X-MEN 100: GREATER LOVE HATH NO X-MAN... OMG WORST TITLE EVER

Yes! It's finally here! The one hundredth fucking issue of the cocksucking dicklicking x-muffs! That's my homage to the cover of X-Men 100, isn't it rad? Some professional artist did a similar homage for a real comic book, which I posted below.

WHOA - COOL.

Hey I have that comic too. I'M SO COOL!!!

Ok so the X-Men are fighting the X-Men. Whaaaaa?!?!?! And so the first page is a splash and the next two pages are a double splash! And then there SIX MORE PAGES of awesome bad ass fighting. Especially by WOLVERINE who is FUCKING SHIT UP. Then Havoc tries to blast Colossus apart and then Colossus WRECKS HOUSE and sends Havoc FLYING! KROM!

And then Wolverine TEARS JEAN GREY TO FUCKING PIECES. WOLVERINE IS A TRUE BEZERKER!!!

But it wasn't Jean Grey, it was another rowbit. Awwww. So Wolverine ruined Dr. Lang's evil plan and he spends the next 2 pages in a double spread crying out in anguish saying "By all that's holy - HOW COULD THIS BE!?!"

Well I'll tell you how, because Wolverine got involved and everyone knows he's a fucking animal who kills and kills and kills and there is nothing you can do to stop him so don't even fucking try, bub.

And then Lang explains some of the history of his plan and then Cyclops, all enraged that he would threaten the real Jean Grey, smashes all sorts of shit with his optic beam (that's goes 'FRAK'), and so Lang escapes in some flying pod thing but then Jean Grey telekenetically fucks with the controls and Lang can't control his pod anymore and he goes CRASHING right into a wall. SPLAT. So he's dead. Jean Grey basically totally killed a guy. But they don't really talk about that much.

So NOW the X-men and Dr. Corbeau (yeah that jagov is still around) have to get off the evil space station and fly home in a damaged space ship with no space suits and in the midst of the WORST solar flares in the history of space flight (whoa). How will they do it? Well Jean Grey will do it all by her pretty little self. First she will knock Cyclops out so he will stop bitching and let her get down to business and THEN she will steal Dr. Corbeau's space skills so she can fly the dang thing and THEN she will protect everyone form the deadly solar flares with a nifty telekenetic shield. Will it work? Well we're supposed to think that it might NOT but what do you fuckin think? You think there's any chance in hell they don't all make it back to Earth all alive and just fine? Yeah, that's what I thought. Great guess you fuckin genius. A regular Sherlock Holmes. Shit.

So this ish was pretty fun. The bad X-Men actually being robots was kind of cheap, but not the worst you could come up with. Claremont puts a couple sub plots, Xavier's space dreams and Black Tom bit on hold to focus on the battle royale. He also develops Wolverine's animal berserker instincts, making him seem even more dangerous, yet rounding out his character into being more than just a short, hairy, Canadian jerk.

And artist Dave Cockrum does a great job illustrating the fight. He's got some severe short comings (most notably perspective, which leads to an overabundance of dull, straight on angles), but he does a pretty good ob here. I think he's also helped by inking his own work (Frank Chiaramonte, the inker for last issue, totally blows).

One thing that's weird is how evil Dr. Steven Lang starts celebrating, declaring he's "WON" once the battle starts. Why are evil villains so over confident? A good touch, on the other hand, was how Claremont used the old, abandoned (I'm assuming) S.H.I.E.L.D. space station for Lang's base of operations. It doesn't make perfect sense but at least Lang's taking over an already functionally space station instead of just somehow being able to assemble one on his own without the federal government realizing what their funding.

And then there's some serious soap opera scenes on the last few pages as everyone gets their vaginas in a tither about Jean Grey potentially sacrificing her life to save the rest of the X-Men (and that random guy Corbeau). Quit yer bitchin ladies. She's an X-Man, she'll be fucking fine. Well, knowing how this pans out dozens of issues later she's actually kind of fucked, as will X-Men continuity for all time, because of event set in motion in this issue.

Hmmm... in hindsight it IS a big friggin deal whats going on. SHIT THAT IS A MIND FUCK.

oh hey it's almost thanksgiving. GOD DAMN I AM THANKFUL FOR THE X-MEN. THE X-MEN FUCKING ROCK. YES TO TURKEY AND STUFFING AND GRAVY AND X-MEN.

X-MEN 99 - DORK STAR RISING

When we last saw our intrepid mutant heroes, the X-men, they were floating around space, about to die, until... they are saved by the Sentinels? Yup, Evil Dr. Lang sent his evil robots out to rescue the X-Men because... he wanted to kill them later, at a more convenient time? Seriously, I have no idea. It's never explained and makes for a pathetic cop-out of last issue's cliffhanger. Dr. Lang had earlier swore that he would wipe out ALL of mutant-kind, by the way. Just so fucking stupid.

Anyway, half the X-men are now alive and back in the evil space station and the other half go up to rescue them in another space ship with Prof X and his buddy Dr. Corbeau. I have no idea who the fuck Dr. Corbeau is but apparently he shows up in the Incredible Hulk and knows a lot about science. This new space ship rams it's way into the space station. The X-Men jump out and immediately start fucking up Sentinels. They fight there way toward Dr. Lang until they are confronted with... The OLD X-MEN! *GASP*.

This issue is pretty bad, and the sooner I'm done talking about it, the sooner I get to treat myself to a delicious $1 double cheeseburger from fuckin Burger King. God damn I love that promotion.

Here is page 12 (not counting ads), panel 4, of Colossus and Nightcrawler fighting Sentinels and looking like homos.

Apologies for the homophobic slurs but there is no other way to describe this scene but complete and utter faggotry. I'll try to refrain from using such base and offensive terms as much as possible. Couldn't be helped in this case.

A while bunch of weird shit was packed into this issue, like:

- There are word bubbles on the cover, even though it shows the X-Men in deep space where sound cannot travel.

- The X-Men are saved when the Sentinels envelop them in big clear bubbles called "ATMO-SPHERES". groan.

- It is a nice touch to see a fake new broadcast about the brewing anti-mutant hysteria and the political fall-out mutant shennanigans cause (the defining conflict of the Claremont era), andthe broadcaster that made the report was none other than Geraldo fucking Rivera. Yes, that Geraldo. And no, I am not looking up what Gerado was doing in the late 70's, nor do I care. That's just how fucking wierd things get in comics, dude. Deal with it.

- On the way up in space, Colossus gets, SPACE SICKNESS. A harbinger of one of the best Ren & Stimpy episodes, no doubt.

- A random lawyer in Ireland is blasted to death with a cane! It's a one page foreshadow of villain-to-come, Black Tom Cassidy, whom we meet at the end of issue 101. Oh wait, SPOILER ALERT. Sorry about that.

- Space battles are always a welcome sight.

- Except when Storm uses who powers (which is the control over weather) to manipulate "solar wind" and destroy a Sentinel. Come on, man. What the fuck is that about?

- Nightcrawler fights like a complete queer. Sorry! Sorry, I know. But I'm looking at his acrobatic 'attacks' right now and he looks like a complete fucking jackass.

- And then there's a lot of standing around and talking and then the final page is a splash of the old and new X-Pals facing off.

This whole book felt like a bunch of random crap Claremont wanted to cram in so he could set up the next issue, big number one hundred, with the big showdown between the X-teams. It's a neat idea, but it makes for a pretty shitty pre-fight issue, as this one is definitely pretty shitty.

So who wins? Well, me, obviously, as I am about to go eat a fucking double cheeseburger. Yes!

X-Men 98 - MERRY X-MAS CHRIST-MEN

Ok so the X-dongs are straight chillaxin around Rockafeller Center during a picturesque white snowy X-mas. Then Scott Summers and Jean Grey's long awaited smooch is interrupted by some big fucking evil robots (pronounced ROW-bits). Looks like its blue balls for Cyclops! The Sentinels are the evil rowbits and they capture Marvel Girl, Wolverine and Banshee and take them away. Then they take Xavier too, who's far away on a boat in the tropics, fishing on VACATION (see below). We find out its the evil Dr. Steven Lang who sent the evil rowbits to capture the X-dongs, which is part of his evil plan, Project Armageddon, which is a project to kill all mutants, regardless of their moral alignment. Wolvie, Jean and Banshee break out of their restrains but only get as far as the next room, because as it turns out (and this is the best part), the next room is OUTER SPACE! Whoopsies! That kind of information probably would have been useful to our heroes BEFORE they launched themselves through the wall and into the cold, dark, instant-death-inducing vacuum of space. What fuggin jagovs!

Can't a bald academic mutant fish for some marlin, rock some Tommy Bahamas and enjoy a little R&R WITHOUT getting asulted by giant purple rowbits these days? What the fuck, dawg.

Here are some what-the-fuckage bits that i'll try and blitz through cause this shit is fucking taking FOREVER.

- Jack Kirby and Stan Lee (original co-creators of the X-rods) show up in the comic as themselves to complain about the state of X-Men comic books these days. Is this cool and I'm just jaded by are far more meta-blase environment in contemporary pop culture, or is this just retarded? I vote the later.

- Cyclops is dangling of a building and decides to starts narrating outloud to himself: "...so i stay where I am and hold on. But for how long, Scott... HOW LONG?" Dude, shut up and save the strength for holding on. Fucking putz.

- I actually like this corny line from Storm: "You are only a machine, Sentinel - and how can a mere machine stand against the power of Storm? The power of a RAMPAGING HURRICANE!!" Yeah! check yourself you giant purple dingus.

- Evil Dr. Lang is wearing a skin tight jumpsuit with a giant A on the chest, presumely standing for Armageddon. Why do mad scientists do dumb shit like that?

- Up in space, Wolverine rips off half of Jean Grey's dress so she can run around the space station better. Jean Grey is wearing the same ripped dress years later when her character is resurrected in the pages of The Avengers. Yes, I noticed that, it is because I am a giant nerd, duh.

This issue is very much a product of it's era, the lame as all hell mid to late 70's, but I still liked it. I mean, its a giant robot fight, rock n' roll, dude. Also I can't stress enough how fucking hilarious it is (to me anyway) that a bunch of X-Men accidentally run directly out into deep space. Dunderheads.

Ok great, next issue, do the X-Men who are floating in space and should already be dead, get saved? Yes of course they do, its a fucking comic book, dummy.

X-MEN 97 - MY FRIGGIN BROTHER, THAT FUGGIN GUY

The Professor has a nightmare about spaceships and space and shit. Then we see Havok and Polaris get attacked in their desert home. THen we see the X-men attacked by Havok and Polaris! But what could make those two do that, especially when Havok is Cyclops' fuckin brother even!?! Oh no, its fuckin Eric the Red (Erik the Red is a bad guy). Then Erik the Red and Havok and Polaris escape by flying of into space because Cyclops is too much of a pussy to shoot down is fuckin brother.

This issue was a lot like the last, in that most of the action revolved around the new X-Men showing off their powers and personalities by taking on the latest Monster of the Week. It's cool to see the trademark behaviors are already there. Wolverine is a crazy psychopath, Nightcrawler is a swashbuckling dipshit, Colossus a naive doofus, Cyclops an angsty Mary, and Storm always does what is right.. BECAUSE ORORO MONROE MUST ALWAYS DO WHAT IS RIGHT!

Here is some stupid scene with a bunch of X-Men saying dumb stuff that I changed to make it sound more contemporary.

The drawings are pure shit though. Actually so are the jokes.

So yeah, its corny, but its also still the youtful and vim imbued Chris Claremont, trying to advance all sorts of sub plots and cram in a much fun as possible, while sticking to a fairly straight forward super hero format. So he's brought back Cyclops brother, Alex Summers, aka Havok, and Havok's girlfriend, Lorna Dane (putrid name, btw), aka Polaris; he's teased both Project Armageddon bit and Xavier's space ship nightmare threads; and Claremont's revealed a bit more about the past Moira MacTaggert and Xavier share. And, unlike last issue's throwaway villian, Erik the Red, though a dumb idea by itself, will be shown in the not too distant future to be a much more important and interesting bad guy (SPOILER ALERT, ITS FUCKIN MAGNETO IN DISGUISE).

With these X-Men comics only coming out once every other month, one wonders if Claremont is getting antsy at how long it will be before he can continue the stories. Well you probably don't give a shit but someone probably wonders. Jerk.

Hey lets point out some of that shitty dialog!

- Claremont starts off the slpash page with parts of Hamelt's dumbass Alas Poor Yorrick soliloquiy that gets quoted up the ass. There's probably the titles to like, 10 differnt shitty movies in that speech. My favorite was when Inter-galactic Bounty Hunter Lobo once said "Alas, poor Yorrick, I fragged him well." Ah, fraggin bastiches.

- Claremont explaining what Xavier is feeling during his nightmare (on a spiffy 2 page pre-Star Wars space battle!): "And, ONCE AGAIN, Charles Xavier finds himself drawn out across the infinite, drawn into nightmare... DRAWN INTO HELL!" Live, direct form Hell, it's Spinal Tap!

- And there's more! "He watched helplessly as ten-meter energy beams turn Tricardian steel to puddled slag," because as we all know, the Tricardians have by 1976 adopted the metric system.

- Cyclops: "Havoc-! What's going ON? Why are you and Lorna in COSTUME? SPEAK UP, MAN!" Yeah, MAN.

- Cyclops to Erik the Red: "Mister, I don't know what this MASQUERADE is all about, but if you think YOU can beat the X-MEN - You've got another thing coming! TAKE HIM!" Erik the Red: "No, Cyclops, you will NOT take me, all you will do... IS DIE!" Well I guess is SOMEONE wasn't saying it, stuff like that would never become cliches in the first place. So it's kind of cool when you think of it that way (but still pretty wretched).

Allright, thats all I got for X-Bags number 97. You know it was a real pain in the ass looking for these issues on EBay since all the search results would be for X-Men comics from 1997, and all those comics from 1997 blew. But I did find those comics and I bought them, because I was impatiant and didn't want to have to deal with creepy comic book salesmen in stores and at conventions. What a champion I am.

Speaking of blowing, they ruin the suprise villian of next issue by teasing "The Sentinels Return!" Oh well. Guess we'll see the fuckin Sentinels next time!

And the first MS Paint picture was so bad i decided to add this bonus drawings. Its of Wolverine and Storm sharing and early, intimate moment.

X-Men 96 NIGHT OF THE FRIGGIN DEMON MUTHAFUCKAS

So Thunderbird is dead and Cyclops is sulking. Cyke is so mad he he shoots his eye beam out in the forest. RAR! But Cyclop's emotional blast also knocked the cap off some alien-demon-tomb-obelisk thing that's sitting in the middle of the forrest just hanging out. Opps! This unleashing a fucking demon which decides to attack the X-Men! (why wouldn't it?). We also learn in a breif cut scene that some dude named Dr. Lang is planning something called Project Armageddon, which is most likely bad news for our good guys. The demon smacks the X-Men around for a while until Storm then saves the day by going to the woods and blowing up the entire demon-oblisk-from-hell thing.

Items of noteworthitutde

- Claremont clearly wants to get things rolling and jams several plot threads into the book, which reads very quickly. Besides the main MONSTER OF THE WEEK type story you also have:

- The intorduction of Moira MacTaggert, quite randomly and without much info.

- Two teaser pages of Dr. Lang and his evil PROJECT ARMAGEDDON (AAAHHH SCREAMING FACE!)

- Two unexplained panels of what we are to assume are parts of Storm's origin of growing up and being buried alive somewhere in the Middle East (uh, isn't she supposed to be an East African princess?)

- and they still find time to squeeze in a splash page and a whole page recapping last week.

- Claremont, the narrator, is quite harsh on Cyclops. He basically taunts Cyclops, goading him into lashing out. He says "Can't justify losing a team member to save the world, can you, Cyclops? Can you? CAN YOU!?!?!"

Fuckin calm down dude.

- Cyclops is also dissapointed in himself and says this terrible line out loud "I got to hand it to you Summers

- When they were giving out brains and common sense... you must not have even bothered to stand on line." Oh Cyclops, at least you're keeping your sense of you humor.

- Wolverine sounds like Robert Evans: "Naw - You only made me mad -- And, baby, The Wolverine just LOVES to get mad." Naw hot stuff, you've just given me a boner, and, baby, Evans loves getting erect!

- Also Wolvie refers to himself as THE Wolverine, multiple times, so as not to confuse anyone with the all the OTHER Wolverines out there.

- So you think Dr. Lang is exaggerating the threat of mutants? Why? Because the ONLY mutants anyone knows of FOR SURE are the X-MEN? Now who's playing the FOOL? Indeed. (ps, that was a real line in the book too).

- Little did Dr. Lang know that over the next 20 years, the Marvel editors would demand Chris Claremont actually invent hundreds of mutants to poulate literally dozens of shitty shitty comic books.

- The demon the X-Men fight for most of the book is not particularly scary. Its got horns, one eye and a huge, distracting, and far too human looking nose. Plus wings, claws, FUR and scales. Kind of like some weird hybrid of whatever penciller Dave Cockrum thought a proper demon should have. Not very good.

- The Demon's name is Kierrok the Shatterer of Souls, and like an idiot he decides to pick on the one group of people for miles around that have super powers and can fight back. There are plenty of merely human populated towns around the X-Masion, like Salem Center, for example, that would provide far easier souls to shatter.

- Moira MacTaggert's character isn't explained at all, except that she has an extemely annoying Scottish accent and has no problem picking up a spare M-16 laying about the amory (which the X-Mansion aparently has) and opening fire on a blood thirsty rampaging demon. Really bizarre scene.

- Here's an example of that fucking stupid Scottish accent: "Well, if sonic blasts'll do NAE GUID, let's see how yon KELPIE FARES - against close-range MACHINE-GUN FIRE!" Also Banshee is going to totally bang her.

- Best scene of the book by far is when Xavier tries to take over the mind of Kierrok and gets sucked into some Lovecraftian Hell. It's half a page of actually creepy imagery, unlike Kierrok who looks like a retarded Muppet.

- Once Storm does her thing and the evil is vanquished its pretty much forgotten about until like 50 issues later. It's never explained whats going on with a gateway to hell randomly being in some forrest in Westchester County, New York, although Professor Xavier does say this, "Whatever Kierrok and his kind were - they once RULED MANKIND. And they want VERY MUCH to rule mankind AGAIN." Its not clear how Xavier knows this but if it's true, you think they'd want to investigate the portal thing Storm blew up, would't you? But no, they ignore it and

let us know that next issue is "My Brother, My Enemy!"

Good issue though, by far the best yet, and there are hints as to how much better it will get. There's still plenty of terrible dialog but there'll always be terrible dialog in Claremont books, thats part of the fun. What's really exciting is seeing stuff that you won't get anywhere else, you know, actual new ideas and shit. Like a battle between mutant and mankind, the questions mutantkind itself presents to humanity, and some fuckin gnarly ass evil demons (though in this case the main demon looked like a total dickhead). Ok, lets see if Claremont can keep improving and get into some seriously fucked up shit next!

X-Men 95: WHORE HUNT, or WAR CUNT, take your pick, it's pretty much the same joke either way

The super short recap: The X-Men break into the military base captured by Count Nefaria to stop him from blowing up planet Earth. They beat the shit out of the shitty animal/man bad guys, the Ani-Men, and then go after the Count, who flees in a plane. Thunderbird jumps on the god damn plane himself and then they both die when the god damn plane explodes. Oops. Then the X-Men go home.

Here's my take on page 14 panel 4

If you dont get the joke form the hilarious movie I got it from well, then, shut up, cause you don't deserve to.

- Splash page starts with one of these ridiculous lines, "In a few seconds, the X-Men will all be dead... [turn page] ... unless they won't be! Oh man! Totally got me! I thought the X-Men were just going to be all dead there on page 2. Whew, that was a close one.

- For some reason they put alien looking Beast in the recap on page 2, even the he was completely superfluous to the story.

- Also nice that it only took Nightcrawler his third appearance to give his explanation about what happens if he teleports to the ground while falling (he continues falling and goes splat). Nightcrawler's teleportation power has all sorts of rules that Claremont loves explaining.

- Also only took Cololssus three appearances before he does his patented 'landing' (ie falling as fast as possible and exploding the earth into a crater when he lands).

- oh yeah, its Count Nefaria, not Count Nefarious, as I was saying yesterday. Still fucking terrible.

- Great Cyclops line, "Cut the comedy, Banshee. We've got work to do." Also great: Banshee did not say anything remotely comedic.

- Obviously being a fan of shitty names, Count Nefaria gave his Ani-Men shitty names. Por ejemplo: frog man is called Croaker, cat man is actually Catman, ape man is Gort (WTF?!?), butterfly woman is Dragonfly (the least worst of the bunch), and bird man never gets a name so probably just Birdman. Oh, and Catman smokes cigar in one completely random panel. Still no sign of ManBearPig though.

- Classic Claremont line: "Sooner or later something has to give... ...and sooner or later, something does!" And by something he means Thunderbird gets fucking exploded to hell!

- Thunderbird is one of the only Marvel character to ever stay dead, but he was only in three issues total, so its not like he was a big deal. I guess more if you count flashbacks in subsequent issues. But they also retconned a brother for Thunderbird, who had the exact same powers and origin, which is just as good as bringing back someone from the dead.

- Thunderbird was also a total downer, always with the negative comments. Don't be such a negative Nancy, Thunderbird, you cock!

- The ending is completely absurd. After watching the plane with Count Nefaria and Thunderbird explode, the remaining X-Men walk to the edge of a cliff where they can see the burning wreckage. Assuming both people are dead, the just turn around and leave the bodies in the smoldering crater. Also forgotten about: the monsterous Ani-Men last scene knocked out in the U.S.'s most sensitive military headquarters with a bunch of helpless servicemen.

- The ending really made me think of the movie Dirty Work. "But the bookies killed Dr. Thunderbird anyway. So he's dead. Well, good-bye!"

This issue was all action and was paced fairly well, so not a complete joke. The bad guys were fucking horrible, and the plot straight camp, but Claremont is already finding his groove and it won't be long before he actually comes up with some decent ideas that don't exacerbate the corny dialog. The issue wraps up the 2 part story continued from the previous comic. If TPBs were collected back then the way they are these days you probably include GS X-Men for 72 pages of story and a whole bunch of sketches and filler shit and sell it for $9.99. Instead I had to buy them all for a total of about $400. Jesus Christ did I really spend $400 on three comic books? Fuck. Well whatever, I was like 12 when I bought one of them and I made literlaly thousands of dollars a year when I bought the others so no sweat off my sack, bro. Also I bought the B&W Essential collection for like $10 used that has issues 94-119 and GS1. So there's some got some value there, ok asshole?

Whatever, I've spent about that at a strip club before, who cares, stop judging me!

Allright, next time: the Night of the fucking Demon!

X-men 94: The Poopsmith Scenario

Recap: The Prof and all 13 fuggin X-Bags are chilling in the X-Mansion. Sunfire, cause he's a dick, tells the Professor to fuck off and flys away. The rest of the new X-Men stay, as well as Cyclops, because he's a pussy, but all the other original X-Men also tell Xavier to get fucked, for no good reason except Angle says they are 'too old' or some bullshit. Wolverine starts shit and then Cyclops and Marvel Girl make out, which is a bold move for Cyke since he's in uniform and if he gets a boner there is NO hiding it in those yellow undies.

Cyclops then leads the new X-Dorks in some Danger Room exercises (pre Shiar technology upgrade when it was all random laser beams and big swinging mechanical rods). After weeks of practice Xavier tells them they all have a mission.

They mission the X-men are on is to rescue NORAD (I guess they had that in 1975), from Count Nefarious (if you are unsure whether he is good or bad, nefarious is a synonym for bad) and his Ani-Man. Count Nefarious dresses in a tuxedo, cape, cane and monocle. The Ani-Men are 5 anthropomorphic bad guys, specifically a frog-man, ape-man, bird-man, cat-man, and a butterfly-woman. Count Nefarious breaks into Norad by mailing a one of the military guys a remote control with a single button that says "PRESS ME". The doofus complies and a portal opens through which the Ani-Men enter right inside NORAD Operational Command. I am totally serious about all of that.

Count Nefarious enters next and gasses the enter base (but doesn't kill them, in a very gentlemanly move, Nefarious he just knocks them out and lets them catch up on some sorely needed Zs). With the base under his control, Cunt Nohairyus then holds the entire world for ransom, because that plan always works so well for evil masterminds.

The X-Males make a quick video call to the Beast, who has been on the Avengers for a while and forgot that he actually wasn't in GS X-Men #1 (my bad!), and the Beast looks really weird. Then the ALL NEW ALL DIFFERENT X-Men get in their SR-71 Blackbird and fly off to stop the Count. But the Count sees them coming and blows up the plane with a missle. So there goes 100 million bucks or so down the toilet. Good think Xavier's got a fully vested 401K.

The book ends on a cliffhanger with the X-Men falling in midair.

That was also way to long. Next time will be way briefer I swear.

He're page 5, panel 5 that i redrew and changed some of the dialog. Oh that rascally Wolverine! The only rules he plays by are his own!

Comments:

- This Chris Claremont's first issue as the only writer. Claremont was the reason why I, and so many others, became die hard X-Men nerds.

- The issue is still pretty rough and silver-agey but the dialog, as cheesy and redundant as it is, is still a major upgrade from last issue. You can already see some of the Claremontisms starting, especially with the nicknames and random foreign words, just in case we forget that these new X-Men are international, like Godspodin Xaiver - which i guess is Russian for Professor Xaiver I guess.

- Overall though Claremont does a decent enough job mixing the goofy comic book stuff with the soap opera content.

- Eh, I think I got most of the comments in the recap. I'll try and split this up better next time. Whatever, formatting is for the gays.

Giant-Size X-Men #1 the return

You couldn't click on the parody cover in the last post to make it bigger so I'm reposting so you can. Hopefully. And if it doesn't work this time, well, who fucking cares. I also changed my mind and decided a re-cap is called for. So here is the short, short version of Giant Size Dong Bags #1:

The relaunch of Marvel's team of mutant super heroes starts with Professor X traipsing about the globe, convincing 4 brand new characters (Storm, Colossus, Nightcrawler and Thunderbird), and 3 preexisting bit characters (Banshee, Sunfire and Wolverine) to join the X-men. Cyclops is then enters and explains what happened to the rest of the original X-Bags, (Marvel Girl, Iceman, Beast, Angel, Polaris and Havoc). They were kidnapped! Or something, Cyclops can't really remember. They then go back to tropical island where Cyclops last remembers the team being and are immediately attacked by the island (in the form of avalanches, murderous growing vines, giant crabs and other totally normal stuff you find on any old tropical island), so the readers can get acquainted with each new characters' personalities and powers. Finally it is revealed that the island is one big giant mutant and its feeding off the old X-Men. The mutant-island also has the power to give Cylops amnesia and cut him loose, hoping he'd bring back more mutants for him to eat, which like a dummy he does. For some reason the island mutant can't just K.O. this new team like he did the old one and then somehow the X-men launch the island mutant into space and then fly home as champions.

And thats how you get 13 fuggin X-men!

Shit, that still took longer than I expected. Ok, nothing really worth adding. Now lets find out what the fuck happens in X-Balls 94!

Giant-Size X-Men #1

I bought Giant-Size X-men back in the early 90's from the local comic shop in my town, the dearly departed One Flight Up II. I had to save up a crap load of allowances AND buy it during their yearly summer sale weekend at 30% off. It was the only comic I ever bought from off 'the wall'. I was pretty young and stupid and didn't treat it nearly as well as I should have and it ended up getting an extra rip or two on the back cover. Nuts.

Up until I graduated college, moved out on my own and bought a big screen TV for fourteen hundred bucks, it was the most expensive thing I ever owned. The TV is a rear screen projection though so now its worth fuck all. Double nuts. My most valued possesion is pretty easily my car, which the state of Maryland recently told me is worth eight grand, and promtly taxed me 300 dollars for it. Fuck you shitty state of Maryland.

Ok, gay personal story time is over. How do you like that cover I did? It got tedious after awhile, as Thunderblimp can attest. I think you can click on it to enlarge it and read all the hilarious captions I included. If you haven't passed out yet from laughing at the dong bag bit that is.

I don't think I'll be making a habit of recreating these covers as I plow through the these x-men, but I definitely will included plenty of shitty MS Paint pics with plenty ass, fart and poop jokes, among other humorous topics.

I also don't want to recap each comic, but I do want to comment on it. E.g. GS X-Men 1 is a pretty big turd. It reads like typical silver age tripe, with insane exposition masquerading as dialog and a bafflingly silly plot that segues like an acid trip.

Here's a panel I replicated in MS Paint with 50% verbatim dialog.

I'll try to wrap up the rest of my comments as this is already taking too long. So it's a fun read, mostly as a time machine to see how crappy comics used to be. When I first read it in Classic X-Men #1, I thought it was breathtaking, but I had also learned to read about a month earlier.

Here's some part of the book that seem totally fucking dumb in hindsight.

- Storm has mutant powers, so obviously she's treated as a goddess by her savage tribesmen. Because black people from Africa in the 1970's were all simple minded dirt worshiping savages.

- Likewise, towns in 1970's Germany were all exactly like they were in Frankenstein.

- Wolverine wants to leave the Candian Weapon X program because it chafes his rugged individuality. So he goes and joins a team with an old wheelchair bound taskmaster for a boss.

- The old X-Men are trapped on a living island that is sucking the life out of them. Once the new X-Men rescue them, instead of just leaving, the stay and try and fight even though the just get housed.

- The living island, named Krakoa (woof), is defeated by, um, well its not really explained but somehow the island is shot into space. Okaaaaaaay.

- There's more crap but I think you get the idea.

On the other head, it IS nice seeing the so much plot crammed into so few pages, back before the days of 'decompression'. Decrompession is actually just a code word for, 'not totally retarded or unrealistic', but the old method is not without merits. I guess.

I dunno, I don't feel like explaining anymore of this nonsense. Wolverine, Thunderbird and Sunfire have a fun time competing to see who can be the biggest dick but otherwise is comic is useless, beyond introducing the new X-Men.

Allright! Tune in next time to find out the answer to the cliche "WHAT ARE WE GOING TO DO WITH 13 X-MEN?" Whaa, waw, waaaw.

hey check this one out for size

I bought every x-men ever. Every single last motherfucking one of them. well, starting with Giant Size X-men #1 anyway. Oh yeah, that's right, Giant Size X-men #1. Its worth thousands of dollars in mint condition, no big deal.

Anyway, i'm going to re-read them all and write about it. And shit.

So fucking get ready to fucking really do it!