X-Men 130: Bedazzler – er I mean, Dazzler

WHAT WE LEARNED THIS ISSUE:

DISCO IS NOT DEAD, MUTHAFUCKA

EVIL CRIMNAL VANS HAVE SHITLOADS OF BUTTONS IN THEM

STORM DOESN’T KNOW HER OWN PHONE NUMBER

THE X-MEN ROLL HARD ON THE DOUBLE R’S

GOING TO CLUBS IN 1979 MEANS PUTTING A PAPERCLIP THROUGH YOUR NOSE

A fuggin disco recap!

The Hellfire Club and the X-Men both go chasing after another new mutant. This time, a fully grown woman who sings in seedy disco clubs in lower Manhattan. The club is hilarious, by the way, full of punks, disco queens and blaxploitation pimps.

Jean Grey and Cyclops roll up in a Rolls Royce and enter the club while Nightcrawler runs recon. They’re attacked, but because they have the motherphucking phoenix phorce on their side, they rather easily prevail over the armored Hellfire goons. Not, however, before Wyngarde shows up in person and makes Jean Grey hallucinate back to the 18^th century again, this time tricking her into making out with him in the club (no bottle full of bub, however) in full view of Cyclops, who watches on and does nothing like an impotent nutless tampon.

Back at the Hellfire secret lair, Kitty is detected, but not before Storm slips her a piece of cloth with a phone number for the X-Men on it (why the fuck would you ever sew that into your uniform?) which she uses to contact the rest of the uncaptured team.

So Kitty Pyrde, the 13.5 year old who earlier his day was at ballet practice, is running for her life from a bunch of costumed super villains, and Phoenix, Cyclops, Nightcrawler and Dazzler all speed off to her rescue. Dazzler, by the way, has the power to make a really intense lightshow that causes people to fall into a trance. Wow, talk about the softest of all mutant powers. What would you do if you were a dude with this power? Fucking hang myself, probably.

Ok, next time we find out if they X-Dorks save Kitty (hint, they do!).

X-Men 129: God Spare the Child… these overly dramatic cornball titles

WHAT WE LEARNED THIS ISSUE:

PROFESSOR XAVIER IS MAD DICKISH

THE HELLFIRE CLUB TREATS OBJECTS LIKE WOMEN

WOLVERINE READS PENTHOUSE FOR THE ARTICLES

Suck my recap: The X-Pals leave Muir Island without powerless pussy whipped Banshee. Jason Wyngarde keep screwing with Jean Grey, making her think shes living in the 18^th century and betrothed to Wyngarde, because Claremont and Byrne are a bunch of foppish dandies who watched far too much BBC as kids.

Back at the X-Mansion, Chuckie Xavier is back and tries to treat the new team, including Wolverine who later in marvel canon is revealed to be over one hundred years old, like a bunch of high schools kids. After Wolverine tells Chaz X that he’s no flaming amateur, bub, Cyclops tries to talk to Xavier about toning things down, at which point Xavier blames everything that’s not going the way he wants on Cyclops’ failures as a team leader. Charles Xavier just may have the worst managerial instincts in the history of the universe.

Then we meet the shadowy collection of villains who call themselves the Hellfire Club, of which Jason Wyngarde is a member. Also a member is the White Queen, Emma Frost, whose idea of a practical outfit is a cape, underwear, a corset and thigh high boots. Come on now!

Emma Frost and the X-Men both then go to Chicago to try and recruit the newest mutant and stereotypical comic reader’s wet dream, Kitty Pryde, to their respective teams. The two sides end up duking it out at a malt shoppe, where soda is advertised as $1.25 (seems high for 1980, no?) and the proprietor doesn’t appreciate Wolverine flipping through his porno mags without paying for the privilege (“This ain’t no liberry, fella,” he says).

The X-Men beat the Hellfire’s armored goons but are no match for the White Queen’s vicious mind rapes (or whatever you call her psychic attacks) and are thrown in a jet and hauled off back to the Hellfire Club. Kitty managed to escape their clutches, however, and stows away in the ship, unbeknownst to the immensely powerful psychic, the White Queen, who’s whole mission’s purpose is to locate and abduct Kitty Pryde.

So there we have the first appearance of two huge characters in X-Men lore, Kitty Pryde and Emma Frost, who I think we can all agree should just kiss already. KISS! KISS! KISS! KISS!

Also noteworthy is the amour the Hellfire’s goons wear is outfitted with a self destruct mechanism that is designed to be exploded while they’re wearing it if they fail their mission. Who the fuck signs up for this gig? There are easier ways to make a dishonest buck, I’m sure.

And super villain Sebastian Shaw makes his first cameo. Shit this issue was fucking loaded. How do they plan on topping it? By introducing the Dazzler next issue! Holy fuck I can’t wait to see what that shit means!

X-Men 128: The Action of a Tiger – A tiger that at no point whatsoever appears in this issue

WHAT WE LEARNED THIS ISSUE:

CHRIS CLAREMONT AND JOHN BYRNE HAVE DEFINITELY EXPERIMENTED WITH DRUGS

PROTEUS LIKES TO TURN GLASS INTO BEES AND HIS MOM INTO AN MUTANT ELEPHANT-BAT

CYCLOPS AND HAVOC, BECAUSE THEY ARE BROTHERS, ARE IMMUNE TO EACH OTHER’S POWERS, FARTS

MOIRA MACTAGGERT, THE SLUT, JUST SAW HER HUSBAND AND ONLY SON DIE IN THE SAME DAY BUT IS STILL IN THE MOOD TO HAVE A FIERCE MAKE OUT SESS WITH BANSHEE

Way too fuggin long of a recap: Proteus is holding Moira hostage and turning the city of Edinburgh inside out, literally, with his reality distorting mutant power. The X-Men, because they are mental midgets with the moral and ethical depth of a shot glass, still don’t want to kill Proteus, because taking a life in any circumstance is wrong. Due to their being such yawning vaginas, Proteus killed a bunch of innocent people. However at the end of the issue, the only way the X-Men could figure out how to stop Proteus was by killing him anyway. What a bunch of prolapsed assholes.

This is typical comic book ethics. A super villain will, for some reason, set up a choice for a super hero. To save these ten people, you will have to kill this one person (or let them die, whatever). The motive for the super villain is usually to show the doo-gooding superhero that they’re no better than then the super villain, in that they are choosing to take someone’s life. To resolve this dilemma, the super hero usually rejects the entire choice stating “there… must… be… another… way!” and manages to save all everyone involved.

Of course this is bullshit, and as people in the military know (and I would know, I’ve watched every episode of Battlestar Galactica), you often are forced to choose between the lesser of two evils. It’s called life, bitches, so just suck it up, X-Bags. Storm is the worst about this, by the way (an yes I know I’m talking about a fictional character, so what). She would actually stop the hypothetical sniper from 1938 from blowing Hitler’s head smooth off. That self-righteous cunt.

Haha… right… anyway, Colossus uses his metal fists to punchersize Proteus into nothingness (oh no… my only weakness… fists!) and he dies. Here’s how Claremont describes that cataclysmic event: “Colossus smashes his organic steel fists into the heart of Proteus’ energy form. And that’s only the beginning of his ordeal, as Colossus’ dense molecular structure totally disrupts the delicately balanced energy matrices that makes up the rogue mutant. In a sense, he short-circuits Proteus, scattering every fabric of the villain’s being—every scrap of consciousness—to the four corners of the Earth.”

Such sweet poetry. A salve to sooth the spastic soul. Words as nectar for nerds like Mountain Dew and Cheeto dust. So long, Proteus, don’t let the pyrotechnics hit your rapidly disintegrating ass on your way toward oblivion.

Dubious ethical soup aside, a very solid four issue arc for Claremont and Byrne. After wrapping up two issue battle with Arcade as the Monster-of-the-Week, we finally see what all this Mutant X foreshadowing nonsense was all about. And it was pretty decent. Moira’s character is fleshed out, Wolvie, Cyclops and Jean Grey continue their angst-triangle, and we got some really trippy fight signs. Sure, we’re still seeing text boxes with stage directions and superfluous expository prose, but its comics in the late 70s, early 80’s, that’s what you get.

Next, we find out with this fucking dandy off a fop, Jason Wyngarde, is all about, at the start off the motherfucking Dark Phoenix Saga. Yeah! It’s going to be tits!

X-Men 127: The Quality of Hatred, is high if you consider how bad these titles are

WHAT WE LEARNED FROM THIS ISSUE:

CLAREMONT IS NOW JUST RADOMLY STRINGING TOGETHER DRAMATICLY SOUNDING WORDS TOGETHER IN NO PARTICULAR ORDER TO FORM ISSUE TITLES

CYCLOPS IS CLEARLY UNAWARE OF THE THEORY OF MORAL UTILITARIANISM

MOIRA MACTAGGERT IS A FINE LOOKING PIECE OF ASS FOR PUSHING 40

IN SCOTLAND, ITS NO BIG DEAL IF A MEMBER OF PARLIAMENT WHO IS A ‘SURE BET’ TO BECOME THE NEXT PRIME MINSTER DIES

SCOTLAND FUCKING BLOWS

A mercifully brief recap: Right before Proteus can finish off Storm, Moira MacTaggert, Proteus’ mom, tries to assassinate him with a sniper rifle. She misses (because pussy whipped Cyclops doesn’t believe in taking a life, even a deranged psychopathic serial killer with near limitless power and a unquenchable thirst for murder, spoils her aim) and so Proteus runs away to Edinburgh, where he finds his dad, Moira’s still legal husband, Joe MacTaggert, and kills him. But Joe was a raging mega douche so no big deal there.

The entire X-crew, reunited and fighting together at last (san Professor Xavier, because he’s luxuriating in space, because he is an annoying character to have in battles so they wrote him out of the book for this arc), find Proteus and get ready for the final battle, which will happen next issue. Man they are really milking this Mutant X storyline for all it’s worth.

No Jason Wyngarde/Mastermind Phoenix Phucking this issue. And Moira’s husband makes one of the briefest appearances by any X-Men supporting characters. Anyway, next issue, the end of Proteus, I swear.

X-Men 126: How Sharper than a serpent’s tooth…! What the fuck is that supposed to mean? How sharper? How sharper is anything?

WHAT WE LEARNED FROM THIS ISSUE:

IF ONE OF MADROX THE MULTIPLE MAN’S DUPLICATES JERKS OFF THE ORIGINAL MULTIPLE MAN ITS TOTALLY NOT GAY AT ALL

MUTANT X WOULD BE REALLY POPULAR AT PHISH CONCERTS

Fuggin recap: The X-Men are on the loose on Muir Island, looking for the that prick, Mutant X, for having a terrible name and for prowling around, possessing people, sucking the life out of them and then chucking their dead, lifeless corpses aside for new bodies. But no one cared that he killed Angus “The Fagort” MacWhirter, because nobody ever liked that scrotum licking butt pimple.

Jason Wyngarde (who I forgot, we don’t technically know is Mastermind yet) is phucking with Phoenix some more and keeping her from the action. Eventually Wolverine and Nightcrawler run into Mutant X and it is revealed that Claremont has finally decided on a better name for Mutant X, and it’s Proteus. Which also means Claremont has decided that the Mutant formerly known as X also has reality bending powers to go with the name. Which means Proteus has the power to make anyone he wants feel like they’re on a really bad acid trip (not that I would know what that’s like).

Moira also tells Cyclops rather sheepishly that Mutant X is her son, that she never named him but just calls Mutant X (because Claremont couldn’t be bothered to think of one), that she hates Mutant X’s father and that Mutant X is susceptible to metal (which I’m also assuming Claremont just decided so he could come up with a convenient way of killing him. I mean seriously, after hearing that why wasn’t Cylops like, oh, ok, metal. Cool, no problem, there’s metal all over the fucking the place. Why didn’t you say earlier? This is going to be a cinch).

Oh and Wolverine casually announces that his adamentium skeleton costs a mere $3 million. Come on, that’s it? Even in 1980, that’s only like, $6 million in 2010 dollars (right? I’m not on the internet right now but 30 years at 2% interest or so? Sorry Managerial Finance was like 2 semesters ago, I may be a little off). If that’s all it costs, eve the Canadian government should be able to afford a shit load of Wolverines.

Anyway, the last panel is a cliffhanger of Storm vs Proteus. Who will win???? Find out next month, when we’ll find out that the X-Men will win (duh).

X-Men 125: There’s something awesome on beer island

And its beer! So good I want to have 30 of them. I wish I could drink beer all the time and just ignore my life forever.

WHAT WE LEARN FROM THIS ISSUE:

CHARLIE IS AN AKWARD GUEST AT INTERGALACTIC SPACE PARTIES

MAGNETO HAS A SECCRET HIDEOUT ON AN ORBITING ASTEROID SPACE STATION AND STILL WATCHES OLD BATTLES AGAINST THE X-MEN ON A REEL TO REEL VIDEOTAPE PLAYER

JEAN GREY LOOKS TOTALLY HOT IN A BLACK LEATHER CORSET AND CAN KILL YOU WERE HER GOD LIKE MUTANT POWERS

Recap of the issue: Back on Muir Island, where once there was the inappropriately named Marvel Girl, now there is totally bitchin PHOENIX! And she’s got some serious cans on her. Jean Grey is just chilling and reminiscing in a helpful flashback while Mutant X creepily watches (and masturbates, one can only assume). Mutant X is still on the loose and inhabiting the body of that limp dick hovercraft salesman, Angus MacWhirter.

Meanwhile, the rest of the X-Men, who Jean thinks are dead still, are alive and practicing in the danger room while Magneto convalesces up on Asteroid M while his former flunky Mastermind thinks about how he’s going to totally fuck over Jean Grey, who he’s been stalking and masturbating too since like 10 issues ago.

Mastermind is not very bright, since he’s scheming to manipulate and abuse a mutant who is now revealed to have god-like powers, being able to literally rearrange the atomic structures of matter around her. Moira frets about this while she wonders where Xavier is. Xavier happens to be chilling in space at his alien bird queen girlfriend’s intergalactic space party thinking about the exact same thing, obviously. Before anyone can do shit about dick, however, Phoenix is attacked by Mutant X.

Before we find out how that find will go, the X-Men finally reveal that theyre still alive, by having the Beast accidentally stumble upon them in what he thinks should be a deserted X-Mansion. Because the surviving X-Men couldn’t be bothered to use a phone and let anyone else know that they’re still alive. I mean I get that they though the other X-Men they were separated from died, but come on, they don’t try and contact anyone? How fucking dumb is that? Pretty fucking dumb, I’d say.

Finally, Cyclops picks up the motherfucking telephone and dials up Muir Island, where his brother’s girlfriend picks up, celebrates his sentience and is then also attacked my Mutant X, setting up a royale rumble between the reunited X-Men and Mutant X at Muir Island.

Boy I can’t wait, it’s been since their last battle with Magneto that the X-Men were all together again. And that asshole Mutant X is going to try and ruin everything. Asshole!

X-MEN FUGGIN ANNUAL THREE. THE TURD FUGGIN ANNUAL IN X-MEN HISTORY

Well I still need a fuckin internship for this summer, so I really shouldn't be wasting time with balzac's fuckin ballsack, but it's been a while so fuck it.

The next issue in Essential X-Men volume 2 is X-Men Annual 3. Annuals are giant size issus, usually like 60 to 80 pages or something instead of the usual 20, that comic companies put out in the summer at triple the cost to get more money from kids. This is the first annual for the X-Men that features the new team, and the first annual that's not reprints, so we're all in for a treat.

The treat comes in the form of a loin clothed dickhead named Arkon, who looks like a viking and throws lightning bolts.

The plot is pretty stupid and predictable. Arkon shows up in the middle of New York and stumbles upon the X-Men, who then fight each other, naturally. Then they become friends and the X-Men help save Arkon's planet. The end.

The only thing that makes this issue special is the interior artwork by George Perez. Perez was at the height of his powers back in the 70's and his pencils here, aided by the always incredible Terry Austin, are spectacular. I personally find Perez's human forms a little stilted but the detail he gives to the inanimate surrounding is breathtaking.

HOLY SHIT CAN YOU EVEN BELIEVE HOW GREAT THIS FUCKIN SHIT IS? YOU CAN'T, CAN YOU? NO BECAUSE SEEIN IS BELIEVIN BABY.

Anyway, that's all I feel like saying about this annual. I need to go find a fuckin job and the issue sucked anyway. Next, back to the regular fuckin series!