Dramatic Reminders: X-men #5

The following is my review of X-men #5, which was posted on PopMatters.com.

It’s easy to forget that everyone was an awkward teenager at some point in their lives. Being a teenager is akin to being a young bird that’s still learning to fly. However, birds don’t have to deal with their raging hormones, reckless impulses, and bodily changes that would put most caterpillars to shame. They also don’t have to deal with an army of adults that can’t stand the notion of trusting teenagers to make responsible decisions. Whether it’s because of their own experience as or because they’ve forgotten what it was like to be young, adults often try to make big decisions for teenagers and teenagers usually don’t like that.

This is the situation that the time displaced Cyclops and Jean Grey have to confront in “Battle of the Atom”. Now the adults are essentially taking their decision to stay in the present out of their hands and like Sir Isaac Newton’s Third Law of Motion, their actions have prompted an equally opposite reaction from the two young teenagers. In X-men #5, this reaction manifests in a way that would frustrate most responsible adults while reminding others that teenage melodrama is like a beehive. Disturbing it the wrong way and it’ll only make things worse.

Each part of the “Battle of the Atom” event has focused on elements of the story, but the main plot has not changed. The X-men are trying to preserve their past and save their future by sending the Original Five X-men back to their own time. At first, the X-men from the present and the future are united in their efforts. They share resources and manpower to track down a teenage Cyclops and Jean Grey. After the shocking revelations in the first two issues, nobody seems to be thinking critically about what they’re doing. They’re basically trying to hoard a couple of deeply distressed teenagers into doing something they don’t want to do. Even with the aid of future knowledge, that’s every bit as daunting as an attack from an army of Sentinels.

But as X-men #5 unfolds, the mission becomes secondary to the drama it inspires. Throughout this issue, Cyclops and Jean Grey don’t act like the mature superheroes that inspired generations of X-men. They act like teenagers. They find themselves in some beautifully awkward moments that don’t involve killer robots or mutant powers. Everything from raging hormones to complicated emotions plague them at every turn. And they have to deal with this while trying to avoid detection from a team of adult X-men equipped with resources the NSA could only dream of. It’s like trying to impress a date while being chased by hungry wolves, but that doesn’t keep them from sharing a few dramatic moments.

These moments help add some emotional resonance to a story that has already had plenty of emotional moments. These moments feel somewhat overdue and Jean even admits this in the issue, admitting that she had been treating Cyclops as if he had the plague since they arrived in the future. Like many teenagers, she made some overly simplistic judgments about Cyclops based on what his future self did and had some overly emotional reactions. However, they still trust each other in the same way they have trusted each other since the earliest days of Uncanny X-men. For an entire generation of readers that only know Cyclops and Jean Grey as the overly responsible adults, it serves as a pleasant reminder that they weren’t always the uptight role models that have to come back from the dead every few years.

Since “Battle of the Atom” is meant to be the X-men’s 50th anniversary event, it’s fitting that it brings two of the most iconic X-men back to their roots. Like the cantankerous old men on Fox News who complain about today’s youth, many readers forget that Cyclops and Jean Grey were teenagers at some point. And in their youth, they embodied the spirit of Charles Xavier’s dream and a big part of that dream was self-determination. Now they are fighting to determine who will decide their fate, even if it means risking the integrity of the timeline. While most of the X-men aren’t content to leave this determination in the hands of a couple of teenagers, some understand their overly dramatic reaction more than others.

This leads to a pivotal turning point in this issue and in “Battle of the Atom” as a whole. Some of the present X-men start to question the intentions of the future X-men. They may not sympathize with two teenagers putting an entire timeline at risk, but they do have a problem with forcing them to accept their fate. This stirs up the first round of tension between the present and future X-men, which allow Cyclops and Jean to continue running. Because as most teenagers probably know, when adults start arguing, their capacity to harass them diminishes.

The growing tension and the unfolding drama help give X-men #5 a special kind emotional resonance. The action never goes beyond an extended chase that probably wouldn’t make the final cut in any of the Fast and the Furious movies, but impact is still on par with the rest of “Battle of the Atom”. There are times, however, when plot flows inconsistently and a number of scenes are a bit underdeveloped. But it still moves the story forward in a compelling way.

Every great superhero was an awkward teenager at some point. But even for those who weren’t born with superpowers, these awkward years were very influential. The Original Five X-men began their path as teenagers. Between near-extinction and spats with other superheroes, it’s easy to forget that the X-men went through these formative phases. And after 50 years, they still make for a compelling narrative and despite their awkwardness throughout X-men #5, Cyclops and Jean Grey are still the best embodiments of that narrative.

Final Score: 8 out of 10

Scanned Thoughts: X-men #5

When you get a comic book fan drunk and give him a blog in the middle of a big time comic book event, beautiful and disturbing things happen. My dick was so hard after the first few issues of Battle of the Atom last week that I could have been spokesman for Cialis. Now the story promises to continue, crossing over into every major X-men title along the way. This will either ensure that the awesome is evenly spread out or evenly distribute the shit stains out so they’re less noticeable. It’s too early to tell which it is, but like a really good orgy before a really bad hangover, I want to enjoy it while it lasts. What follows is my drunken assessment of X-men #5, which is Part 3 in the X-men Battle of the Atom event. But before I continue, I should probably once again warn my audience that if your erection lasts more than four hours this time, then get to an emergency room. Some things just don’t need to be documented on an insurance form.

With that in mind, I hate to see what Xorna, also known as Jean "the real fucking deal" Grey, had to put on her insurance form. After the cock-smashingly awesome revelation in the previous issue, she goes onto explain that the reason she has taken up Xorn cos-playing is because it’s the only way to contain her powers. It’s no longer enough to just think happy thoughts about chocolate, bacon, and whiskey. She needs a suit that makes her look a mascot for Cyberdyne to keep her powers in check. It’s actually a more fitting explanation than it sounds. O5 Jean’s powers have been expanding since she put Wolverine in the gayest pose he’s ever been in back in All New X-men #2. But more importantly, her presence gets the X-men of the present to shut the fuck up and agree to help them find O5 Cyclops and O5 Jean Grey.

Everything is still fried chicken and porn between the present X-men and future X-men. They’re now one happy chronologically mismatched team and stand united in tracking down O5 Cyclops and O5 Jean. The two Beasts even allow them to use a new X-jet since Cyclops and Jean hijacked the Blackbird. And yes, it’s way too fucking convenient that they just happen to have a spare jet on hand that goes by an exponentially less badass name like Dove. But no, it’s not too contrived. The X-men conjure new jets and institutes the same way Hugh Hefner finds hot blondes willing to bone him. So a team of future X-men and present X-men take it for a test drive while O5 Iceman and O5 Beast are told to stay behind in case Jean and Scott return. I guess that’s something irrational runaway teenagers do in the Marvel universe. The teenagers I grew up around would have to travel to different time zones before they even contemplated doing that shit.

I guess O5 Jean and O5 Cyclops have more in common with the teenagers I grew up around than I think. Because they actually do end up in a different time zone. At the end of All New X-men #16, they landed at a beach along the California coast line. I guess there are worst places they could land. They could have tried to escape through downtown Detroit the night after the Red Wings get knocked out of the NHL playoffs. But avoiding the X-men tends to get a lot harder when there’s no high tech jet to rely on. They end up having to ditch the jet and their uniforms, forcing them to steal clothes. Because in the future, running around naked either ends up on an internet porn site or becomes a reality show.

But this plenty logical tactic is a lot less boring when a couple of hormonal teenagers are involved. I mention hormones because O5 Cyclops and Jean just can’t resist making shit awkward. They’re not old enough to know how to avoid awkward shit. It leads to a very humorous and a somewhat telling moment where Cyclops “accidentally” sees Jean getting dressed and Jean gets “distracted” when Cyclops takes off his shirt. And by distracted, I mean distracted in the same way women get distracted when they look at Channing Tatum’s ass. It’s a telling scene since for most of All New X-men, O5 Jean has been avoiding Cyclops and even treating him like shit at times because of what his future self does. She claimed she wasn’t in love with him, yet she gets all awkward when he takes his shirt off. This is why teenage hormones can be both entertaining and humiliating. I’m pretty sure O5 Cyclops had a boner in this scene, but I guess he hides it much better than I ever did during gym class.

Even after ditching the X-jet and their uniforms, it doesn’t take much for the future and present X-men to find them. In the same way teenage hormones make it impossible to not get horny in certain situations, they also make it impossible to block out two powerful telepaths. Xavier and Xorna/Jean make good use of Cerebro to track down O5 Cyclops and Jean while they make their way along the coast in their X-jet/Dove. I still think that’s the worst name for a vehicle since my cross-dressing neighbor named his Chevy the “drag hauler,” but it gets the job done. Since all O5 Cyclops and O5 Jean can do at this point is hot wire a motorcycle and try to block them out with amateur-level psionics, they might as well be trying to shovel the shit from the septic tank outside of the Fox News headquarters.

It seems like more lopsided conflict than a wrestling match between a midget and grizzly bear on crystal meth. And it looks like it’ll stay that way so long as the future X-men and the present X-men are getting along like bacon and whiskey. But O5 Jean wasn’t the only one who felt just a little fucked up about the situation. While O5 Beast and O5 Iceman are doing their part as couch potatoes, Rachel Grey and Kitty strike up a conversation over leftover Chinese food. Because what great idea hasn’t begun with leftover Chinese food? I’m pretty sure that’s the shit Nikola Tesla ate.

Their conversation, however, comes off as a somewhat random 180. In the previous two issues, Kitty Pryde was completely on board with sending the O5 X-men back to the past and Rachel didn’t say a damn thing. Now they just flip-flopped on the issue in ways that even Mitt Romney would find egregious. They just suddenly realize that forcing this on the O5 is morally suspect. That’s like a butcher at a meat packing plant just suddenly realizing that he’s a vegetarian. It’s somewhat underdeveloped, but it does begin the first major rift between the present and future X-men. I imagine they won’t be sharing their bacon and whiskey for much longer.

For O5 Cyclops and O5 Jean Grey, there is no flip-flopping on this issue. They’re still dead set against going back even though the present and future X-men are closing in on them fast. As they’re riding along the highway, they remind each other that they didn’t exactly ditch the X-men with a plan in mind. Like most teenage endeavors, they decided to just up and leave without a strategy. I’m pretty sure that’s how 95 percent of all parties go back and how 99 percent of all teen pregnancies start. They really don’t have much of a destination in mind and they don’t know of too many allies that are sympathetic to time displaced teenagers. But O5 Jean Grey does offer one idea and warns Cyclops that he’s going to hate it. At this point, I think he should be used to hating the way shit pans out for him.

But even as the rest of the X-men close in on them, they manage to have a more serious moment together and this time it’s a lot less awkward than accidentally seeing each other naked. For most of All New X-men, O5 Cyclops and O5 Jean haven’t really talked much about what happens between them. O5 Cyclops just gave Jean a copy of their wedding invitation and beyond that, they’ve kept their distance. It is basically the 800-pound gorilla taking a huge shit in the middle of a room. Cyclops and Jean Grey are by far the most iconic romance in the history of X-men and for them to ignore this is like trying to ignore an oncoming tornado. And O5 Jean Grey has been pretty damn distant from Cyclops. Then when O5 Beast wouldn’t listen to her, she turned to him and he trusted her when she said that something was very wrong with these future X-men. So now they’re in this shit together and they can’t ignore the shit from that gorilla anymore.

They finally get some of the crazier shit about their future relationship out in the open, namely Jean dying multiple times and Cyclops going crazy. Yet O5 Cyclops makes it clear that he’s still got a boner for her and he would do anything to keep that boner. O5 Jean even goes so far as to apologize for treating him like he just shit in her shampoo bottle and thanking him for trusting her. This makes for the perfect opportunity for O5 Cyclops to tell her what he couldn’t tell her in that damn letter he keeps trying to write. It could have made for a very emotional moment, but like most teenagers that moment, it’s cut short when the rest of the X-men arrive. It feels like a scene that should have gone on longer. Instead, there was an entire page wasted on Jubilee giving Shogo to O5 Beast and O5 Iceman. It contributes about as much to the story as Shogo’s shitty diapers.

Like a teenage boy whose parents barge in just as he’s about get his girlfriend’s bra off, O5 Cyclops doesn’t respond kindly when the present and future X-men run him and O5 Jean off the road. To their credit, they try not to be too rough. And not playing rough only means Deadpool shooting the tires of their motorcycle out while Beast catches them before they can sustain more brain damage than most teenagers usually incur. It doesn’t make for a very epic chase scene. It’s like a Disney Channel version of the Fast and the Furious. O5 Cyclops and O5 Jean still try to fight back, but it doesn’t turn into a full blown brawl like an argument between Cyclops and Wolverine. It just amounts to more pleading to go back to the past and accept the shitty fate they know is in store for them.

However, they don’t get to do much pleading because Rachel and Kitty Pryde show up in what looks like a stripped down version of Reed Richards’s fantasticar. Like a spare jet, I guess it’s another one of those vehicles the X-men stockpile in the same way I stockpile bacon and blow. It’s also a bit contrived, but it does make the argument that follows much more interesting. Again, it doesn’t make for a big fight. It’s just Kitty pointing out how they’re treating O5 Cyclops and O5 Jean Grey like criminals and that’s not a good way to deal with a couple of confused teenagers. I guess in the future teenagers are more reasonable, but the argument is only part of the fight.

While Kitty Pryde is distracting the other X-men, Rachel Grey finally says more than a few words to O5 Jean Grey. She basically gives her a quick lesson in advanced telepathy, something they probably felt too awkward to do in earlier issues of All New X-men. This helps them give the X-men the slip yet again, ensuring they’ll be even more pissed off and for a couple of teenagers that’s an accomplishment. But in addition to showing that she’s no longer so shell-shocked at seeing her teenage mother, it shows that Rachel really doesn’t trust the future X-men. She seems to have the same bad feeling that O5 Jean did now. It’s the first major act of dissention between the two teams and in X-men comics, that shit never ends well. In fact, it usually ends with Wolverine and Cyclops trying to kill each other.

Those two may have more reasons to do so because after O5 Cyclops and O5 Jean Grey slip away, they decide to follow the idea that O5 Jean Grey floated earlier. And that idea involves them meeting up with Cyclops’s revolutionary team on the ruins of Utopia of all places. I honestly don’t know why Jean thinks this is a good idea. Cyclops has been among those who has also made it clear that they should go back to the past. Yet she somehow thinks she can win sympathy from him? I guess she hopes that seeing a teenage version of the woman he loves will ensure that his penis overrides his brain.

I’m not sure if it’s a bad sign that a couple of teenagers were able to outsmart a full complement of adult X-men. All I know is that when teenagers frustrate adults, bad shit tends to happen. Sometimes it’s awesome. Sometimes it involves a hefty repair bill and a couple of lawsuits. Since my lawyer and I aren’t on speaking terms right now, I’m hoping that Battle of the Atom leans more towards the former. And now that Uncanny X-men is entering the picture, the teen drama looks to escalate in ways that NBC only wishes could be made into a reality show. X-men #5 continues to build on the momentum set up by the first two issues while shifting the focus more to drama. There weren’t any cock-smashing revelations in this comic, but it was still pretty damn awesome. X-men #5 gets a 8 out of 10. The X-men are starting to bicker again and they’re 0 for 2 in keeping a couple of teenagers from doing too much damage. Now they know how the Catholic Church feels. Nuff said!

X-men #5 PREVIEW - More Details and a Kick-Ass Jet

If I haven't made it clear yet how hard my dick was after reading parts 1 and 2 of X-men Battle of the Atom, then I guess I'll never convince anyone and go back to drilling for oil with my foreskin. It's not unusual for Marvel to start an event really strong. I'm still sober enough to remember how awesome Fear Itself and Avengers vs. X-men were when they first began. They eventually fell so hard that Satan himself felt it in his anus. I sincerely hope that X-men Battle of the Atom does the same. Marvel doesn't need to take another shit on Jack Kirby's grave. But from here on out, the story will unfold weekly in various X-books and I have every intention of getting drunk and reviewing every one of them.

The next issue on the docket is X-men #5 by Brian Wood. This issue will have the present and future X-men chasing after O5 Cyclops and O5 Jean Grey in hopes that they won't fuck up the future too much by running away. I seem to remember a simpler time when teenagers running off just made people worry about them fucking in ways that make the Catholic Church angry, but the whole fucking timeline is at stake here. On top of that, All New X-men #16 revealed that the mysterious Xorna is actually Jean fucking Grey. This made both my brain and my penis very happy when I read it. Granted, there's always a possibility that it could be a ruse. I hate to keep showing this, but I think it gets the point across.

I shouldn't still be pissed off about it, and yet...

At the very least, there are multiple Jean Greys to work with in this event. And that's a statement I never thought I would say two years ago. Hell, back then it would have been more likely to hear me say, "No beer please, I don't drink anymore." But that shows just how quickly things can change in the X-books. Xorna's revelation posed some interesting questions and possibilities that promise to be explored in future issues. Thankfully, Newsarama released a preview earlier today and it offered a few details that should help maintain a healthy boner until next week.

So in addition to revealing out that Beast has way too much free fucking time on his hands and not nearly enough internet porn, this preview effectively explains why Jean was dressed as Xorn to begin with. It seemed like a pretty fucked up choice of attire, given that the Xorn was the asshole that killed her before getting overly retconned. She needs this suit in order to keep her powers in check. It's not an unreasonable concern. Jean does have a rather lengthy history of going a bit power mad and devouring planets when she has a bad case of cosmic PMS. O5 Jean said in the previous issue that her powers were growing and anyone who has tried to grow a beard knows that at some point, growing it any bigger just isn't going to work.

This still doesn't mean that this Xorna/Jean Grey figure is actually legitimate. If she was really this concerned about her powers, why not reveal that to O5 Jean Grey? She knows as well as anyone that her powers are destined to get fucked up. This might actually be a serious enough detail to get through to an overly emotional teenage girl. But she doesn't do that and she gives the impression that she has something to hide. And as someone who has made way too many mistakes with transvestite hookers, I can attest how bad it can get if certain details are not shared.

Battle of the Atom has just started and promises to escalate quickly. Like a vagina, it's awesome in its beauty yet mysterious in its function. There are so many ways this event could go. It could either induce multiple orgasms or multiple migraines. It's too early to tell, but I've got my booze and my blog handy for whatever outcome it may be. Nuff said!