Astonishing X-Men (Vol. 3), Issue #17 – “Torn (Part 5)”

* Part 5 of 6 of the Torn storyline *

Welcome to Loneliness & Cheeseburgers Presents: Astonishing X-Men (Vol. 3) Issue #17 – “Torn (Part 5)”! In the previous installment, we learn that Colossus is the Breaker of Worlds.

…

Wolverine is still a scared little childlike boy, Beast is still feral, Colossus and Cyclops are still unconscious, so it seems that the onus falls on Kitty Pryde to save the day in the end. It’s going to take two more issues, so get comfortable.

Also, I’m writing this at home while my HVAC guy is fixing my shitty, fucked-up furnace, so I’m going to be more distracted than usual while writing. Not that it matters since none of this storyline makes sense to me anyway and YES, THE FILTER IS OLD! I ONLY CHANGE FILTERS LIKE ONCE A YEAR! I’M SORRY!

Astonishing X-Men (Vol. 3), Issue #17 [November, 2006]
Written by: Joss Whedon
“Torn (Part 5)”

Aha, and just when I thought things were barely sorta making what I could almost call some semblance of sense, the first full-page spread is of Kitty Pryde and Peter Vladimir Colossus Putin welcoming a new child into the world! His name is Michael, and his superpower is pooping other people’s pants.

Her various friends show up to congratulate them! Wolverine wants a cigar! He also wonders why the kid isn’t named “Logan”. Oh, I know why! Because “Logan” is a sucky suck name.

Charles Xavier now enters the room looking like pedophilic Lex Luthor (which is pretty impressive considering Lex Luthor looks like a pedophilic Lex Luthor). “Can I get a look?” he asks. lol. You don’t get to look at anything of his, sir. Stay away from playgrounds while you’re at it.

The kid starts crying, so Kitty starts asking everyone to shove off so she can whip out her titties. Xavier makes an angry frowny face because, I’m guessing, he didn’t get to touch the kid. This is getting pretty grim, you guys.

Fast-forward to when Michael is learning how to walk. They wonder if the kid has powers even though, for the last two years, their pants have been mysterious filling up while shopping and/or at church!

Xavier floats in on his magic hovering wheelchair device that he cooked up himself MacGyver-style using flux capacitors and little child bones. “Put the boy down, Kitty,” he says menacingly as the rest of the A-Team X-Men saunter up. “I’m afraid it’s not safe.”

Kitty is alarmed! What are they doing?! Don’t take muh baby!

The kid can sense child molesters. And… uh… this is a bad thing! Right?! Of course! Heh. Because… um…

Kitty is going to try to fight these losers off by, like, I don’t know, phasing through them or something? She tells Peter to hold them off for two minutes while she runs away from them.

But he’s in on it, too. “I’m sorry, Kitty,” he says raising a fist.

Fast-forward to maybe two days from now. Kitty phases an axe through Peter’s skull. “I’m sorry, Peter. You blink and I let go. Where is my son?”

He’s at Denny’s enjoying a Grand Slam Breakfast. Where the fuck else would he be?

After coming to terms with the fact that Kitty would straight-up murder him, Peter decides talking might be a good idea. “He needs to be isolated.” Oooooh, bad sentence. Kitty calls him a “big metal @#$%ing robot”.

“He’s in the basement. In a box. Go. I won’t try to stop you.”

Kitty cries big, fat tears as she moseys to the basement as if in a fugue state.

Let’s move out of this – what I can only assume to be – alternate reality and see what Agent Brand and her Merry Men are up to.

“So, it’s Frost,” she says.

“Mosssst like,” responds her lizard friend.

“Attacking her own team. Fury briefed me on that possibility.”

“There are… anomalies in my sensings…”

His/her “sensings” seem to indicate vague whiffs of Cassandra Nova, which come and go. Brand thinks that she might be blocking the lizard out.

Brand’s other buddy, the bald black guy that’s not Nick Fury because this guy doesn’t have an eyepatch and he isn’t yelling at everyone, reports that they have a visual on the mole eighty miles out.

She’s not a tinker-toy! She’s Robot Medusa and I love her!

Ah yes, the A.I. that really fucked things up for everyone in the last storyline. “So Ord has an ally who’s not a moron,” Brand says, not asking it as a question.

The mole wants to have a chit-chat. It gets patched through to Brand’s Bluetooth, and she hears a bunch of gobbledygook from… surprise!… some sort of dragon hovering in the sky above Xavier’s School of Rejects and Child Molester Apologists.

Speaking of the school, Wolverine wakes up an exhausted, passed out Hisako. “Oh, won’t you please wake up!” Everyone else is asleep except Kitty, so he’s lonely and scared again.

Speaking of Kitty, she’s in the basement (I guess) looking for the box (I suppose) that’s shaped like a rhombic prism (from the last issue) and says “Mommy’s here.”

Blindfold is able to wake up Peter, who doesn’t have an axe through his head because I still think alternate realities might be happening here.

Nova is getting restless. Emma tells her to be patient. It is revealed that the version of Emma that Kitty trapped in the wall is actually – gasp! — an IMPOS-TOR.

YES, I KNOW I HAVEN’T CHANGED THE WATER FILTER IN ABOUT TWO YEARS! THEY DON’T MAKE THAT WATER FILTER ANYMORE I DON’T THINK! JUST FIX THE FURNCE!

Kitty touches the box and reasons that it’s made out of hyperdense submolecular shift matrix alloy, which she can’t phase through. Except THIS version of Kitty was in a black room for 18 months focusing her time and energy on learning how to phase through hyperdense submolecular shift matrix alloys, I suppose. So she gives it a shot, but an alarm goes off.

The baby’s got my hand! The baby’s got my hand!

Kitty keeps pressing forward, literally, even though it hurts so very, very badly. “I can feel him,” she says, learning nothing more than that there is a kid in the box.

Hisako and Wolvering amble down the hallways looking for Kitty, BUT THEN ORD AND ROBOT MEDUSA CRASH THROUGH THE ROOF RIGHT ON TOP OF THEM!! BLHRABRHAHRABLHABHB!!

Emma tells her crew to ignore that and keep on waiting. They’re almost there. Almost where? I’m not sure. But it ain’t Tahiti, my friends. It ain’t Tahiti.

Ord and Robot Medusa looks around the ruined hallway. The one they seek is around here somewhere…

A semi-conscious Wolverine lies supine on the floor in front of an open fridge. A beer can falls and bops him on the nose. He picks it up… looks at it… stares at it with a familiar menacing glare…

Robot Medusa’s impeccable tracking device is failing her. Peter Colossus must be somewhere…

Kitty recovers her child from Hell Box and runs off…

“Kitty, what are you doing?” Peter asks, stopping Kitty in the hallway.

“I did… what you wouldn’t… and I did it, Peter.”

We saw Kitty take a child, but Peter sees something different. Peter sees a giant fucking maggot. Peter sees Kitty lovingly clutching a giant fucking oozing dripping maggot.

“I saved our son.”

Peter looks, the eyes roll back in his head, and he flumps on the floor. Kitty drops the maggot and flumps on the floor alongside him.

The Hellfire Club enters and congratulates themselves on a job well done. Nova looks down at Kitty and feasts her eyes upon her new host body. “Be assured, I will take much better care of that hair.”

Then Wolverine shows up clean-shaven with different hair. Oh wait, it’s Cyclops. The art is so atrocious that I couldn’t tell! He has a gun. He shoots Emma, much to her surprise. Like, right in the stomach or something.

That’s it. That’s the end.