Scanned Thoughts: Wolverine and the X-men #4

Being different for the sake of being different is the worst reason for being different, despite what Lady Gaga may preach. I get that whenever a new creative team comes on a book, they want to leave their mark and give it their own unique touch. But that shouldn’t involve throwing out the shit that worked and replacing it with the shit that doesn’t. Wolverine and the X-men was initially established as a fun, light-hearted, Fast Times at Ridgemont High type spirit, minus the stoners. It had the X-men acting as both heroes and staff, trying to keep their teenage mutant student body from blowing everything up. Sure, they failed miserably at times, but that didn’t make their escapades any less entertaining. Now in wake of this relaunch, Wolverine and the X-men has taken on a different tone. It lacks the humor, spirit, and tone of the previous volume, exchanging it instead for Kid Omega being an ass and Wolverine ditching most of the staff. That’s like trading a Porsche for a Kia. It still does the same job, but not with the same style. The lack of made Wolverine and the X-men much harder to get excited about, even with the aid of awesome weed. But it hasn’t gone completely in the shitter. It has created a conflict in the Phoenix Corporation that stems directly from the events of X-men Battle of the Atom and Avengers vs. X-men. It just hasn’t done so with style. It’s like Joan Rivers modeling lingerie. It’s the wrong kind of presentation. Wolverine and the X-men #4 is supposed to make that lingerie more appealing, but it can only be so hot if it lacks style. Unless it involves Seth Rogan, that approach can only work so well.

Now nobody can ever say Kid Omega looked good in lingerie, but he is very much a central figure to this arc. He’s the one the Phoenix Corporation targeted and if X-men: Battle of the Atom wasn’t some elaborate LSD-induced hallucination, he’ll also be the future bearer of the Phoenix Force. But he didn’t really care for what the Phoenix Corporation was offering. Even their sexy nuns didn’t do it for him. Usually sexy women will get a teenage boy to give himself a colonoscopy, but not for Kid Omega. He either has really unreasonable standards or the Phoenix Corporation just has the world’s shittiest salespeople.

But thanks to Wolverine and Storm, Kid Omega managed to escape. And somehow he found his way to the secret location to the New Xavier School. It’s not even hinted at how he found this location. I’m pretty sure if he really knew where it was, he would have told Wolverine just so he could jerk off while he and Cyclops beat the shit out of each other. Instead of an explanation, we get to see Kid Omega attacking the O5 X-men and some of the students at the New Xavier School. It’s makes much less sense, but it’s more entertaining. I’m just amazed Kid Omega didn’t make a dick joke when he encountered Goldballs.

Once he’s done roughing up the male population of the New Xavier School, he turns his attention to X-23 and O5 Jean Grey. Here, he reveals that he’s still a teenage boy. The sexy nuns offered by the Phoenix Corporation didn’t do it for him. But X-23 and O5 Jean Grey sure did. Rather than fight them, he does the next best thing and puts on the kind of charm that only a creepy omega level psychic could manage. While it may be creepy, it works. I guess it’s easy to attract women when a little omega level telepathy is applied. It’s tantamount to cheating, but there isn’t a straight teenage boy on the planet who wouldn’t use it. I still have no respect for Kid Omega as a person, but I will say the kid has standards.

Unfortunately for him, he’s not the only powerful psychic at the New Xavier School. He also grossly underestimates his ability to psychically charm pretty girls. The Stepford Cuckoos prove that when they reveal that the O5 Jean Grey he thinks he’s about to cop a feel with is actually just an illusion. X-23 and O5 Jean Grey have too much self-respect and too weak a stomach to give let Kid Omega do anything other than leer. It’s so creepy that one of the Cuckoos claims she’s now a lesbian. I’m sure Kid Omega will still consider that a win.

While Kid Omega is all style and fake substance, Faithful John is the exact opposite. He was by far the most interesting character of the previous issue. He’s big, he’s strong, he’s a powerful telepath, and he’s rocking an epic ZZ-Top style beard. What’s not to love? Well, he is attacking the students of the Jean Grey Institute with the intent of killing Genesis. I said he was interesting. I never said he was Mother Theresa. But he’s not just doing it for shits and giggles, although I suspect that is part of it. He has seen the future and he has shared those visions with others. In that future, Genesis becomes Apocalypse and really fucks things up. So he’s willing to take a page right out of Skynet’s playbook from Terminator and fix the problem before Apocalypse gets all Apocalyptic.

And to accomplish this, he fights smarter rather than harder. It’s a lesson he knows most teenagers have yet to wrap their head around, along with how to cook anything that doesn’t involve a microwave. Having just showed the students what happens with Genesis, some actually side with him. Hellion is one of them. He attacks Rockslide and Idie, allowing Faithful John to concentrate on more pressing matters. He’s like a sadistic gym teacher, turning teenagers on one another so he can just sit back and enjoy the show. It’s cruel, but I know from experience how well it works so I’m not going to knock him for it. I’m just going to redirect my resentment towards my old gym teacher.

Wolverine and Storm could probably learn a thing or two from Faithful John’s tactics. They rely more on just plain fighting rather than fighting smart. It still works to some extent. They’re able to fight off the Phoenix Corporation’s Hydra-wannabes. But being able to defeat anything remotely akin to Hydra is like Derek Jeter winning a game of T-ball against 8-year-olds. It’s not a fair fight, but that’s not the point. While Storm favors returning to the Jean Grey School to protect their students, Wolverine opts to stay behind and confront Eden Younge, the CEO of the Phoenix Corporation and a guy who thinks having sexy nuns as henchmen is vital. Not saying I like the guy, but I do respect his style.

It makes for a nice moment between Storm and Wolverine when there have been painfully few lately. These two are still supposed to be sleeping together, yet they’ve come off about as close as reluctant lab partners for a high school chemistry assignment. It may feel somewhat out-of-place, but it adds some badly needed emotion for these two. Besides, after seeing Kid Omega’s bullshit fantasy about kissing O5 Jean Grey, we need something like this to stop the dry heaves. If I want to see something that sickening, I’ll picture Kathy Bates naked.

The endgame here is tied to two characters: Kid Omega and Genesis. While Kid Omega is looking for answers with Cyclops, Genesis looks for answers with Fantomex. He’s the one responsible for Genesis since he shot his predecessor in the fucking head. He’s been trying everything he can to keep Genesis from becoming Apocalypse, including but not limited to ripping off Superman’s origin story. Yet he’s still a target so Fantomex opts to hide him in The World. It’s another moment that adds a little emotion to the mix. Genesis knows what he is and is still trying to not be the asshole he’s supposed to become. Every teenager foolishly believes at some point that they’re in control of who they are. They don’t know that unless their name ends with Rockefeller, their options are pretty damn limited and downright fucked most of the time. In that sense, I feel somewhat sorry for Genesis, if only because I too was once a teenager who found out the hard way how the future fucks everyone at some point.

The World is still only a temporary refuge because Faithful John is still on a rampage. Thanks to Hellion, he’s able to get into the school. That’s where Armor tries to stop them while employing some of the psychic shielding tactics that she learned, which I imagine is right up there with Sex Ed in terms of vital curricula. But again, Faithful John works smart and not hard. He lets Armor attack him. He lets her believe she has stopped him. And the moment she starts feeling proud of herself, he sends one of the bamfs to take her out. That reminds me a lot about getting my mid-term grades back. The moment I think I do well, I see the grade and feel like I’ve just been assaulted by a demon.

Wolverine fares somewhat better against Eden Younge. He catches up with him just as he’s retrieving what looks like a steak knife that Donald Trump would own. Wolverine gives him a chance to end this without too many claw marks on his ass. He reminds him that he lost Kid Omega and if he fucks up the Jean Grey Institute, he’ll be even less inclined to help the Phoenix Corporation. Eden Younge seems to be on a cosmic level of not giving a shit. He then cuts himself with the blade, releases a Phoenix-level light show, and goes on this confusing rant about how he would do anything to cling to whatever frail hope he has left.

If that sounds confusing as fuck, join the club. I don’t know what kind of hope he’s talking about. If it’s hope that the IRS will stop screwing him over or that Brett Ratner will make a movie that doesn’t suck, he’s shit out of luck. Eden Younge comes off as the kind of guy who just likes to hear himself talk so that he sounds more ominous than he really is. He might as well be an infomercial pitch man. I really have no idea what he’s after or why I should give a fuck. My only hope is that it’s reason enough for Wolverine to stab him to death.

Younge can’t seem to explain who the fuck he is or why the fuck he’s doing any of this. However, Kid Omega has already read his mind and knows what they’re dealing with. He’s apparently a really old fuck from the Conquistador days. He found a miniature version of the Phoenix Blade and somehow that allowed him to be reborn in a way that helped him form his own cult. Since Jesus established that being reborn is the key starting a new religion, Younge had everything he needed. I still don’t know what the fuck he’s after, other than pissing off the X-men and toying with cosmic forces. Either he just got bored being a cult leader or he did it really fucking wrong

But Eden Younge takes a backseat to a much more meaningful conversation between Cyclops and Kid Omega. I know it’s a strange notion, having any kind of meaningful conversation with Kid Omega. But Cyclops is in a great position to help him because he has plenty of direct experience with the Phoenix Force. He didn’t just wield it, he married the girl that wielded it best. He doesn’t tell Kid Omega what he wants to hear, like most school counselors do with teenagers. He tells him that all that power really did go to his head, even though he tried to convince himself that it didn’t. It’s probably the most productive conversation a teacher has ever had with a teenage boy that didn’t involve condom usage. And despite what the Hank McCoys of the world would have us believe, Cyclops is still very good at reaching young and confused mutants.

Maybe he should’ve had a similar pep talk with Genesis sooner because his time is running out. Having effectively pwned the entire student body of the Jean Grey Institute with the same effort I put into making my Hot Pockets, Faithful John has nothing standing in his way from taking down Genesis. One of his mind-controlled bamfs locates The World where Genesis is hiding. However, Fantomex has finally decided to get off his ass and actually help. He stood by and let some creepy old guy beat up the a bunch of inexperienced students. He’s a douche, that much hasn’t changed. But he’s still ready to protect Genesis. Only one person should have to kill a kid. It’ll either be a creepy old psychic or a masked French douchebag. If I were in Genesis’s shoes, I would be very conflicted.

Going back to my lingerie analogy, I’m willing to say this issue made the overall concept of this series just a little more sexier. The Phoenix Corporation still has a business plan that’s more lacking than the last Keanu Reeves movie, but the battle against Faithful John and Kid Omega’s pep talk with Cyclops really added some badly needed dimensions to the story. For once, we got a big picture perspective of the Phoenix Force and other great powers like it. Cyclops, while lacking in credibility, gives Kid Omega some insight he won’t get from anyone else. And Faithful John continues to show that he has more personality than most of the students at the Jean Grey Institute. The battle that began way back in Uncanny X-Force continues and there’s a genuine struggle here with Genesis and the Phoenix. Storm and Wolverine aren’t able to accomplish much other than maybe sneak in a quickie before the next battle. But everything else in the story progressed in a way that makes the lingerie feel just a bit more appropriate. It’s still not a thong on Jennifer Lopez’s ass or a bra on Pamela Anderson’s tits, but it gets the job done. My penis and I agree. Wolverine and the X-men #4 gets a 7 out of 10. It’s not far off from being awesome and if it can continue this momentum, then my penis and I will have even more to agree on. Nuff said!

Wolverine and the X-men #5 - Birthing True Awesome

There are very few comics that are awesome enough to enjoy both drunk and sober. There are even fewer comics are awesome enough to read with your kids/nephew/kid whose mother you're trying to bang. Granted, most modern comics are about as kid-friendly as a webcam in Snooki's bedroom. The women are grossly proportioned. The men are perfectly sculpted. No woman ever seems to bitch about having her period or complains about wearing skin-tight outfits. No man farts uncontrollably and makes hissing noises to let people know how much it stinks. I get that comics are a fantasy world because reality sucks elephant cock. But for kids, it does send a pretty fucked up impression. That's why I find Wolverine and the X-men to be such a breath of fresh air. Is it mature? Of course it is. It deals with homicidal kids and aliens and school uniforms where the skirts are several inches too high. But at least it's fun in a way that you can bullshit around with a kid. It might even get you lucky with said kid's mother or a restraining order (whichever comes first).

Wolverine and the X-men has become awesome under Jason Aaron because of his ability to create a unique tone for this comic. What sets it apart from the gritty and brooding world of Uncanny X-men that Kieron Gillen already does so masterfully is the different circumstances. Wolverine is not trying to create an army of mutant superheroes at the Jean Grey Institute for Higher Learning. He's just trying to educate mutant children so they don't have to fight. That and be able to get hammered without the fear of being called up by Cyclops to fight a sentinel. So far, it's been as disastrous as one would expect. The Kid Hellfire Club showed up. Karoka attacked. And Angel, who is amnesic after his Dark Angel Saga experience, has gone batshit crazy. Oh, and Kitty Pryde is pregnant. Yeah, you know your school is done fucked up when your headmistress is knocked up shortly after you open your doors. That shit may work in Texas public schools where sex education consists of the bible and prayers to Rick Perry, but it shouldn't work in comics!

All these problems need to be fixed. But to fix them, Wolverine needs more than just his charisma and willingness to stab people. He needs money. Yes, even in comics shit can't get done without money. This was touched on in the last issue. Iceman, the institute's resident accountant, was warning Wolverine that they were burning through cash like MC Hammer in a parachute pants outlet store. They were able to keep things going by using Angel's fortune. Since he went nuts in the last issue, he didn't seem to mind. Well Wolverine and the X-men #5 begins by revisiting that issue. The kid Hellfire Club may be a ridiculous excuse for an enemy, but they have something more powerful than all the sentinels in the world...lawyers. With those lawyers, they effectively freeze Warren's accounts and cut of Wolverine's funds. It's a dick move and the Hellfire Club makes no bones about it. It doesn't help that Warren is still acting like an eight-year-old boy at Disney land in front of the board of his family company and press folk with video cameras.

While Wolverine is dealing with the severe rectal itch that is financial problems, class at the Jean Grey Institute continue as normal. Normal being more skewed than accounts of Gary Busey's therapy sessions. Quick, what do you remember about biology class? If you answered masturbating to the pictures depicting female reproductive systems, then obviously you never went to the Jean Grey Institute. And you may have left those stains on my textbook. While they don't have the kind of money to keep the school going, they somehow have the technology for Beast to shrink his students down Ant Man style and explore the mutant body up close and more intimate than a prostate exam.

It's actually a pretty meaningful lecture on some levels. Yeah, Kid Omega uses it as a way to flirt with Idie and Broo acts like he's a tourist at Disneyland. But others like Genesis take a moment to reflect on how a simple mutation on so small a level is causing all the crap he's now dealing with. In the last issue, a good deal of time was spent showing that Genesis was new to this world of conflict. He's still taking it in and Aaron takes some time to show that he's still processing everything. He does throw in some humor with Kid Gladiator acting like a douche in saying Shi'ar DNA is so much better, but it gets the point across.

The lesson ends with a not-so-startling reveal that they were inside Toad, the resident janitor. You get the sense that Aaron is just setting him up to go on a shooting rampage at one point, but for now the school has more pressing concerns. At the end of the previous issue, Kitty Pryde started puking uncontrollably and it wasn't because she saw that birth scene in the last Twilight movie. She found out she was pregnant Aliens style. Her womb swelled up and now she's understandably freaking out. It's like a new TLC show "Fuck, how did I get this pregnant?" She tried calling up Colossus, but never said a word to him. That's too bad because if the kid is his, that opens the door to all sorts of baby daddy drama. Admit it, "The Father of my Baby  is the Juggernaut" sounds like the perfect title for an episode of Jerry Springer. But a cameo is all we get. She eventually confronts Beast and Rachel, who are also understandably freaked out. At least they don't have to worry about their snatch being permanently ruined.

Now a sudden pregnancy like this is pretty serious shit, but Jason Aaron doesn't let the tone of the book get too serious. We get to see some of the students who got to explore Toad's innards in a completely non-sexual way hanging out and reflecting on their lesson. Then Wolverine comes barging in acting like he hasn't had his daily bottle of whiskey and demands that Kid Omega come with him. He doesn't explain why. He just leads him down into the "teachers only" area of the school and tells him that he's about to have a chance to prove that his dick and his brain are both as big as he boasts. For some reason in order to do that, he has to use the institute space ship and fly off into space.

Wait a sec, the Jean Grey Institute has a space ship and a shrink device? Why the fuck do they have money problems! There's a solution right there! Paid trips into space and adventures inside the human body. If they could somehow find a way to allow people to explore the insides of Natalie Portman that would pay for the institute for 20 years easy!

But before we can go off and have a space adventure, there's still a little matter of Kitty's pregnancy. There's a lot of questions to answer, like who the hell did she bone and what kind of miracle grow was in his jizz? She laments a bit how she'll be a crappy mother, as I'm sure most women who don't remember how they got pregnant may think at some point. Again, it's somewhat glossed over. But there's a reason for this. Once she gets an exam from Beast, he makes a rather disturbing discovery that makes that Alien joke I mentioned earlier all the more relevant. She's not pregnant. She's under attack by a swarm of aliens inside her body. Why do they happen to gather inside her baby maker? Maybe they just like vaginas as much as humans. Admit it, if given the choice I can see how some men would be okay with living in a vagina.

These aren't the same Aliens that Segorney Weaver fought. These are the Brood, also known as those horrific looking aliens whose idea of a good time is brutally slaughtering innocent creatures and dining on their bone marrow. They're usually large enough for you to shoot with a shotgun, but the ones inside Kitty are small enough to dine on her cells. In many ways that's infinitely more terrifying. For that reason, Beast locks down the school and everyone has to start checking every molecule they breathe to make sure they don't get eaten alive as well. But it's fucked up with a twist if you can believe that. These mini-Brood aren't up to infect everybody. They're tailored for Kitty. He calls it an assassination attempt. It's the kind that the CIA would kill for, but it only complicates the situation. Lucky for Kitty, Kid Gladiator needs to prove that his dick and his ego are of equal size. So he uses the same shrink technology demonstrated earlier to fly into her body and start fighting off the Brood. It's a losing fight, but given how Kid Gladiator has been such a douche it's hard to really care about him as much as Kitty's safety.

Now this unusual attack on Kitty begs a pretty important question. Where the fuck did it come from? Well Jason Aaron doesn't answer that question too quickly. But he does set things up. While Wolverine and Kid Omega are flying off into space in a way that's going to somehow save the school (the methods how can only be explained by Aaron's twisted imagination), an incident aboard your typical alien ship that flew too close to Earth is unfolding. The good folks at SWORD show up like a galactic boarder patrol minus the right-wing bumper stickers. They treat them the same way Arizona treats undocumented Mexicans. Somewhere there's a political ad for Rick Santorum, but I'll leave that for whichever asshole wrote his stance on birth control.

Like any pissed off wannabe immigrant, one of the aliens lashes out and rips the SWORD agents to pieces like popcorn shrimp at a summer cookout in Baltimore. Said alien looks like a Brood that pumped one too many meds from Sylvester Stallone's pharmacist. It has a bunch of normal Brood chained to it and it may not be of their own volition either. It's hard to tell. That may be a Brood mating ritual for all I know. But it's not enough to just kill the SWORD agents and presumably all the other aliens on the ship just looking for a place to shack up or some anuses to probe. It then blows open the ship and enters the vacuum of space, but looks about as comfortable doing so as a college co-ed in Ben Rothlesburger's swimming pool.

With no pesky ship to worry about, the creature and his Brood pets start drifting to Earth. As they do so, he narrates that he's tracing a signal from a virus. Any guess as to where that virus may be? If you guessed the inside of Kitty's lady parts, then you've managed to connect the dots in this story or you masturbate to some pretty fucked up fantasies. Or both, but who am I to judge? It only offers a hint as to who may be responsible for Kitty's sudden baby bump that isn't a baby. It's worth noting that not long ago, Kitty Pryde was trapped in a giant bullet that flew through space and encountered who knows how many alien germs? Will Aaron make that connection? We'll find out in the next issue. I just hope he's nice enough to offer a warning label if we'll have to watch a violent alien birth the likes of which would only be acceptable in another shitty Species movie.

Jason Aaron has set up some pretty disturbing plots with this issue. Kitty Pryde being eaten alive by cellular Brood creatures has the potential to be more fucked up than the birthing scene from Species II. And the prospect of the Jean Grey Institute being short on cash is nothing to laugh at. Anyone who has ever had the IRS or a bank come busting in your door for not keeping up with taxes or mortgage payments will get night sweats from shit like this. Yet somehow Aaron manages to keep the same fun tone with this issue. Maybe it's just because my notion of fun is so fucked up that it has to involve hookers and no fewer than three joints of Jamaican weed. Or maybe this comic is just well-written enough to put a smile on your face even though it deals with these disturbing plots.

This issue did a few things different compared to previous issues. It took on some more dramatic elements with Kitty lamenting over what she thought was a pregnancy. However, that drama wasn't really played up as much as it could have been. Kitty being pregnant is something that had the potential to really cause some added drama with Colossus. It could have even opened the door for him to get involved. But even before we found out that it was an attack by vagina loving Broodlings, it was glossed over. Kitty was like "I'm pregnant. Fuck." That's about it. I'm not saying Aaron mishandled it, but the impact felt a bit weak. That and Angel's character has become wildly erratic. I get that he's amnesic, but even he has to understand that fucking up the school's bank account is not something to take lightly.

Overall, this book is still high quality on all the levels that Jason Aaron has done such a good job of refining. He continues to have a nice sense of flow with this book, taking conflicts like financial troubles from previous issues and working them into future issues. And the mere fact that he's using finance as an issue adds an element of realism that had never been touched on in previous X-men comics. How they deal with this and how the team deals with the Brood threat with Kitty has the potential to be unlike any story that has come before it. That sense of novelty mixed with light-hearted humor helps make this issue awesome. That's why I give Wolverine and the X-men #5 a 4.5 out of 5. It's not quite perfect because the dramatic element hasn't been developed yet. But there's more than enough potential to fix that with future issues. Until then, feel free to share this issue with a kid and explain to him why aliens that try to eat a woman inside out are a perfect metaphor for mood swings. Nuff said!

Wolverine and the X-men #4 - A Typical Day of Awesome

A typical day of school is like a traditional bout of diarrhea. No matter how much you may be used to it, you still despise the experience and you're left with a burning asshole at the end of it. Or maybe that's just what I get for coming to school drunk and stumbling into the girl's bathroom. So when a comic book comes along with the central premise of young misfit kids going to school, it has about as much appeal as sticking one's penis in a toaster while drunk (I can't be the only one). However, this isn't just any comic book. This is Wolverine and the X-men by Jason Aaron, one of the best things Marvel has invented since Emma Frost's tits. This may be the best and only chance that a day of school doesn't come off as painful as untreated rectal cancer.

Wolverine and the X-men has not only established itself as one of Marvel's best new titles. It's established itself as an X-book with a very different feel from the always dire and constant extinction threats so typical of X-books. The first arc introduced the Jean Grey Institute for Higher Learning and told a fun story about young mutants adjusting to a new school and homicidal kids trying to destroy that school with a living island. For once, I don't even have to make a joke about that or use a lame metaphor. That's actually what happened and you know what? It was pretty fucking awesome. It wasn't just a good story. It was fun, light-hearted, and hopeful. It actually made readers have faith in the future. In this day and age, that's a pretty novel concept. There are enough comics on the market that require a Prozac prescription to enjoy. It's refreshing to have a book that makes you smile without having to use the pages to roll a joint.

Wolverine and the X-men #4 continues the early growing pains of the Jean Grey Institute. The school was just attacked, damaged, and repaired. The students were likely scarred for life, but no worse than they would be if they went to a public school in Baltimore. It begins with Wolverine doing some narrations that describe how fucked up his job is. By day he's a mild mannered school headmaster. By night he's a ruthless killer with a drinking problem. It's like Superman if he was a crackhead. But some of those activities involve his work with X-Force and as was demonstrated by the end of the Dark Angel Saga (a saga you should have read and jerked off to several times by now) his night life is now affecting his day job. His staff are all understandably restless, but Wolverine isn't done making them wish they had dropped out. 

Once again, X-men Regenesis has helped some books mesh with others. It's the kind of coherence you don't usually get even while sober. But it's like the hot sauce of comics. It makes everything taste better. Remember those activities I mentioned with Wolverine and X-Force? Well one of them led to a young, pre-tyrant Apocalypse. Only now he calls himself Genesis. Rather than surround Genesis with the gritty world of secret mutant kill squads, Wolverine decides to enroll him in school. I honestly think he's better off with the kill squads because pretty much everyone seems to notice how he looks. Not many have lips like his that look like someone shot Stephen Tyler with bee venom and got him stoned. Needless to say, the others aren't too welcoming and that's probably not a good thing for an aspiring tyrant.

But Genesis isn't the only relic from Wolverine's late-night debacles with X-Force. At the end of the Dark Angel Saga, Warren emerged completely changed. He wasn't Arcangel anymore, but he wasn't Warren Worthington III either. He's completely amnesic and has no memory of who he was. So he looks in the mirror, sees that he has wings, and makes the perfectly logical conclusion that he's a real angel. I personally would have assumed that I just took a bad hit of LSD, but I guess angel works just as well. It's not enough to just look the part for him either. He has to act the part as well. So he flies off and finds a father and two kids who just went through the traumatic experience of burying a pet dog. Warren digs him up and offers to bring him back. Not only are the kids not very enthusiastic about this, but I'm pretty sure they'll need therapy for the rest of their natural lives.

But these are just the regular antics of new students in a new school. My old school didn't have angels and teenage tyrants, but if an angel or a kid that looked like Genesis showed up it wouldn't gain nearly as much attention as what the seniors did to the incoming freshmen, which usually involved crazy glue and thumb tacks. For this new school, Jason Aaron takes some time off from making shit blow up and homicidal kids and actually depicts a lecture with the students at the Jean Grey Institute. He even brings in yet another relic of Uncanny X-Force in Deathlok. He's only about as intimidating as my 10th-grade algebra teacher and he gives the students a lecture about the future. Since the X-men deal with the future (sometimes literally) on a regular basis, it's not an unreasonable thing to educate the kids about.

This may not be as exciting as seeing the X-men take on an army of Frankenstein monsters or a living island like they did in the first arc, but it has some real relevance here. It offers insight into what life is like in the Jean Grey Institute. Now the shallow douche-bags of comic fandom may thumb their nose at that, but stuff like this helps add depth to the X-men because it shows just what they're doing on a non-heroic basis to make the world better. I agree. Fighting monsters is more exciting, but it helps when there's reason behind why they need to kick the asses of said monsters. Deathlok goes through the class and tells them the odds of them going one path or the other. It gets to the heart of what Wolverine wanted for this school, which was means for mutants to be themselves and not listen to aspire to be Cyclops's bitch.

It's not without drama though. It's worth noting that not everyone seems to know of all the shit that went down during the Dark Angel Saga. Iceman, who established himself as one of Wolverine's most trusted X-men, is among them. He's also one of Warren's oldest friends. So when he finds out that Warren flew off to mentally scar a family, he gets understandably upset. He doesn't offer to pay the therapist bills for the kids, but he does get Warren away from them and finds out that Warren has no idea who he is or who the X-men are. For any number of reasons, this upsets him because it shows that despite being one of the Original Five he hasn't exactly been kept in the loop. Now he probably regrets wasting time on snowmen and internet porn.

It's not the only dramatic moment in the issue. While Deathlok is revealing the potential futures for some students, he hesitates to predict the future for Genesis. When he's confronted, we get a brief flash-forward of a potential future that involves Deathlok being burnt to a crisp and Idie being a mature, very boneable leader. That future also shows that going to school didn't stop Genesis from becoming the Apocalypse that gets a boner every time someone inflicts mass genocide.

This is somewhat of an odd scene because it's not entirely clear if this is a real Days of Futures Past type future or just something Deathlok is conjuring. It may certainly rub some readers the wrong way to see Kid Omega and Idie coddling under Genesis's wrath. It doesn't help that Kid Omega seems to have the emblem of the Phoenix Force on his costume, this before the events of Avengers vs. X-men are resolved. Given all the alternate futures in Marvel, this just seems excessive and cliched. However, it does send a message. Genesis still has the potential to be dangerous and school won't exactly help. Again, a kill squad sounds like a viable alternative here.

In many ways, Genesis's potential future and Warren's new state are a microcosm of what the Jean Grey Institute is facing. Not everybody is okay with it. Iceman confronts Wolverine about it and makes his anger about Warren painfully apparent. He doesn't seem to care that Wolverine was keeping X-Force alive. He only cares that doing so seemed to have mind-fucked his friend. Wolverine doesn't mince words. He explains both in words and in narration that the school is about hope and nourishing vulnerable minds before they become genocidal tyrants. He reveals that Warren has been enrolled in the school. Never mind that Warren has to be older than the rest of the student body. Hell, he was banging Psylocke in Uncanny X-Force and it's really not clear if Psylocke is like those teachers that can't help but bone their students. It's almost as if Warren was de-aged. Jason Aaron doesn't offer any explanation to this and it would be nice if he did, but the point of this conclusion is to show what the Jean Grey Institute represents and in that respect he succeeds. And wouldn't you know it? He does it without blowing shit up.

Once Wolverine is done with his little monologue, everything ends on a fairly upbeat note. But Jason Aaron just seems more impatient than a crackhead in withdraw and offers a preview into the next storyline. It starts with Kitty Pryde being sick and throwing up during class. Usually that's just the result of someone who couldn't sleep off a hangover, but this is something more serious. When Kitty stumbles into the bathroom, she makes a shocking discovery. Apparently, she didn't have a note on her panties that said "don't be a fool, wrap your tool." She also appears to have miracle grow in her uterus because she's pregnant. I now leave the readers for a moment of silence to mourn the eventual destruction of Kitty's snatch.

So an ending full of hope turns into a scene from Species. Now someone getting pregnant in school is nothing new. We live in a country where 15-year-olds get knocked up in locker rooms all the time. What makes Wolverine and the X-men an awesome book is how it presents these issues. It's not done in a dire, world-ending sort of manner. There's conflict, but there's hope. There are assholes, but there is heart. Wolverine and Deathlok both come off as assholes in this issue at times, but it's always balanced with a genuine desire to make this school work. That's the main theme of this issue. It shows the day-to-day bullshit that the X-men have to deal with in order to function. It takes time from islands that want to devour schools and shows just how this new school functions. It also sets up a pretty fucked up story after and one that is sure to require the world's greatest gynecologist when all is said and done.

The only area that may turn some readers off is the tone of the issue. It's organized like one big setup. Some may not appreciate that Jason Aaron is trying to slow down here and show how the Jean Grey Institute functions on a logistical level. Some just like it when shit blows up. They may or may not be future NASCAR fans, but they may have a point on some levels. This issue mostly set up plots for the future. It established Genesis as a new character with an uncertain status. It established Warren as someone whose mind has been fried, frozen, and reheated. It also established that Kitty Pryde may or may have some kinky tastes that would make great Japanese anime porn. But it didn't do much with any of this. And some may not like the tone of Deathlok's vision of the future. In the end this issue is like an extended trailer for an action movie, but without shitty 80s rock music in the background.

I can't fault Jason Aaron for easing into the next arc. Kieron Gillen did the same thing with Uncanny X-men, although one could argue that he did it in a better way. This issue does a great job of exploring the less obvious aspects of the Jean Grey Institute. Aaron's style is as engaging, enjoyable, and fun as ever. It just lacks the same impact that Kieron Gillen gave Uncanny X-men #4. That's not a criticism. Not everyone can raise the bar, less the air grow too thin and everyone suffocates. Wolverine and the X-men #4 is a worthy and entertaining addition to this amazing series. That's why I give it a 4.5 out of 5. It's almost awesome enough to ease the childhood trauma of my own school experience. Almost being the operative word. Nuff said!