Astonishing X-Men (Vol. 3), Issue #13 – “Torn (Part 1)”

* Part 1 of 6 of the Torn storyline *

Welcome to Loneliness & Cheeseburgers Presents: Astonishing X-Men (Vol. 3) Issue #13 – “Torn (Part 1)”! After a long break, we’re back with some more Joss Whedon X-Men “excitement”! In the previous storyline, the Danger Room that Professor Xavier built up at the school has malfunctioned after Wing, the flying kid, kills himself inside of it. This causes the Danger Room to become sentient and start terrorizing the mutants, eventually manifesting itself as a robot named “Danger”, but I liked to endearingly call her “Robot Medusa”.

Robot Medusa flies to the ruins of Genosha, a fake country presumably near Africa or the Middle East that was the site of an attack on mutants that killed 16 million of the bastards. Professor Xavier is there hiding out for some reason. Anyway, he’s able to keep her at bay until the rest of the X-Men team arrive. They fight her, and then they fight some giant Mega-Beast (the one that razed Genosha), and then they win.

Afterward they learned that Xavier was treating Robot Medusa like a lab rat for years, which pissed off the team. Wolverine likens Xavier’s immoral behavior to Magneto.

Oh yeah, and Frost is still not to be trusted. Watch out for her.

Astonishing X-Men (Vol. 3), Issue #13 [April, 2006]
Written by: Joss Whedon
“Torn (Part 1)”

“Some time ago”, Frost asks an elderly man (or woman, I can’t tell) dressed as either a big-game hunter or a World War I recreationist “why me.” The response she gets is “Because you’re a predator, Miss Frost.”

Yeah, a sexual predator. Woozle wuzzle!

Frost tells this man/woman that he/she seems pretty confident that he/she won’t be stopped. The individual is like “Bitch, please, you won’t even remember you were here.”

“They’re all going to die, Emma,” the woman (I’ve decided that she’s a woman) narrows her eyes. “Millions, in minutes. No warning, no escape – and you’re going to be right in the middle of it.”

Sounds awfully attractive, Your Honor! But she’ll take a pass on this one, fam.

Don’t back out yet, Emma! You’ll survive this shit via “secondary mutation” and this old lady and her people are going to “create” one for her! Not at all confusing, right?! I’m glad we’re done with this scene. The woman looked like Spider-Man’s Aunt May on meth and she was making me very uncomfortable!

Wolverine addresses a pile of sad students. He tells them that nothing has changed. Students are gone, sure. Shit went down, ok. But did anything change? Nothing that matters changed. “What matters is the fight,” he says, and I’d be rolling my eyes right about now if I were one of these pissant little kids. “What matters is the last time you were in this room… you all wussed out.”

What’s-her-name — Wing’s friend. She tells him “uh, sir, sorry, sir, but the Danger Room is where I found my dead friend, sir.” And Wolverine, he just waves her off and goes “self-pity is for people named Cyclops” and leaves it at that.

The Danger Room has just gotten more dangerous, though! It may be offline, but watch this: KILL THE LIGHTS! *does the Wolverine “SNIKT”* See?

Sort of looks like my friend’s dorm room with a little more decoration.

Beast and Cyclops are in a lab both wondering what the other is doing there and why. Very suspicious on both ends! Also, they discuss the possibility that Wolverine might kill all the kids, but they don’t spend too much time focused on that! Not until Wolverine starts killing all the kids, then they’ll take it seriously!

Outside, Kitty Pryde and Russian Peter are chilling under a tree. They seem happy, like nothing short of an unexpected visitor could shatter this lovely little bubble of theirs… oh hey, look over there, an unexpected visitor! A man approaches the tree and addresses Kitty. She gasps in both recognition and butt cramps. “Dad! This is impossible!” She hugs him so hard it shatters half his already-tender ribs.

“Oh, Daddy…”

“I know you’ve got a lot of questions, Kitten. I just have one.”

Dad, stop melting! You’re embarrassing me in front of my boyfriend!

Kitty wakes up from her sudden weird fugue state. It’s chalked up to a bad dream, and she and Peter go right back to sexy huggin’.

While staring out the window overlooking the school grounds, Emma is asked if she’s having fun. She’s with the Hellfire Club, whoever they are, and they want to get down to business. The old man/woman is there, and I still say she’s a woman even though it’s impossible to tell!

“You show up with no regard for… I could hear every word you thought in Genosha,” says Frost to the woman.

“But Xavier couldn’t,” responds the woman. “Dear Charles was the only real threat to our little cabal, and he was well wrapped up in his own problems as always.”

I don’t know what these fools are talking about or why, and they’re making me sleepy so I’m going to take a nap now.

Zzzz.

Merzbow! Merzbow! Merzbow! Merzbow!

And we’re back! The consensus in the room is that action must be taken, whatever that means. Emma is the only one who doesn’t want to “take action”. A guy named Sebastian wants to make the room aware of two things: 1) there’s an actual mission that needs to be adhered to, and 2) they were all brought together by one person and her voice is the last one that needs to be heard on the matter.

*Celine Dion clears her throat*

The woman is named Perfection and she’s completely hooded like Death himself. She points a gloved hand at Emma. “Your game is first,” she says. I hope all of this makes sense quickly or I’m going to eat a butt in outer space!

Atop a giant flying carrier, S.H.I.E.L.D. Director Maria Hill is speaking with the green-haired woman Agent Brand, ugh. I don’t remember who she is or why she’s important. This write-up is horrible. “The mutant situation is still a threat, and I will continue to monitor the X-Men in–” then she gets cut off by Hill, who tells Brand that she’s broken every law she’s ever heard of, including ones no one has heard of. Plus, she’s harboring an intergalactic criminal. If that ain’t illegal then I don’t know what is.

Nick Fury is toast, lady. Brand isn’t going to run with the ball wherever she damn well feels like it anymore! Brand disagrees, saying that Hill is just in the way of any and all of S.H.I.E.L.D.’s operations. Hill calls Brand a thug. Brand gets in her rocket ship and blasts off to some orbiting space station! The space station looks cool as shit and it’s better than some dumb rotating Babylon 5 bullshit, I’ll tell you that much. It’s so cool-looking that it needs its own full-page spread, baby. That’s the stuff.

Meanwhile, Kitty Pryde sits up in her bed mulling things over.

Honey, if you gotta say it, then you ain’t it.

Bracing herself for whatever it is that she’s afraid of (a plate of butts in outer space?), Pryde enters Peter’s room and starts babbling about nonsense for seven panels. It takes her a while to get to the point, which is this: she wants to break up with him for no reason whatsoever, but then he kisses her tenderly on the face hole and that’s the end of that notion!

Emma Frost is watching creepily from a distance down the hall. She turns around to head back to her own room, but as she turns the doorknob that Perfection lady with the hood an’ shit pops in out of nowhere and tells her that she knows what’s going on between her and Scott Summers. She knows what’s going on and none of the rest of the Hellfire Club knows shit!

“You really love him,” says Perfection. It’s not a question.

“With all my predator’s heart,” Emma responds flatly.

Emma enters the room where Scott is filling out paperwork or handwriting his manifesto or doing Sudoku puzzles, I can can’t really tell. She tells him to come to bed, that she has a surprise for him (a plate of butts). He doesn’t want to tear away from his paperwork.

“…I’m wearing your favorite outfit…” she says, turning herself to look exactly like Jean Grey. That’s not weird at all. Jesus.