Welcome to Loneliness & Cheeseburgers Presents: All-New X-Men (Vol. 1) Issue #6! More wacky hijinks from the wacky hijink-prone X-Men! In the previous storyline, Cyclops is trying to recruit an army of brand new young mutants to start a mutant revolution, but he also doesn’t really wanna either. Beast is dying of too-many-mutations-itis and travels back in time to convince the young original X-Men to travel forward in time and confront Cyclops to tell him he’s being a bad boy. Jean Grey goes through a fucking traumatic episode after learning she’s dead in the future.

Also, Cyclops, Magneto, and Emma Frost’s powers barely work anymore because of something called the Phoenix. Also, Cyclops had possessed the Phoenix and killed Professor Xavier, and that’s a big whoops! So everyone’s mad at him for that. He didn’t mean it. It was an accident!

The Young X-Men, after many issues of deliberating, decide to stay in the past and try to make things right. It’s probably not going to work. They’re going to make things worse.

All New X-Men (Vol. 1), Issue #6 [March, 2013]
Written by: Brian Michael Bendis

KITTY PRYDE HAS ASCENDED TO THE THRONE! Not only does she have working legs, but she can walk through walls and right into your bathroom stall! Try to poop when she’s around, you’ll never be safe again.

At the Jean Grey School of Pancakes, a young Jean Grey is peacefully sleeping in her bed until Cyclops and Magneto RAM THEIR WAY INTO HER ROOM to tell her that they’ve come to take her out of there. “They’re going to kill you!!” Cyclops screams in her face literally two seconds after they wake her up. She looks understandably alarmed.

The Wolverine rushes in and stabs her right through the throat with his point metal claws! All RRRAAARRRGGHHH about it! He then looks concerned as her eyes roll back during her whole bleeding out thing.

Then she wakes up. CRASH CLINK FUMP. Her startled jerking has caused a bunch of objects in the room to float and crash down to the floor. Pryde comes to visit to see if everything is ok, and everything is NOT ok! Death! DEEAATTTHH!! Pryde comments on how Grey just destroyed her own bedroom, but hey. Whatever. You’re just a guest and everything, nobody expects to you not destroy the fucking place. Thanks.

Grey hasn’t really been formally introduced to Kitty Pryde, who has been tasked with working with the young X-Men as long as they’re at the school. Grey starts crying and gushing about all the new, stressful shit she’s had to deal with in the last week. New telepathic powers, getting transported to the future, learning how she’s going to die, Kitty Pryde’s smelly unclean room. It’s a lot to handle. And she hopes the rest of the kids are ok. Pryde assures Grey that they’re fine, but she looks sideways in a manner that suggests they’re either dead or being tortured.

Young Scott stands up in front of the mess hall full of mutant freaks staring back at him. He frowns. “It’s a funny thing – yesterday I was the leader of the X-Men… that was yesterday. At least to me.” He excuses himself and walks away, still grappling with the fact that his future self becomes a homicidal maniac.

He finds himself in a garage of sorts where there is a whole slew of slick vehicles. X-Cars, X-Planes, X-Trucks. He hops on an X-Motorcyle and drives his X-Ass out of there while “Bad to the Bone” plays in the background.

B-b-b-b-b-bad! B-b-b-b-b-bad!

Wolverine uses his special hearing powers that I guess he has, I don’t know, and hears Young Scott Summers VVVRRRROOOOMING off on his hog. So he runs out of the mess hall and follows him in a dumb-looking jeep or truck or something. I’m laughing because his eyes are pointed in different directions.

Don’t drive drunk, kids! Duurrrrrr.

Jean Grey is still in the bedroom trying to clean everything the best she can while other objects continue to float around. Pryde lets her know that breakfast is being served in the mess hall, but Grey isn’t ready yet. Pryde comments that Grey’s “baby face” is going to take some getting used to, which is… uh… flattering? Grey is about to ask what Pryde’s mutant power is when her head is suddenly full of the thoughts of dozens of people in the school.

“Let’s go back to the subject at hand.”

“Hair in the shower is disgust–”

“What are they doing here?”

“Wolverine smells like a wet dog.”

“Has anyone seen Angel?”

“Taco Bell isn’t even food!”

And so on and so forth. Grey keels over in intense pain. Kitty Pryde tells her that these aren’t voices in her head. They’re thoughts. She’s not crazy schizo, sorry! Perhaps she’d like that better, but she’s just a mutant freakazoid. Grey cries while Pryde tells her to focus! Focus! *slap* Focus! *slap slap* Focus! *kick* Focus! *stab*

“In your head are 1000 little doors. You close each door. One by one, you close them.” Pryde puts her fingers to Grey’s forehead. “This is your brain,” she says, helpfully. “You control everything about yourself. Decide to do it and you will.”

Of the many, many thoughts swimming around these panels, there sure are a lot of them inquiring about Angel’s whereabouts. As you may remember (or not, depending on if you have more of a life than I do), he joined Cyclops in Uncanny X-Men, Issue #5! That may or may not actually have anything to do with what’s going on here anyway. And why anyone would actually be looking for this boring loser is up for debate.

Jean Grey takes a deep breath and the thoughts cease. Grateful, she thanks Pryde and asks who taught her that tactic in the first place. “You did,” Pryde responds, and we’ve entered a paradox. Who taught who first? Does the advice even exist at all? Far out, man.

They talk a little bit more. Pryde admired Jean Grey even though she was sometimes very tough on her. She lets a few negative thoughts slip, such as “I admired you only sort of” and “you plugged up the toilet too much”.

Although you did owe me $50 before you went and rudely died, so there’s still that matter to settle.

Pryde takes Grey’s hand and tells her to start leading! She’s the leader of this little brigade even if she doesn’t want it. Storm comes into the room to corroborate this opinion: “It was you who convinced all of them to stay in this displaced time. They listen to you. You’re the leader.” Thanks, lady. She was trying to get out of it and then you show up to blab blab blab.

Usually Scott Summers is the leader, but no one likes him! And, by proxy, no one likes his younger self either. Plus, he skedaddled away on his X-Citebike. Speaking of the little pissant, Scott finds himself downtown looking around like he’s Marty McFly in the year 2015! Shit’s weird, like that guy with the haircut, and, uh, that car. He walks into the store and asks a young lady for a map. “A map? A map of the United States? Or the world? Doesn’t your phone have a map?”

Scott is confused! Buuhhh-what? Durr, a map on a phone? And what’s with all this bottled water? Back in my day, we–

“Wow!” The woman suddenly has a realization that Scott Summers looks like Scott Summers! That jerk who sucks! She pulls out a copy of Rolling Stone, of all magazines, with Old Cyclops on the cover. “You look just like him!”

Oh snap! He’ll take a copy of that magazine! Five dollars?! What the fuck happened in the future?? Back in my day, m–

Scott pulls out a wad of $100 bills. “Why does he have this much money in his pocket?” he asks himself. He doesn’t remember whose jacket this is. Mr. Monopoly’s?

“Because it’s none of your damn business,” Wolverine hisses in Scott’s ear. “Get your butt back on my bike and back to the school. You’re here less than 24 hours and you’re annoying me more than your other self, which is, I must say, quite–”

Scott is impudent! He tells Wolverine not to touch him, and also who the HELL does he think he is? Captain Jean-Grey-School?? Oh, the guy who took over after Scott Summers murdered Charles Xavier? That’s a pretty good answer.

I’m going to noogie you into oblivion, young man.

“It’s not fair that everyone is blaming me for something I haven’t done,” Young Scott whines. Once a whiner, always a whiner. And although Wolverine hates Scott Summers’ fucking guts, he puts on his empathy hat – more like his empathy beer helmet – and tells him that a good night’s sleep and some serious thinking will help get his mind back on track about all of this. Right now, though, get your supple little ass back to the school.

Nope! Scott takes off his glasses and blasts Wolverine onto the roof. Now you’ve gone and done it. Wolverine gets Wolverine-y and SNIKTs out his claws… but Young Scott has already driven away on the bike before Wolverine can get stabby. And he definitely does not high-tail it toward the school, either. More like toward Tijuana.

Flashback to *checks watch* 45 minutes ago. Young Angel is standing on the roof of the school looking down at Scott leaving on the bike. “Sure, leave me here, Scottie. I don’t want to be here in the first place and now you leave me here.”

Young Angel sure is sad-sacking up the place right now. As he watches Wolverine chase down Cyclops in that jeep, he notices a face in the ground suddenly erupt… and then return. Like an entity made of dirt. “Am I nuts or did the ground just burp?”

Who cares? That’s dull. Here’s the REAL business! Old Angel swoops in looking like Fabio except even more annoying. “So… what are you, me from the past?” he asks, clearly not recognizing his own damn self, the guy with the wings.

Young Angel explains that the original X-Men A-Team got whisked away to the future in order to help stop Old Cyclops from being a real jerk. Old Angel can’t believe it. All the original X-Men. “Jean Grey? Jean Grey is here?”

Yes, yes, yes. Jean Grey. Jean Poopypants Grey. Everyone fawn over Jean Poopy Diaper Grey.

Old Angel starts smiling broadly and gives his younger self a big old bear hug! A real reunion of me and me, you might say.

“You believe me?” Young Angel asks, agape.

“Do I believe you?”

“I just told you an insane story… you believe me?”

“I don’t lie.”

Then they fly away! Touching.

We end with a woman named Raven. Some sort of witch vampire lady. Her advisor shows her a video of Young Cyclops blasting Wolverine across the street with his powerful, hot eyeballs.

How can you tell? He has the jawline of a 25-year-old.

“When was this?” Raven asks.

“Today. This happened four hours ago.”

“Get everybody together,” Raven says. “I want to see this for myself.”

Final Thoughts

I don’t care if Raven wants to see this for herself! I want to see Wolverine totally fuck up Young Cyclops! Just pound his face into hamburger meat in front of the entire student body. Just dump his corpse into the school’s wishing well.