Welcome to Loneliness & Cheeseburgers Presents: Astonishing X-Men (Vol. 3) Issue #18 – “Torn (Part 6)”! In the previous installment, who cares. Let’s finish this godforsaken storyline as soon as possible so I can go back to my Wario Land 3 game on Nintendo Switch Online.

Astonishing X-Men (Vol. 3), Issue #18 [December, 2006]
Written by: Joss Whedon
“Torn (Part 6)”

The cover art depicts the soccer team of a high school in Kentucky. Just blonde white girls as far as the eye can see.

The splash page tells me this, which I missed from the last issue with respect to Kitty’s baby: “All this was an elaborate telepathic trick to lead Kitty to release STUFF, the organic prison of Cassandra Nova. With Stuff out of the box, the whereabouts of Cassandra Nova are still in question.” So, yeah, we were supposed to figure that one out? Maybe I’m too dumb for Joss Whedon’s X-Men comics.

Also, Scott didn’t shoot Emma Frost. He shot the White Queen, of course! “So, honey… you ready to talk about this?” he asks her as she writhes on the floor bloodily.

Nova tries to grab Scott’s head and do some Jedi mind tricks, but Scott, to Nova’s complete angry surprise, shoves her hand out of the way. “Can’t mess with my mind, lady… I already lost it.” Then he makes a 65 IQ face and we return to the action at hand.

Blindfold is the one telepathically bolstering Scott up and helping him maintain coherent thoughts for the moment, but she will soon be attacked by Beast and that will prove to be a hefty, unwanted distraction.

“Professor McCoy,” Blindfold says to the growling, feral blue so-and-so currently snarling at her. “are you going to eat me?”

She then gets into his head and tells him that he already ate, and also that Scott warned her that Beast might have lost his dang marbles. “He told me, if I couldn’t reach you, I had to give you this.” Blindfold presents a box that says “PROPERTY OF HANK MCCOY. DO NOT TOUCH.” It appears to Beast as a ball of red yarn. “Just in case. He said. Just in case.”

Knit me a sweater, fucker.

Meanwhile, Ord and Robot Medusa keep smashing through the school looking for Peter Colossus. The computer continues to scramble up Robot Medusa’s works; too much interference. But she’s sure that he’s around here somewhere! Mmm-hmm! Right around the corner!

“Can’t you just bring their computer to life?” Ord asks, punching walls.

“As I learned with the wild sentinel, that doesn’t insure compliance. Which is, I suppose, as it should be,” Robot Medusa responds, using “insure” instead of “ensure” and making me punch walls myself.

A sudden KRASSH! tells Robot Medusa that Colossus is near and they’ll enjoying a friendly round of dominoes shortly.

Colossus regains consciousness after a bout of unconsciousness, apparently, to the welcoming milky eyes of Scott Summers. “Pete, hey,” Scott smiles as he continues shooting what I presume to be members of the Hellfire Club. “You would not believe the day I’m having.”

The gunshots draw the attention of Ord and Robot Medusa, who begin to head in that direction until bubble-suited Hisako slams their heads together. Ord tries to hold her up against a wall, but Hisako is able to punch the shit out of him and avenge Wing as a result! You know, the dead kid? Who cares, right? Precisely!

While both Ord and Robot Medusa are distracted by telling Hisako that she will just about get murdered courtesy of their handsome, perfect fists, Wolverine pops up to punch Robot Medusa’s head clean off her body.

0110101001011011100001101101001001101 this, fucker.

Kitty snaps out of whatever baby-loving trance she has been in for the better part of two issues and sees the STUFF for what it actually is: a revolting blobby maggot on the floor. “You gotta find her, Kitty,” Peter says as she frowns heavily, knowing what he’ll say next. “You’ve got to save Emma.”

Robot Medusa puts her own head back on. The fight continues among her, Ord, Wolverine, and Hisako. After Robot Medusa praises her impenetrable adamantium body, she and Ord are suddenly drawn to the ceiling where they become quite stuck! Beast enters the room dressed in a fancy suit with a red bowtie. “There’s a master of magnetism blows in and out of here now and again, makes all manner of trouble. So I’ve been tinkering.”

Giant-ass magnet saves the day again, and Beast credits the ball of yarn for returning him to his docile, civilized state. Yarn laced with pheromones, aerosol, smart drugs, light sequences, and cookie crumbs. It rewires the brain! And how about you, Wolverine? Can of beer did the trick? Remarkable!

An injured Hisako tells them that the Hellfire Club is causing quite a ruckus, especially Emma Fucking Frost. Beast, using that intuitive brain of his, knows it’s not the real Emma. It’s some sort of White Queen-type Emma. No time to explain, let’s go!

Real Emma is rotting in a hole starving and about to die. She sees a brilliant white light. She sees an angel emerge from the incandescence. It reaches for Emma’s hand, but it’s all a hallucination. “Noo… not for me…” Emma mumbles. “I belong… below…”

The angel is actually Kitty. “Cry me a river, bitch. We’re going up.”

Scott says there’s no Hellfire Club.

Nova tells Emma that they’re ready.

Robot Medusa estimates seven minutes until full internal systems reroute.

“Did any of you ever see any more than one of them at a time?” Scott asks the room. Beast saw Nova. Peter saw Shaw. Kitty saw the Warhead kid. But no, you’re right, Scott. Something dang fishy is dang ol’ going on.

Nova keeps talking to Emma about getting her consciousness out of the maggot thing while the X-Men slowly figure shit out… Shaw was never here, but was it Emma that pulled the strings? Did she stick Nova’s consciousness into the blob? Maybe. Is Nova trying to worm her way into Emma’s brain? Maybe.

Then, out of nowhere, Scott starts talking about guilt.

It is her fault, though. Emma Frost sucks.

Kitty isn’t having it right now. She was stuck with three years of fake memories about a kid she never really had and doesn’t want to hear Scott give that cunt any leeway. She grabs the gun from Scott and aims it at Emma. Nova, in Emma’s head, attempts to keep her focused on giving up that juicy, juicy, conscious brain of hers.

“Doesn’t anybody care about what she did to us?” Kitty asks the room while keeping the gun trained on Emma’s temple. Beast is like, yeah, she made us confront our worst fears. Pretty noble, actually! No one needs therapy anymore! And Scott, well, Emma stripped him of his eyeball powers. He can actually see clearly now.

“Kitty, understand… Cassandra brought you here to open the box. What Emma brought you here to do…” he motions toward the sad-sack Emma sitting on the floor, “… is what you’re doing now.”

“Do it now,” the Nova in Emma’s brain instructs.

Scott gets right up in Emma’s face and tells her, if she’s still in there somewhere, that she can still stop Nova.

…

Emma speaks up. “Go to hell.”

…

And whether that was for Scott or for Nova is unclear. Ord and Robot Medusa tear into the room (the magnet stopped holding, I guess) and start manhandling Colossus. Agent Brand and her ship hovers over the school and starts beaming them up – Colossus, Ord, and Robot Medusa. “Strap ‘em in, all engines to rapid,” orders Brand. “Set course for the Breakworld.”

And that’s that! All in four panels! We get shit done around here!

Final Thoughts

I’m glad that things came together in the end and, finally, I can say that I understood what was happening for the last five issues! Perhaps this was the plan all along, and the story warrants re-reading to get the most out of it.

Ha! Got you there for a second! I ain’t re-reading shit. See you next time.