern goat herders. It's a story that Marvel has turned into an epic that has spanned years. Jean-I mean Hope (I need to sober up) is in a position to be the messiah to the entire mutant race. She's already helped boost their numbers with the Five Lights. Like a certain Middle Eastern preacher, she's gained some exceedingly loyal followers along the way and used those followers to go on the kind of adventures they right books about. Can't think of a good example, but you get the idea.

However, part of every messiah story involves a betrayal of sorts. You don't take on the role of a savior without making a few enemies because saviors by definition have to save others from something that's fucking with them. More often than not, it's a someone. The only way to combat it is to fuck with the system itself and Je-I mean Hope (need more coffee) has been doing more than her share. Since Second Coming, she's become less a messiah and more an insubordinate brat who thinks with her fist more than her brain. This has already led her to put Idie in a bad position that led her to leave the team in Schism. Then in the most recent arc, she brought Sebastian freakin' Shaw to Utopia and demanded that he join her team. She might as well have brought Mephisto on a double date with Spider-Man and Mary Jane Watson.

All this has led to more and more anxiety from her fellow Lights and the other X-men, especially Emma Frost since she tends to despise redheads for obvious reasons. Now it's getting to a point where some are looking to play the role of Judas in Hope's (cold shower did the trick!) messianic story. Generation Hope #16 begins to tell that story. It starts off by showing Hope in a pretty conflicted position because after the hissy fit she threw in the last issue with Sebastian Shaw, Cyclops has given her the X-men's file on the asshole for her to study. In reviewing it, she gets a sense that she's dealing with a guy that may or may not rank somewhere between pond scum and donkey shit. Plus, he did try to kill Cable a few times. That can't help, but to Cyclops's credit he's still trusting her. To him, she's still the messiah and that means giving her the kind of leeway that Charlie Sheen gets with his family.

Messiah or no messiah, some of the Lights are finally getting tired with her bullshit. And who better to conspire against a Jean Grey ripoff than an Akira ripoff? Kenji made it clear at the end of the last issue that he didn't like the control she asserted on him or the other Lights. And being the kind of deranged artist that thinks logic doesn't make for good art, he starts plotting. He attempts to get Laurie involved and he shows a little creativity in the process (he is an artist after all). He uses those creepy tentacle-rape monster type powers of his to link into Laurie's mind where he creates an illusion where they're both normal. He points out (correctly) that Hope has power and influence over every one of them and the more Lights she activates, the more power she'll have. He briefly flashes an image of her becoming a Goblin Queen like one-woman army, which I admit is pretty hot, but since she's already a Jean Grey ripoff I would rather Hope leave Madelyn Pryor alone.

The fucked up thing about this crazy lecture is that Kenji isn't wrong. Hope isn't the tragic little girl that was running from Bishop for most of her life. She's an arrogant brat not afraid to assert herself on a bunch of young mutants who haven't had much time to adjust to the idea that they're doomed to being labeled a freak for the rest of their lives. She hasn't really made them feel normal. She's tried to turn them into soldiers for her rescue team. Even if he is one of those artists that sniffed one too many paint fumes, Kenji has good reason not to trust her with an army of Lights.

It's a very serious and emotional moment for Kenji and Laurie. However, James Asmus isn't without throwing in a bit of humor. In previous issues, Teon has proven unable to control his mating instincts around the Stepford Cuckoos. But cut him some slack. They're three hot blonds that like to dress in catholic school girls uniforms. How could anyone, let alone a hyperinstinctual mutant, help himself? Two of the Cuckoos try to hose him off like a priest taking a cold shower after watching the Little League World Series. They even create a nice dream-world for him where he's surrounded by beautiful women and all his does is eat, sleep, mate, and fight. Instinct or not, that sounds like Heaven in my book! But what's interesting here is one of the Cuckoos actually comes to Teon's aid. It leads to a rare fight among the triplets and not the kind you can masturbate to unfortunately. It shows that the Lights aren't the only one dealing with a potential rift. Could one of the Cuckoos have the hots for a lovable horndog like Teon? It's possible and could make for the kind of fantasy that both dogs and man alike can cherish. 

So her Lights are conspiring against her. Her unofficial pet in Teon can't tear himself away from the Stepford Cuckoos. You would think this is shit she should be on top of, but she does have other crap to deal with. Namely Sebastian Shaw. After reading about what a douche-bag he is, she pays him a visit. Shaw has since shaved both his beard and head, making him look less like a rich asshole and more like the guy I buy pot from. You don't want to feel any sympathy fr this asshole, but he does make clear that he trusts Hope and Hope has to lie to his face that she would help him recover memories of who he was. Given what she's read about him, it's understandable. But still, she's supposed to be the messiah and lying like that is usually a bad sign. I'm sure even Jesus was a little more tactful when his disciples asked about him and Mary Magdalyn.

Everyone seems to either be plotting to kill one someone or fuck them. Teon seems to be improving his luck with the Cuckoos, but what about Gabriel? He also has a raging boner that won't go away. He's tried sharing it with Hope, which only ended in disaster. He tried sharing it with Pixie, who didn't much appreciate it either. But since he went out of his way to save her ass in the last arc, she's a bit more open to letting him lick chocolate off it now. She pays him a visit and it doesn't take long before she forgets all about his tendency to let his penis do the thinking and kisses him. Maybe it's just because Pixie has a lack of options on Utopia and not enough people have an Elf fetish. So why not go for a guy who is so horny at times that he would hump beanbag chair with a slit in it? It's not romantic, but they both get laid. So why not?

While Gabriel's day is getting better by the second, Hope's day just keeps getting worse. She crosses paths with Emma Frost again, who if you'll recall smacked her across the face in the previous issue in a rather awesome way. She just finished a meeting with Kenji, which is like seeing the President of Iran come out of a gas station bathroom with a nuclear weapons scientist from North Korea. In a very unmessianic way, Hope blows Emma off and once again it's not in a way you can masturbate to. My dick is starting to get very upset, but at the expense of diverting too much blood from my brain I'll also point out that Hope confronts the same gang of mutants that tried to rough her up in the last issue as well. It was a generic fight, but one that left Random and his buddies pretty humiliated. So it's a little surprising/ominous when Kenji comes along to break it up. It doesn't come off as an overly friendly gesture either. It's more a "the bitch is mine!" type move.

It's not just Kenji that's making a move either. After yet another instance where Emma wants to slap Hope a new one, she meets with Cyclops to nag him like any good girlfriend should when their fuck buddy is paying too much attention to another woman. What's odd is she's not wrong either. She points out that Cyclops is giving Hope way too much leeway and is blindly trusting that she's the messiah they all hope she is. That doesn't sit well with her and for once Emma Frost's tits, pussy, ass, and lips are not enough to sway Cyclops. Even the mention of the Phoenix does nothing so Emma Frost does something that if it happened in any other book would be big. She uses her powers to knock his ass out. It's not quite as bad as locking a clamp around a man's dick, but I imagine it's right up there.

This is a powerful scene, but once again it's playing off the old theme that Marvel won't do anything to seriously disrupt the Cyclops/Emma relationship. So it's hard to take seriously that something is going to happen here. Moreover, all this drama seems to be happening in a vacuum. It's really not clear how this fits into the events of the other X-books, if at all. It means either nothing meaningful will come of this shit or it's just one of those things that will be glossed over in other books. That's the problem with comics that are about to end. So many good things may happen towards the end, but it's all too easy for related books to write them off.

Now Hope's blind adherent isn't around to help her. It allows Kenji to take some pages out of Japanese anime porn and use that tentacle rape body to attack Hope in a way that isn't quite NC-17, but still pretty fucked up. Using his powers and getting help from former brain-in-a-jar Martha, he starts mind raping Hope into a dream world where he attacks her. He brings up the events of the first arc of Generation Hope where she used his own powers to fuck with him and tame him. He also taunts her at how she's an arrogant brat who wants to be a messiah, but doesn't give three sixteenths a shit about the Lights she influences. Again, he's not wrong. Hell, I found myself saying "It's about damn time!" when I read this scene. I'm not an art buff, but Kenji is alright! Aside, from of course, the tentacle rape connotations.

Once he's done screwing with her mind a bit, he wakes her up to show that she's in a position that another messiah back in Palestine 2000 years ago was in. She's nailed to a cross-like structure with Emma Frost, Magneto, Kenji, Laurie, and a bunch of other mutants surrounding her. They dare her to show that she's the messiah she claims to be, but Kenji also points out that messiahs have a tendency to die. It's really an either/or prospect. Either sacrifice herself like a good messiah or stop being such a bitch. It should be an easy choice for any reasonably minded person, but Hope Summers is the same arrogant bitch that brought Sebastian Shaw to Utopia. Reasonably minded left her sorry ass a long time ago.

This is the kind of story that hasn't exactly been brewing from the beginning, but the potential has always been there. Now James Asmus is realizing it and doing a damn good job of making good use of it. He really shines here in the way he handles these characters. I can honestly say that this is probably the best depiction that the Lights have gotten in quite some time. We don't just get to see Kenji and Laurie adjusting to their roles as mutants under Hope's wing. We get to see them wrestling with their very nature. The visuals and the mind games help give this book a unique feel. They don't go to some exotic location to fight a battle. Much of it happens inside their minds and really helps flesh the characters out. Because while Kenji sounds like an artist that smoked way too much weed at times, he's perfectly reasonable in despising Hope for her hold on the team.

The only criticism I can levy against this issue (if you can even call it that) is this drama doesn't seem to play off anything else that's going on in the other X-books. Shaw's presence hasn't been brought up to anyone yet and Namor, who was assured that Emma Frost killed the man, hasn't even been mentioned in a thought bubble. While this story may eventually mix with the rest of the X-books, at the moment it feels very isolated and narrow. It's written in a way that seems too cut off from the larger scope of the X-books. I know that Generation Hope is getting canceled, but that doesn't mean it can't play a part in the greater X-men landscape. It's still a very well-written book, but is too narrow in scope and we get no sense that the events in this issue will affect other books even if they should.

On it's own, Generation Hope #16 is still a quality comic. James Asmus has done an admirable job taking this series down the home stretch. Unlike the last arc that involved an adventure in Western China, this arc is more character based and brings to surface something that feels like an important element to the whole messiah aspect to Hope's character. With Avengers vs. X-men looming in the not-so-distant future, the timing couldn't be more appropriate. It just needs to fit into that larger puzzle. With that in mind I give Generation Hope #16 a 4.5 out of 5. When Judas got tired of being a messiah's prison bitch, he struck a deal in secret. When Kenji felt the same way, he took a more direct approach and played mind games with his messiah. Thus proving that even in stories that are a basis for all of Western monotheism, the Japanese are still more efficient. Nuff said!

Generation Hope #15 - Tense Awesome

I don't claim to be completely level-headed in my reviews. I don't claim to be sober either. I understand that I have a number of pet peeves in comics that rub me in ways that you don't want an Asian transvestite masseuse to do while blindfolded. But despite these personal grudges, I try to be objective with every book I review. A little brutal honesty helps as well. When a book has minor flaws, I'm willing to take an extra shot of bourbon and overlook it. But when that flaw is major, an entire mountain of cocaine isn't enough to make me ignore it. Consider this a disclaimer of sorts because I've ranted on certain flaws in the X-books before. Some of you may be sick to death of them. To those people I would say you need to drink more. For everyone else, I ask that you keep this in mind as I review Generation Hope #15.

Generation Hope is a series that has had some wild variations. From Kieron Gillen to James Asmus, this book has been cock-bustingly awesome at times and ass-clenchingly horrible at others. In between there have been WTF moments on top of "Holy shit, this is so amazing that I need to inject this book into my veins!" This series is built around some pretty novel concepts that have helped give this book a truly unique feel. The events of Schism helped shape that feel into something even more compelling. James Asmus, taking over for Kieron Gillen, did a great job with his first arc. He had Jean-I mean Hope (you really expect me to still tell them apart?) and her realigned team of Lights venture to Pakistan where they rescued an amnesic Sebastian Shaw. They don't know the man's history or that Emma Frost basically lied to everyone about what he did to him in the Quarentine arc. So when they brought him back to Utopia, the reaction from Cyclops was as overblown as expected. It made Generation Hope #15 all the more intriguing so of course I had a number of pre-rolled joints made up for this issue.

It begins right where the previous book ended, making for the kind of perfect continuity that makes comic fans all warm and fuzzy inside. First, there's a backstory page for readers who don't know the kind of douche-bag that Sebastian Shaw is. Then when the next scene involves Cyclops blasting him and getting Psylocke and Danger to contain him, you don't feel too bad about it. This is, after all, the asshole that made Cyclops's wife go Dark Phoenix and trigger decades of frustration for Jean Grey fans. In that sense Shaw is lucky that Cyclops doesn't order that Shaw's testicles are ripped out through his eye sockets.

Jean Gr-I mean Hope (shit, this is hard) and her Lights are understandably confused and so is Shaw. If you'll recall, Shaw has no memory and the Lights are still new to the game. They don't know what a douche-bag Shaw has been. So Je-I mean Hope (almost had it!) storms off with Cyclops and Emma for a badly needed explanation, leaving the Lights to scratch their heads in frustration at what they just experienced. It can't be too uplifting. They go out of their way to save someone they thought was in trouble and they return only to find out they brought back someone that the X-men hoped was lying dead in a ditch. It leads to some pretty tense moments. Velocidad reminds his teammates that every time he uses his powers, he ages a bit. And when he uses them just to save some guy the X-men hate, that's kind of a big waste. It shows that the Lights may or may not be on board with the X-men's plan. The only one who seems content with this situation is Kenji and Martha Johannsen, who he gave a new body in the last issue. They're already coddling with the kind of creepy chemistry that makes for great anime porn. It may sound disturbing, but it has the kind of charm that will make you smile and throw up at the same time.

We go from one tense moment to one that should be a million times worse. Sebastian Shaw shouldn't be alive. He shouldn't even be on Utopia. It was Emma Frost who mind-wiped him and dumped him in the middle of nowhere. It was also Emma Frost who flat out lied to Cyclops in the Quarantine arc about what she was doing with this. This in and of itself wouldn't be too egregious. She's been known to lie before, but this came after the whole Confession bullshit during Utopia where they agreed to have no more secrets. Well here's a big fucking secret that is a serious threat to both Hope and their partnership with Namor, who is working under the assumption that Emma killed Shaw for him. But what does Cyclops do? He just says "All right." No really, that's it. That's all he fucking says when his big-breasted girlfriend tells him that she lied to him and went behind his back.

Here's where those pet peeves I mentioned earlier come in. I've always cried bullshit when Cyclops and Emma's relationship basically gets a free pass when this shit would have been overblown for any other couple. Emma Frost flat out lied to Cyclops after promising she wouldn't. This usually causes strain in a relationship, both fictional and in real life. But it doesn't amount to jack shit here. They just brush it off and go back to being a walking porno. And I say that's fucking bullshit. If this happened with Cyclops and Jean Grey, every writer at Marvel would use it as a way to fuck up their relationship. But Cyclops and Emma? A couple that has the depth of an episode of Two and a Half Men? Fuck no! There's having a double standard and then there's just being an arrogant dick about it. Guess which one Asmus and Marvel uses here? I'll give you a hint. Paris Hilton loves to suck it when a night-vision camera is rolling.

The potential for drama in Cyclops and Emma's relationship is completely forgotten so they can argue with Hope (happy now?). As far as she's concerned, they just rescued someone who had their mind wiped. Whoever he was before isn't who he is now. It's not an unreasonable assumption, if of course you're an arrogant teenage girl that doesn't know why she shouldn't trust creepy men that claim to have no memory. Cyclops tries to calmly explain to Hope that Shaw is an asshole, but despite that or perhaps because of it Hope says she trusts the man. She even calls Cyclops out for having a shitty standard because this guy boned his girlfriend. It's a real dick move and Emma Frosts responds by smacking her. It's by far the best thing Emma Frost did since getting a boob job. Given how much of a bitch Hope has become lately, she more than deserved it.

While the bullshit surrounding Cyclops, Emma, and Hope is unfolding, another almost equally shitty situation is arising with the Lights. They're still standing around confused at why everyone is so pissed that they brought Sebastian freakin' Shaw to their shores. Then out of nowhere and for no reason they're confronted by some Utopia residents that used to be part of the Mutant Liberation Front. They really don't think highly of the Lights and why should they? They're a bunch of teenagers who just got their powers and because of their connection to Hope Summers, they get all of Cyclops's attention. It's not totally unreasonable, but the fact they're doing this now is really fucked up timing. Too fucked up for it not to be contrived. Laurie doesn't help by being a bitch herself so in addition to contrived timing we get a contrive fight.

It's every bit as random as it sounds. A fight breaks out between the Lights and the MLF for no other reason than to throw some action into this book. To Asmus's credit, the fight is well-organized. It has some pretty nice moments like Kenji using that Akira knock-off form of his along with Martha to show the MLF what a Japanese school girl feels like in tentacle porn. It's not just punching, kicking, and shooting. It is what it is, a mindless spectacle that helps distract from the bullshit happening in another scene. Unfortunately, it isn't distracting enough.

When Emma senses this, she interrupts their little conversation that involves heavy bitch-slapping to inform Hope that her ability to manage others has more room for improvement than downtown Detroit. So how can she really hope to manage an asshole like Sebastian fucking Shaw? Well being the arrogant bitch that she is, Hope reminds Cyclops and her Lights that she has a very strong hold on them. This hold has been hinted at before, but Hope has never flexed it like this. Not only is it a dick move, it has a very Dark Phoenix feel to it. She essentially uses this hold to remind the Lights that she's the pimp and they're her hoes and if they fall out of line, she is well within her right to fuck with them.

This is one moment that is actually really compelling in this comic. To this point, the mysterious influence Hope has over her Lights really hasn't been explored. Moreover, it hasn't taken a dark turn like this yet. When it happens here, you can't help but wonder why this didn't happen sooner. Then again, the timing may be perfect. Hope is becoming more of a brat just in time for Avengers vs. X-men as it looms over the horizon. If she's this much an asshole by the time the Phoenix arrives, then the X-men and Avengers have that much more to fight about.

Hope's little demonstration ends up making her point. Her Lights tuck their tails between their legs and run off to ponder the collapse of their collective scrotum. In addition, Cyclops caves to her wishes. Most likely because he doesn't want to upset the "City in Arizona" as he calls it. He agrees to let Hope work with Sebastian Shaw. He makes sure she reads up on his history of being a dick beforehand, but given the arrogance Hope showed earlier I doubt that'll change her mind. In addition, she has other concerns within her own team. Apparently, they don't like this influence she has over them. Kenji, being the one who almost destroyed a whole fucking city in the first arc of this series, is especially pissed and makes it clear that he's more than a little inclined to fuck up in ways that will make Emma give him all her panties.

This issue had a lot of promise. After the end of the last issue, Generation Hope #15 had a chance to really impact the dynamics of other X-books like Uncanny X-men. Sadly, that promise was never fully realized. It's like a porn star that couldn't get the boob job she wanted. It's tragic and frustrating. It's not enough that this issue once again showed that Marvel is all too willing to gloss over glaring inconsistencies in the Cyclops/Emma relationship. But meaningless fights with characters that haven't so much as taken a minor shit in other comics just make too much of this issue feel like an excuse of sorts. Hope Summers and Emma Frost get a pass while Shaw suddenly becomes a major player for reasons that even a damaged teenage girl should understand are fucked up. This is the first X-men Regenesis book that has left me very disappointed and there's no reason it had to be this way.

I won't go so far as to say it's all terrible. James Asmus did utilize other elements in this issue that helped make up for some of the flaws (to a point). The new dynamic with Kenji and Martha was disturbingly charming. And seeing Emma Frost slap Hope Summers like the bratty bitch she's become was more than enough reason to justify purchasing this comic. Moreover, Hope's hold on her Lights as she demonstrated in a very Phoenix-ish sort of way added more hints as to what may be coming with Avengers vs. X-men. So this comic did contribute to the larger themes of the X-books that are developing in other titles. It's just unfortunate that it didn't do more with what it had to work with. It's like having a boner and no lube.

This issue wasn't the worst installment of Generation Hope to date. It certainly wasn't the best either. It has some elements that make it annoyingly asinine. It has others that make it undeniably appealing. The balance between the two is hard to really define. I can't really say that one makes up for the other. It's like one part is a shot of meth while the other is a shot of heroin. They each have the opposite effects, but it's balanced out in a way that leaves you confused and your brain pretty fucked up. So in light of this split I'm giving Generation Hope #15 a 2.5 out of 5. It could have been so awesome. Instead, the chocolate is mixed in with the shit to a point where it's hard to make sense of either. Nuff said!

Generation Hope #14 - Secrets No Longer Buried (Yet Still Awesome)

Sometimes comic books, like shitty football teams, have a lot working against them. They stuck in a crappy division with a lot of good teams or they're like the Indianapolis Colts and were stupid enough to build everything around one player that they thought would never get injured. Generation Hope may not be in the AFC East or have Peyton Manning as a quarterback, but it does have the misfortune of being a title that doesn't feature major X-men characters at a time when the books that do (namely Wolverine and the X-men, Uncanny X-men, and Uncanny X-Force) are kicking so much ass that Jerry Jones and Dan Snyder would mud wrestle each other for the chance to sign them if they were football players. However, that doesn't mean that Generation Hope hasn't held it's own.

James Asmus came in at a pretty fucked up time. Schism was over. Regenesis began. He really couldn't start from scratch or anything. He had to continue what Kieron Gillen established. That doesn't always sit well with certain writers and it's not uncommon for those stories to just fall apart because writers aren't inclined to give a shit about a story they didn't start. But Asmus started off quite nicely with Generation Hope #13. He set up a conflict with Jean-I mean Hope (what did you expect?) and her Lights involving a story that spun right out of Uncanny X-men. They basically stumbled ass backwards into Emma Frost's little secret about keeping Sebastian Shaw mind-wiped and secluded in Pakistan. So without asking questions, the Jean Gr-I mean Hope leads her lights on a mission complete with Kenji's new squeeze, Martha (who happens to be just a brain), and their new member on a rescue mission. Everything was going as shitty as anything else that goes on in that part of the world. Then Shaw gave Fox News something to jerk off to when he played the role of suicide bomber and set of an explosion that ended the last issue in dramatic fashion.

Generation Hope #14 picks up with the ears of the Lights still ringing. They all survive, of course. Marvel may hate redheads that look like Jean Grey, but they aren't that stupid. While everything around them is blown to shit, Je-I mean Hope (get some liquor in me and I'll get it right) is okay because she can tap powers like Velocidad's to make time work in her favor. Kenji did the rest with the Lights, protecting them in a shell that presumably doesn't involve tentacle rape. While I could make more comments about Japanese fetishes, Kenji does have a somewhat more prominent role here. Remember Martha? That brain on a stem that for reasons only Japanese men understand gave him a boner? Well she's been damaged and he's freaking out. The revelation that the bomber (Shaw) they encountered is still in one piece is secondary.

But Shaw isn't the only asshole involved for once. Even if Emma Frost did fuck up his mind, he's not the kind of guy who just blows himself up for kicks. Keep in mind, the Light's newest member, Pixie, got separated from the team in the last issue. And as is often the case with teenage girls in a shitty part of the world, she runs into the wrong crowd. But much to the dismay of Fox News, they don't look anything like the dirty terrorists that Lou Dobbs loves to rant against. They look like neatly dressed thugs who just robbed an Old Navy. Aside from their shitty tastes in clothes, they do have Pixie contained in what looks like giant rock candy. They also have big ass guns so Hope (thank you high grade whiskey!) and her Lights are in deep shit.

Now keep in mind they weren't asked to go on this mission. They basically stumbled into it at the expense of Emma Frost and her Cuckoos. Back on Utopia, Cyclops gets word that Hope has run off into an unforgiving battlefield again. Seeing as how he's sacrificed a lot for this girl that looks strikingly similar to his dead wife, that frustrated him. However, he still doesn't know about Shaw and Emma Frost makes sure it stays that way. She tells him to run off and try to something like stressful, like brain surgery. And like a completely pussy-whipped boyfriend, he does. This leaves Emma and her Lights to deal with Shaw. And Emma is quick to point out that this isn't another secret that they agreed to avoid. This is just shit she hasn't told him yet.

I don't care how hot Emma is, but that's just bullshit. Some of that goes to Marvel as well because for quite some time now, they've let Emma Frost get away with pretty much everything. They dedicated an entire issue after Utopia to Cyclops and Emma coming clean about their secrets. And what's Emma do? She keeps another secret regarding Sebastian Shaw. Now this doesn't bother me as much as the fact that it never seems to affect her relationship with Cyclops. Just this past week, Marvel pretty much threw the Psylocke/Angel relationship into a tailspin. This week, X-23 and Hellion were pretty much ended. Hell, these people broke up Mary Jane and Spider-Man by literally making a deal with the devil. Yet they won't do shit for Cyclops and Emma? Just because their relationship has the depth of a porno? Fuck me with a jackhammer, but that's just stupid. I know I've gone on this rant before, but it bears repeating when shit like this happens. I hope I'm wrong, but like Fox News broadcast without the bullshit I'll believe it when I see it.

Keep in mind that Hope and the Lights are completely unaware of Shaw's history and his capacity to be a massive douche. However, they do quickly realize that there are certain shades of brown in this shit that aren't normal. For one, Shaw isn't young like the other new mutant signatures. In addition, he can't remember who the fuck he is. They don't know Emma Frost has weeded through his brain and rewired one too many neurons. All they know is he's got major blocks on his mind and they need to figure it out because in Hope's experience, anomalies like this usually need to get shot later.

This is where Kenji's creepy Japanese fetishes come in once more. Because they do actually have a telepath on their side now in the form of Martha Johannson. Yeah, she was just a brain in a jar, but Kenji is an artist. He's also a nice enough guy to create an entire body for her using his Akira rip-off form. Is it any surprise that the body he creates is very boneable? Okay, maybe it would require a number of drinks to work up the urge, but still it's no worse than mistaking a hooker for a transvestite. It's another instance of Kenji showing some theatrics, which he hasn't really shown since his first arc. It was overdue and Asmus pulls it off nicely.

With Martha's help and her new body, she's able to reveal some details about Shaw's background. She can't get bast Emma's blocks, but she can confirm that he showed up in Pakistan with no memory and no idea how to ask the locales for the nearest bar. He ended up running into (or being ran over may be a more accurate statement) a guy named Jin Billion. I'm sorry, but not since Johnny Cash has anyone ever used money in their name and turned out not to be an asshole. So while at first Shaw thought he could help him with all his cool stolen tech. He was wrong. And since Shaw doesn't have any memory about what an asshole he was, he decided that guys like this need to be blown up. So that's what he's been doing and doing a pretty damn good job of it for the most part.

There's basically a lot of talking and not many answers. The comic starts dragging at this point. We get it. Shaw doesn't have any memory and he got roped up with people who took advantage of him. That's poetic justice in it's most beautiful form, but all this is happening when Pixie is captured and a bunch of heavily armed badly dressed men are on their way. Even if you hate Pixie, you kind of have to give a damn for the sake of the story.

When shit finally does get heavy, Jin and his boys find Shaw and the Lights. They make it clear that Shaw is theirs and they have Pixie as leverage. Shaw, acting heroic for the first time in his miserable life, tries to defend Hope and the Lights. That goes about as well as you would expect in this part of the world. Jin is about as understanding as a loan shark with impulse control issues and starts shooting at the Lights. They competent enough to defend themselves, but it's an overly basic match. Jin and his toys prove to be nothing special. They just dress flashy and shoot fancy guns. They're kind of like cowboys without the bad accent and Chuck Norris connotations.

Eventually, Shaw gets sick of it and decides it's time to end this. So while the Lights hold their own, he taps that ruthless side of him that we all know and love and taked down Jin. This time it's a bit more flashy even if it's a little late for it. Those fancy guns he was packing turn out to be pretty unstable. All Shaw has to do is break them and they behave as you would expect any poorly made Chinese product to operate. If the blast doesn't kill Jin, the lead poisoning sure will. While this is going on, Martha finds out where Pixie is being held and Velocidad goes after her. Keep in mind this is the same guy that's trying to bone her so it could have been an equally awesome fight. But it wasn't. It was glossed over. He just says that Jin's B-team sucked and he has the girl. So between some parts dragging and others being glossed over, it's not the most elaborate finish for such a conflict. But it's satisfying none-the-less.

So Shaw is back at square one. He has no idea who he is and all Jin did was screw with him. He has some idea that he's not a nice guy, but seeing as how Hope was raised by someone who was never all that pleasant to be around she offers him a chance to come back with them. She doesn't know that Shaw doesn't play well with pretty redheads that look like Jean Grey and have the Phoenix Force. So she's already pissing on an electric fence without knowing it. But that doesn't change Shaw's decision. He agrees to go back.

This goes about as well as you would expect. Shaw arrives on Utopia and guess who's there to greet them? Remember how pissed Cyclops was when he found out that Hope and the Lights ran off to Pakistan? Well take that level of pissed off and multiply that by a billion and that's how pissed off he is to see Sebastian Shaw. A few issues ago, he noted that he knew about the "city in Arizona" as he called it. He also remembers what happens the last time when Shaw tried to set up shop in that city. He doesn't even know that the woman he's boning (who also happens to be Shaw's ex) has been lying to him. So between Shaw's arrival and Emma's secrets, Cyclops is pretty much fucked in all the wrong ways.

So we've come full circle. The events that started in Uncanny have been successfully picked up in Generation Hope and assembled in solid opening arc for James Asmus. There's a lot to like about Asmus's style here. Forget for a moment that Hope and her team have no idea what they've gotten themselves into. Remember how they went about it. Hope just dove right in with her Lights, assuming at this was another distress call like all the other distress calls they had encountered thus far. It doesn't just show that Emma Frost is as good at keeping secrets as she is keeping boners stiff. It shows that Hope's team is still immature and brash. They don't know Sebastian Shaw. They don't know that he's bad news, especially around redheaded girls with the Phoenix Force. It's the first time the youth of this team has really been played up and Asmus plays it well.

While it is a solid issue, it involves a bit too much talking at times. This is one of those rare instances where substance exceeds style, but not by much. I like that Asmus was thorough in explaining what Shaw had been going through and what he had been up against. It just made the story feel stalled at times. In the end it still came together. Asmus did a great job linking this arc to the arc in Uncanny where Emma first mind-wiped Shaw. He also had a very valid reaction from Cyclops in the end, one that could have been glossed over but wasn't. It makes the reader want to pick up the next issue just to see how pissed off he'll be when he finds out what his big-breasted barbie doll girlfriend has been keeping from him.

Generation Hope still has the misfortune of being sort of an Uncanny X-men lite. This feels like a story that could have been told in Uncanny. As this series has progressed, it seems more and more finite. Unlike the other regenesis books, this one doesn't feel like it has a solid future. It feels like with every issue it's nearing the limit of what stories it can tell. For what it's wroth, Asmus makes the most of this issue. He hits all the right gears albeit at a staggered pace and for that I give Generation Hope #14 a 4 out of 5. So now Emma Frost's hypocrisy is exposed, but will anything come of it? Will Marvel ever do anything to undermine their sexiest female character and risk the vital masturbation audience? I'm starting a pool now. I say they won't even try. Then again, I've been wrong before. Nuff said!

Generation Hope #13 - Generational Awesome

Don't mistake my drunken rants as evidence of my political affiliation. I treat politics in a way similar to my penis. I don't whip it out in public and I don't force it down peoples' throats. I try to do the same with religion. That's exactly why I think it's an appropriate approach for a series like Generation Jean-Ripoff. It's a series that involves a messiah figure that doesn't involve crazy people from Texas running for President. Yet at the same time, it's been more erratic than Rick Perry's brain farts. Some issues have been awesome in ways that blow the mind and shrivel the scrotum. Others have been more fucked up than an Lady Gaga's dresses. So when a new writing team enters the fold, they're coming into an orgy that has just as much potential of being awesome as it does gruesome.

James Asmus takes over for Kieron Gillen at a time when all the X-books are undergoing big change. Schism has passed. Lines have been drawn. Sides have been taken. Balls have been busted. Every series is adjusting a mutant race that can no longer go clubbing in downtown San Francisco during gay pride week. Among the teams most effected were Jea-I mean Hope Summers's lights. Their so-called rescue team couldn't rescue their heads from their asses as Idie became a killer. Yet they still proved that they could kick ass against the Hellfire Club's fancy new sentinel so with Pixie joining in to take Idie's spot (and swapping spit with a few members already) the new team is set to move forward in the new world of Regenesis. I would hope that they along with Asmus treat it as well as I treat my penis.

Generation Hope #13 presumably takes place after the dust has settled from Schism and everybody is getting their butt-cheeks unclenched. Now with a depleted island, Cyclops sees fit to make sure that Je-I mean Hope (sorry, daylight savings fucked me up) are still capable of kicking ass. Sure, they handled a sentinel, but for X-men that's like saying you banged Madonna. It was something to brag about a few decades ago. Now it's no big deal. So to test their wits, Cyclops pits them in an exceedingly lopsided battle against Colossus, Psylocke, Namor, Magneto, Storm, Illyana, and Meltdown. So I guess Cyclops was that unimpressed with their performance in Schism. That roughing up a bunch of teenager mutant wannabes is their way of spending an afternoon.

Overmatched or not, Jea-I mean Hope (daylights saving plus booze does not a coherent brain make) and her lights hold their own. In fact, they do better than hold their own. They actually make the X-men regulars look like they belong in the minor leagues with JaMarcuss Russel and Ryan Leaf. Gabriel is able to outrun both Psylocke and Meltdown. Pixie teleports Colossus to what I assume is a crack den in Moscow while casting a spell on Namor that doesn't involve him fantasizing about another hot blonde. Teon even manages to diss Cyclops by saying Namor is the alpha male.

Now this is a little unbelievable in some ways because these Lights are all still very young. In fact, they haven't been X-men for the comic book equivalent for more than a few months. Yet they're able to go toe-to-toe with the regulars? It's one thing if they were holding back, but it's a bit too competent for a bunch of young mutants getting instruction from someone who may or may not be housing the "city in Arizona" as Cyclops calls it.

Eventually, the regulars get tired of this shit. When Kenji takes on Magneto and uses that Akira rip-off body of his to face-rape the master of magnetism Aliens style, he stops holding back. He pulls a few magnet tricks to rip Kenji's malleable body apart in a way so graphic that even Quentin Tarantino wouldn't put it in his movies. Needless to say this stops the exercise and Magneto gets a good lecture from Cyclops. Magneto reminds him that he's fucking Magneto. He used to want to make meat coats out of humanity. He's not going to go easy on a Japanese kid who tries to face rape him. Yet he still manages to be a douche about it, but again it's Magneto.

What follows next is some potentially interesting insight into Kenji. There really hasn't been much done with him other than show just how creepy he is. But after he pulls himself together, Kenji begins to speculate the more philosophical aspects of being a mutant/living glob. He says every form of his body is linked, but if he separates it does that means he's separating his soul? It's the kind of shit only a stoned artist would make after he found out he's being evicted. But Kenji IS an artist. That's part of his character and this is the first time it's really being explored. I applaud Asmus for this. I'm tempted to applaud how he touches on Gabriel and how using his powers seems to make him age, but Gabriel's been such a douche-bag lately with how he lets his dick do all the thinking that it's hard for me to give three tenths of a shit.

As if Kenji hadn't proven himself creepy enough, he decides to take a page from Gabriel's playbook and do some flirting. But who would he go after? Maybe Surge, another fellow Japanese mutant? Fuck no! That would make too much sense. He goes for Martha Johanssen. Who is Martha Johanssen? Well she's not Scarlet's cuter, more accessible little sister. She's a brain in a jar. No, that's not a lead-in to a Sarah Palin joke. That's what she is. And for some reason, Kenji is attracted to it. I'm tempted to go into elaborate details about how fucked up this is, but Kenji is from Japan. This is the country that gave us tentacle rape porn and panty vending machines. A brain fetish is actually pretty tame for a teenage Japanese artist.

There's so much horniness going around that even Teon gets in on the action. He decides to tempt the Stepford Cuckoos. Let's face it, three hot blond triplets in school girls uniforms will have every man's instincts going into overdrive. But once Hope (there, take that daylight savings!) arrives to spare the Cuckoos one too many semen stains, she finds out they were tracking a mutant in Pakistan that she didn't know about. This pisses her off because she's leader of the rescue team. She's supposed to know about every mutant signature in case they need rescuing. This is one the Cuckoos kept from her and since they won't give her details, she does what any reasonable teenage girl would do and pretty much blows them off in a completely non-porno way.

Now for those of you who haven't kept up with recent events in the X-books, this isn't coming from nowhere. That mutant signature is a result of a fairly recent arc of Uncanny X-men. In that arc, Emma Frost went through a great deal of trouble to slip Sebastian Shaw under the radar of everyone including Cyclops and Namor. She managed to ship him out to Pakistan where she mind-wiped him and hoped she would never have to deal with his sorry ass again. Well now Hope Summers, who just a few issues back threatened to burn Emma Frost to a cinder, has found out about him. You can imagine why this would fuck a lot of shit up.

After using the Cuckoos's own powers, she assembles her lights. Kenji even brings along Martha for good measure because a brain on a stick is just SO useful on a trip to Pakistan. Now Laurie tries to explain to Hope that in this time period Pakistan is about as welcoming as a horny pit bull at a daycare center. But she doesn't listen. She doesn't care if there are terrorists in this part of the world that routinely bomb girls schools for just showing their eyes, let alone walk around naked like Laurie. She doesn't know that this is Sebastian Shaw they're dealing with. She thinks this is another mutant that needs to be stabilized. So she splits the team up to look for him, even putting Gabriel with Pixie just because she needs to keep his penis confused. If you've read Uncanny, you know Hope is walking into a metric fuckton of trouble.

We finally get a chance to dig deeper into these hormone issues. At this point there's mostly talking and not much action. There's a moment where Hope hints that Laurie is attracted to Kenji, but that's so random that even in Pakistan it would be considered fucked up. It's just random talking and it's not the kind of talking that hasn't been done in previous issues, so it kind of drags here. Then Gabriel just talks about how he's a fucked up teenager in a body that's rapidly aging every time he uses his powers. He tries to justify his hormones as being part of his bone-headed decision making when it comes to flirting with anything that even resembles a pair of breasts. Pixie basically tells him off for trying to make her the skank. It isn't until they encounter some guys with guns that the conversation actually starts to get interesting. Really, that's all they do. They talk until people start shooting at them.

It eventually does pick up when Kenji's new squeeze, Martha, finds the signature they're looking for. It's their old buddy Shaw, but they don't know it's Shaw and it's not even clear of Shaw knows he's Shaw. Confused yet? It gets a lot simpler. As the Lights all converge around him, he does something that would be extremely unexpected if it were taking place in any other part of the world. He reveals that he has a bomb strapped to his chest. And since he's Sebastian Shaw and he's in a part of the world known for that sort of thing, it's not terribly surprising when he blows himself up. Now he doesn't give a reason. That's essentially left for the next issue, as are most of the plots revealed in this issue. But it's an explosive way for the issue to end. It finally shoots an enema of action into a comic that didn't really have much and this is the kind that you don't have to lie to your proctologist about.

Now I can already hear the ACLU and the Community for Islamic Relations suing Marvel. It's one thing to have a mission in Pakistan. It's quite another to cater to all the stereotypes about shanty towns, goat farms, and suicide bombers. Please, Marvel. Let's not give Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity anything else to jerk off to when the cameras are off on Fox News. So what if they're accurate. This is the age of political correctness! Truth be damned!

Political correctness aside, this issue was a solid setup issue at the very least. At the most it was one of those charming stories that starts with a mistake and turns into a fiasco that's just awesome to unfold. It's like watching Mike Tysons beat the shit out of Darrel Strawberry. You're not sure why they're beating each other to a pulp, but you're pretty sure they deserve it. James Asmus shows that he has a good handle for these characters. He even dug a little deeper with some elements that Kieron Gillen only touched on like Gabriel's aging and his flirtation with Pixie. He even introduced some new elements like Kenji having a strange fetish (at least by non-Japanese standards). It all culminated in the encounter with Sebastian Shaw at the end, which quickly turned explosive. The man doesn't know who he is, but he's the kind of guy that will blow shit up whenever he gets a chance and that always makes for great X-men stories.

While the setup was nice, it was just that...a setup. I get the feeling that Asmus spent too much time setting shit up and not enough time moving shit forward. There's only so much shit you can set up before it's starts to smell. Now the stench wasn't overpowering here, but it was apparent. Some elements like Gabriel's assessment of his attraction to Hope and Pixie seemed a bit contrived. Laurie's attraction to Kenji just came out of nowhere. I'm not sure if those were setups, but they felt a bit random and that had me scratching my head a few times. Luckily, the picture of a big ass explosion at the end made it all worth it!

Now I try to avoid scoring books on a curve. Setup issues are hard to overly praise because they only put the story in a position for action. At the same time they're a necessary part of every story. Not every issue can start with the characters neck-deep in shit. It's necessary to show them wading through the sewage. In that sense Generation Hope #13 is more than sufficiently awesome. There's a bit too much talking at times, but it succeeds in making the reader want to see the next issue and since Marvel is in the business of selling shit last I checked I can safely say they succeeded. That's why I give Generation Hope #13 a 4 out of 5. Hope and her team have stumbled ass backwards into a fucked up secret that certain people in the X-men don't want revealed. At the rate this story is going, it looks like Jerry Springer will need to make a comeback in order to assess it. Nuff said!

Uncanny X-men #534 - Matt Fraction's Swan Song

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Well here it is. The end of an era. It's not an era you'll find in any history book, even the ones from Texas that claim Jesus Christ blessed America with a magic fart and FDR was Facebook friends with Hitler. For the past several years, Matt Fraction has been at the helm of Uncanny X-men. Under his run, Uncanny became THE central X-men book again. It's the first time Uncanny X-men had such a role in over a decade. Before it was Grant Morrison, Joss Whedon, or some other big name writer who stole Uncanny's thunder. Well Matt Fraction took that thunder back like a Nigerian salesman and ran with it. He took Uncanny past the landmark #500 issue, moved the X-men to San Francisco, set up Utopia, and wrote them through Second Coming. That's a lot for a writer who had to pick up after an event like Messiah Complex.

However, Matt Fraction's run hasn't been without it's hiccups. He's done a lot to set the status quo for Uncanny, but that status quo can sometimes make your eyes roll so much that you can see the back of your skull. Fraction has been great with telling big stories such as Utopia. Where he's faltered is his characterization of certain X-men. He's made no secret that he loves Cyclops and Emma Frost. That's all well and good, but for the duration of his run his bias towards these characters has been so blatant that it's turned off even those who are fans of them. He treats these characters as if they were made of glass that was hand-molded by Michelangelo himself, never putting them in a position to do any wrong or face any hardships. It's made the Cyclops/Emma relationship pretty much unbearable. People used to whine about the Cyclops/Jean relationship for being bland. At least that relationship had depth. Matt Fraction's Cyclops/Emma has been a migraine inducing deconstruction of their characters that takes all the proclivities that Grant Morrison and Joss Whedon developed and gives it the Old Yeller treatment.

Then there's his portrayal of other characters like Pixie, Dazzler, and pretty much any mutant under the age of 18. He doesn't give any character an individual voice. If they all look a certain way, they pretty much sound the same way. You could put Pixie's dialog in place of Dazzler's and it would be exactly the same. You could do the same with Storm and Colossus. It's hard to really get a feel for these characters when they're about as underdeveloped as the nation of Botswana.

But I digress. Matt Fraction has done a lot of good things as well. He's told some great stories and taken the X-men to a new and exciting environment. So I am left with some sadness that he's leaving, but he's going onto bigger and better things like Fear Itself. I'm guessing that involves a pay raise and access to Marvel's secret vault that contains life-like blow-up dolls of She-Hulk, Emma Frost, and Miss Marvel. His final issue is Uncanny X-men #534, the last issue of the Quarantine arc. It starts off with the plot that I've been banging my head against the wall more than any other since Second Coming. I'm pretty sure I've brained my damage since then.

It starts off with Emma running from Sebastian Shaw. I'm left with a Baywatch type image here given Emma's surgical enhancements. Given that Emma wears heels everywhere, I'm pretty sure she's incapable of outrunning a guy she forcibly imprisoned. So it comes as no surprise when Shaw smacks her around a bit more, taking a page right out of Chris Brown's bitch-slapping handbook. Then he takes it a step further. He makes Emma Frost give the ultimate head. No, that's not a blow-job reference (not entirely). He actually rips off Emma Frost's head.

If Matt Fraction weren't writing this, it would be a powerful moment. But seeing as how he won't let Emma Frost get so much as a split nail, it's pretty predictable as to what happens next. The whole ripping Emma's head off...a complete illusion. Yeah, Emma managed to hack Shaw's mind...again. As if she couldn't have done this before when he was locked up in the brig? Why go through the trouble of getting Kitty Pryde and Fantomex involved in the first place? It makes about as much sense as a vacation in North Korea and is so predictable you could have skipped over this entire sub-plot and not missed a damn thing.

The Emma plot was going to turn out blander than water flavored ice cream. That shouldn't surprise anyone. The real lure of this book is the one involving the Sublime Corporation and the HX-N1 virus that has left the X-men weaker than a shaved kitten. In the last issue Cyclops's balls descended just a little bit more and he ordered that the X-men stand and fight, despite being sicker than a vegetarian at Ted Nugant's house. He's advised against it, but Cyclops being Cyclops doesn't listen. They get a shot of kick-ass drugs to give them just the strength they need. I don't know what sort of drugs could put the X-men back in fighting condition, but I want some! The guy at the corner of 8th and 14th never has anything that good.

At the same time the battle against Lobe's investors has been unfolding. The X-men who aren't puking their guts up are the ones taking the brunt end of a bunch of super-powered rich fucks who already think money makes their shit smell like roses. It should be a chaotic fight, but most of it is dominated by shots of Dazzler and Pixie acting like school girls at a Hello Kitty convention. For what should be a tough battle, they take it about as seriously as people take Glenn Beck. It only gets serious when the rest of the X-men crash the party...literally.

The X-men arrive and despite being sick they're packing some serious heat. It's at this point we're reminded that no matter how rick and snooty you are, it takes time to learn how to kick ass. These investors think that just because they have Wolverine's claws that they're as tough as Wolverine. Just because they can heal doesn't mean they're any less a pussy when they get knifed in their gut. The rest of the X-men demonstrate this as well. That and Cyclops packs a flamethrower. If given the choice, I would rather be wounded by an optic blast than burnt to a crisp by napalm. But that's just me. Maybe there are those with a fire fetish out there who feel different. If so, my therapist would love to meet you!

Lobe being the crafty douche-bag he is utilizes a fail-safe. It makes you wonder if he was just jerking off while he watched his investors make asses of themselves. That fail-safe involves an extra surprise in the HX-N1 virus he infected the X-men with. He basically takes it form slowly killing to wishing you were dead. It's his way of ending the fight so the investors are still healthy enough to fork over their hard-earned money. However, he overlooks one glaring problem and it starts seeping from his nose. For once, it's not the result of excessive cocaine snorting.

What happened is Lobe turns out to be a lot dumber than he let on. The HX-N1 virus infects mutants and not humans. So what do you think happens when his little drug gives normal people mutant powers? Suddenly, monkey pox doesn't just infect monkies anymore. Now that the X-men came and crashed the party, they brought the virus with them. As a result, it infected Lobe and his rich douche-bag buddies. So now they're all keeling over and coughing up meals that they ate three days ago.

It's a graphic scene, but one that really kills any intrigue readers might have had for Lobe. The man was so smart and cunning throughout this arc. Then it turns out he's so fucking stupid that he doesn't stop to think that his virus could infect those who have his X-men in a bottle? Even Magneto at his worst was never that dumb! For all the genius that went into making this shit, it's a pretty weak way to fuck up. The X-men didn't outsmart them. They didn't craft a virus of their own. Lobe was just stupid as fuck. It really does kill the whole intrigue that was such a great sticking point for this arc.

So as expected, Lobe orders that the virus be purged. Cyclops gives a lecture to the investors on how much it sucks to be an X-men. They buy it and go back to their mansions to sulk in a pile of money, strippers, and caviar. If that weren't degrading enough, Cyclops goes onto do the least heroic thing he's ever done. He threatens to sue Lobe. That's heroism for you, using lawyers instead of powers. Since Warren is rich that means Lobe will probably be sued for $500 billion dollars and forced to wear an Emma Frost costume at every gay pride parade for the rest of his life. It's a victory for the X-men, but it feels as dirty as taking money from a tobacco lobbyist.

While the X-men clean up shop with Lobe, Emma Frost cleans up her little deal with Shaw. Again, there's nothing all that surprising going on. She doesn't kill Shaw and her secrets continue to stay under wraps. She just wipes his mind so he doesn't know who he is. Then somehow it's revealed that they crashed in the most landlocked area of the planet, therefor Namor will never find out that she lied to him after he boned her. Wait...didn't they crash land because Fantomex dropped him out of their aircraft? Did they just HAPPEN to be in the right area? How many WTFs does that constitute and how many supercomputers are necessary to compute it.

Again, it's a story that demonstrates a clear bias by Matt Fraction. He won't do ANYTHING to hurt Emma Frost. This could have been a major turning point for her. What would happen to her relationship with Cyclops and Namor if they found out she was keeping secrets again? All this after she and Cyclops agreed that keeping secrets was a bad thing in wake of Utopia? Then there's the excuse she gave at the beginning of the arc when she told Cyclops that she was taking Kitty "shopping." Does he still believe that shit? She's basically getting off completely unscathed. Nothing changes. Her relationships and status is unaffected. It's almost as if this was just a way to keep her away from Utopia so Greg Land didn't have to draw her sick. Emma Frost has become one of the blandest characters in Uncanny under Fraction and she's in desperate need of more depth beyond her looks. Even a woman with breasts like hers can only do so much before her story loses impact.

There's not much else to do from here. Storm, Pixie, Dazzler, and Northstar finish off Lobe's plan by destroying his stockpile of the drug. Wait, do they really have to destroy it? Is it possible that they could find some use for a drug that gives people mutant powers? Wolverine's healing powers alone could rid the world of AIDS and cancer. Surely humanity will bow before the X-men and serve them the head of every anti-mutant zealot for that. Then there's the Angel drug that allows people to fly. It would basically do a way with traffic jams FOREVER. Seriously, why destroy this shit? Why not take Lobe's ill-gotten work and use it for better purposes? I guess they're just not feeling very heroic lately. It's a bullshit loose end that Matt Fraction usually doesn't leave.

All may not be lost. In the final panel one of Lobe's new X-men slipped away. Back when Cyclops was rounding up the investors, those Original Five knock-offs were among those captured. Well one of them got away. It was the female Angel. Again, how does a girl who looks about as competent as your average high school girl outsmart the X-men? Usually girls at this age can barely work a coffee machine at Starbucks. Yet she somehow slipped out and managed to take some of Lobe's miracle drug as well? Again, it's a loose end that Matt Fraction doesn't usually leave. This being his last issue, it's pretty disappointing.

So there you have it. Matt Fraction is finished with Uncanny X-men (for now). What can you say about his legacy in the X-books? He's definitely changed the landscape for the X-men. He took them out of New York and put them on the West Coast. It could have been a gimmick, but he made it work. At the same time his writing (or lack thereof in some areas) has scrambled the X-men a bit. Some would say certain characters have regressed. Others would say they're now in a position to do more. I would say it's a mix and this final issue leaves his run with a somewhat unbalanced legacy.

I won't mince words. This was NOT a good issue to be Matt Fraction's last. The Quarantine arc had great potential. Half of it was wasted by the Emma Frost story and even though the story surrounding the Sublime Corporation was pretty novel, it fizzled in the end like a North Korean firecracker. This arc had too few surprises and too many loose ends. Once again, Emma Frost gets away with everything and comes out completely untainted. Once again, Cyclops is made to look overly competent at the expense of the other characters around him. And once again, the dialog with characters like Pixie and Dazzler are rendered childish and bland. It's the kind of arc you can skip over and not miss a thing. Nothing really changed here. There was no twist or aftermath. It's like finishing a story with an incomplete sentence. The meaning is there, but limited. Usually Matt Fraction is very good about not leaving loose ends. It's disappointing that he would leave one with so many on his final issue.

Uncanny X-men #534 wasn't terrible, but it wasn't very good. Matt Fraction deserves better for his final issue. I can only assume he's out of breath for hyping Fear Itself. He still did something novel with the Sublime corporation. If he wanted to send a message about the evils of Big Pharma, that message was received loud and clear. They're assholes. We get it and this issue shows just how big an asshole they can be when you put mutants into the mix. Guess I'm not buying stock in Pfizer. Even so, this issue was really sub-par. He could get away with it when the other X-books were somewhat secondary in scope. That's rapidly changing with books like Uncanny X-Force and X-men Legacy. So with everything that was and wasn't done with this issue and the Quarantine arc as a whole, I give Uncanny X-men #534 a 2.5 out of 5.

For all the flaws in his run, Matt Fraction still did something that places him in the upper decks of X-men writers. He made Uncanny X-men awesome again. In many ways, that's his greatest legacy and it's one to be proud of. Say what you will about his writing. Matt Fraction made the most of it and left Kieron Gillen with plenty to work with. So setting aside all my boob jokes and dry political references, I say this to Matt Fraction. Thank you for making Uncanny X-men a meaningful book again. Good luck on your future projects! Good luck on Fear Itself! And if you ever need to get piss faced drunk in Baltimore, look me up! Nuff said.