Scanned Thoughts: Uncanny Avengers #10

When new comic books come out, a fuckton of chemicals in my brain mixes with a fuckton of chemicals I ingest to create the kind of assessment you won't find outside a bar fight at Comic Con. I've taken it upon myself to give comic book fans the perspective of a drunk for their comics because I've always felt that drunks offer the kind of twisted insight that reveals those special details that a sober mind misses. This is what my drunken mind came up with after reading Uncanny Avengers #10. If you're sober enough to handle it, please read on and prepare to be confused, amazed, and offended.

This issue actually begins the same way a Michael Moore movie begins, with a solemn monologue that berates America in ways that make registered republicans cry like little girls around a nest of spiders. But this time, it’s Rogue who leads the monologue so it’s way sexier than Michael Moore. She also makes a very valid point at how much of an asshole Captain America has become. Like the real America, he’s not so much concerned with being right rather than saving lives. Because so long as he doesn’t have to hear anyone say those dreaded four words, “I told you so,” he’s okay with invading a sovereign country, pissing off cosmic forces, and throwing people in jail for bullshit reasons. But I digress.

This monologue, while awesome, doesn’t really lead into how the Uncanny Avengers confront Apocalypse’s old man-servant, Ozymandias. He’s now out of work, having been replaced by two younger and stronger Apocalypses. I guess now he knows what it feels like to be one of Hugh Hefner’s ex-wives. The team is basically willing to carve as many assholes as they need to find the Apocalypse Twins. And since Sunfire, a former horsemen, has a serious axe to grind, they casually shrug off everything from the Geneva Convention and get their answers. So I guess Rogue’s monologue does have some connection. Like the modern America, Captain America and his associates are okay with torture so long as they find some way to justify it. And they didn’t even need Dick Cheny for this. I think that says a lot.

But torturing former associates of Apocalypse isn’t their only tactic. Havok, who is supposed to be the leader of this mismatched, embittered team of superhumans, has split the Uncanny Avengers up to investigate different areas. He and the Scarlet Witch are tasked with investigating an Akkaba Temple in Guatemala. I’m sure this is just Havok’s way to get a little alone time with another one of Magneto’s daughters. He wasn’t content just boning Polaris. He needs to go for her more powerful, less sane sister. You can’t fault the guy for not having extreme tastes.

It’s clear that Havok’s penis is the last thing on the Scarlett Witch’s mind. As they explore the temple, she confides in him how proud/attracted she is of Havok for keeping the team together. But she also discloses that she has little hope that humans and mutants will ever co-exist. Between the shit the Red Skull pulled in the first arc and Cyclops running a full blown mutant revolution, the odds are stacked against them to say the least. That and she is Magneto’s freakin’ daughter. But it makes for a genuinely nice moment where the Scarlett Witch, at least for a moment, doesn’t seem like that same crazy bitch that fucked an entire species over on M-Day. It’s hard to tell if she’s at that point where she’s willing to bone Havok, but she makes it clear that she supports him and maybe will support his penis if he plays his cards right.

This nice Hallmark moment is eventually interrupted when one of the new horsemen that was revealed at the end of the previous issue finally makes their big entrance. The first one up is Banshee, who has a good reason to want to rip Havok’s ears out through his anus. His younger brother, Vulcan, was the one that fucking killed him. Not only that, his older brother, Cyclops, killed Charles Xavier. And since neither Summers brother is present, he settles for the next best thing, which is like an Olympian saying they’re okay with a bronze metal. But Banshee makes up for it by abducting the Scarlett Witch. For those of you keeping track, this marks the second time the Scarlett Witch has been abducted in Uncanny Avengers. Somebody really need to put a collar on that bitch.

The next horsemen to show up is someone who actually took a dirt nap very recently. In an earlier issue of Uncanny Avengers, the Grim Reaper crashed Havok’s infamous “M-word” speech. And for that, he deserves a pat on the back and a beer. Then Rogue killed him on live TV, which is not a bad way to go all points considered. But I imagine he’s still pissed off and so now that he’s a horsemen, he takes it out on Simon, his pacifist brother. Now I personally would have chosen to attack Rogue while she was taking a shower, that way I could get my revenge and a boner in the process. But I guess this works as well if he’s more interested in dealing with family issues rather than getting boners. It’s also a lot easier because Simon made it clear to Havok and the Scarlett Witch, who he was supposed to be monitoring, that he’s not into fighting anymore. So he might as well be a baby rabbit and Grim Reaper might as well be a wolf on crystal meth. It’s not a fair fight, but at least it doesn’t end with another beautiful woman getting abducted.

As for Captain America himself, Mr. I-need-to-be-right-no-matter-what is doing his part by teaming up with Wasp. They have a nice little conversation as well, but it’s not nearly as productive, or relevant for that matter, as the others. He just talks to Wasp about how much his chat with Immortus fucked him up. That’s about as interesting as me describing every beer I had at my birthday party and detailing every second of the hangover that follows. It really doesn’t amount to much other than Captain America suddenly realizing where they can find the Apocalypse Twins.

By this point in the comic, a clear theme has emerged. Hell, that theme has been persistent since Uncanny Avengers began. Rick Remender is taking a page right out of Chris Claremont’s playbook and trying to squeeze in as much inner monologue as possible. Now Claremont knew how to make it work and Remender does as well most of the time, as he has shown in other parts of this issue. But when a scene consists mostly of Captain America and Wasp describing how fucked up they are, that’s not the kind of shit that needs to waste precious ink. I would much rather see more panels of the Grim Reaper teaching Simon why Ghandi was full of shit than just seeing a boring conversation like this. I’m not saying that these conversations aren’t good for the story, but at least with Havok and the Scarlett Witch it actually had some emotional weight. We already know that Captain America is fucked up and rapidly turning into an all-American douche-bag. We don’t need to read about him talking about it.

I would much rather read about the results gained from torture and I think the fine folks at the CIA will be pleased to see that torturing Ozymandias yielded results. Wolverine, Thor, Sunfire, and Rogue beat a location out of him, probably through means that would make the last two Saw movies look like G-rated Pixar spin-offs. But they location they get looks like parts of downtown Detroit, but it ends up concealing a gateway that leads them to a place that looks like something that J. J. Abrams rejected from the last Star Trek movie (but he may save it for Star Wars). They find that the Apocalypse Twins are packing some pretty impressive hardware and since Thor was stupid enough to lose Jarnbjorn, which he used to fight Apocalypse in a flashback a few issues ago, they’re especially fucked. And before they can even clench their assholes, they get their first taste.

Another one of Apocalypse’s horsemen shows up and this time it’s someone that even Thor’s asshole dreads. It’s the fucking Sentry. He may be a Superman rip-off, but fuck if he isn’t one of the hardest hitters in the entire Marvel universe. He died during Siege, but now he’s armed with some Apocalypse mojo and he uses that to literally beat Thor’s ass across the galaxy. And no, I’m not exaggerating as I tend to do when I’m tripping on acid. Sentry is strong enough to fucking do that. Plus, he did bone Rogue at one point. That alone puts him above Thor and pretty much everyone else in the Marvel universe or any universe for that matter.

Sentry’s attack basically scatters the team, which leads to Wolverine being swallowed by a giant fucking worm. Again, that’s not me exaggerating. I ran out of acid last week. And the rest of the team is basically scattered or running scared because they know they have no fucking chance at beating Sentry. Their best bet at this point is to do what they tell us to do in grade school when we’re on fire and tuck and roll. As someone who has seen many mishaps with fireworks, I can say that doesn’t do jack shit.

I can also say that Sentry makes it clear to Thor that he’s the god of jack shit when he beats him all the way to an alien planet that has green gamma lava. I’m sure it’s like regular lava, but a billion times more awesome. And he uses that to basically turn Thor into that pathetic little kid that could never hold onto his lunch money. I’m not going to say that Thor deserved it because he has been way less of a douche than Captain America or Iron man lately. I’ll just say he’s way overmatched and that’s probably the point.

So three horsemen have been revealed. That means there’s only one left and this one has been crafted specifically to fuck with Wolverine. Granted, that’s not too hard to do. This is a guy who gets pissed off when someone steals his whiskey. The Apocalypse Twins could have just hired a transvestite to look like Cyclops and that would have been enough. But they have to take it a step further and throw Wolverine’s son at him, as in the son he fucking killed in Uncanny X-Force.

It was one of the biggest moments of Rick Remender’s Uncanny X-Force one, and there were a fuckton of them. Wolverine murdered his own son and unlike Cyclops, nobody gave him shit about it. But unlike Charles Xavier, Daken fucking deserved it. Now he has come back to life and is ready to confront his daddy issues with Apocalypse-powered mojo. The problem is this scene, which should have carried more emotional weight, doesn’t amount to much. Wolverine just looks at Daken the same way I look at the Pizza guy when he’s 20 minutes late and Daken tells him that all hope is lost. That’s like the Pizza guy telling me he got stuck in traffic. We’ve heard that shit before. It’s a weak way to end the comic, but seeing Sentry kick Thor’s ass more than makes up for it.

I'm convinced that whenever Marvel kills one of their characters, a baby seal is sodomized by Rush Limbaugh. I'm also convinced that whenever Marvel brings back a dead character, a cute blond stripper with low self-esteem gets a free boob job and the world is just a little bit happier. This comic didn't just bring back a slew of dead characters, albeit in evil forms. It effectively mixed in the interpersonal drama that makes it clear that Rick Remender writes awesome comics and he probably does so completely sober. For that, both he and Uncanny Avengers #10 deserve to be awesome. This is what I've concluded in my completely unsober state of mind and if it bothers you, then I'm assuming you're not drunk enough. Nuff said!

Scanned Thoughts: Uncanny Avengers #9

Every week when I pick up a certain comic, it triggers a flood of strange chemicals in my brain that cannot be induced by anything I find at a pharmacy or a street corner in Tijuana. And when those chemicals are the reaction from a team like the Uncanny Avengers, a team so dysfunctional that they could have their own sitcom on Fox, they can be pretty volatile. These are my thoughts for Uncanny Avengers #9. You might want to wear safety goggles.

Rick Remender was the one who had Wolverine lead a team that shot a kid in the head and drown his own son to death. So I guess it’s only fitting that as the writer of Uncanny Avengers, he take some time out of Havok being a total douche to torment Wolverine about it. It comes in the form of a nightmare lecture by a kid Apocalypse with a bullet in his head, Arcangel, and the dead body of his son, Daken. They’re basically reminding him of how he fucked up. It’s like me having dreams about every time I came to school wearing a Backstreet Boys T-shirt. The kind of horror and mental torture is excruciating, but given how this has led to the Apocalypse Twins I think it’s perfectly appropriate. I’m sure this sort of mind-fuck is nothing Wolverine can’t handle. He can always go back to dreams of Jean Grey in a thong.

After waking up from his nightmare, Wolverine joins Havok and the Scarlet Witch for a verbal whipping by Agent Brand and Maria Hill. It’s not all doom and gloom. They managed to prevent Peak, SWORD’s overpowered space station, from crashing into Rio and completely disrupting the export of bikini wax products. They were also able to describe the big boom over Akabba, courtesy of the Scarlet Witch using her powers for something other than mutant genocide. I guess that counts as progress. But it’s still not clear just what the hell the Apocalypse twins were expecting by trying to crash Rio or blow up a city of loyal followers. They speculate that it was to just gauge their response. If that’s the case, then it’s painfully inefficient. It probably would have been easier to just Google them, but not nearly as destructive. And where’s the fun in that?

The Apocalypse Twins certainly seem to have a taste for fun. They enjoy plenty of non-destructive activities such as being pampered by beautiful women in bikinis with bird masks and exhuming dead bodies. I’m not saying they’re healthy activities, but they perfectly in line with anyone who crashes space stations and triggers nuclear explosions during a hard day’s work.

However, they don’t have much time for hobbies. While the Uncanny Avengers are saving vacation spots, they took the time to fuck with the laws of physics and create a block to prevent Kang the Conqueror from coming from the future. It adds some curious twist to the whole Kang sub-plot, which seems to have been overlooked in the past few issues. But if he’s got a gate preventing him from time traveling, then at least it offers a partial explanation of why we haven’t seen him. It’s not like you can miss a guy who dresses up like an 80s rock band and was rejected by the blue man group.

And their hobby of exhuming dead bodies also has some worth as well, but not in the way necrophiliacs are probably hoping for. The Apocalypse Twins may not look like the Apocalypse we all know and love or even match his same charisma. But there are some family traditions they just have to keep. Apocalypse rarely showed much respect for dead bodies. And rather than just waste them on feeding worms or mounting them on his wall, he found that they could be more useful as horsemen. And since the Apocalypse Twins flat out slaughtered the previous horsemen that were introduced in Uncanny X-Force, they need to fill the void and do it in a way that will maximize X-men and Avenger pwnage.

This finally brings us to Kang the Conqueror, who to this point has been overlooked in this arc. At least now we know why. The Apocalypse Twins are cock-blocking him. But that didn’t stop him from leaving a message for Captain America to find. In the previous issue, he landed in the parts of Sudan where shooting live targets is right up there with masturbation in terms of afternoon activities. It was a mystery as to who left him some strange holographic message. But after what was just revealed, it makes perfect sense that it’s Kang.

His message is pretty basic. The Apocalypse Twins end up becoming the evil overlords that Dr. Doom always failed to be and he tried to stop it by doing what he does best (until Wolverine topped him in Age of UltroN), which is fuck with time. He says seven timelines have been created as a result of the Apocalypse Twins and all of them end with the world having a few extra torn assholes. And since he’s stuck in the future, he’s relying on Captain America and the Uncanny Avengers to save his miserable ass. Makes me wonder why the hell he didn’t kill the twins, but I’m going to assume that would somehow fuck up the time stream even worse. Seriously, what doesn’t fuck it up these days? He even offers Cap a weapon, but that ends up being shot to shit thanks to a few Sudan rebels. You can always count on gun-toting militia-men to make shit worse, no matter what universe you’re in.

The battle against the Apocalypse Twins looks to be pretty awesome, but there’s another battle brewing within the team and it involves two beautiful women. In that sense, it’s almost every bit as awesome. It involves Rogue and the Scarlett Witch. It also involves Havok’s controversial speech where he turned the word “mutant” into a racial slur that could get the Don Imuses of the world fired. Much has been said by politically correct fanboys with too much free time and Rick Remender has generally told them to fuck off. I get the sense that with this conversation between Rogue and the Scarlett Witch, he’s throwing in a few extra middle fingers.

The debate is actually pretty intense and engaging. Usually, scenes that just involve characters talking tend be boring. But this shit was almost as intense as an arm wrestling match between the Hulk and Superman. Rogue thinks his idea is bullshit and asking mutants to dissociate with their M-label is like asking a gay man not flaunt the fact that he never has to deal with buying tampons for his spouse. But the Scarlett Witch sees it another way. The labels associated with being a mutant only breed more fear and stereotypes. It’s amazing how valid each of their points are, so much so that I struggle to imagine them wrestling naked in a pool of baby oil. It makes for a great debate and a scene that really escalates the conflict over how the Uncanny Avengers handle their whole mission about bridging the gap between humans and mutants. It’s the kind of juicy moments that you only used to see in Rick Remender’s Uncanny X-Force, but it’s every bit as awesome here.

The heated debates continue beyond labels and stereotypes. Just as Wolverine was facing his nightmares early on in the issue, he now has to finally come clean to the rest of the team about what happened with Angel and X-Force. He basically has to admit that he led a mission where a child got shot in the head and Angel was basically killed and reborn a brain-damaged hippie. Those are some pretty fucked up crimes, especially for an Avenger.

The reaction of the team here is spot on. Captain America sure is pissed. So is Wasp. And why the fuck should they be? Were they not aware that Wolverine had a nasty habit of killing people before he joined the team? I mean fuck, it’s not like it’s a secret the NSA has to uncover through stolen emails. He flat out admits to the team that he’s a killer and he did what he had to do. But not everyone is disgusted. Thor comes clean and says that a lot of this shit with the Apocalypse twins was his fault too because of that glorified bar brawl between him and Apocalypse that was shown a few issues back. Again, it’s a scene with little action, but Remender finds a way to make the dialog every bit as entertaining as 1,000 battles against killer robots.

Once again, the Uncanny Avengers are about as coherent and organized as Congress during happy hour. It actually provides a compelling reason for why the X-men and the Avengers didn’t team up sooner. They probably would have slaughtered each other by now if they had. But Havok, being the leader and the top douche, tries to keep his team together. He basically tries to do what his brother was so good at doing, minus the hot redhead or blonde he’s boning. He points out that they’re playing right into the hands of the Apocalypse Twins and he’s right. They’re doing plenty to help them. But the prospect of them working together to take on this threat looks about as promising as Nicholas Cage’s last Ghost Rider movie.

And who do these embittered X-men and Avengers have to face in order to beat the Apocalypse Twins? Well, after desecrating a few graves and the Apocalypse Twins now have their horsemen. And who will rise up and further torment this team that makes the Oakland Raiders look competent? How about Daken, Sentry, Banshee, and Grim Reaper? All are dead Marvel characters and now they’re back, evil, and ready to take on a team that can’t seem to stop bitching and moaning with each other. It’s about as fair a fight as pitting sick puppy against a chainsaw-wielding Michael Vick on crystal meth. Hell, you could put it on pay-per-view and I would still watch it with a raging boner.

These are my thoughts about Uncanny Avengers #9. All you need to know is that this comic is finally becoming as awesome as it was hyped to be. It has taken a while, but everything that made Uncanny X-Force so awesome has translated to Uncanny Avengers. Nuff said!