Astonishing X-Men (Vol. 3), Issue #15 – “Torn (Part 3)”

* Part 3 of 6 of the Torn storyline *

Welcome to Loneliness & Cheeseburgers Presents: Astonishing X-Men (Vol. 3) Issue #15 – “Torn (Part 3)”! In the previous installment, Emma Frost pretends to be Jean Grey and then makes Scott Summers cry and then turns him into a drooling vegetable by the end of the issue for some reason. But at least he has his visor off, showing us all those big, beautiful brown eyes! Catatonic eyes, but hey, they’re eyes nonetheless.

Meanwhile Peter and Kitty are fucking.

And Agent Brand is in a space station gathering intelligence about a new threat to the mutants. That scene was infuriatingly vague and I don’t even care what comes of it. I hope it’s a giant asteroid like the one that killed the dinosaurs. Put all of Earth out of its misery for all I care! Fuck those idiots!

Astonishing X-Men (Vol. 3), Issue #15 [August, 2006]
Written by: Joss Whedon
“Torn (Part 3)”

I get a nice “Previously on” splash page that catches me up on some details that were lost on me completely. The Hellfire Club, for instance, want to destroy the X-Men! Did I know that? I probably should’ve! Then Scott Summers went all comatose for reliving his past experiences trying to contain his powers as a boy, which is a big “WHATEVER” to me but ok! And Agent Brand is working with S.W.O.R.D. to narrow down the mutant who will be responsible for destroying the Breakworld! And she found him/her/it! That’s a big “WHATEVER” to me, too. Looks like I just don’t care much about this story, huh?

Anyway, Emma Frost works up a tear and enters the kitchenette. “Scott!” she says to Kitty, Peter, and Wolverine. “Oh God, I need, I need… Scott’s gone!”

They tell this hysterical women to sit down and quit being so hysterical! She insists that they need to find Hank, but Hank is busy talking to the bald Hellfire Club woman in his laboratory full of screens and buttons. He warns the woman (who I assume is named Cassandra Nova) that shutting off his human brain is just gonna turn him into Beast, which means ravaged internal organs and lots of pooping all willy-nilly. And Nova doesn’t care. Beast won’t even know she’s there, so suck it.

“Tell me true, while you can…” says Nova as the consciousness of Hank fades with every passing second. “…do you even smell another person in this room?” And to this I say, Cassandra Nova looks like she smells pretty damn badly, so I’m going to go with “yes” and “ew”.

Emma brings the group over to the drooling Scott Summers, who is halfway-flopped on the bed. Emma just found him here this way, cross her heart and hope to die, stick a needle in Wolverine’s eye! Peter’s going to take him to the lab to talk to Hank-Beast about removing the catatonia with smelling salts and hardcore pornography. One wonders if Scott has lost his power? Which is crying, basically. Emma “wonders” if this could be an attack, so Kitty is going to check on the students to see if they’re all in one piece.

Wake up, dingus. You’ve got a lot of sobbing into a pillow to do today.

Kitty enters a room with a figure sitting on a couch. She asks the figure if they saw anyone around who looks like they don’t belong, but this figure doesn’t belong. It’s Hellfire Club Member #4010 (Negasonic Teenage Warhead?) and she looks ready to pounce on unsuspecting young women.

Hellfire Club Member #518 (Sebastian Shaw) enters the lab to talk to Peter. With one metal fist, Peter-Colossus punches the guy square in the nose, pushing the cartilage up into his brain and killing him instantly! Or, rather, he barely bleeds. “What have you done to Scott?” says Peter-Colossus, getting right up into Shaw’s face. Shaw basically responds with “Way to bone Kitty Pryde, honcho” and continues getting his ass kicked.

Negasonic Teenage Warhead tells Kitty that she dreamed of this encounter. “I dreamed you phased away. I dreamed you couldn’t stop.” And, lo’ and behold, Kitty phases through the floor…

Meanwhile, Nova has turned Wolverine’s brain into that of a happy little girl. He’s making little paper girls with pink construction paper. “Isn’t it the best, Miss Nova?” Wolverine smiles with joy in his heart and pep in his step! “Say mine is the best or I shall be cross all day!”

Beast, all feral and whatnot, shows up to tear Wolverine a new butthole where there wasn’t previously a butthole. Not his face, there’s one there already…

Kitty won’t stop phasing through the Earth’s crust. “I can beat this,” she thinks. “I’m not gonna be purpled-manned by some goth punk.” She’s gotta focus or she’ll be killed by *Dr. Evil voice* burning hot mag-ma. She successfully phases through that and now she’s in some sort of dark void that is presumably the Earth’s mantle.

Colossus is really kicking Sebastian Shaw’s ass. We’ll leave him to it.

Oh dear, that strawberry Hershey’s syrup is getting everywhere.

Wing’s friend, I forget her damn name, she’s speaking to a girl named Blindfold who is clutching her knees in a bathroom stall. She tells Hisako (her name is Hisako, I know this now) that she’s just sitting and to go away. Hisako is like “what’s up?” and Blindfold is like “someone else is gonna die, Hisako, goddamnit!”

Wolverine bursts into the girls’ bathroom crying about being chased by Beast. “A beast!” he yells, clutching Hisako’s legs. “A tiger, only blue, and large as a moose! Do hide me, only say you’ll do…”

They hide behind a stall just as Beast bursts through the wall, splintering wood everywhere. He sniffs the air, then finds Blindfold immediately. He gets his drooling, snarling teeth right up into her can’t-see-a-thing face. Hisako bubbles up and punches Beast out of the bathroom. She becomes some huge Transformer thing, which scares the shit out of Beast and causes him to run off. “…hell was that?” Hisako asks herself. It’s justice, lady. It’s justice.

“Not that I entirely care… but these guys just cannot catch a break.” Agent Brand of S.W.O.R.D. shakes her damn head. “The psychic turmoil coming from that mansion is overwhelming.”

What’s-his-face, the hissing lizard dude, he will go “run the files”. He is warned to stay away from the prisoner. “Whatever’s going down… it’s not gonna help him now.”

I love the Agent Brand scenes because of all the fucking vaguebooking, you know? Really gets me interested in comic books.

“Please do not turn around. I have instructed the monitors not to detect me. But if you appear to be conversing, even with yourself, it will not go unnoticed. Besides, your best move now would be to listen.” This is the prisoner talking, and she looks like Robot Medusa. Maybe because she is? Don’t fucking know! Don’t know! Don’t care! Don’t care!

She talks to the guard, tries to manipulate and schmooze him. They’re both victims of the mutant threat, yada yada yada. The guard tells the prisoner to watch her tongue. The prisoner tells the guard that the Killer of Worlds has been found. “And you are very lost,” she continues. The guard perks up a little at that! The Percolator, that’s what I’ll call him.

Peter is still beating up Sebastian Shaw, but he has a trick up his sleeve.

That’s right, bitch. Smack me around, it just makes my powers Worse.

So Shaw claps Peter really hard on both ears. He falls over silently, clearing the path for Shaw to do horrible, unsexy things to Scott Summers! Oh, one can only imagine the horribleness and the unsexiness!

“Summers is a zombie,” Shaw reports to Nova. “Pryde’s a ghost. Rasputin, a victim of his own rage. Believe me when I say he has plenty,” he says, icepack on his swollen face.

“My two were simplicity itself,” brags Nova while Emma sits in a chair looking sad. “A beast who thought he was a man. And a frightened little boy who fancied himself a beast.” She watches as Beast chases Wolverine around the school grounds. Perfection (that’s the hooded one, I remembered her!) calls this whole thing prologue. The real story hasn’t even begun yet.

“Being an X-Man means a lot to me,” thinks Kitty as she continues phasing through the Earth. “but it doesn’t always agree with me.”

Kitty reminds herself that it was Emma Frost who brought her into the team. Well, lady, you’ve met your match! Once… she… you know… figures out how to get back to the surface… ha ha… um… it’s curtains for you! Curtains! Hopefully…