X-Men 273: Too Many Mule Taints OR Whose Hog is This Anyway?







BY HOG I MEAN HOGAN. AND BY HOGAN I MEAN DONGER. AND BY DONGER I MEAN WHO PUT THIS DICK, ON MY BACK?

 



SLOTH REFERENCE. TIMELY, I KNOW.

THIS WAS PART OF AN AD FOR SKATE OR DIE, A VERY NICE VIDEO GAME FOR THE NINTENDO ENTERTAINMENT SYSTEM. THE COPYWRITING IS FUCKING RADICAL.

CHILL-R-B-CHILLED IS MY RAP NAME BTW.

THATS A LOT OF FUCKIN MULE TAINTS.

I WISH I LIKED STORM MORE. SHE'S PROBABLY LIKE TOP 5 MOST IMPORTANT X-MEN. BUT SHE BLOWS. JUST LOOK AT THAT GOD DAMN HAIRCUT. HEY FUCK OFF STORM.

JUST SOME TYPICAL DANGER ROOM SHENANIGANS!

HERE IS ANOTHER CLASSIC MUTANT PRANK.

BACK IN THE DANGER ROOM, WOLVERIE UNHINGES HIS JAW AND FUCKS UP A FAKE LADY DEATHSTRIKE.

SOMETIMES FOR FUN I WALK AROUND MY OFFICE AND PRETEND I HAVE WOLVERINE CLAWS THAT ARE JUST SCRAPING THE FUCK OUT OF THE OFFICE WALLS. LIKE ON MY WAY TO THE BATHROOM AND I'M JUST CUTTING THAT SHIT UP. YEAH, FUCK YEAH. I'M A TOTALLY COOL DUDE.

WHOA, GAMBIT BEAT WOLVERINE IN THE FUCKING DANGER ROOM. HOLY SHIT. GAMBIT: NOT FUCKING AROUND.

THE ONLY REAL VILLAIN OF THE ISSUE SHOWS UP BREIFLY WHEN JEAN GREY SLAPS ON THE CEREBRO HEAD GEAR AND GOES SEARCHING FOR THE UNREDISCOVERED X-MEN, ROGUE, LONGSHOT AND DAZZLER (THE ONLY ONE WE READERS HAVEN'T SEEN YET IS FUGGIN LONGSHIT), ON THE ASTRAL PLANE AND SUBSEQUENTLY GETS ATTACKED BY THE FUCKIN SHADOW KING. THE SHADOW KING IS A MASSIVE BUTT CAKE.



THESE ARE YOUR FUCKIN X-MEN. ASIAN PSYLOCKE, NOOB GAMBIT, WOLVERINE AND JUBILEE, OLD MAN BANSHEE, PIECE OF SHIT FORGE AND GOD DAMN STORM.

 

CYCLOPS, THE BEST X-MAN, WALKS AWAY WITH JEAN GREY, THIS SLIT HE'S BEEN FILLING. THEY'LL BOTH BE BACK AFTER THE NEXT STORY ARC, THO.

 

Great, grand, wonderful, another treat from Claremont. It's basically his last chance to look back wistfully at his long run on the X-Men, as this is a fairly slow paced, reflective issue, with most of the action provided courtesy of Danger Room sequences.

 

Cable gets to be the editorial stand in, lecturing Storm and the X-Men to get their shit together and start acting like a proper fucking super hero team. Claremont has been ordered by the editors to get back to more traditional comic book storytelling and quit with the random, wandering X-Men stories. I think getting the team back together, for the sake of the narrative, was probably a good idea, however I'm with Claremont when it comes to some of the other edicts, especially the return to the original original (ie 1960's) uniforms. The fuck are the point of them? Stupid.

 

This issue is also the last before Jim Lee begins his tenure as co-plotter, another signal of Claremont's imminent departure from the series he grew into the industry juggernaut it remains today. If you think about, Disney bought Marvel for 4 billios a few years ago. Lets say a quarter of that value is Spider-Man, a quarter for the X-Men, and the other half for the Avengers and the rest of the Marvel Universe. Claremont is responsible for at least 50% of the X-Men's success, if not more. Without Claremont, the X-Men would be worth as much as their DC's analog, the Doom Patrol. Supposedly there are some excellent Doom Patrol comics out there, but as intellectual property they aren't worth much. ANYWAY, back of the envelope calculations: Claremont created 500 million dollars of value for his employers.

 

GOOD JOB CLAREMONT YOU ARE A FUCKING STUD.

 

I mean that, truly.

 

Then in the last panel, the X-Men are whisked away by Lila Cheney, who (or whom, if you're a pendantic grammar douche) we last saw running away from some dickheads in the Shiar Empire, somewhere out there in fucking outer space.

 

Can't wait to see what happens next. I'm guessing some fucking space battles. Fuckin space.