Welcome to Loneliness & Cheeseburgers Presents: All-New X-Men (Vol. 1) Issue #5! In the previous installment, Old Cyclops is a big whiny crybaby and Young Hank is going to perform his Doogie Howser doctor magic on his aged, mutated, heart-murmuring self.

Magneto and Frost are mad at Cyclops, the good guys back at the school are mad at Cyclops, and he sits there with his malfunctioning visor grinding his teeth and sobbing and moaning. Dude needs some Klonopin.

This issue wraps up the first story. Every single one of these mutants is broken and beaten. Without exception. It’s a wonder no one killed themselves yet! Ha ha. Suicide is serious, please call 1-800-273-8255 if you or someone you know is considering suiciding and you can talk to a representative who might make you feel worse by accident. Sorry.

All New X-Men (Vol. 1), Issue #5 [March, 2013]
Written by: Brian Michael Bendis

Old Beast is having a flashback where he and the young X-Men are back in school and Young Hank has already mutated into Young Beast. He prowls around the halls all excited like a kid in a candy store, or Donald Trump Jr. in a cocaine store. As it turns out, Jean Grey has done some magic psychic voodoo and transported both of them into Old Beast’s brain. Maybe! Jeannie has never done this before. I hope they’re not stuck forever!

Well, Young Beast (who is actually Old Beast) tells Jeannie that she’s not supposed to become telepathic for at least another year. Perhaps all this jumping around time and being traumatized into fucking oblivion has jump-started Jean’s telepathic battery. Cool, huh? You can thank him later for showing up in the past and rearranging all of the metaphorical furniture.

“I can’t get over how good it is to see you,” Beast tells the very-much alive Jean Grey, “I’m sorry about all of this.”
“No you’re not, you did this on purpose,” she snaps back, a little salty that Beast had to go and mess with time and space. You don’t DO that, man!
“I’m sorry you have to grow up faster than you were planning. But you’ll go back and Xavier will put it all right.”

Another version of Young Beast shows up to the party. He’s not blue yet, but he’s beefy! Super beefy. A beastly slab of beef, this one. The two Beasts talk to each other and finish each other’s sentences, and it’s darling as heck, and Jeannie is amused by their encounter. The two Young Beasts want to bounce ideas off of each other in order to determine what’s going on with their old, stinky, senile, fetid, useless older self.

Well, for starters, I don’t think manhandling Blue Beast’s titties is going to help all that much.

Non-Blue Beast knows what the problem is! Eventually, their older self is going to fuck around with their mutation and, years down the line, it’s going to cause a whole slew of issues! Such as, and get this, having weird heart attacks and panting and heaving in this ugly hospital room.

Don’t blame Blue Beast! He’s the same person as you are, Non-Blue Beast, you janky little whelp! Second of all, how was he supposed to know what would happen? They were fine for years! Decades, even! So take a chill pill, Jill, before he gets shrill and he’ll kill you with a quill. It will be a thrill. You swill.

Back in the actual real world non-psychic head invasion, the rest of the X-Men are cautiously worried about Young Hank screaming nonsense into the face of his older, comatose self. All like “THE HELL YOU WILL!”, and Wolverine confirms that he’s a twelve-year-old. No hair on dem balls yet.

Meanwhile, back in Head Land, the two Beasts pore over a wall full of fake-ass equations. They each keep repeating “oh my stars and garters”, which is the worst catchphrase since “Jiminy Jillickers!”

In the real world, Young Hank wants everyone out of the room except Jean. Kitty Pryde wants to stay, but he tells her to go fuck herself!

If it makes you feel any better, Benjamin, it’s less because you’re a mutant and more because you look just like every mass shooter in the last twelve years.

UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS! Benjamin, Mr. FaceApp, got kicked out of school and he’s going to sue the pants out of all of them. Not only that, but he thought all of you were his friends! Oh, sure, you’re gonna protest mutant rights until you get gunned down by police Kent State-style, but when a real actual mutant, with a big ol’ dick by the way shows up in the flesh, you all are like “HUB BUB BUBLBUBULB”! Well, screw you guys, I’m going home.

Benjamin storms out of there with his purple skateboard and an ugly scowl on his face. Like a sexual predator, Scott Summers is hiding behind a tree with a sexual predator jacket and a sexual predator hat. And large, red, sexual predator sunglasses. “Sorry you’re having a bad day,” he says, moving in for the kill. Benjamin recognizes this asshole right away.

“Can’t help but feel partly responsible,” Cyclops says, hands in his pockets like he’s going to sell this kid drugs any minute now.
“Partly responsible?!” Benjamin scowls incredulously, “I give you full permission to allow yourself to feel fully responsible. You show up– you bring– what was that? Your whole mutant superhero roadshow with you.”

Kid’s got a point. Cyclops has no way to react other than sheepishly. Trying to be the bigger man and all that happy horseshit. He tries to explain that he has no idea what that was all about and he doesn’t know what to say and he doesn’t know what to do to make it better. This, preposterously, if you can fucking believe it, doesn’t sit well with Benjamin. He asks to be left alone.

Benjamin walks about six steps before curiosity gets the better of him and he about-faces back over to sheepish Cyclops. “Why me?” he asks him, getting up in his face. Pfft, don’t flatter yourself kid. It’s not about you. People like you are popping up all over the world right now. A real PANDEMIC, you might say! Get yourself a mask, kiddo.

I’m still not convinced that Cyclops isn’t trying to worm his way into some quality cuddling time with this flirty display.

Cyclops admits that he doesn’t know what the hell Benjamin’s deal is. He knows shapeshifters, oh God does he know shapeshifters! But this isn’t really shapeshifting. And it’s not totally becoming another person entirely either. Odd stuff. Unprecedented, you might say. It’s very sexy.

Benjamin lets his guard down and allows Cyclops to start playing the sympathy card. All that cult stuff that one needs to watch out for. Kindness, understanding, making the target feel like he’s not alone, that’s he’s cared about, all before he gets a nice cup of Flavor Aid in Guyana.

“You need guidance and training. I’m offering it to you,” Cyclops tells him.
“I have the internet. I know who you are, Scott Summers. I know what you’ve done,” Benjamin counters, pointing his bony, accusing finger at the handsome perpetrator!

Cyclops tells him he can just walk away from all this if he doesn’t like it or him. Trust him. And his target is snared! They’re immediately transported to the New School of Creepy Weapon X Holocaust Experiments! Welcome home, son!

Meanwhile, back at the Jean Grey School of Hard Knocks, Young Hank is gettin’ touchy!

Look lady, you’re distracting me from my very important giant lightbulb starin’.

Young Hank shows off his moves by flipping up to some ceiling pipes and twisting around like a six-year-old on a jungle gym. “Don’t do anything crazy,” Pryde warns from the floor, “you tend to, sometimes, do crazy things.”

Crazy? Moi? Hey now, Young Hank has more of a vested interest in keeping himself alive than you or anyone else, Kitty Cat, so if Young Hank wants to do CRAZY SHIT then WABWHA HABWHWBWBW AHWBWHWBA PPFFFFTTTTTHWBAB!!

Pryde looks hurt by this. Oh well!

Back in Hank’s Head, a young blue Beast chit-chats some more with Jean Grey. He doesn’t want to give her a big I-told-you-so, but she got in Cyclops’ head and now she knows that Beast was telling the truth all along! ♫♪ told you sooooo ♪♪♫♪

Jean bites her lower lip like someone who doesn’t like the idea of knowing she’s going to die some day for reals. “How did I die?” she asks Beast. “Which time?” he replies. She doesn’t like that at all! Nevertheless, she wants him to show her. Show her how she dies? Like, as in, get a front row seat on the action? That sounds grim. Let’s do it!

OK, honey, get your telepath probe and root around in there for a bit. Just get deep in Beast’s brain. Look at the big brain on Beast! It won’t hurt, he might even like it a little too much. She looks. Her eyes pop open like “BRRRZRRTT!!” and she sees a swirling vortex of past scenes that look like cutouts from other X-Men issues! Stuff like her emerging out of water covered in flames. Her stare upon her own dead body. Her kissing Wolverine. Her with hair like Margaret Thatcher. Her her her. These glimpses mean nothing to me, but I’m sure they mean something to somebody!

…It was so tiny and BLUE and it was shaped like bent mushroom that had withered in the sun over the last twenty years!

Jean yells “NO!” really loud, emits some violet light, and knocks over a table full of Young Hank’s equipment. She flails among the scalpels and beakers while Pryde runs to her assistance. She saw everything! And it wasn’t pretty!

The women walk out of the room. Young Hank gives his comatose older self the side-eye. “What are you up to?” he asks out loud while filling a ten-gallon syringe with red liquid. “Let’s hope one of us is as smart as the other one thinks he is,” he says, injecting ten gallons of Kool-Aid through Old Beast’s hospital-room chest plate thingy.

What’s happening outside the front of the school again? Why, Wolverine and Storm confront Young Cyclops and his ragtag team of precocious chumps while a slew of lookie-loos gawk at them brainlessly. Young Cyclops is all like “SORRY, I’M SORRY, WAAAHH, PLEASE FORGIVE EVERYTHING RIGHT NOW PLEASE I’M BUT A CHILD” and Wolverine is like “pfft”. They’ve got Wolverine talking like a Goodfellas. They’ve got Wolverine speaking like fuckin’ 4’ 7” Joe Pesci.

“Every time I could’a just popped a claw in the back of your scrawny neck and stopped you cold,” Wolverine muses, savoring the thought and popping a stiffy instead of a claw. Storm tells him to cut it out and stop being mean to the genocidal dipshit.

For reasons I don’t understand, Wolverine declares that killing Young Cyclops will make Professor Xavier magically appear. Probably not, though, because the Professor would’ve probably fallen head first into the toilet by now. Wolverine wants to get democratic with it and put the notion of killing the kid up to a vote. Cyclops tells him to knock it off. They look like they’re either about to kill each other OR hug and kiss. Perhaps both!

“That’s quite enough, all of you…” chirps a mysterious blue beastly voice. Young Hank and Old, Revitalized Beast show up! Beast has ten gallons of Kool-Aid sloshing around and he feels fit as a fiddle! “Logan, I didn’t bring them here so you can work out your issues.”

Huzzah! Hurray! Excelsior! Hooah!

Bad example. Ebenezer Scrooge didn’t learn a damn thing.

Someone objects to this sentiment. Jeannie Grey doesn’t want to go back. First of all, living her life on the original track means she dies and that doesn’t sound fun whatsoever. Second of all, she’s seen everything, and I do mean everything, for the next ten or fifteen or eighty years. She saw it all in the blink of an eye! And it sucks. So no. Third of all, Professor Wheelchair is going to know what happened and he’ll flash the Men in Black mind-wipey thing on all of them. Fourth of all: no.

Jean keeps talking and talking and talking and talking and talking and talking and talking and talking. Being an X-Man means a lifetime of torture, disaster, whining, and bitching. Nothing matters anyway, it’s all going to lead to this exact same point. So fuck it.

So here’s the deal: they stay, right the wrongs, THEN they can go back and get tortured and experience disaster and whine like bitches. But not a second earlier than they’re supposed to! Got it? Good.

Wolverine doesn’t like that. Get your ass back to the past.

No.

Now Jean wants to get democratic with it. Voting time! Show of hands please.

Everyone’s a comedian…

Only the youngins are to vote. Everyone says yay except for Angel, but who cares about him? I don’t. I don’t know that guy. He can get thrown into the dump for all I care. Right into a landfill full of hypodermic needles and baby feces.

“Then it’s settled,” announced Jean.
“It’s not settled,” argues Beast, who brought these kids here in the first place, “you’re just kids. You can’t just go bobbing around in the future doing whatever you want.”

Kitty Pryde puffs out her chest and uses her most authoritative squeak she can muster. “I’ll keep an eye on them!”

Cool stuff. That won’t be a torturous bitchy moany disaster.

Angel still isn’t pleased. He wants to know where the hell he is in this horrible future. He hasn’t seen his older self loafing around anywhere. What gives?

He probably farts himself to death.

ANYWAY, Young Cyclops wants to talk to Jean for a quick second. Jean walks away and tells him to leave her alone.

Final Thoughts

DRAMA! It reminds me of high school, except here two airplanes didn’t fly into the Twin Towers during my 9th grade French class.

HOW ARE THEY GOING TO RIGHT THE WRONGS! Tune in next time when I tackle the next All-New X-Men storyline! In, like, seven months.