Welcome to Loneliness & Cheeseburgers Presents: Astonishing X-Men (Vol. 3) Issue #5 – “Gifted (Part 5)”! In the previous installment, Ord breaks into Benetech Labs to steal some of the cure for Evil Guy Purposes. The X-Men also play Mission: Impossible and attempt to break into Benetech Labs to try to discover…something! Wolverine doesn’t even know why they’re there! As Kitty Pryde phases through some weird 100-foot-long alien floor, the rest of the team gets cornered by a troop of machine-gun-suit-wearing lab guards! Pryde discovers who I can only assume is an old acquaintance named Peter who hopes he’s dead! EXCITEMENT! INTRIGUE! SUSPENSE! COMPLETE AND UTTER PUZZLEMENT ON MY PART! Will I find out more in “Gifted (Part 5)”? Will I run into even more questions? Keep on reading and you may or may not find out!

Astonishing X-Men (Vol. 3), Issue #5 [November, 2004]
Written by: Joss Whedon
“Gifted (Part 5)”

The opening scene is some sort of bewildering dream sequence where Cy “Scottclops” Summers is lying in a prone position on his back while an ethereal vision of Jean Grey is giving him flak! I’m a poet and I don’t even…realize! She calls him a failure and tells him to stop faking it. Back in the real world, Cyclops is bleeding out after presumably being gunned down a tad by sentries at Benetech Labs. Frost is all white and stuff and is worried about him. Wolverine seems to be in rough shape on the floor too but no one cares about that cocksucker.

At Professor Sex’s School For Sex-Men, the flying kid who dropped from the sky after no longer being a flying kid anymore (Wing, his name is Wing) is still not dead. It turns out Hisako caught him before he hit the ground. I don’t remember what Hisako’s powers are. Looking sulky all the time, maybe? Some gold guy is trying to revive Wing while a set of creepy triplets announce that Frost’s connection is broken and also Frost wants to bone Cyclops bad. I’m guessing these triplets are Frost’s Stepford Cuckoos? Mr. Gold Guy is successful at bringing Wing back (by being gold at him, I guess?), but Wing knows he doesn’t have his powers anymore.

Yeah, you sure look cured, kiddo. You look like all your problems have been solved.

At Benetech Labs, in the weird red room 100 feet below the alien floor, Pryde and Peter are talking to each other. She wants to talk about the logistics of getting them both out of the room, he wants to talk about her. She’s trying to pretend that it’s not bugging the shit out of her that this guy, who she knows is supposed to be dead, is in front of her and talking right now. If he’s a clone, a robot, a ghost, or an “alternate universe thingie”, then she’s cool with it, but if he’s a shapeshifter or an illusionist, then she’s so NOT cool with it, so at least Peter knows where Pryde stands on the rules of the situation. “Peter Rasputin died and I know this because I carried his ashes to Russia and scattered them myself!” she says with wary indignity. “Thank you” he says, not reading the room here very well, but Pryde backs off at this point. She mentions getting out of the room again, but Peter gets all weird and creepy about the room like some sort of shapeshifter or illusionist. He talks about “them” performing tests on his sexy, chiseled body for years, and then there was “him” who revived him. The “him” appears to be Ord, who, in a flashback sequence, congratulates Peter for ridding the mutant world of legacy virus with his death. This, of course, means nothing to ME but it means something to Pryde and Peter SO I GUESS THAT’S ALL THAT MATTERS, HUH?

Please, not Gay Gene, he owes me money! 🙁

Back upstairs in the room of gunned-down X-Men, Dr. Whatsherface…uh…Rao, she shows up to ask what the FUCKING CUNT FUCK HELL is going on (her words). She attempts to help and assure the team that she didn’t intend for anyone to get hurt, but Frost is acting all catty toward her because, you know, she’s trying to “cure” them and stuff. That nagging little thing. Beast has had enough, grabs Rao by the neck and shows her the corpse of the mutant woman on the autopsy table being used for experiments related to cure development. “Did she need it? Did this girl need your cure?” he growls Kelsey Grammer-ly. Rao tells Frasier Crane Beast that this young woman killed herself and that the lab had nothing to do with it, but he won’t hear ANY. OF. IT! Cyclops regains consciousness and he and Frost start think-flirting a little bit before Frost enters everyone into group chat mode. Cyclops and Wolverine should have used this opportunity to think-flirt as well but they didn’t, which is a shame. Instead they are like “let’s stop pretending we’re hurt now I guess” and then proceed to tackle the sentry guards in the room. After disabling their scramblers, Frost puts the ol’ David Tennant from Jessica Jones voodoo on the guards and wipes their minds of any memories of the situation / day / laboratory in general and hey that reminds me! I gotta find some Jessica Jones comics! That Krysten Ritter is a real nice-

WHAT?? HUH?! Anyway, the X-Men now plan to take Cyclops back to Professor X’s School of Ice Cream for medical treatment, everyone else will split up around the lab to look for Pryde, they will burn the lab down to the ground after they’re done, and also I was going to say she was a real nice actor so shut the fuck up. Watch Don’t Trust the B—- in Apartment 23 you losers. Rao says it’s no use, she already sent cure samples and her notes and findings to other doctors all over the world. Wolverine is all “Challenge accepted” with a dumb, wry grin.

ORD SUDDENLY BURSTS THROUGH THE WALL! BLABAHAHB! The X-Mens try to strategize and Frost wants to hurt him in the dick, but then they suddenly freeze in awe. Ord triumphantly takes this to mean they’re scared, but little does he know that Pryde and Peter are right behind him ready to hurt him in the dick. Peter is a big shiny metallic blue muscle man with a metallic six-pack and Pryde is a tiny little woman! After Peter blindsides Ord with a dishonorable sucker punch to the back, Ord returns the favor with an honorable regular punch to Peter’s face. “YOU!” he shouts (Tom’s Note: Ord knows Peter already because everyone already knows everybody). “Do you think because you are made of mere steel– –that you can stand against me?” Ord says punchingly!

“I EAT STEEL FOR BREAKFAST, MOTHERFUCKER.”

This really ticks off Peter since steel is one of those bourgeois metals. He starts really flipping out at Ord now, knocking him around the room for half a dozen panels like he’s his own penis! “I AM MADE OF RAGE!” Peter declares ragingly. As a metallurgical engineer, I’m going to have to chime in here and say that steel is stronger than rage, but ok. Ord is crumpled on the floor, and just before Peter proffers Ord a finishing blow, that Nick Fury eyepatch guy shows up with a giant posse of S.H.I.E.L.D. gun dudes and a green-haired lady. More importantly, he shows up NOT looking like Samuel L. Jackson. The end.

Final Thoughts

The fanbase thinks that the panel with Peter saying “I AM MADE OF RAGE!” is epic and awesome, which is why I’ll never become the truest of the true comic book fans. There is only one more issue left of this story arc and it seems impossible to wrap up, but hey, sometimes it takes the heroes about two hours of the movie before they find the “destroy the bad guy for real this time” button and press it, so maybe our X-Men team just has to find that button? WE SHALL SEE! Shall we? WE SHALL! Yes? YES!