X-men #8 - Awesome vs. WTF?

After the first arc of the new adjectiveless X-men series, I was a bit jaded. That happens when I by into the bloated hype that comic companies throw into big events that make Miley Cyrus picking her nose look like a football game with playoff implications on Monday Night Football. I admit this book lost some credibility with me after Curse of the Mutants. When you finish a major story with the same fortitude that Homer Simpson finished a calculus equation it's enough to leave any would-be readers skeptical. However, this series didn't crash and burn like the lumps of diarrhea that was Ultimatum or One More Day. The new arc, "Serve and Protect," promises to do what this series was originally intend to do from the beginning aside from providing more ad space for the Thor movie. It was to connect the X-men in 616 to the greater Marvel universe.

The last issue really felt like it should have been the first issue. X-men #7 showed the X-men getting back to their roots, pulling off random acts of heroism that included stopping bank robberies, rescuing cats from trees, providing desperately needed makeup for hookers. It was all part of a new PR campaign that Cyclops is pushing to make the world love the X-men. After M-Day, he sort of has to make up for the whole mutants-going-extinct-that-justified-sending-kill-squads-out mentality. This effort is small, but not completely devoid of shame. Cyclops is genuine in his desire to convince the world that the X-men should be celebrated rather than have an approval rating that even Dick Cheney would look down on.

X-men #7 had the X-men begin a bigger push with this whole campaign. When a new disturbance emerged in New York City, Cyclops sent a team to investigate. The team consisted of Storm, Gambit, Wolverine, and Emma Frost. They were to go into the sewers and investigate a series of disappearances. This led them to a den of what can only be described as groping zombies, not unlike Charlie Sheen at a strip club. It's hard to tell because the art is pretty shitty. It looks like cardboard cut out by a first grader and pasted into photoshop for a retarded high schooler to prop up. It seems like Marvel is going out of it's way to reconnect readers with classic horror monsters. First it was vampires. Then it was zombies. But that isn't the only clue they stumbled upon. At the end of the issue, the X-men cross paths with Spider-Man. Who after One More Day is still on a lower heroic ground than event he zombies.

X-men #8 picks up right after that meeting and like Blade in the first arc, Spider-Man offers his help. He also fills in some of the blanks to this madness. He reveals what pretty much every Spider-Man fan who ever saw the 90s cartoon already knows. The sewers are home to the Lizard, a hulked out version of his old friend Curt Connors. The twist here is that now the Lizard is on the loose again and is taking a page right out of the vampire's playbook (minus the sparkling) and is creating zombie followers. It's not a trick that the Lizard has played before, but it is a somewhat different twist to a plot that Spider-Man fans have seen more times than Mary Jane has seen the backseat of a Mercedes.

Now rather than look further, Spidy and the X-men do something that pretty much ruins any suspense this moment may have had. They leave the sewer and regroup at a fancy hotel that Emma Frost no doubt roped Cyclops into arranging, most likely through actions that involved the plots of several pornos. Then we get a seemingly random transition to some nerdy kid playing a knock-off of World of Warcraft (can't use the actual name in comics because lawyers would sneak out of the shadows like ninjas). It's a strange montage of wasted ink. Again, the art here is really shitty so it's hard to tell what's going on. It's easy to miss and even easier to gloss over. All the reader needs to know is that somehow a nerdy kid who plays too many computer games is involved somehow or will be. It seems out of place and about as random as a clown in a funeral.

It feels like filler so the X-men have time to get to the hotel. Again, Emma Frost seems to be taking the mission about as seriously as Tom Arnold's acting career. She's running up a room service tab while Storm is setting up an array to contact Cypher back on Utopia. Spider-Man is there too, but only to add what Cypher already finds out. Locals in the area are disappearing at alarming rates. Then the disappearances stop until young teenagers start vanishing like virgins at R. Kelly's house. Spider-Man knows one of them so that's why he's involved. It's only a bit more convincing than Blade's old excuse of just going where the vampires are.

From here there are some flashbacks and insights into who these kids are. It's a clear attempt to humanize this issue as being more than just a sewer zombie attack, which pretty much fits into any superhero comic. It's a big deal for the X-men because if they can help rescue a bunch of darling missing teens, then that would go a long ways to making it difficult for people to hate them. They would be like Brad Pitt, so overpowered and over privileged yet impossible to hate.

While they're talking about these kids, we meet up with the World of Warcraft nerd again. Like so many other level 75 wizards, in real life they're about as powerful as a kitten with it's limbs cut off. The boy gets jumped by some bullies and roughed up. They're just your stereotypical bullies that you would see in a John Hughes movie. Again, it seems like random transition material. I may sound bitter about that and I admit it's because it brings back disturbing memories of my own high school experience. I had to put this comic down to go to my happy place for a few minutes before I went into a hulked out rage. But a few calls to my therapist and I was okay.

Back at the fancy hotel devoid of bullies and shit, the conversation continues. Again, the details about more kids are discussed. This time even Emma Frost chimes in, talking about a missing child she investigated. Wait...when did she have time to do this? Did we miss something? I know the timeline in comics is more fucked than a futon at Hugh Hefner's house, but where the hell did this come from? I know the story needs to have some human impact, but no amount of impact makes a difference when you start pulling shit right out of thin air. Shit should only be pulled or pushed out of the ass. It's not even that compelling. A seventeen-year-old girl living with her grandmother disappears. They think it's connected to the other kid Spider-Man mentioned. That's about it.

Once Spidy and the X-men chime in and basically drone on about how much it sucks for kids to be outcasts (like it takes superheroes to figure that shit out), they enlist Cypher to find a common thread between the kids. Gambit made a valid point that when kids are outcasts they tend to look for an outlet. With help from Cypher, they find out that the outlet involved chatting online with some user named DB001. So yeah, it's the whole internet stalker shit that made "To Catch A Predator" such a hit. You would think kids saw enough bad movies to know that there are evil people on the internet. They don't have usernames like WindowlessVanPedoman666, but even teenagers should be smart enough to avoid that shit. Then again, perhaps I'm giving too much credit to the underdeveloped brains of our nation's overcaffinated, overweight, under-educated youth.

Once they find a common thread, Emma calls Wolverine to track down that proverbial windowless van. The trail leads to the nerdy World of Warcraft boy again, who like an extra on Star Trek listened to DB001 online and went to meet him. While he didn't end up having to play doctor with a creepy old man that insist he drinks his special healing elixir that's filled in an old vodka bottle, he does get taken by the Lizard. It's the first bit of action in this whole comic and it's a little underwhelming. You want to feel bad for the kid, but given the stupidity of not heeding all those warnings that after school specials blare every day it's hard to feel much sympathy.

Wolverine catches up and tries to rescue the kid. There's a nice little clash, but because of the shitty art it looks like something out of a 4th grade art project. When Wolverine gets bitch-slapped a bit, he tries to end it quickly. Then the Lizard sicks a hoard of lizard zombies on him. Just like in the last arc when Wolverine got in over his head against a bunch of vampires, he gets in over his head with zombies. And not just any zombies. Lizard zombies. We finally see some details of the creatures that showed up in the last issue. Again, those details are fucked because the art is fucked. But still, we've seen this shit with Wolverine before. It didn't help the last arc finish strong. Why the hell would it work here with shittier art? All it really does is make for a semi-decent two-page spread.

While Wolverine is getting his ass kicked (again), the Lizard gets away with the kid. He takes him to a special cell area which is very similar to that proverbial windowless van. Again, there's no sign of Michael Jackson's Jesus Juice, but the kids mentioned earlier are there and have likely shit themselves no fewer than three times. Like I said, you want to feel sorry for them. But it's their own damn fault for listening to some nameless shmuck on the internet who claims they can take them to a happy place that doesn't involve bullies, school, or sodomy (that last one being only lightly implied).

While they're all whining for their mommies, it's revealed that the Lizard might not actually be the one behind these string of abductions. In fact, the Lizard himself may be a victim of having listened to someone on the internet when he should have gone back to beating off to internet porn (I'm sure there's an entire site dedicated to reptile sex somewhere). The Lizard is just a puppet on strings. We don't actually see who the puppet master is. He seems interested in Connors's research, but his words are as standard as you can get with comic book villainy. So it could be anybody. There's not even a shadow to offer a hint. It sort of takes away from the mystery. It's not the kind of ending that will make most readers grind their teeth to thumb tacks waiting for the next issue. Given how random this issue has been, the end comes as a relief.

I'm not going to hide from it. I was wounded by this comic. I had such high hopes after the last issue that this series would redeem itself. Curse of the Mutants started weak and got a bit stronger before crashing and burning. This arc started with a strong issue, but already the story seems to be crashing and burning. It isn't just because of the shitty art either. The issue tries to hard to add the human element to the story. So rather than take advantage of the opportunity for some conflict with the X-men and Spider-Man in the sewer, the issue takes a complete detour. That detour isn't even the scenic route. It just has a bunch of random spreads about the kids who were abducted. They weren't worked into the story naturally. They were just laid out in a neat yet bland way that made it difficult to get attached to them at all. If anything, this little plot trick makes these teenagers less deserving of sympathy because they were so damn stupid to get themselves caught up in this shit.

The issue isn't without some positives. At least it tried to add a touch of real-world heart to a series that's only been known for fighting off vampire armies. If only it could try to do more with the actual plot surrounding Spider-Man and the X-men. Part of the appeal of this arc was that it brought Spider-Man into the fray like the last arc did with Blade. Even though the last arc sucked in the end, at least Blade played a solid part. In this issue Spider-Man might as well have been a movie extra. He didn't do shit. There was no element of Peter Parker whatsoever and so much of the issue was sent pretty much narrating shit that happened off panel that it you would get more satisfaction out of reading the Wall Street Journal on Ritalin.

There's no way around it. This issue sucked. I was willing to overlook the terrible art in the last issue for the promise of a novel concept. Well I can only overlook so much before I stumble into a pile of shit. Even Curse of the Mutants didn't have as many WTF moments as X-men #8. It was a chore to read. It wasn't exciting, engaging, or enjoyable. It did little to make me want to read the next issue. Even with Spider-Man's help, this issue is like Gwen Stacy on the George Washington Bridge. It's DOA. That's why I give it a 1.5 out of 5. It tries to do a lot, but fails miserably. Nuff said!

X-men: To Serve and Protect #1 - The Basics of Awesome

It goes without saying that Marvel Comics needs to keep readers interested and like any good business, they'll bend over backwards and suck any number of dicks to keep delivering a product that we fans gladly fork our hard earned money over to follow this unfolding saga of awesome. The X-books are their own world. It's like the Wal Mart of Marvel's character arsenal because it has so many different characters, plots, and stories to choose from. At the same time it's a daunting task trying to keep that interest going. In a ways it's like porn. Once you jerk off to pretty much everything the internet and illegal imports from South Asia, it's a lot harder to get your rock off.

The X-books have decades of continuity, the equivalent of several internets worth of porn to work with. Usually their way to keep the gravy train pouring gravy is to throw big events into the mix. Fans need to be wowed because their standards are so high and their capacity for bitching is so strong that unless everything comes straight from brain stem of Hemmingway himself it gets demonized. To their credit Marvel tries it's best to keep one-upping themselves. The X-books have had an embarrassment of riches lately with House of M, the Messiah Trilogy, and most recently a string of #1s featuring the likes of Wolverine, X-23, Generation Hope, and Uncanny X-Force. It's all been big, flashy shit that can't always be that deep or have too much substance. That may make people actually think.

However, there is room for the negated little things. They're so easy to negate and can keep a good story from becoming awesome. Great writers and greater ideas take care of the little things. Series like Blackest Night, Superman Origins, and Civil War did a great job of covering every detail. During events in the X-books like Utopia and Mutants vs. Vampires there were some off-shoots to those stories that acted like these little filler stories. They weren't bit or flashy. They simply told smaller stories about the more personal aspects of the X-world. It's not the kind of thing that will make a fanboy's heart explode and their dick go crashing through the roof. That's a tragedy too because these smaller stories compliment the larger ones and when nobody appreciates them, Marvel has to go back to blowing shit up and that runs the risk of collateral damage.

Following in the footsteps of Nation X, the X-books began a new mini that emerges from the shadows of Second Coming. It's called X-men" To Serve and Protect. This is a series that essentially gets back to basics. For the past few years the X-men haven't been all that heroic. House of M set them up for a one-night stand with extinction and so much of their struggles were directed away from heroics and all towards survival. Well that's different now. Second Coming made it so mutants could stand up extinction. Now they have to learn to be heroes again. The story after Mutants vs. Vampires promises to be the next big tale that sends them down that road, but before they get to it X-men: To Serve and Protect sets the stage. It takes a handful of characters and tells short little stories about them doing the little things. It isn't epic, but it is a vital part to the ongoing awesomeness of the X-books and should not be discounted.

The first issue has a total of four stories, each told by a different writer. The first story involves Rockslide and Anole, two of the younger mutants who still live in a world of dreams that haven't yet been shattered by the adult world. Rockslide wakes Anole up and suddenly remembers why he joined the X-men in the first place. He wants to make a difference. So out of nowhere and most likely after watching The Dark Knight on Blu Ray for the fifteenth time, he says they should go out and fight crime. It seems random, but someone had to remember the original purpose of the X-men at one point. It might as well be Rockslide, who isn't known for his impulse control.

Anole goes along with it, but there's a problem. As with all impulses, what sounds good on paper (or what sounds good while you're wasted on tequila) doesn't always pan out when put into practice. To fight crime for some reason they feel like they have to put on masks. Given how they look, that would be like Kanye West trying to prove he's not a douche-bag by buying sunglasses laced with silver instead of gold. Anole puts on a cloak and a fake mustache. Rockslide puts on a hockey mask. They look more like serial killers than crime fighters, but that doesn't stop them from finding a crime and making a scene.

In the end they do stop the crime and save a woman who was about to be assaulted, but when she sees them she runs away like a creationist from the natural history museum. Rockslide is encouraged. Anole seems about as convinced as Michael Moore in a debate with Sean Hannity. It's easy to forget they're still teenagers. They've yet to process fully the meaning of a young woman's scream or the consequences of their actions. At least for them this doesn't involve a botched house party or a beer run. They do some heroics and for that they should be commended.

The next story is a bit more mature. It involves Emma Frost, a character who has suffered horrible characterization under the pen of Matt Fraction. She's either an outright bitch or she's submissive arm candy. If anyone is in need of a story that just shows someone being themselves, it's Emma Frost. This story is that story. Emma's doing what most would expect her to do. She's getting a massage at a fancy spa that's probably more exclusive than Steve Jobs's personal phone number. She's also naked so that alone makes the whole comic worth buying. Most male readers would be content to see a whole plot of her just getting a massage. But Marvel has to be coy here and tell a story. This time it involves a psychic attack that for whatever reason has every overprivlidged rich girl walking like drones at a GOP rally. Emma, having been inconvenienced, takes it upon herself to fix the problem so she could get back to her massage.

The asshole behind this little attack is a butt ugly man/ape named Mandrill. With his pheromone powers, he's controlling all these rich beautiful woman to look at him like he's Brad Pitt and George Clooney all rolled into one sweet man-package. Most male readers would admit, they would do the same thing if they had those powers as well.

However, it doesn't work on Emma Frost. This is a woman who went toe-to-toe with the Phoenix and made her living manipulating men as a stripper. To manipulate her would be like getting Satan to kiss your shoes while dressing up in a school girls costume to dance to your entire Ipod playlist. Mandril isn't amused and tries to attack Emma with the girls. Somehow a bunch of overprivileged rich women against someone like Emma Frost hardly seems like a fair fight.

Needless to say, Emma barely breaks a sweat fighting off the attack. Being beautiful, tough, and thoroughly pissed off for having her massage interrupted she makes quick work of them. Then to punish Mandril, she messes with his mind in a way that all men would consider to be a fate worse than death. Originally, he busted into this spa to get a bunch of beautiful woman a man as ugly as him could never get under his control. Emma turned that around on him, twisting his mind so that whenever he sees a beautiful woman he'll just see his own butt ugly face. That means he'll never be able to look a woman in the eye without being repulsed, thus making even a simple task like masterbating to internet porn next to impossible.

It's the kind of cruel yet fitting lesson that makes Emma Frost so lovable. She does it with a cool attitude that hasn't been seen since the Joss Whedon days and for this, Emma fans of all stripes should finally have reason to celebrate. For she is still the most awesome bitch with a heart of gold in Marvel Comics.

The next story isn't quite as sexy. This one involves Doug Ramsey, aka Cypher. He's a computer geek and overall braniac who has to rely on old fashioned fighting skills to be a hero. In that sense he's like Batman if he was an awkward and sometimes annoying teenager. He hasn't had too many chances to be heroic since Second Coming.

This little story changes that. On a sunny day in San Francisco he picks up a disturbance (which in San Francisco could mean any number of crazy things) and looks into it. He discovers the source to be your typical hissy fit from Hydra. Some douche-bag thought it would be a good idea to stage a suicide attack in a city near where the entire mutant population lives. This doesn't even qualify as a it-seemed-like-a-good-idea-at-the-time moment. It's more of a what-the-fuck-were-they-on-and-where-can-I-get-some moment.

Cypher stops one attack, getting some unpleasant attention from the police in the process. They look to question him as if he was OJ Simpson. Then without the help of a white Bronco, he runs off to find another Hydra suicide bomber that his senses are picking up on. Now I'm not sure if this is some broader statement about how the police can be assholes, but there seems to be little reason why they treat Cypher as a suspect after he's stopped a suicide bomber. In this day and age that would get you a personal blow job from Sean Hannity. He probably would have Cypher on speed dial because he succeeds again in taking down the bomber.

It doesn't become quite the subliminal advertisement for the GOP because the cop does end up being a somewhat nicer guy. Instead of questioning him the second time, he figures out that Cypher isn't the enemy and the guys with bombs to their chests are. Somehow that shouldn't have taken more then one suicide bomber to figure out, but at least he came around. Cypher gets to be a hero and he doesn't get arrested. In comics where cops almost never show up and aren't always shown in the best of light, this is probably the most balanced story in the X-books that they've had in years.

The final story involves our old friend Fantomex. He's a bit of a douche, but at least he has manners. His story starts off with him showing his douche side by breaking into a museum and stealing a large gem. Only he didn't steal it himself. He actually stole it from another thief who stole it beforehand. I know that sounds confusing, but it's actually pretty easy to follow. Fantomex doesn't like some other French guy stealing his thunder so he decides to fuck with him.

Not one to take this sort of shit lightly, the thief goes after Fantomex and the two fight it out for the diamond. It's a pretty well-developed scene. It's not heavy on the inner monologues like Cypher's story was. It's just pure hand-to-fist ass-kicking and in a book that has smaller stories at it's core, this actually fits quite nicely. It's a little cartoony at times. You could probably put Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd in this story and rate it TV-14 and it would still work.

Eventually, Fantomex does get the upper hand. He fights off the thief and grabs the diamond while crashing into a window. He takes a moment to proclaim his greatness and how he has a super valuable gem that he can use to get money for expensive French wine and very liberal French women who actually shave their arm pits. Then comes a slight twist. Remember, this story is centered around the X-men being heroes again. Stealing a gem isn't very heroic even if it's stolen from another thief. For Fantomex, he has to put off all that bling he would have bought because that window he crashed through was actually a police station. So instead of risking a PR nightmare for the X-men or becoming an even greater douche, he gives the diamond back over to the authorities. He probably doesn't like it, but it beats the hell out of prison rape.

That final story caps off the end of the issue. It's a fitting and more humorous story to end on, bringing together an all around entertaining and insightful collection of tales that show the X-men in less epic parts of their lives. They aren't fighting off aliens or killer robots from the future. They're just living their lives and doing some cool shit along the way.

It's a great premise to a series and one that really follows the same mold of Nation X. These are simple stories that get in a bit deeper to the characters. However, some of the stories didn't dig deep enough. They just showed the characters doing heroic shit. In Nation X there was more emphasis on character development. That's not really apparent here. In some arcs like the Cypher and Emma Frost arc, there was some decent development. But in the others it was limited. Just having characters do something isn't enough. A little depth goes a long way because fans can't dive head first into a series if the pool is too shallow. Plus, the humans skull can only take so much punishment.

But these criticisms are minor. I still have no problem saying this series was awesome and a worthy addition to the X-books. For that I give X-men: To Serve and Protect #1 a 5 out of 5. A series like this is vital to keep these characters grounded. With all the other crazy shit Marvel probably has brewing, a series like this is a great way to keep everything in perspective even in a fantasy world. And for once, no hallucinogens are needed! Nuff said.