Welcome to Loneliness & Cheeseburgers Presents: Astonishing X-Men (Vol. 3) Issue #4 – “Gifted (Part 4)”! In the previous installment, we see Cyclops struggle with leadership! We see Wolverine struggle to keep his temper! We see the whole team struggle to trust each other and get anything done! We see Beast find something DREADFUL about the cure, related to Jean Grey, that I don’t FUCKING understand yet! Read on as I fumble through the thickets of exposition dialogue about backstory I don’t know much about in a vain attempt to understand how the X-Men got to this point, why they be beefin’ with each other, and why it seems like Kitty Pryde is just as clueless as I am about what’s going on!

Astonishing X-Men (Vol. 3), Issue #4 [October, 2004]
Written by: Joss Whedon
“Gifted (Part 4)”

Soliloquy time! Ord, the guy who orchestrated the hostage situation a while back, talks to himself about how far he’s come, how hard he’s worked, how many warriors and friends he had to kill in his wake, how much he had to sacrifice to get to where he is now…which seems to be a locker room of some sort? Ah, no, he’s at Benetech Labs where they’re storing vials of the mutant cure. He takes one and inserts it into his spiky fist weapon while grinning toothily. I’m beginning to think this Ord guy is up to no good!

Elsewhere, the X-Men are getting their fancy costumes on to go on a fun mission! Wolverine wants to kick some ass, but Cyclops reminds him that they’re just trying to gather information. I say, why not both! That’ll probably happen, right? Both? Kicking some ass in order to gather information? Buffy used to do that! Hey, did Joss Whedon write this?? Ha! Anyway, nothing says “inconspicuous” like putting on your loud and pointy superhero costumes and, as a group of five, breaking into a guarded laboratory!

Bring on some hurt! John Hurt! William Hurt! Bring all the Hurts!

Back at Professor’s Xavier’s School of Harry Potter Wannabes, the flying kid who called Pryde a retard in the last issue is getting chastised in the hallway by some girl named Hisako. She accuses him of having a crush on Pryde. He denies it. They start talking about working their way up to becoming X-Men themselves when Ord suddenly pops in and looms over them in the hallway. I’m guessing these kids are gonna get fucked now, but not in the fun way. Frown.

While Cyclops and Frost are having a gay old time rifling through documents and filing cabinets looking for I-still-don’t-fucking-know-what. They have a nice little well-timed conversation about how Frost is jealous of Jean Grey about how Cyclops says that Jean Grey is “part of him” so she’d better get used to it. Again, I don’t know that that means and all this Jean Grey business is for the birds! The birds, I say. In another room, Pryde is trying to phase her way through the floor but isn’t encountering any sign of a room below. She’s intrigued. In another room, Wolverine and Beast don’t seem to be doing anything productive and they discuss what Beast would even do if he were “cured”, since Wolverine is still skeptical and belligerent about it and he won’t mind his own goddamned business. Pryde still hasn’t found the bottom as she phases down, down, down through the pitch black darkness.

Aha, a funny twist has occurred! Ord is having a very mild-mannered conversation with the two kids and is being perfectly polite about it. He wants to know where the X-Men are, but they don’t know and Ord finds this rather frustrating. Hisako is tired of Ord’s shit and turns into some big blue thing to kick him through a wall. Ord is a bit peeved. Wing (that’s the flying kid’s name, just like that Chinese singer woman from that one South Park episode) bolts upward flying-style and crashes through the glass ceiling. Up in the sky, Wing regrets leaving Hisako down with Ord, but Ord suddenly appears behind him high in the sky and punches his back with his spiky drug glove. The sound effect is “FFFT”. Like a fart. As the kid falls, presumably unable to fly anymore, Ord tells him, and I’m paraphrasing, “Fuck you, kid”. Basically.

FFFT. The sound of you getting irrevocably fucked, kiddo.

Back at Benetech Labs, the Ecks-Men come across the blue and yellow corpse of a mutant woman laid out on a table. It is suspected that she was being used for experiments in developing the cure. Wolverine sees this as justification to bomb the lab, but level-headed Cyclops reminds him that they’re all just speculating. Wolverine’s getting ornery and finally asks what the fuck they’re even looking for at Benetech in the first place. Frost suddenly doubles over and literally says “My girls…the Stepford Cuckoos…they’re calling me…it’s so loud I can’t make it out…”, and yeah, sure, that makes perfect sense to me right now. Thanks. It’s at this point that some burly dudes with machine gun suits start opening fire into the room. But we’ll get to that later!

Kitty Pryde has finally hit bottom on her little meld-through-the-floor excursion. She’s in some red darkroom, confused about all that solid floor that she phased through. It must’ve been 100 feet! It felt weird! Not of this planet! Maybe it was a moonroof! *rimshot* *awooga* Across the room, Pryde sees a team of armed guards discussing the X-Men that are captive above. Pryde now knows that she is the only one at the moment who can keep continuing their little mission, albeit quite hesitantly.

As she attempts to creep about sneakily, the guards see her almost immediately and start shooting. The bullets pass right through her as she stands there wide-eyed and perplexed. The bullets keep going and start bouncing off some giant buff metal android/robot/guy. Pryde calls him “Peter”, which I think is perfectly fitting for some shiny chrome-plated colossus! “Peter” smashes one of the guard’s faces into the wall. Pryde tells “Peter” to stop, but “Peter” is mad! GRRR! Pryde, again, tells him to stop, and “Peter” takes pause. He then suddenly turns into just a regular fleshy man with normal eyeballs and calls her “Katya”. He starts sobbing at her feet in his underpants. “Am I finally dead?” he asks. And that’s it.

No, but I’M dead. Dead tired of this issue! Ha! *Buffy outro music*

Final Thoughts

What the goddamned fuck, people? What are the X-Men looking for? Why didn’t they tell Wolverine? What’s being guarded at Benetech Laboratories? What the hell is a Stepford Cuckoo? What is this mysterious alien floor? Who is Peter? Who is Katya? Why is Peter crying in his Hanes briefs, hoping he’s dead? What’s Ord’s problem anyway?

So many questions! So many tantalizing breadcrumbs for me to follow! My heart is palpitating! I’m sweating profusely! Oh god, my blood pressure! Help! Until next time, this is Tom signing off with: And That Certainly Was a Comic Book!