X-Men 241: Fan the Lame - Infartus Fart the Fecund

What we learn this issues besides that I think I'm a clone now, there's always two of me just hanging around. 

ANOTHER RAD COVER BY MARC SILVERSTRI AND SOME HACKNEYED RETREAD JOKES BY ME. I'M REALLY RUNNING OUT OF IDEAS, AREN'T I?

YEAH DID THAT ONE BEFORE, TOO.

AND THAT ONE.

HAVOK USING THE POWER OF CONCENTRIC CIRCLES IS NEW AT LEAST. I THINK ANYWAY. HEY LOOK, THAT MAILBOX IS FUCKING EATING A DUDE!

ANTHROPOMORPHIC FIRE HYDRANTS? SAY, THAT WOULD MAKE A GREAT COLLEGE MASCOT FOR SETON HALL UNIVERSITY, WOULDN'T IT? BECAUSE THEY HAD THIS TERRIBLE DORM FIRE TRAGEDY AND OH GOD WHAT THE HELL AM I SAYING?!?!

BUT DON'T LOOK HIM UP IF YOU'RE EATING OR YOU JUST DON'T WANT TO HEAR ABOUT A GUY GETTING SODOMIZED WITH PLUNGER.

SURE, WHATEVER.

GET IT? THEY ARE SLUTS. HOW CLEVER.

CORPORATE INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY CAN NEVER DIE, SO FUCKIN WHO GIVES A SHIT, AM I RIGHT?

You may have noticed from the lackluster captions that I am experiencing a bit of what might be called dick-and-fart-joke-fatigue, or DaFJF. Duhfeejeef. Whatever, I may need to take a break after I get done slogging through the Inferno story. Not that I'm loving the Uncanny X-Men any less but I need to think of some fresh way to approach these posts. There's only so many times I can MS Paint belches into these scanned panels.

OR IS THERE?

So in the actual comic book, the X-Men are duking it out with the Marauders in Manhattan. And not regular Manhattan, but a Big Apple transformed into a hell on earth due to the influence of the demon N'Astirh and the portal to Hell (I mean Limbo) that he opened with the help of his "catspaw" Madelyne Pryor, now corrupted into the increasingly batshit Goblin Queen. So things like mailboxes now eat people (and turn them into 2-dimensional prisoners trapped on postage stamps in a rather amusing 'Twilight Zone' inspired bit) and police ride in giant fanged Jabberwockies.

And while those two teams of super powered jagovs pound on each other, the secret origin of Madelyn Pryor is finally revealed! It's a little silly and incredibly overwrought, but it's well worth bearing in mind that such a story is the product of the unique commercial medium of mainstream American super hero comics and all the attendant peculiarities thereof. And it all started back in the early 60's when the primordial Marvel Universe was still oozing about in a semi congealed state.

Oh god I just thought for 2 seconds about how convoluted the wholes back story is and how tedious it will be to try and explain, but what the fuck ever, it's not like I have anything better to do.

So here goes, and I may get all this wrong so you're better off just looking it the fuck up in wikipedia, if you really want to get everything straight, so be my guest, nerd.

Anyway, back when Stan Lee, Jack Kirby et al created the X-Men, they decided they needed a lady for the team, so they could write in all sorts of angsty teenage love drama into their 'new' style of super hero comics. So they created they rather generic Marvel Girl, named her Jean Grey and gave her red hair, because ALL female super heroes have red hair.

Things were fine and dandy and boring and Cyclops popped massive boners for her. Than, in the late 70's, the X-Men were returning from space but sucked at flying and crashed their space ship into New York's Jamaica Bay. Jean Grey managed to save everyone with super powers and incredible selflessness and was about to die in the accident when the all might cosmic entity known as the Phoenix Force came out of no where and rescued Jean Grey. It put her in a coma and buried her in a cocoon thingy at the bottom of the ocean (for safekeeping, I guess) and also decided that it was going to pretend to be Jean Grey and hang out like normal with the rest of the X-Men. The Phoenix Force wanted to do such a good job pretending to be Jean Grey that it actually convinced itself it really was Jean Grey, too. Then it went insane and killed 6 billion alien broccoli people. But because it had done so well convincing itself it was incredibly selfless and moral Jean Grey, it committed suicide, to protect the universe from it ever going crazy again and killing a few more billion broccoli people.

And right as the very moment the Phoenix Force as Jean Grey killed itself, a clone, grown in the laboratory of weirdo super villain Mr. Sinister, came to the life for the first time. Mr. Sinister had always been obsessed with Cyclops, because he is a creep, so he planned on creating a clone of the women for whom Cyclops popped boners (i.e. Jean Grey), so that Cyclops and the Jean Grey Clone would bone and he could harvest Cyclops' sperm. Or something like that.

Anyway, the Phoenix force woke up the til then dormant clone and Madelyne Pryor came to life. He called her Madelyne Pryor because who fuckin knows, he just did. Then, as one would obviously expect, Madelyne Pryor and Scott Summers met, got married and had a kid. This baby would one day grow up to be the time traveled mutant savior and shoulder pad enthusiast known as Cable, but for now it was just a the ordinary baby of the mutant super hero Cyclops and a clone of the mutant super hero Jean Grey/Marvel Girl/Phoenix.

Then Mr Sinister sent a bunch of evil villains he created in a lab (and Sabretooth) into the Morlock tunnels to kill all the Morlocks, (which they succeeded at) and to lure the X-Men out into the open so they could kill them too (which they ultimately failed at) so Sinister would have a clear path to abducting Cyclops' baby (which didn't happen yet). So Sinister waited a bit, recloned some of the Marauders the X-Men killed and sent them out to kill Madeline Pryor and kidnap her baby. They failed on the first task, again, but they did get the baby. Fuckin baby.

Then Jean Grey's comatose, cocooned body was discovered at the bottom of New York's Jamaica Bay by the Avengers, transported to Reed Richards and the Fantastic Four and brought back to life. Then they X-Men, including Madelyne Pryor, but not Cyclops or any of the original X-Men, all died in stupid Dallas while defeating an evil, all-powerful cosmic entity known the Adversary. Then yet another all powerful deus ex machina, I mean cosmic entity, brought them back to life but set things up so that everyone in the world still thought they were dead.

Scott, now seemingly unencumbered by wife or baby, started to rekindle his love affair with the original Jean Grey, who he technically had not seen since the X-Men went up into space way back in the 70's. Madelyne Pryor, meanwhile, was being targeted by the demons of Limbo to be a potential linchpin for the opening of the portal to hell (I mean Limbo) so that the demons could take over Earth.

Madelyne indeed went crazy under the corrupting influence of the Limbo demons and became the super powered Goblin Queen. Sinister, however, doesn't really give a shit about any of this and decided to go all Bond villain on Madelyne Pryor, chaining her up in his underground "orphanage" in Nebraska and explain everything to her. The orphanage is located in Nebraska because that is where Cyclops grew up, in a real orphanage, and where Sinister manifested his a creepy infatuation with him, while Cyclops was still a boy. Ew.

So now Madelyne Pryor and the demons of Limbo are squaring off with Mr Sinister in his secret lair while the X-Men wail away on the Marauders all during the hell's rapture with the mortal plain. And those assholes X-Factor, including Cyclops and the original Marvel Girl, are on their way to help fuck everything up as well.

Got all that? Hello? Anyway still there? Probably not, I think I bored myself. Whatever, you still have appreciate the rich tapestry of interwoven plot lines that is the Uncanny X-Men. Its 25 years of continual storytelling, and sometimes plots and characters must be picked up, dropped or completely rewritten, often for purely commercial purposes, all while the greater Marvel Universe continues in the same concurrent fictional continuum. Its fuckin comics bro, I'm telling you.

Anyway, the action continues in an issue of X-Factor that I just read but won't be reviewing, and returns back to the Uncanny X-Men, which I well be covering. If I can't find anything better to do in the meantime, which is highly unlikely.