Scanned Thoughts: Uncanny X-men Special #1

For whatever reason, there’s this strange trend that has taken hold over the past 20 years and it needs to stop this instant. It involves entire sub-groups emerging online and in real life who dedicate time and energy they could be using to solve the world’s problems and/or get shit-faced towards bashing something that happens to be popular. Now don’t get me wrong. I hate Twilight and every Hugh Grant movie ever made, but I don’t craft entire fucking monuments to that hatred. Some shit is popular for reasons we don’t understand. Get over it. And the powers that be at Marvel are just as guilty of this in their recent efforts to make Cyclops a criminal anti-hero rather than an uptight boy scout. Grant Morrison started it. Every writer since then has taken it way too fucking far. After Avengers vs. X-men, it has gone so far that it might as well be rock at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. That’s not to say that the stories that have followed haven’t been awesome. I’m just saying that the foundation they’re built on has a thick layer of bullshit. And that bullshit has seeped to the surface in Uncanny X-men Special #1, but not in the way it has in other comics. Luckily for the fine patrons of this humble digital pit I call a blog, I’ve got some air fresheners handy.

Like every Die Hard movie ever made, it all starts with some sinister-looking guy crafting some evil plot. But unlike the Die Hard movies, this guy isn’t some Eastern European douchebag who didn’t get the memo that the Cold War was over. He looks more like a cross between a Star Trek fan and a World of Warcraft cos-player. Plus, he’s drinking wine instead of whiskey. For a villain, that’s like drinking light beer at a frat party. Aside from his shitty tastes in alcohol, we know he’s looking for someone and for once, it isn’t a Kardashian. He’s trying to come off as menacing, but he’s not Hans Gruber. Not by a long shot.

That said, the students at the New Xavier School aren’t John McClane either so I guess it balances out. They’re still novices when it comes to X-men. That doesn’t just mean they’re not quite as proficient at destroying killer robots just yet. That means they don’t know the history of the X-men and how some end up getting pretty fucked up by it. They find this out by accident when they bring up an old picture of Magik when she was just a sweet little Russian girl in the New Mutants. It’s a nice little reminder of where some of these characters have come from and just how fucked up they’ve become.

It’s a nice aside, but it’s also a reminder that Magik hasn’t been that innocent since Run DMC and the Beastie Boys were still relevant. A lot has changed since then. Since Avengers vs. X-men, Magik has undergone more changes. However, these changes have been underdeveloped or poorly developed, hence the shitty Dormammu arc. It could be construed as a bad sign for the students at the New Xavier School. If this is what happens to a cute little Russian girl, how fucked up could they end up?

They don’t get to ask her. They’re still students at the New Xavier School and that means they have classes. But instead of calculus, their classes involve learning how to fly the X-jet. Now I know what some Texas republicans are thinking. What kind of school teaches teenagers to fly high tech jets instead of making them love Ronald Reagan? The awesome kind, that’s what. Flying a jet sounds way more useful than calculus. Unfortunately, the lesson ends abruptly as many lessons with the X-men often do with an unexpected attack which results in a plane crash. But I think this could just as easily count as another lesson because given how often the X-men get attacked, these students might as well learn how to deal with being shot out of the sky. I still say that’s way more useful than calculus.

When they crash land on a farm that has probably had its share of UFO sightings already, they’re attacked by three Robocop wannabes, one of which is wearing a badass helmet that looks like a cross between a Viking and the Borg from Star Trek. It’s menacing, but still goofy as fuck. I guess this could count as another lesson as well. The battle that follows isn’t all that epic, but it’s not boring either. Like a bottle of lube and a box of tissues, it gets the job done.

It also counts as another lesson of sorts. In seeing this battle, I realized something. The students of the New Xavier School have fought killer robots, evil inter-dimensional creatures, renegade time travelers, and a pissed off Maria Hill. However, they haven’t fought killer cyborgs yet. That feels like a gross oversight. The New Xavier School may have its faults, but nobody can accuse them of not being comprehensive.

As lessons go, this one fails in a number of ways and not just because the teacher showed up to class stoned. The three cyborgs, despite taking a few optic blasts, manage to subdue Cyclops with some fancy mask contraption. It’s basically a more stylish version of the mask Cyclops was forced to wear in Avengers vs. X-men: Consequences. But in subduing Cyclops, they completely ignore the other students. I’m sure the find that just a little bit insulting. To be fair, Cyclops is one of the most experienced X-men in history and he’s banged Emma Frost and Jean Grey. That still doesn’t stop him from getting captured. If only these cyborgs were telepaths then this battle would have been much shorter and much sexier.

Once Cyclops is subdued, they take Cyclops and fly off with him in their ship, leaving the students of the New Xavier School behind and probably wondering if this is just some elaborate pop quiz. I would still prefer it more than a Calculus quiz. Their only real choice is to call in Magik for help. They know they’re fucked on some level when they have to call in a temperamental Russian teenage girl that once rubbed shoulders with Dormammu. I suppose that’s something else they have to learn at the New Xavier School, working with teammates that will jam a giant fucking sword up their asses if they piss her off.

So Cyclops has been abducted. The most wanted mutant in the entire Marvel Universe and the subject of Maria Hill’s wet dreams is now in the custody of a bunch of renegade cyborgs. It sounds like the kind of circumstances that promise to expand Cyclops’s growing reputation as former Boy Scout turned anti-hero that hooked up with Emma Frost. Anybody that would be surprised by such circumstances is either brain damaged, too high, or not high enough. But this is where the whole plot takes the kind of fucked up turn that can turn a typical road trip into the premise of a shitty slasher movie.

Remember that pasty-faced, wine-loving, Hans Gruber knock-off from earlier? Well, he’s the one that hired these cyborgs to abduct Cyclops. However, it turns out he never wanted Cyclops in the first place. He wanted to abduct Havok. To me, that’s like asking for tickets to a Marilyn Manson and getting tickets for Justin Bieber instead. But apparently, this guy’s tastes are just that fucked up and the cyborgs he hired are just that incompetent. These villains that looked so menacing earlier now come off as a cross between the Three Stooges and a Married With Children rerun. I’m not saying it’s the most fucked up premise for a story, but it certainly changes the tone. It’s like going from Top Gun to Caddyshack. It’s that jarring.

The wine drinker in this inept villain continues to show. When he demands that the cyborgs abduct Havok, they give him a quick lesson in business with respect to mercenaries. First, they inform him that abducting an Avenger costs more than anyone whose last name isn’t Rockefeller, Buffet, or Stark is way more than his sorry ass can afford. Second, they don’t have money-back guarantees. They’re not fucking General Motors. And being the pussy he is, he pays the cyborgs what they want after they rough him up a bit. In the end, he comes off as more pathetic than Alan Harper on Two and a Half Men. It’s really not clear what this guy can do with Cyclops since he’s not even the Summers he wanted. But I really can’t take this guy too seriously, especially when he’s dealing with a guy who regularly deals with a pissed off Maria Hill.

As if this guy weren’t fucked enough, he’ll also have to deal with Cyclops’ ex-girlfriend. Since Emma Frost probably claimed a monopoly on making Cyclops suffer after they broke up, she’s determined to get him back. The problem is they have no idea who the fuck these glorified Star Trek cos-players were. They gather that they’re some kind of bounty hunters and given their hardware, they’re either alien or one of them has boned Tony Stark or both. They still need to find out more so they formulate a plan and it’s the kind of plan that doesn’t involve lessons. This is the real fucking deal. It’s like having high school freshman play against the New England Patriots. They don’t have the luxury of being amateurs and having the NCAA exploit them.

This plan sounds elaborate, but it’s logical enough to not need an extra joint to appreciate it. Emma and Magik send Ben Deeds and one of the Cuckoos undercover to SWORD. Since they probably know the names, addresses, and sexual fetishes of every alien that ever visited Earth, this is probably the best place to start. Since Ben’s powers involve getting people to trust him in ways that usually involve a bribe and a blowjob, he’s best suited for this mission. Plus, he gets some alone time with Mindee Cuckoo. I’m pretty sure there are teenage boys who would cut off one of their fingers to go on a solo mission with a teenage clone of Emma Frost. It’s an operation that promises to have some Jason Borne style spying. It gives some of the younger mutants of the New Xavier School a chance to be real X-men.

Unfortunately, the operation unfolds a bit less like a James Bond movie and more like an Austin Powers movie, minus the dick jokes. Mindee and Ben show up at SWORD’s headquarters, Peak, where they get the kind of orientation that most people get when they visit a fucking museum. They don’t have to sneak away, charm a guard, or subdue anybody either. Ben just asks to go to the bathroom. It’s basically the same excuse I used in algebra class to smoke a quick joint before lunch. It’s as inane as it sounds.

While it might be a boring tactic that causes the story to drag, it does work. It allows Ben to find a computer where he starts looking up aliens that have a history of abducting people in broad daylight and shooting down high tech planes. It’s not like there’s an alien bounty hunter version of Google, although I’m sure SWORD has been working on that. All the while, Mindee is busting his balls about taking too long since people are now getting suspicious. Again, it’s as thrilling as it sounds. Going on a tour of a museum for pocket protectors would be just as exciting.

In the end, Ben doesn’t even need to do much searching. The answers he’s looking for find him. Iron Man, for reasons that I can only assume involve alien hookers, shows up and tells him that the bounty hunter that abducted Cyclops was Death’s Head. It sounds way more badass than it really is. But he has a history with Iron Man and that’s the only reason he needs to get involved. Never mind that he’s an Avenger and every Avenger wants Cyclops publicly crucified. He’s now involved in this in the least coherent way possible. Since the whole premise of the story has gone from a sci-fi version of Taken to an old Chris Farley movie, I can’t get too excited or too thrilled and for a stoner that’s saying something.

Reading this issue reminded me somewhat of bachelor parties that go horribly wrong or horribly right. It starts off all fun and innocent. Then there are some major misunderstandings, coupled with a few kidnappings, and everything goes to hell from there. At least in this issue, it didn’t involve undercover cops and transvestite hookers. It started out strong, promising to add a new challenge for Cyclops and the students of the New Xavier School. It ended up being a fucked up misunderstanding. Now I’m not saying that story can’t still be interesting. Hell, three Hangover movies were made on that premise. The idea of Cyclops being abducted by mistake is a novel concept, especially since everybody in the Marvel universe has placed a target on his ass. But then the story just started to drag and it’s hard to really know what’s going on or why I should be more excited than I would be for the pizza guy. For a comic that’s a few pages longer and a dollar more expensive, it just doesn’t deliver the value it should. People who want value should stick to the dollar menu at McDonald’s. I give Uncanny X-men Special #1 a 6 out of 10. We all make mistakes. We by the wrong kind of pop tarts, we put too much salt in our French fries, and we accidentally flush our weed down the toilet when we mistake the mail for a DEA raid. But abducting the wrong guy? Fuck, that’s like going to male strip club by mistake and getting a lap dance. There’s just no fucking excuse, no matter how much incompetence/alcohol is involved. Nuff said!

X-men Supreme Reflections: Wanda Maximoff is LIVE!

I've faced a lot of challenging tasks in developing the X-men Supreme fanfiction series. That's to be expected for any reimagining of a mythos as vast and as expansive as X-men. But this latest round of X-men Supreme Reflections has posed a special kind of challenge. I didn't just have to explore characters like Psylocke and Colossus, who only recently joined the X-men during the events of X-men Supreme Volume 4: Politics of Fear. I had to explore one of my OCs, General Nathan Grimshaw, in a way that made him compelling in a world where he has no equivilent in the current Marvel comics. These characters had considerably different circumstances compared to other reflections I've done. It's part of my ongoing effort to make X-men Supreme more distinct. However, I've saved the most challenging for last.

Few characters have had more upheavals in the comics recently than Wanda Maximoff. When I started X-men Supreme, she was still guilty of inflicting mass genocide on the mutant race through the events of House of M. Being Magneto's daughter is hard enough. Being guilty of crimes that have determined the course of the X-men comics for nearly a decade is even harder. It has been a long time since the Scarlet Witch was more than just a criminal or an Avenger. At one point, she was just Magneto's estranged daughter. But as egregious her crimes might be, I've alawys had a soft spot for the Scarlet Witch. I think she embodies Magneto's ideals better than Magneto himself. Like her father, she seeks to protect the mutant race and ensure their survival. But unlike her father, she is willing to fight for both peace and war when necessary.

X-men Supreme Volume 4: Politics of Fear put the Scarlet Witch in some impossible situations. After the events of Overlord, she gladly stepped down from her leadership position and let her father take control over Genosha. But as ruler of Genosha, Magneto only ended up raging war again by attempting to use the power of the Cambrian. He ended up nearly destroying humans and mutants alike, becoming mentally unstable in the process. Now the Scarlet Witch once again has to assume leadership of Genosha. She managed to negotiate a fragile peace with the rest of the world after her father fled, but it's a fragile peace at best. So what does this mean for Wanda Maximoff and her future? What is driving her to do what she's doing? That is what has made this by far the most challenging entry of Supreme Reflections to date, but I believe I succeeded in capturing all the right moments for the character.

X-men Supreme Reflections: Wanda Maximoff

This insallment of X-men Supreme Reflections is now officially done. There were a lot of raw emotions exposed towards the end of X-men Supreme Volume 4: Politics of Fear. Expect many more emotions to follow as this fanfiction series enters its fifth volume. As I've said before, I have every intention of completing X-men Supreme Volume 5 and the entry of X-men Supreme Reflections that will follow it. However, I have not yet decided whether I will continue this fanfiction series after. If I do, I might end up making these updates monthly rather than biweekly. That depends largely on the amount of time I have and the level of feedback I get. Feedback has been inconsistent at times, but I am always open to it. Some have gone out of their way to converse with me and for those wonderful readers, I thank you and hope others follow your example. If ever anyone has any feedback on this issue or on X-men Supreme as a whole, please post it directly in the issue or feel free to contact me at any time. Until next time, take care and best wishes. Excelsior!

Jack

Uncanny X-men #22 Preview - Enter A Pissed Off Blonde

As Hugh Hefner can attest, pretty blondes help make life worth living. They are one of God’s way of making all the annoying drive for heterosexual men to spread our seed worth it. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that hot blondes get away with some pretty fucked up shit. Just look at Anna Nichole Smith. Hell, my penis still misses her. But in addition to having undeniable sex appeal, they can be pretty badass. I would rather run from a T-rex than run from a pissed off hot blonde. They might not be able to maim me to the same extent as others, but they’re way more likely to get away with it. I’ve yet to meet a pretty blonde that hasn’t been able to charm her way out of a speeding ticket.

In the context of X-men, most of my remarks regarding hot blondes involve Emma Frost. And while she is a major player in Uncanny X-men and the X-men comics as a whole, she’s not the only pretty blonde with a high profile (who aren’t also clones). Dazzler, a character once associated with disco and roller skates, managed to claw her way back to relevance thanks in large part to her development in Greg Pak’s Xtreme X-men. She seemed poised to cash in when Maria Hill enlisted her to join SHIELD as their mutant liaison. She would get to fight the good fight and run around in a sexy skin-tight white uniform. That’s as close to win-win as can be without involving bacon and Jack Daniels.

Then she got cast aside again, but this time not because of negligence. After her first mission ended up a bust, Mystique drugged her and took her place. Since then, she has been playing with SHIELD’s vast resources the same way monkey plays with a machine gun. And when she’s not squandering taxpayer money, she’s creating a new mutant community in Madripoor and using MGH created from Dazzler’s blood to fuel it. This kept Dazzler out of the picture until Uncanny X-men #21 when she was finally rescued by Magneto. Now she’s finally back and able to contribute and a preview from Comic Book Resources shows that she’s more than pissed off enough to make a difference.

CBR: Uncanny X-men #22 PREVIEW

• The war between the Uncanny X-Men and S.H.I.E.L.D. heats up!
• Can Cyclops and his team track down the source of this new brand of sentinels? And is S.H.I.E.L.D. really behind these attacks?

It’s a beautiful and horrifying thing when a beautiful blonde gets pissed off at the right people. Even if those on the other end of her wrath have killer robots at their disposal, they’re still at a disadvantage. While the Mysterio knock-off behind the Sentinels might or might not be responsible for what Mystique did to Dazzler. She needs to take it out on someone and it might as well be the asshole who has been attacking mutants with Sentinels since this series was relaunched.

 

It’s also a beautiful sight to see Magneto’s little side-plot converge with the Sentinel plot. At one point, Magneto’s story took a completely different direction. He left Uncanny X-men and did his own thing in his solo series. Those things usually involve more gruesome murder, but he’s found a way to make it work for him. Along the way, he saw what Mystique was building on Madripoor and was more sickened than a vegan in Ted Nugant’s trophy room. That gave him more than enough incentive to free Dazzler and fuck up Mystique’s operation. Maybe now he can do the same to the Sentinels.

 

While the outcome of that battle promises to be pretty damn lopsided, I’m more interested in the aftermath. Dazzler tried employing her new skills at SHIELD and the only thing she accomplished was being added to the long list of women Mystique has turned into her bitch. Would she really be willing to give it another try? And would SHIELD even be willing to trust someone who let themselves get replaced by a shape-shifter? I’m pretty sure Secret Invasion made that a job requirement at SHIELD. If not SHIELD, then why not Cyclops’s team? Or why not head back to the Jean Grey Institute? Wolverine is going to be dead soon. They’ll need someone else in a leadership role besides Storm and a pretty blonde makes a great leader to a bunch of teenage mutants. My old history teacher, whose bra size still enchants my dreams from time to time, can attest to that. Where will Dazzler go? What will she do? I don’t know, but she’s a hot pissed off blonde and that alone should generate plenty of possibilities. Nuff said!

Scanned Thoughts: Wolverine #8

Reading the Wolverine comics these past few months has been a lot like watching the first half-hour of a slasher movie. All the characters are in place. We then make note of the slutty girls and douche-bag jocks because we know their asses are going to get horribly butchered first. That's a given. It's how the ugly girls and dorky guys get through the last leg of the movie that makes the story. However, that's not what Wolverine now offers. Like the slutty girl and dumb jock, we know Wolverine is going to die. Granted, he's not going to stay dead. Hugh Jackman will probably refuse to show his bare ass in another X-men movie if Marvel does this and the reaction from women alone would raise unholy hell. But watching Wolverine work his way towards his impending death, trying to maim Sabretooth one last time, has not been without its moments. His new ongoing has finally become more organized to the point where I don't have to be sober when I read it. And now that his little ruse to the Offer has been exposed, maybe I can add a joint or two as I read Wolverine #8. It could end up being fucked up in an entirely new way, but that's never stopped me adding in an extra joint or two before.

Whereas a glass of wine or a nicely rolled joint can act as a good way to get a party going, Wolverine runs with a crowd that takes a different approach. While I don't deny that whiskey has its place in circles like his, I don't think anyone should be surprised that a few punches to the gut and a kick to the face counts as a handshake to some of his friends. That's exactly what he gets when he meets up with Iron Fist and Shang Chi on an island called Itsukushima. I have no fucking clue how to pronounce or even spell check that so I'll just make sure I tip the next Japanese hooker I see extra to make up for it. Given Wolverine's history with Japan, it's not an inappropriate setting. And given that he just betrayed his new team, including a beautiful woman who let him see her naked, a good ass-kicking is more than warranted.

Warranted or not, there is another reason behind Iron Fist and Shang Chi's rough greeting. In the same way a sleazy talent agent gets pretty girls to show him their tits, they use this well-deserved ass-kicking to assess Wolverine's current state. Being masters of Kung Fu, who are also probably Wolverine's Facebook friends, they know he has lost his healing and they notice that he now hesitates when he fights back. It's not the first time either. It happened earlier in this series with a Sentinel and if Wolverine is hesitating in the face of Sentinels and ninjas, then they know as well as him how fucked he is.

Aside from being highly handicapped in his usual badassery, Wolverine needs help from Shang Chi and Iron Fist to help him unfuck the situation he now finds himself in. Because of him, Pinch's daughter is in danger and Sabretooth is one step closer to taking a giant shit on everything he holds dear. He still wants to take down Sabretooth, but he might as well be hoping to beat up the 1985 Chicago Bears with a feather duster. He needs help and since he hasn't screwed over Shang Chi and Iron Fist yet, they agree to help him. They're the ones that suggested they meet on this island whose name I'll never be able to pronounce, even if I were sober. They claim death is forbidden on this land, which I guess would make it the ultimate retirement community. But since Wolverine contemplates retirement the same way Wesley Snipes contemplates his taxes, it's a given he probably won't stay.

It's also a given that the friends Wolverine screwed over are going have a lot of incentive to get him off that island as quickly as possible. At the end of the previous issue, Sabretooth revealed that he had Pinch's daughter. That pretty much ended the fight and forced Pinch and Lost Boy to surrender. Now she's trapped and surrounded by ninjas, but she still has something Sabretooth wants so they're both intact for now. And Sabretooth being Sabretooth, he has to let them know that he likes to play with his prey before he maims it. He's like a cannibal who enjoys jerking off on the bodies of his victims before he eats them. I'm sure Pinch was ready to throw up through her nose when she saw Sabretooth playing with her daughter. I'll bet she'll never claim that playing Grand Theft Auto games are as dangerous again. It's disturbing, but it gets the point across. Sabretooth is a psychopath and he's willing to do some pretty fucked up shit to get what he wants.

After Pinch is done throwing up, the Offer arrives. He's understandably worried, but probably only to the point that Donald Trump is worried that he'll run out of hair gel. He's still no Kingpin. He had no idea Wolverine would screw them over, but he probably should have. Since when has a former Avenger or X-man not screwed over a criminal? That's like hoping the IRS will forgive back taxes or a bank will forgive student loan debt. It just ain't happening. I want to say I have sympathy for the Offer, but there's only so much sympathy anyone can have for a guy who wears a suit that probably cost more than my last five mortgage payments.

I can't say I have much more sympathy for Wolverine either at this point because he's still on an island where death is forbidden. But he's not there to snort snake venom and dine on poisonous spiders. He's there to get help from Shang Chi and Iron Fist. They give him this help by taking him to a temple they claim to be the Temple of Death. It seems strange yet appropriate that there would be such a temple on an island where death is forbidden. They claim death treats this place in the same way billionaires treat their own private islands, as refuges from their hectic life of screwing people over and listening to the whining of every overpaid asshole on CNN.

That's not to say that it's a very welcoming place either. Death is still an asshole, even while on vacation. As Wolverine enters the temple, he finds that it has a hell of a security system in that it unleashes an army of hideous demon creatures. It's the kind of system I would love to have in my car because these creatures only attack those who fight constantly. These are people who already have a death wish and once Wolverine figures that out, he's allowed to move forward. It's basically like a system that would only let me lend my car to people I knew would bring it back without a scratch. Fuck, I wish I had that.

When he enters the temple, he finds out that death has a secretary and death is also a chick. Somehow, I find that incredibly appropriate and not just because I know how vindictive women can be whenever a significant other sells their panties on Ebay for crack money. Women are the ones that give birth to us. Why shouldn't they be the ones that kill us? I'm sure plenty of feminists can appreciate that, but some will find a way to bitch about it. However misogynistic it might be, death's adorable little secretary leads Wolverine through a strange maze that gave me the urge to play Pac-Man for some reason. It's a bit confusing about how this temple works, but the end result is pretty clear. Death has been expecting Wolverine and knows all the ways he has kept her busy. In other words, he's fucked on an entirely new level.

In preparation for his arrival, Death has prepared a statue of sorts and a pile of skulls representing the many people he's maimed. Frankly, I'm surprised it isn't the size of the Great Wall of China. Keep in mind, death is still on vacation. I'm assuming she didn't want to bother getting too elaborate. It still gets the point across because one of the skulls belongs to Rose, a sort of proto-Jean Grey that Wolverine fell in love with long ago and who was also referenced in an earlier issue. It sends an even more powerful message than before. He's got a lot of bad karma built up with death so he's more fucked than he thought.

The Rose connection adds a badly needed personal touch to a story that has been so disorganized and chaotic at times. This series was billed as the countdown for Wolverine as he neared his death, assuming of course his death will only be as permanent as the release date of the next Wolverine movie. It hasn't delivered at times, but it has made connections with parts of Wolverine's past that aren't often touched on. Rose, who might be the reason he has a boner for Jean Grey, is a big part of that past and adding her to the story helps add to the drama. It's not much in that it doesn't cover the vast clusterfuck that is Wolverine's past, but it does give a more profound message than, "You gonna die, bitch!"

The mention of Rose isn't just intended to torment Wolverine, although I'm sure that's 80 percent of the reason. The point Death tries to make here is that Wolverine has spent a good chunk of his ridiculously long life never fearing death. She points out that even children learn to fear it at a young age when they find out their goldfish don't like it when they pour mountain dew into their tank. Now he has lost his healing factor and he has to get used to the idea that he can die really fucking fast, otherwise Sabretooth will be the one that reminds him and he'll be a lot less generous about it. Yes, Sabretooth is less generous than death at this point.

It's the kind of mid-life crisis that Wolverine probably should've had decades go. He's finally having to confront death. Conceptually, that's a pretty important plot to cover in this whole "Death of Wolverine" story. It's a fitting conflict for him to explore, but one that lacks the impact, at least in this issue. Let's face it, Wolverine has a list of sins longer than Led Zepplin's hotel bills. An entire season of Game of Thrones could be dedicated to the fucked up ways he's built up bad karma. Mentioning Rose helped make it personal, but it didn't give Wolverine the sense of just how fucked he is.

If Death really wanted to make Wolverine shit himself, she would first show him images of Cyclops and Jean Grey's honeymoon. Then she would show him the deal that the Offer is now making with Sabretooth. Since he doesn't like being screwed over anymore than Pinch, it's not too surprising that he's willing to cut a deal with Sabretooth. A man doesn't get to wear an overpriced suit like that without learning to negotiate with sadistic assholes about ways of screwing other people over.

And he still has leverage. He and Pinch still have that glowing orb they found in the previous issue and at the moment, only Pinch knows how to work it. Sabretooth wants that orb, if only to give him a more efficient way to make Wolverine suffer. So the Offer reveals that he knows how to find Wolverine. He apparently slipped a tracking device into his suit when he was busy banging Pinch. It's his way of demonstrating that he has the cunning and Ayan Rand caliber spirit to get shit done in a way that will benefit his organization. Sabretooth may be an asshole, but he knows the value of amoral assholes to criminal organizations like his.

Sabretooth makes good use of this new information. As soon as the Offer reveals Wolverine's location, he unleashes another wave of Hand ninjas. Now I doubt he expects that these ninjas will kill Wolverine. Even without his healing factor, Wolverine maims ninjas the same way sumo wrestlers maim buffets. But they'll at least rough him up a bit, ensuring Sabretooth can torment him with greater ease. They'll still have to go through Shang Chi and Iron Fist. Wolverine better make sure he doesn't screw those two over because he really can't afford to be without allies at this point. He's already rubbing elbows with death herself. He couldn't be living more dangerously if he were snorting anthrax and touring with Ozzy Osborne.

In terms of the bigger picture, this issue does have a novel concept in that it has Wolverine confronting his own mortality in a way so literal that it could be a skit on Saturday Night Live if it weren't so serious. He's screwed over his new team, lost the orb that was supposed to give him another crack at Sabretooth, and created another vindictive ex-girlfriend in the process. Donald Sterline might be able to get away with that shit and come out two billion dollars richer, but Wolverine can't. Seeing him confront death while teaming up with Shang Chi and Iron Fist in the process was a somewhat abrupt, yet still welcome chance of pace. With his time running out, he damn well better get used to the idea of death because it's about to kick him in the balls and slap him in the face. He took his first step here and Sabretooth took his first step towards screwing Wolverine over again. Granted, the whole plot about Pinch's daughter was basically forgotten faster than Johnny Depp's last movie that didn't involve Tim Burton. But the big picture is still solid and for a series that started off less coherent than stoner reciting Shakespeare, that's still saying something. I give Wolverine #8 a 6 out of 10. Wolverine has now looked death in the eye. Now he has to fight more ninjas. Sounds like an average Tuesday for him. He doesn't have much time left though so he better enjoy maiming these ninjas while he can. I'm sure he'll miss that almost as much as he'll miss whiskey and sexy redheads. Nuff said!

Scanned Thoughts: All New X-men #28

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