Welcome to Loneliness & Cheeseburgers Presents: Astonishing X-Men (Vol. 3) Issue #2 – “Gifted (Part 2)”! In the previous installment, a lot of stuff happened that I didn’t go into too much detail about anyway! Kitty Pryde showed up to the Professor X School of Freaks to work there. Wolverine and Cyclops fought in the schoolyard like a couple of rapscallions. Some geneticist lady named Dr. Kavita Rao gave a speech about how mutants are just diseased humans and that “they” found a cure for it. Cyclops wants to bring the band back together. A mysterious hostage situation at an undisclosed location is underway.

A lot is happening and I don’t know nuthin’! Let’s get this show on the road.

Astonishing X-Men (Vol. 3), Issue #2 [August, 2004]
Written by: Joss Whedon
“Gifted (Part 2)”

We begin the fascinating second installment of Astonishing X-Men (Vol. 3) at Dr. Rao’s press conference. She shows a video of some Kevin Spacey-lookin’ motherfucking cop and his partner busting into little girl Tildie Soames’ house. Apparently, mutant powers are supposed to manifest at puberty, but Tildie’s an early bloomer! I’ve always said that about her, the little pistol! We come to find out that Tildie’s superpower is making her nightmares come true, so it is revealed that she accidentally killed her parents at the beginning of the first issue. Whoops! She kills the cops too. Double whoops! *cue Buffy intro music*

Elsewhere, Team X-Men is assessing the hostage situation. We learn from Ms. Blue Lipstick (Emma? Frost?) that it’s happening at a building hosting “Walter Langford’s annual fundraiser for the preservation of Victorian architecture”. BORING! The X-Men radar shows a bunch of red dots surrounding a single blue dot, and it’s the blue dot that is suspicious! It’s the hostage head honcho, and he’s anticipating the arrival of the X-Men for an old-fashioned beat-‘em-up! One of the soldiers gets so spooked he starts shooting a window! Walter Langford’s not going to like that!

You show that motherfucking window who’s boss! Take no prisoners!

Soon, the X-Men team barrels into the room all guns a-blazin’ and there’s about seven wordless panels in a row of heroic contorting and bad guy punching. The head honcho is still standing, letting the X-Men know that they fell for his little trap, so to speak! Heh heh heh! So this guy starts kicking all their asses and declares, verbatim, “Diamond. I am Ord, of the Breakworld. We stuff our pillows with diamonds.” So that clears it up! As Mr. Ord is about to claim victory, some fat dragon thing pops up out of nowhere and breathes fire in Ord’s face, effectively shooting him out the goddamn window! “Lockheed! You found me! You are the best X-Dragon ever.” says Kitty Pryde, bewilderingly.

“Lockheed”. That’s subtle. I’m gonna call him Martin!

After the threat has been vanquished, the team turns to the camera crews and the attendees of the fundraiser to explain what was going on, but they’re not good at explaining, and they kind of just make it worse. One member of the press asks the blue beast guy what he thinks of Dr. Rao’s new cure. The X-Men are confused about this, but Mr. Kelsey Grammar Blue Beast claims that Dr. Rao is one of the great geneticists alive in the world and that the news is probably true. Frost wants to kill the bitch and everyone concurs, likely because this “cure” is just going to be “mass genocide” and that’s not fun for anybody. The X-Men decide to call it a night because they’re all tuckered out and they’ll regroup in the morning. Wolverine’s gonna have a beer. As a reader, I sure am glad that the team is treating this with the urgency it demands!

Frost and Pryde hang back as the rest of the crew leaves. This scene fails the Bechdel test immediately because they start talking about two men. Frost is grateful that she has Professor Xavier’s trust since I guess she used to be some sort of villain? And now she’s an X-Man. And she likes that. Mostly ‘cause she’s boning Cyclops. She reveals that she was the one who requested Pryde’s involvement in regrouping an X-Men team. Pryde reveals some backstory that her first encounter with X-Men involved Frost being a jerk to them, so she doesn’t trust her as far as she can throw her (unless she’s strong, I don’t know yet). I can see that we’re going to have some baggage here that even Joss Whedon might not be able to wiggle his way out of with a pen and paper! You can’t harass cartoon women, Joss, remember that now.

Fancy seeing you here! We haven’t meant up like this in quite some time.

We are treated to a scene where Dr. Hairy Blue Guy McCoy tries to sneak into Benetech Laboratories but then Dr. Rao catches him scuttling around the ceiling. They take this opportunity to catch up since they were buddies from old times or whatever; Rao insists that she is trying to help save innocent lives and that McCoy can’t stop her, but McCoy is like “Hold the phone, darling, does that shit work? Gimme some of dat!” Aaaaaaaaannnnd, SCENE!

Final Thoughts

Things are starting to get interesting, son! Is McCoy tired of being some sort of large blue cat or whatever he is? Are Emma and Kitty gonna hate-fuck? Are Wolverine and Cyclops gonna hate-fuck as well? Is Issue #3 gonna be 20 straight pages of gloriously-illustrated group hate-fucking? Join me next time when these X-MEN will continue to ASTONISH you!