Welcome to Loneliness & Cheeseburgers Presents: Astonishing X-Men (Vol. 3) Issue #16 – “Torn (Part 4)”! In the previous installment, the Hellfire Club has really fucked everyone up: Cyclops is a drooling vegetable, Beast is feral, Wolverine thinks he’s a child, Colossus has been smacked to incapacitation, and Shadowcat won’t stop phasing through the Earth.

How is David Boreanaz going to save the day in time?? Ha. Joss Whedon.

Astonishing X-Men (Vol. 3), Issue #16 [October, 2006]
Written by: Joss Whedon
“Torn (Part 4)”

Kitty Pryde on the cover staring you down like “grrrrr, I have boobs!” How will this impact the story at hand? I’m on the edge of my seat here.

Agent Brand and her crew are trying to bust up the space station looking for the Ultimate Destroyer of the Weapon of the Worlds or whatever. They chase down some Star Trek alien-looking motherfucker who punches his way through a window and out into the vacuum of space where he gets intercepted by a passing shuttle. Agent Brand and crew say “damn” and wonder who is piloting the shuttle. They don’t know.

Agent Brand mutters under her breath that they’re all amateur losers who can’t even do nuthin’ right gawddamnit. “The dumbest alien I ever met just made us look like rank #@%$ing amateurs. He did not do this alone. Find out who’s working with him.”

If it ain’t Judge Judy, then I don’t care.

Meanwhile, Wolverine is stuck in a tree on the school grounds. He prays to God, literally, and tries to bargain for getting Beast to stop prowling around. It’s not happening. Beast is waiting for the moment that he can eat some lovely Wolverine Stew…

Inside the school, Hisako is helping the blind Blindfold girl amble down the hallways to the infirmary where they find a zonked-out Scott Summers and an unconscious Peter Colossus. “No one here is awake,” Hisako observes astutely. Kitty bolts into the room from behind the two girls and tries to help her barely-breathing fuck buddy. She glares the the girls and asks them to tell her what they know.

Here’s what I don’t know: how the hell did she get back up to the Earth’s surface? Is this some plot hole shit? Sounds like some plot hole shit to me.

And Wolverine’s doing well holding his own, I must say.

Tastes like chicken! HA HA HEE HEE HOO HOO HA HO HEE.

The pain causes Wolverine to snap out of it for long enough to go SNIKT, but then he gets scared of his own claws and screams muddy bloody murder.

The Hellfire Club, elsewhere, stares down at some sort of rhombic prism. “The manger itself,” declares Emma Frost passively. Shaw wants to try opening it up with the remnants of his power stored up from all of Colossus’ blows, but Emma will handle it from here.

She punches the thing really hard. It doesn’t open, but it DOES shoot four red lasers at her chest and throw her across the room splendidly!

“Xavier clearly designed it to be impregnable, even by his own people,” observes Perfection. Shaw recommends kidnapping Hank and having him poke and prod the thing for a bit, but Emma thinks Perfection is correct. The only one who can open Xavier’s Magic Box is Charles Xavier himself. And the key is to do a little dance, so no one’s going to open that shit anytime soon.

But there’s a loophole, fam. They don’t need to open it. They just need someone who can go through it… like Bill Cosby from Ghost Dad! But who is able to phase through solid matter effortlessly, possibly even able to phase through the Earth accidentally and is also fucking Colossus and is played by Elliot Page…?

Right? That drunk asshole is barely aware of himself!

Maybe Wolverine! And speaking of him, Kitty finds him nestled next to a tree trying to be as quiet as possible. Kitty takes this opportunity to tell her friend that Emma Frost fucked with his brain and she also has a veritable posse of brainfuckers. Wolverine says that’s impossible and then starts speaking to her about his mishaps with Beast as if he were a child. Kitty makes a “ughhhh, fuck” face. She’s the only one left with all her faculties. It’s all up to her now.

Some unknown force communicates with Blindfold in the infirmary. She’s going to now “try” something. Try having eyeballs, for starters.

Elsewhere, the Hellfire Club is arguing amongst themselves about losing Kitty Pryde while Emma is trying to listen to some weird din in the background. She leaves the group and walks into a factory floor-type room with a mirror hanging on the wall. “You,” she says, staring at herself. “Did you really think you could hide in there?”

A fist comes out of the mirror and punches Emma right in the face, bloodying her nose up real good. Then a foot comes through the wall and kicks Emma in the gut. Kitty phases out through the wall and continues reigning blows on Emma. “Hide? From you?” Kitty says while they both fight it out. Kitty phases them both into a sewer and she holds half of Emma’s head into a stone wall. “You get in my head, the rock gets in yours,” Kitty warns. Emma starts spilling. The Hellfire Club, its members, their poker games. Kitty is satisfied with the information, for now, and allows Emma to live. “But I’m gonna let you stay down here and think about what you’ve done,” she says while phasing back out of the sewer. Emma looks salty.

Moments later, Emma contacts Perfection via BRAIN TELEPATHY. Perfection says that Emma did fine considering the circumstances.

Even after Kitty beat the shit out of Emma, the others are still in their respective altered and/or unconscious states. Obviously, she’ll have to pick them off one by one! Bald Lady. Hooded Lady. Monolithic Teenage Wasteland.

She feels so alone meandering through the halls. So alone, and–

I wasn’t doing sinful things to my wee-wee in here, Miss Kitty! I swear!

Kitty chastises Wolverine for meandering around the rooms too instead of hiding like she had asked. “Well, I… you’re a girl, and there’s danger about, I… well,” Wolverine stammers sheepishly, “it isn’t right for a Howlett to hide behind someone’s skirts. I shan’t prize my life above my honor…unless you think that’s a good idea…”

Kitty suddenly suffers a splitting headache. “It’s time, Pryde,” says Perfection, the culprit! “At long last, it’s time to make yourself useful.”

Perfection tells Kitty to not bother even thinking about murdering her in cold blood with a candlestick in the conservatory! Emma Frost might have been a lousy pussy about town, but she’s no match for… THE WHITE QUEEN!

She takes off her hood and reveals herself to be the White Queen. She looks like another Emma Frost. Even Kitty is confused! This whole storyline is full of shit it seems like I’m supposed to know already. If I wanted to be confused I’d watch Teletubbies.

Exactly

Elsewhere, Agent Brand blows up a space shuttle for reasons also beyond my understanding at the moment. Now Ord, a guy I barely remember, needs to get “the rest of his way on his own”. Whatever that means. I don’t know what that means. Someone tell me what that means. All two of you reading this blog, someone fucking write a comment and tell me what’s what.

Oh, Ord is the guy who leapt out of the shuttle in the first place. See, I pay attention.

It was assumed that Ord was trying to kill himself, and Brand thinks this makes a whole lotta sense. “I mean, what would you do if the one mutant destined to destroy your entire planet…”

She motions toward a pile of documents on a table. One manila folder is labeled “Psychic Probability Report: BREAKWORLD” and it has a picture of Colossus in it.

“…is the one your brought back to life?”

Final Thoughts

THE PLOT IS FINALLY THICKENING LIKE SO MUCH LUMPY-ASS GRAVY! Here’s hoping that I stop being such a dumbshit about what’s going on. That can’t possibly be an attractive look, guys. I understand that.