Welcome to Loneliness & Cheeseburgers Presents: All-New X-Men (Vol. 1) Issue #4! In the previous installment, the new mutant team of Cyclops, Magneto, and sort-of-Emma Frost learn the hard way that their powers are acting up. Uncontrollable and/or not working correctly. Cyclops is a blubbering mess, having spent much of his life trying to control them and now he’s back at square one. Magneto and Emma are pissed at Scott for causing this shit to happen in the first place. Magik Illyana seems to actually have gained some powers, so she’s happy as a mutant clam.

A college kid accidentally displays his freakish powers during a school protest. When the new mutant team pops in to introduce themselves, the Young X-Men clan of sweating 12-year-olds also show up to stop them!

These children are gonna get so many noogies.

All New X-Men (Vol. 1), Issue #4 [February, 2013]
Written by: Brian Michael Bendis

Old, tired, beat-up, raggedy, pathetic-looking Cyclops, with his visor sputtering and flashing, he finally thinks to himself that he’s really gone and lost his mind now. So much has happened in life, but now he’s finally admitting it. Reality keeps blurring into fantasy. Mutants! Powers! But time-travel? Come on, now.

Perhaps Emma’s lying about her loss of powers. Nah, she’s too fucking mad about stuff right now. Hmm…but she’s always kind of mad, isn’t she? But then again, if she actually didn’t lose her powers then there’s no way she’d allow Scott to think the thinky thoughts he’s thinking right now! At least he thinks so! Haha!

Perhaps Professor Xavier is doing all this! Oh wait, he’s dead! He’s decomposing! Zombie Xavier? Pfft, no way, his legs don’t work. Ain’t no zombie wheeling around in a chair around these parts. But maybe he’s not really dead. Maybe he’s invisible! Maybe he’s invisible and right in front of Scott’s nose. Maybe Scott can’t feel him either. Maybe Xavier is smooching him on the lips right now.

“He wants to see who I was when he loved me. When I was everything that he wanted me to be,” Scott mulls it over. Evidence toward the smooching, if you ask me.

Xavier sent 12-year-old versions of themselves in order to illustrate the point that Scott has really lost his way over the course of these past couple of decades. Right? How old is Scott Summers, like 92?

But no, that can’t be it. Dead is dead, and Xavier’s dead. Not even smart enough to stay alive. What an idiot.

So who would do such a thing? Who would punish Scott so…so…so viciously. Waaahhh! Boo hoo! Blub blub blub!!

Yes! Thank you! Yeesh.

Old Cyclops literally stands there staring at all these youngins while ruminating. The silence must be awkward. It’s probably been three straight minutes already! No one dares make a move…until Scott starts thinking about how beautiful and sexy and bonable a young prepubescent Jean Grey is right in front of his eyes! Or his lack of eyes. In front of his Geordie LaForge visor. Then she yells at him to stop, considering she can hear every single sick thought.

Old Cyclops is still palaryzed with paranoia, fear, curiosity, and big old stiffy. Magneto wants to know WHO WOULD ORCHESTRATE THIS ABOMINATION!! Step forward! NOW!! Spanking time, children!

Old Cyclops keeps undressing Jean Grey with his mind and she tells him to cut it the hell out.

I’m not too well-versed in Jean Grey’s powers, but it looks like she can move stuff with her mind too. Old Cyclops comes running toward her one second, and the next second he’s flying backwards yelling “NO!”, landing right on some stone steps with his face. Right on his face! lmao

“He did it. I hear his thoughts. He killed the professor!” she yells, which is not something that I myself heard in his thoughts! In fact, he did this whole thing where he didn’t know if Xavier was actually dead. Gawd, weren’t you paying attention at all, Jeannie?

In the scuffle, if you could even call it that, Jean flings Old Scott’s visor off his eyes and those plasma beams start spouting every which way. Since he’s now about 20 yards away, I’m fairly certain that Young Cyclops misconstrues this as an ACT OF AGGRESSION AND ESCALATION and reacts accordingly. By that, I mean he yells “Stop!!” and flings his own plasma blast back at Old Cyclops. Their two blasts meet in the middle, with Old Cyclops’ more erratic.

Ha ha ha, your focus is getting a little shaky, old man.

Old Cyclops loses this tug-of-war and gets flung to the side again. He keeps saying stuff like “no, no, no” and “oh no” and “no” and “agh” while the two teams duke it out for a bit. Young Iceman does stuff, then Magneto, then Young Angel, then Magneto tells Magik to get them out of there, then the old team disappears.

“He ran away? Magneto ran away?!” Angel cries incredulously, “Since when does he do that?”

And Cyclops and Magneto were hugging each other? This is their future? Gross stuff, man. They should just slit their wrists now and cut their losses. They should tie their legs to concrete blocks and jump in a pool like AJ Soprano.

Nah, suicide is dumb. They should just go back to their own time. It’s better there. There’s less…well, it’s better there.

Oh yeah, the kid! The face shapeshifter! Benjamin! He’s on the ground looking dazed, and the young redhead runs over to ask him if he’s ok. We forgot all about you, buddy! How are you holding up? Want some Brisk iced tea? You look hot. “You turn into a mutant and the frickin’ X-Men show up and start beating the hell out of each other?” she asks him like it’s all his fault, “And then they just leave?”

Never eat tuna salad before being magically transported by a mutant sorcerer.

Time to shift gears and see what’s going on at Weapon X. The two newest recruits, the non-Benjamin recruits, are hanging around the ugly industrial nightmare of a hideout and getting to know one another. You got Eva, the time-stopping Australian chick, and you got Christopher, the bringing-friends-back-from-the-dead not-a-chick.

Christopher likes Eva’s accent. Eva probably doesn’t like much of anything of Christopher’s. Nevertheless, they bond a bit over their newfound mutantdom and the fact that the police are after both of them by accident! They chit-chat about their powers, or at least what people are saying their powers are since they don’t really believe it. Pretty soon they’re like “wow cool” and “omg”, and they’re gonna be friends now because they probably ain’t got no friends no more anyway.

The three X-Men Rogues pop into Weapon X after having successfully escaped a group of confused children. Cyclops walks away without a word while Frost, Magneto, and Magik discuss who they just encountered. The Original X-Men! The Fab Five! Scott Summers, Jean Grey, and the rest, whatever their names are! They just encountered all of them in their acne-ridden, sweaty, youthful forms. It’s messed up, right?

Magneto starts getting vicious toward Frost. He accuses her of making this happen, and she snarls back at him. Tells him to take his fucking medicine, GRANDPA, basically.

She’s just touchy because now she’s gonna be caught in a love triangle with Scott and a literal child. And that’s gross.

Meanwhile, at the place where Kitty Pryde is fumbling around playing doctor with Beast, she desperately tries to get ahold of Reed Richards who, as we all know, is currently sucking some monochrome lady’s pussy, so he can’t come to the phone right now.

Without Reed Richards available to help fix the dying Beast, Pryde must move on. She hopes Richards is ok. Personally, I don’t care one way or another about Reed Richards. If he dies next I won’t stop eating this delicious burrito that I’m currently eating. It’s a really good burrito.

Like I said, Reed Richards is poonin’. Also, it was funnier when I thought these kids were 12. You’re a real buzzkill, Iceman.

The thing that gets me, the guy mostly ignorant about the vast and dense X-Men mythology, is everyone freaking out about Jean Grey running around again. Like, yeah, I get it, she’s dead in the present, but who cares? Is she going to telekinesis her way into launching the school into the sun? Is she radioactive as all get-out? What’s the big deal?

Oh well, something for me to figure out in ten years I guess. For now, I’ll roll with it. Pryde and Iceman ultimately wonder what Old Cyclops thought of his old self. His young self. You know what I mean.

INTERMISSION TIME, YOU RUBES. Be sure to tell all your friends about TomWritesAboutStuff.com unless, of course, you don’t have any friends. Sorry.

And we’re back! FLATTOP MOUNTAIN, COLORADO! Speaking of mountain, Reed Richards is mountain. Mountin’ dat ass.

Young Cyclops sits atop the bluff and stares wistfully in the distance. Jean Grey is passed out and Young Beast hopes she’s not dead, then she wakes up, and he’s happy about that. That’s nice.

Everyone asks her a bunch of questions, and she’s clearly in NO MOOD for that stuff. Everyone’s thoughts hammer into her brain. She’s totally wigging out, man.

They should have snuck in one thought that was just like “I like big ol’ honkin’ titties”. We don’t have to know who it was.

Then, as if from the flick of a switch, the voices stop. Jean must have figured out a way to block it out. “Great day to find out I’m an untrained psychic,” she tells the group after assuring them that’s she’s ok, and–

BLEH! That’s her collapsing. Dead.

Just kidding! Now that Jean seems to have recollected herself, the others want to vamoose! Get out of dodge! Blow this popsicle stand and never look back, by cracky! Most want to put all this unpleasantness behind them forever. Not Young Scott, though, he wants to keep all this sharp in his mind forever! Probably because he’s the one who becomes the problem?? I mean, not a stretch here.

Young Scott asks Jean if she’s ok. She glares at him. He looks sheepish. They all hop in the jet with the intention of heading back to the school, except for Young Iceman. He wants to rassle with Magneto and Old, Evil Scott! Everyone says he’s dumb. So they leave.

At another undisclosed location, Old, Evil Scott sits atop a bluff and stares wistfully in the distance. Emma Frost approaches to be like “hey, buddy, I just want to let you know this wasn’t my fault, k?”

Scott’s pretty absent-minded at the moment. He’s all fucked up after seeing Jean Grey, which I’m already getting pretty tired of. Frost, obviously, has a vested interest in making sure her bone buddy isn’t straying, so she asks him pointedly what these youngins were all here for. Scott tells her to zip the lip. “I’m serious,” she says, rather seriously as is my observation, “If we know what they want then we know who did this.”

Sounds reasonable! Scott tells her to zip the lip again. But then admits that they came to the future to witness the monster that Old Timer Evil Scott has become! Boo! Hee hee hee.

Frost thinks about this for a second. “So, if that’s the motive then all we have to ask is who– who has the wherewithal and technology?”
“Hank McCoy,” Scott says simply. Ding ding ding! And that’s a wrap!

And why is all this happening? Because, Scott, you murdered Charles “Captain Jean-Luc Picard of the USS Enterprise” Xavier, and Beast is salty about that, so he’s looking to punish you.

Cyclops makes a twisty grimace about this. Like there’s poo in his pants and the poo is uncomfortable.

Next, we see what those other hapless old-timers are doing: Wolverine and Storm. Their GPS tracker isn’t working, so they can’t GPS track anyone, and that means Storm is tired of being useless so she’s going to go out there and look for them by god. So don’t stand in her way, Wolverine, because sh–

Man, everyone is so scattered. If Professor Xavier was here he would know how to lead. He would, uh…throw an Infinity Gem at somebody

The youngins comically show up at this point in their big fat ship and they land ten inches from Storm and Wolverine. The kids are like “WE’RE THE TEACHERS NOW”.

As a group, the young X-Men burst into Beast’s hospital room / janitor’s closet and Young Hank waves his arms like Matt Foley, Motivational Speaker going “BLAAB BLUURRB BALAUHB I’M GOING TO TAKE CARE OF MYSELF GODDAMNIT!” He wants all the files, all the info, all the records, all the skinny on the mutagen that made him BLUE and FUZZY and he wants it NOW!!!

So Pryde lets him, because she needs a damn doctor and Doogie Howser over here is the best hope. Beast wakes up just long enough to call his young self a good looking hunk ‘o man *wolf howl*

Well, all that autoerotic excitement sends Beast’s heart into a tizzy! His machines start beeping and blooping, sending him into cardiac arrest! Oh no!

Beast lets out a beastly growl. “NNYARGGHH!” he says, like a nerd who lost his retainer.

Final Thoughts

I don’t give a shit one way or another if Beast lives or dies! But he’ll live. That’s exciting I guess.

In other news, we have one issue left of this story and I hope it ends with Old Cyclops blubbering and moaning like the other four issues! That shit is funny.

Fun stuff lies ahead.