X-MEN 107: where no x-man has pooped before

Let me just say right off the bat, that you have not watched football on tv until you've watched that tv through an open doorway that leads to your bathroom that has a toilet in it on which you are sitting and pinching off a nice smooth loaf. Also you are simultaneously drinking a beer. Only THEN, my friends, can it be said that you have truly watched football on tv before.

Ok, so besides being totally great and doing awesome stuff like that like ALL THE TIME I've also made it to the end of Dave Cockrum's first run as artist on the X-Loaves, and I'll be honest, I'm kinda glad it's over. I mean, Cockrum isnt a TERRIBLE artist, but he isn't all that great either. Plus John Byrne starts his classic stint next issue and he is undeniably better. If you're familiar with the past starting quarterbacks of the New York Giants, its kind of like having Phil Simms take over for Dave Brown.

So anyways, when we last saw the X-Knobs they had just all jumped through a interstellar portal because Xavier strongly suggested that they do so (why the fuck not, right?) and then find themselves on a double page spread in front of this really big, like 2 story diamond (pssh, probably just a CZ) and like a dozen or so new superhero types.

Everyone speaks English (duh) and none of the X-men have any problem breathing on this new planet (which Claremont geniusly dubs, "The World"). Predictably there is some pretense (specifics are not important right now) that get the two super groups to fight and so they wail on each other for a while. Pow! Bam! Sock! Nards!

The gist of it all is Evil Bird-Alien Emperor D'Ken is holding his sister, hot bird-alien babe Lilandra, hostage. Lilandra had just barely managed to recruit the X-Men to help stop her crazy brother from using that giant diamond, which he thinks is a weapon but will really just destory the entire universe. D'Ken is just one of those two dimensional bad guys who has a hard-on for giant death rays. Fuggin jagov that guy.

D'Ken is such an incredible dickface that he even summons a Soul Drinker to drink Lilandra's soul. Can you believe this fuckin guy? A SOUL DRINKER? Fuckin A. Check it out.

OH SHIT THAT SOUL IS GOING TO BE TOTALLY QUAFFED BY THAT FUCKING DEMON!

But don't worry. Nightcrawler 'ports in and rescues the princess just in time. Lilandra then explains that all the bad guys the X-Men have been facing since issue 97 (thats like, 10 issues ago for you non math majors) were due to the machinations of D'Ken's spy on Earth, Davan Shakari, who dressed up like Eric the Red and ran interference with the X-Loafs so they wouldn't be able to help Lilandra thwart D'Ken. If it sounds like Claremont is just making this shit up as he goes ITS PROBABLY BECAUSE HE IS.

So the X-Men and the Shi'ar Imperial Guard (those would be those dozen other super heroes that are on D'Ken's side, though they are not necessarily evil, just following das orders mien herr), fight some more. Then Gladiator, the head imperial guardsman who is basically Superman with purble skin and a mohawk, is about to smash Lilandra to death because she won't blindly follow the fuhrer as he obliterates all time and space when -SHZAK!- in comes the Starjammers to save the day!

Ah, the Starjammers. giant lizard fish man Ch'od, space pirate captain Cosair, Raza, the orange skinned space pirate cyborg, and Hepzibah, a space cat pirate babe. Yep, thats the fuckin Starjobbers (a star job is when a girl masturbates you while you pilot a space ship, if you didn't know).

Allright, well whatever, so these guys show up and tilt the battle in the X-Men's favor and Phoenix accidentally discovers that Cosair is Cyclops long lost father (because off her mental telepathy) but she doesn't tell anyone else and D'Ken looks like he might be vanquished but then he's all like TOO LATE PUSSIES - THE DEATHSTARS HAVE ALIGNED. Yeah they call them deathstars. There was no shame in 1970's comic books.

HOLY SHIT DOES THAT MEAN THE UNIVERSE IS GOING TO GET TOTALLY FUCKED UP AND DIE AS WE KNOW IT AS THAT PRICK DOCTOR CCORBEAU SAYS IN THE LAST PANEL? Nobody knows. Not even the fantastic Doctor Reed Richards of the Friggin Four fuckin knows.

So again, ignoring the stupidity (it's just the nature off the beast. Getting caught up in the bullshit in old superhero comics is like freaking out about plot holes in porno movies. If that's all you're caring about then you're missing the point, brah), this was a pretty good royal rumble. Cockrum and Claremont dump close two 2 dozen new characters in one issue. Possibly because it was Cockrum's last, I have no idea. None of them are GREAT characters, stock characters and powers in new costumes mostly, but many them are used quite a bit in the X-universe in subsequent years.

Great, well, smell you later Cockrum. I enjoyed checking out your drawings of the all new all different X-Men. I didn't read them when they came out but I did read the Classic X-Men reprints when they came out in the 80's, and so by reading these black and white reprints in the Essential X-Men books I bought on Ebay, my aching cavernous nostalgia was the least bit satiated. Also your name is cock and rum. tee hee.

X-MEN 106: DARK SHOUD OF OH HEY FUCK THIS AND FUCKIN BLOW ME

so i was going to wait to do the next issue but then i realized that it was a throwaway issue that used to happen when the people who normally do the comic fall drastically behind schedule and they use some issue that they had the back up guys create around the same time they first launched the series so they could use that to plug the gap so they dont miss a ship date.

FASCINATING I KNOW RIGHT?

so the first two pages is xavier about to be attacked by firelord from the last issue and then he goes "oh man i'm having a dream!" and then the rest of the comic is some shittyly drawn and shittyly scripted comic where xavier dreams the new x-mena and the old x-men fight each other.

OH WOW, WHAT A COOL IDEA, TOO BAD THEY ALREADY DID THAT IN ISSUE 100 ASSHOLES.

oh and check this out, the issue ends with xavier waking up and going, "Whew, it was all a dream."

of course it would have been WAY cooler if he then turned to the reader and said "OR WAS IT???" but no, this issue is totally without any redeemable qualaties. it sucks my ass and here is what xavier is like all the time because of his stupid annoying as hell dreams that they postponed revealing what they were all about for this awful fucking piece of shit filler issue:

man, shut the fuck up xavier. finally next issue we find out what the fuck all these space dreams were about because the x-men are in space about to handle some fuckin space business.

but im done for now and hooray for beers and you know SNL wasnt nearly as bad as i thought it was going to be but it also wasnt great and you know what is totally great? in exactly 15 years from when this fucking issue was hanging out in drugstores and newsstands throughout the country is when faith no more released the best fucking album in american history. DONT BELIEVE ME? WELL LISTEN TO THIS AND HAVE YOUR FUCKING MIND CHANGED FOREVER.

X-MEN 105: THREE DICKS UNLEASHED

Regular old PENIS UNLEASHED would also rhyme with PHOENIX UNLEASHED but I prefer going with 'three dicks' because it implies explicitly the presence of two more dicks and holy fuckin shit i never turn the opportunity to treble my dick quotient. fuckin dicks man, its what i live for bro.

great, so it's saturday night and i'm going to write about some x-men comics but its cool cause ive been drinking, so im not a total fuckin loser. right, lets get fucking to it then.

oh hey look, charles barkley on fuckin SNL. fuck me, right?

Now in X-men one hundred and five, published in june nineteen hundred and seventy fuckin seven, the x-men are fighting this guy eric the red, who's been hounding there asses for months, FOR MONTHS, right there on the first splash page.

And everyones like "Eric the Red you fuckin dick! Now youre going to get whats coming to you - for fucking with the X-men! Yeah!"

And then right as Wolverine is about to cut his ass up the fucking FIRELORD comes out of nowhere and FUCKS HIS ASS UP with a FLAMING BLAST from his fuckin FLAMING STAFF of the FIRELORD.

They fight for a couple pages and then (UGH) everything that's been going on for the last bunch off issues gets explained, which means this will take awhile. (ps Kristin Wiig is looking pretty hot. I'd like to slip her my tube steak. yeah, boners).

so like, eric the red is really a a member of the alien race called the Shi'ar. He chose to impersonate Eric the Red because I one point Cyclops was tricked into fighting the X-Men AS Eric the Red so this Shi'ar guy Shakari dressed as Eric the Red to confuse the X-Men and fuck man how tedious is this, shit.

how do i condense this? So, Xavier's been having these space nightmares because this alien, Lilandra, has been trying to contact him so he can help her over throw her brother, D'Ken, from blowing up the unviverse with a big space crystal that he thinks is an awesome intergalactic weapon but actually if he uses it he will eradicate all existence and, no wait, that happens next issue, or no the one after the next issue.

MOTHERFUCKER. drinking and recapping the the first claremont/cockrum run on x-men was a bad idea. ok gonna start over.

X-men fight Eric the Red. Firelord comes in and fucks up the X-men. Firelord fucks X-Men up. Firelord was tricked by Eric the Red into attacking the X-Men because Eric the Red is a fucking DICK. THEN Eric the Red convinces Firelord to go find Xavier and FUCK HIM UP TOO (also because he is a dick).

Then we see some aliens trying to kill another alien. then the first alien heads towards earth and the other aliens decide they dont want to fuck with earth because earthlings have fucked up Galactus not once, not twice, not THRICE, but FOUR TIMES BITCHES. YES EARTHLINGS IN YOUR FACE. SUCK ON THESE EARTH NUTS AND CHOKE ON MY EARTH DONG. FUCK YOU ALIENS CUNTLICKS!

then the alien escaped to earth and finally to xavier who's talking to jean grey and jean grey's parents and jean grey's roommate Misty Knight (who is NOT a stripper, shockingly) and Xavier is all like "Oh fuck, the alien from my dreams! And this alien is a babe! She's got a weird hairdo and says she's a bird-like race but i say shes a presedential race of Babraham Lincolns!"

Then Firelord shows up to fuck up Xavier and then Jean Grey's like, oh no, bitch, im not only jean greay but i'm also fuckin PHOENIX UNLEASHED SO FUCK OFF TO HELL AND DIE YOU FIREFUCKASS!

Then Firelord is fucked off all the way to Union Park in lower manhattan where chris claremont and dave cockrum are talking about making the X-Men comic book when they are interrupted by FIRELORD'S FUCKING BODY and they are like WHOA WE ARE META BEFORE IT IS COOL SO SIENFELD AND LARRY DAVID CAN SUCK BOTH OUR RESPECTIVE COCKS WITH INCREDIBLE GUSTO.

AND THEN (fuckin A i think its almost over) eric the red constructs a intersellar gateway on the top of jean grey's apartment building (yeah fine, whatever) and grabs Lilandra the alien bird, uh, chick (fuckin ha ha) and then xavier's like NO DAMMIT, NOW THE WORLD WILL END, HOW DO I SOLVE THIS PROBLEM?

So then i redrew the next panel in the comic:

But in the comic they actually all do go after Shakari (ooooh my hips dont lie!) and Lilandra (and phoenix too) and then Firelord comes back and is like 'Right, now i plan on DEFINITELY fucking you up, xavier', and xavier is all like 'whatever man, you're just a fuckin stooge and my x-clowns are on there way to another planet to save the UNIVERSE so fuckin suck me.'

AND FINALLY WE ARE DONE FUCK THIS.

X-MEN 104: The gentleman's name is FAGNETO

What, he's a fancy gentleman, and what else were you expecting from a title like that?

S0 the all new, all different X-Bags made it out of Ireland are are now on an island in the North of Scotland, the Outer Hebrides, talking to the proprietor of a hovercraft rental company, which are apparently not at all hard to find in the Outer Hebrides. Unfortunately the X-bags showed up in costumes (which even Banshee admits is retarded) and the hovercraft proprietor no longer wishes to rent to mutant folk (racist swine!) but since the X-Men all have super powers they just take it anyway.

So off they go to see Moira Mactaggart, who lives way the fuck up there and up till know all we know of her is that she is a past acquaintance of Xavier's and knows how to handle a machine gun. Then the hovercraft full of X-Men attacked and trashed (looks like Agnus MacWhiter was right not to want to rent to muties, way to play into your sterotypes, X-tards) and the X-men are transported against their will into the lair of Magneto! Which we all knew was coming because he's on the fucking cover (a rather uninspiring homage to the very first X-Bag comic).

But before those dudes can duke it out we cut to Cyclops landing in the HR-71 Blackbird (what, Xavier's just growing those fuckers on trees?) at Moira's place with Moira in tow. There they find Maddrox the Multiple Man (NICE!) who explains that Eric the Red broke into Magneto's cell where he was being held prisoner as a baby (yes thats right. Hey, I guess if you have the technology that certainly an effective way of disabling a criminal) and grew him back into a man. Um, whatever. And then Eric the Red and Magneto broke into Moira's futuristic compound on a remote Scottish island and took over. Apparently those two then discussed there plan to take the X-Men down within ear shot of Maddrox and didn't think twice about it.

Anyhow, Cyclops bolts to try and meet up with the rest of the team, who are in the meantime getting big time PWNed by Magneto. It doesn't help that the two toughest X-Men facing the Master of Magnetism, Colossus and Wolverine, are made out of metal.

After getting wailed on for like 4 pages Cyclops shows up to distract Magneto long enough for the X-Men to run away. Which they do, to the sevre displeasure of Wolverine, who informs Cyclops that he will never forgive him for turning the X-Men into cowards. Fucking pussy.

While getting their asses kicked, the X-Men also learn that Moira's weird little base thing is actually a holding cell for dangerous, captured mutants. We see a cell for Unus, the Untouchable, a Silver Age ass clown whose power is that hee can't be touched (gotta love those 60's) and one of the lame ass Ani-Men from the new X-men's very first mission. And finally the last door we see after the X-Men flee like bitches is a door marked Mutant X, which won't hear about again until like issue 125 or some shit.

Then there's the last page, which features (deep breath!): the first appearance of Cosair, a space pirate and his giant lizard-alien space friend, Ch'od; the space lady from Xavier's space dreams, flying around a giant bug-looking alien space ship; Xavier reuniting Jean Grey with her parents; and finally Eric the Red fiercely ruing his foiled plans and vowing Xavier's death by his hands. Quite a lot of stuff packed into 1 page and 7 panels.

So yeah, still heaps of 1970's comics nonsense, but we're finally seeing Claremont find his groove, and the comics are getting quite fun to read. Claremont is juggling a bunch of different plot lines, or at least teasing them, while sticking faithfully to the single story per-issue style of the day. Any of the last dozen or so issue could be read on their own, but the readers who tune in every other month (as they were published at the time) were rewarded for picking up on the subtle (and not so subtle) digressions snuck into various pages. And though Cockrum's art struggles at time (it's pretty lacking in detail and dynamic angles), its infused with enough energy and imagination that its no wonder this run became a kind of cult classic for super hero fans back in the day (ie autistic dorkwads who couldn't find anyone to play D&D with).

OK I feel like a total fag for that last sentence but it's ok because I'm going to feel even lamer in just a second when I declare my excitement for some of the even AWESOMER comics that are coming up next! The next one is called: PHOENIX UNLEASED! Oh, fucking radical!

X-MEN 103: The balls of jack bauer

So this one is called THE FALL OF THE TOWER, even though its the whole castle that falls, so why not just call it that since it's as equally lame as what they chose? Beats the fucking shit out of me! Also the cover calls it DEATH SEIGE, which is way cooler than either of those fuckin names, so who fucking cares, shut up with the title already, christ!

Anyway, this is an all leprechaun issue, I guess because Claremont loves leprechauns and his worthless editor, Archie Goodwin, didn't think to stop him and say, "Hey Chris, you know how you have like, leprechauns in every panel of issue 103's script? How about instead of leprechauns you makes them literally anything else in the world because leprechauns are with out a doubt the god awful stupidest fucking thing you could possibly come up with."

Alas, such a conversation never transpired, or if it did, the sage advice of Mr Goodwin was blithely ignored by the arrogant young rouge author Chris Claremont.

But seriously, fuck this issue. I don't want to recap any off it because fuck these dumb shit leprechauns. The X-men beat Juggs and Black Tom and everyone is fine. Although I will point out that the only way the X-Men stop the Juggernaut is by throwing Black Tom into the ocean, which causes Juggernaut to leap into the ocean after him.

And the Eric the Red is teased a couple times as the mastermind behind the last few issues but explaining it would involve more leprechauns so fuck that noise.

Oh right, here is the cartoon.

X-MEN 102: WHO WILL FROT MY FUGGIN COCK?

Issue 102 starts with a big fight splash as big Juggs asks "Among the lot of you [X-Men] - WHO WILL STOP THE JUGGERNAUT?" It's a good thing someone also didn't make a mess all over Juggernauts' parking lots, because then he'd have to ask, "WHO WILL MOP THESE FUGGIN LOTS?"

As you can see, what Juggernaut does ask also serves as the title of the issue and I had a ferocious internal debate as to which way I should go with my parody title. Obviously the more purient alternative prevailed. Also, should it be whom instead of who? I don't know, what do I look like, a fucking English professor?

Anyways, as I was saying, the issue begins with the big maroon bullet-head wailing away on Colossus, Nightcrawler and Wolverine. Banshee tackles his cousin, Black Tom, who are immune to each others' powers because they are related (because thats how mutant powers work, duh) and Storm cowers in the corner, suffering from a debilitating panic attack brought on by her acute claustrophobia.

Storm's phobia developed during her childhood when she saw her parents crushed to death by a collapsed building. Seems logical enough. However, explained illogically is the rest of Storm's fucking idiotic origin. Craming in as much unnecessary detail as possible, Claremont decided that Storm, the African weather-goddess, was actually born in Harlem (112th St and Amsterdam, specifically) to an aspiring African-American photojournalist (aparently he hasn't made it into the big leagues of photojournalism yet) and a Kenyan Princess. When she was six months old, Storm's parents move to Cairo, so that 5 years later their house can be crashed into by French Vautor fighter bomber during the Suez War of 1956 (don't worry about the pilot of that French Vautor fighter bomber, though, Claremont explicitly says he ejects before the crash and is repatriated home after being taken prisoner, thank god). Storm's parents, unfortunetely, are crushed to death. So long Mrs and Mrs David Munroe, it was swell sharing 5 panels and 2 pages with you! But it doesn't end there, oh no. See, Ororo is quite the resourceful 6 year old, and manages to crawl out off the rubble and find Achmed El Gibars, the finest beggar thief in all of Cairo, who takse Storm in, raises her for 6 years and teached her to be an expert beggar thief. Then, at the tender age of twelve, Storm walks (yes, walks), two thousand miles to Kenya, where she worshiped by the bushmen of the Serengati until Xavier shows up and convinces her to join his superhero team.

Yep, that's how fucking stupid comics in the 70's were.

So after the flashback digression we see Xavier, picking up on Storm's anguish with his vast mental powers. He goes to get Cyclops to tell him to help (right after a brief one panel shot off Jean Grey teasing her super scary super duper new phoenix powers!) but Cyclops tells him to fuck off, he's staying with Jean. Xavier calls him an "ungrateful, unspeakable cur!" (whoa, temper temper there, fuckin Shakespeare) but before his reprimand can continue, he has another space vision!

Then there's like 5 more pages of fighting and it looks like the X-men are defeated when the issue ends (and also we see a couple more panels of the leprechauns).

This isn't as terrible as it sounded. The fights scenes are pretty good, with Nightcrawler, Colossus and Wolverine all showing off their bad assness, and the Dark Phoenix ominous tease is cool, especially when you know what happens like, 30 issues later. Yes, Storm's origin is retarded, but Claremont needed a lockpick for the team so these is how he got one. It's also nice to see Xavier totally over react. That guy can be a total dick, man. I'm glad i never joined the X-Men. Fuckin professor ass-fuckin-hole.

Ok next coming up right now!

X-MEN 101: LIKE A FETUS FROM THE ASSES

Hey happy new year - its been forever since I did this so let's see what happened in X-Men one hundred and fuckin one!

The spaceship of x-men crashes in the ocean (SBANG! THOD! FTHOD! FTHLOOM!) and everyone is OK except Jean but then Jean Grey emerges like a PHOENIX FROM THE ASHES in an all new uniform!

Then they don't know if she will be ok BUT THEN SHE IS OK! And Cyclops is so relieved he has to cry because GOD WHAT A LITTLE BITCH.

So then Xavier sends them to Banshee's castle in Ireland (what, you don't have one?) for a vacation, but Cyclops stays (because he is a bitch, 'member?). And the rest of the X-Men joke around a bit.

Ho ho ho, what chums! But then while hanging out in the Castle they are attacked by Black Tom Cassidy and the Juggernaut! "Nice vacation while it lasted!" says Nightcrawler.

And thats how the cliffhanger for next ish is set up.

So Jean Grey and her new costume are fine, and as we'll see in a few issues, totally powered up! She be able to tackle such worthies as Galactus' Heralds, putting her among the ranks of the heaviest of Marvel Superhero heavies. Then of course we later find out that its too much power for her to handle and she goes nuts and kills a whole planet, and then kills herself to atone for such egregious abuse of power. And then the Marvel editors decide to fuck up the continuity royally by having her come back from the dead, but instead of just going, oh look Jean's back, and its a comic book so who cares (like Joss Whedon did with Colossus in Astonishing X-Men), the Marvel powers that be decided (in a tale best retold by you looking it up on fucking google for the whole epic length story) that the jean Grey/Phoenix we're seeing now is not actually Jean Grey, but a whole different being, who then died, and the REAL Jean was pulled out of the bottom of the ocean.

So yeah, it got all fucked up later. For now, though, its good to know that Marvel Girl wouldn't be such a worthless dame and will be able to actually contribute in future x-battles (If you're a total nerd who cares about this kind of stuff its good, anyway).

Anyhow - no updates on the weird space dreams Charles Xavier has been having but we finally find out why some guy got killed for trying to deliver a letter a bunch of issues back and Black Tom the villain is introduced I think for the first time and at least for the first time with Juggypoo, Xavier's evil half brother.

Also, we don't know it yet but we see a panel of a bunch of leprechaun hiding in the shadows of the castle watching he X-Men. These turn out to be actual leprechauns and the less said about them the better.

On the opposite off the awesome fictional character spectrum is Wolverine continuing to be a total bad ass. Sure, he buys Jean Grey flowers when she is in the hospital, but in Wolvie's defense a) Jean Grey is a total babe b) even Wolverine can not believe he's buying flowers for a "frail". And the fact that he calls her a frail is pretty bad ass too.

Oh and the best part is when Xavier 'orders' everyone to go on vacation and Wolverine's response is to un-snikt he claws and threaten to murder Xavier with them because he doesn't feel like going. Because Wolverine will FUCKING CUT YOU AND HE DOES NOT EVEN CARE.

OK even though its been awhile I added 3 pictures so thats enough for now. And yes, Avatar's plot is that fucking stupid. Awesome visuals but I guess I have time to digress so here is the essence of Avatar: Evil humans are trying to extract precious resources from a planet inhabited by a bunch of 10 feet tall blue people who act like a bunch of Indians from the American plains in the 1850s. To more easily extract these resources, the evil humans create fake remote control aliens. One humans decides he will stop the rest of the humans by using his remote control alien to rape the biggest pterodactyl on the planet and lead the aliens to victory in a big battle against the humans as the ancient alien legend predicted.

thats it. i recommend seeing this movie in 3-D in the theatres but maximize their experience by first taking a bunch off extasy tablets and listening to an iPod with 3 hours of full of crazy tehcno the whole time.