Welcome to Loneliness & Cheeseburgers Presents: Astonishing X-Men (Vol. 3) Issue #8 – “Dangerous (Part 2)”! In the previous installment, the X-Men fly to New York City to fight a knockoff Godzilla, and then the Fantastic Four show up, and then the Fantastic Four bolt out of there just in case it’s bad press to associate with such mutants! At the Mutant Academy for Gifted Mutants, Wing is having a crisis and ends up jumping off a cliff. As he bleeds out, it’s revealed that he was actually in some sort of “danger simulation room”. He seems pretty dead though. He was bleeding pretty deadily.

Let’s keep this show going! Aaaaannnnnnnnnd………..action!

Astonishing X-Men (Vol. 3), Issue #8 [February, 2005]
Written by: Joss Whedon
“Dangerous (Part 2)”

Panel One: Wing’s hand on the floor? Blood coming out of an unseen face. Caption: “I welcome the gift.”

Panel Two: A couple of hicks peering over the edge of something unknown. One guy looks like Kid Rock with a Caterpillar hat and workshirt with a “BOB” nametag. The other guy looks like a sad William H. Macy in a checkerboard shirt and denim overalls. “BOB” says “We’re gonna be rich.”

Panel Three: Frost hears a sound.

Panel Four: Pitch black and the “click” of a lightswitch.

Panel Five: Lights on. Frost, and everyone else in the room, seems to be in pain with blood coming out their noses.

Panel Six: A red light engulfs the two hicks. “BOB” yelps in surprised shock. Sad William H. Macy recoils.

Panel Seven: The door of a large chamber hums with electricity. Here, I’ll show that panel!

See? Look at all that electricity!

Panels Eight and Beyond!: Frost has collapsed on the floor. And maybe all the cuckoos. And the weird lady without eyeballs. The rest of the X-Men are ok. Kitty phases through the wall to go find help. The rest carry the unconscious ones and run to the infirmary. Something strange is afoot!

The hicks, still awash in a strange red light, are hiding on some sort of upper level area near a barn roof, looking down. “What’d you do?” asks one. “I never powered it up–I wouldn’t know how!” says the other. “Took three months to dig that thing out of the woods. If you messed with it–” says the first, but he doesn’t finish that thought. A giant…uh…robot…thing…bursts through the barn roof and reduces most of it to kindling. “I HEAR YOU, LORD.” it says. “I COME. PRAISE BE TO YOU.”

One hick got his dang leg impaled with a 2×4!

I dunno, that puddle could be licorice syrup. Looks like he’s having a good time to me.

Logan Wolverine, Kitty Pryde, and Peter Colossus are outside looking for Wing. Wolverine can’t pick up his scent, but if “I find out he started all this…he’s dead.”

Scott Cyclops is by Emma Frost’s side. He tells her, per Hank Beast, there’s nothing physically wrong with her. She should wake up! So do it!

Hey, do you like this Firstname Heroname convention I’ve adopted? Not at all annoying huh? – Tom Blog

So, the fact that there’s nothing physically wrong with her (per Hank Beast!), this means that “someone’s in there, shutting you down”. And Emma Frost is too powerful to let that happen! GET THE FUCK UP!

Scott asks if Emma can hear her, but her head is filled with the voice of someone else. “Don’t worry, Lamb, I’m cloaked. I’m not about to give our little game away so soon…” says the mysterious unknown voice that I probably should know, but I don’t, so oh well. The voice makes fun of Scott: “If that geek was sharing my bed, I think I’d try not to wake up.” Ha! I like this voice. Best character so far.

Elsewhere, the giant…uh…robot…thing…drags itself across a forest, tearing down trees in the process. While he goes and finds his lord. Or whatever.

Hey! Don’t interrupt the green-haired lady’s up-pushing.

Even more elsewhere, Agent Brand is doing some sexy push-ups in her quarters. She’s all like “Huhh. Huhh. Huhh. Huhh.”, and I think that’s pretty…pretty cool. A guy comes by, an underling perhaps, to let Brand know that every tap they’ve got in Professor Xavier’s House of Treats is offline. “Even our mole’s not responding.” he tells her. Agent Brand’s perplexing reply: “You think they made us?”

The X-Men heroes REGROUP! Beast can find nothing wrong with any of the unconscious suckers. Wolverine says that all phones, computer lines, wifi, TV, telegraphs, flags, smoke signals, carrier pigeons, bricks with menacing notes tied to them, and sexy finger gestures are offline. They think they’re being set up. The only way to communicate with the outside world is to leave the premises, and that sounds Dangerous! Part One through Part Six!

Yeah, he found a pile of bones he buried in the yard. “Long range recon” indeed.

The X-Men’s special pet dragon comes swooping around the doorway. Kitty Pryde had sent Lockheed on a reconnaissance mission, and it looks like he found something! What is it, boy?? What is it?? Go get it! Go get it! That’s a good boy!

They all run out to the school grounds, and they find a giant…uh…robot…thing. And it says “DESTROY.”

So it’s time for a fight scene! So I’ll throw on some music while it goes on:

Doot doot doo-doo-doooooo…doot doot doo-doo-doooooo….

The giant robot starts throwing large objects at the school. Cyclops instructs Kitty to send all the kids down to the Danger Room until the robot is defeated. You know, the Danger Room where a child is decomposing as we speak?

The robot has red laser eyes that blast through the building. Kitty is hurrying everyone to safety. “I want this thing off my lawn.” Cyclops says like a grumpy old rocking chair man! He removes his Cyclops goggles and blasts the big fucker with his big, scary eye-blasts blasting power! That did the job.

The robot lies unmoving, arm ripped off, among some burned trees. Cyclops instructs Wolverine to tear it up further.

Kitty Pryde opens the door to the Danger Room, allowing her and dozens of kids to discover Wing bleeding out. Kitty tells Hisako to take charge, get the kids back out into the hallway, and then find Cyclops.

Look Hisako, if it makes you feel any better… you can have some of that licorice syrup.

However, one of the students informs Kitty that the door disappeared…

Wolverine approaches the smoldering robot Jesus freak. “MY LORD IS WATCHING YOU. SHE KNOWS WHAT YOU’RE GOING TO DO. SHE TELLS ME THE CHILDREN WILL PAY FOR THE FATHER’S SINS. AND I MUST NOT FEAR DEATH.” Ahh, so Jesus was a woman after all! I knew it! Wolverine is grumpy and starts tearing up his circuits.

Pryde types in her Doom cheat code again and clips through the wall with her arm. “I’m not feeling the exit. Listen up everyone, someone’s messed with the programming in here.” She tells them that she’s going to leave the room for a minute to investigate further.

“Go ahead, Sprite. Leave the children with me. After all, I only need a minute or two…to murder them all.”

And that was the voice of Zombie Wing, lurching twistedly and bloodily toward all the tasty students! Cool!

The X-Men check the Danger Room. Colossus pulls on the door with all his mighty, mighty might, but it’s no use! They suspect that someone intended to lure all the students to the room, but they’re mystified as to how the Danger Room could’ve been tampered with in the first place. “It’s supposed to be unbreachable.” Scott Cyclops Sunshiney Summertime Summers says. Wolverine tells everyone that Sentinel (that’s the big giant robot’s name!) was being all weird while he was tearing him up! Mentioned the “Lord”! Said that the children would pay for the father’s sins.

Cyclops starts to beat himself up for directing Kitty Pryde to take all the children to the Danger Room in the first place. Now all the children are locked in the Danger Room with the Danger!

Emma Frost corrects him with wide-eyed blue-lipped melodrama:

“No, Scott. Our enemy’s not in the Danger Room.”

“It is the Danger Room.”

“The Danger Room is angry.”

Final Thoughts

I hate it when the Danger Room gets angry! Really messes up my day!

Do you think Zombie Wing will be able to turn back into Regular Wing?

You know, sometimes we all want to turn back into Regular Wing in our lives.

Really makes you think.