Welcome to Loneliness & Cheeseburgers Presents: Uncanny X-Men (Vol. 3) Issue #1 – “The New Revolution”!

Another day, another Brian Michael Bendis run. I’ve accidentally stumbled on this guy more times so far than anyone, with Mark Waid not even being a close second. It’s funny how renowned the guy is for Ultimate Spider-Man and then maybe Alias, but everything else has been mediocre at best. BUT THAT’S ALL GONNA CHANGE WITH UNCANNY X-MEN! I have a good feeling about this one! It’s uncanny, after all!

I don’t have anything more to say. Let’s get this shit on the road or I’m turning this car back around. Back to the garage, you see. Because this shit isn’t on the road yet.

Uncanny X-Men (Vol. 3), Issue #1 [April, 2013]
Written by: Brian Michael Bendis
“The New Revolution”

LET’S SEE. Who’s that on the cover? Cyclops Man. Cold Lady. Large Earring Woman. James Joyce Glasses. Magnet Man. Colossus Sister. Cool, cool, cool.

So, I know from All-New X-Men that Cyclops is hangin’ with Frost and Magneto (Illyana too; she hangs back though) so they can recruit new mutants. That’s Short-Hair and Mr. Goggles. Short-Hair is from Australia, I forget her name, she can stop time. Mr. Goggles can bring people back from the dead. These are both very useful skills! Better than flaming eyeballs or whatever the fuck Cyclops’ problem is.

There’s an intro page that tells you about X-Men mutants like you might not already know. I know. We’re moving on. Cyclops has emotional and mental problems AND he wants to start a revolution, which is a recipe for complete disaster but we’re all going to let that play out.

Speaking of short hair, hubba hubba and whatnot. Maria Hill, my favorite S.H.I.E.L.D. agent and/or commander and/or deputy director and/or director is with Nick Eyepatch Fury in the INTERROGATION BUNKER. And what a bunker it is! “He just showed up out of nowhere?” Hill asks a nameless agent. Who cares what his name is, he’s dressed in a suit.

“Is he in there?” she asks a security officer.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Have you taken the necessary precautions?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“All of them?”
“Ma’am.”
“I don’t like this…”

Yeah, well, what you don’t know could fill a few thousand top of the line, state of the art S.H.I.E.L.D. Apple IIe computers.

Hill braces herself before entering the interrogation room. The guy was checked for weapons. She asks if this guy has ever done anything like “this” before, and the answer is no. Sounds like a rascal who was in the wrong place at the wrong time to me. Cut him loose, men.

If this guy tries any funny business while Hill is in there, the crosseyed security officer is to hit a red button that will gas the place and kill every single one of them. Sound good? Excellent! There’s no time to say goodbye to your wife and kids, son. This is the price you pay for your duty as a S.H.I.E.L.D. Security Pawn. I mean, Officer. Tee hee.

“Agent Hill,” says the man.
“You asked for me?”
“I did.”
“Specifically?”
“I did.”
“Why?”

We would allow it on Armenian soil. But American soil? No way, Jose. That’s SPECIAL soil!

It’s because Maria Hill has no personal vested interest in this revolution. Neither do 6.8 billion other people, why doesn’t this guy want to talk to them? He can talk to me, I don’t give a shit about the mutant revolution!

He wants Hill to listen to him. That’s all. He produces a round, coin-like object from his mouth and places it on the table. Everyone freaks out. The security guy is going to get waterboarded just for missing this one. He’s going to get waterboarded with milkshakes.

“What is that?” Hill asks, startled and frightened.

“I’m not here to hurt you,” he says, looking like he might anyway. Just a teensy bit. “I have to imagine that my reputation precedes me. I think you know me well enough to know that if I was here to hurt you there’s a lot smarter ways for me to go about doing it.

Well, nicely done. Checkmate, I guess. Good game. Time to go heh heh. Oh, you’re going to explain what the object is? Fine. She’ll stick around a little bit longer.

He claims it’s information. Information she doesn’t have. He presses a small button on the coin and the room lights up with a hologram of the world swirling around them. It sort of looks like normal Earth land masses but it’s all weird and different. I think I see Russia, though. Yep, there’s Putin.

“Each one represents a new mutant who has popped up,” the man explains the bright points of light that dot the map like stars in the sky, “They’re popping up all over the world.”

Hill is skeptical, but he knows that she knows that he has good intel, so he knows that she knows that she should trust him. Got me? She’s also quite alarmed and nervous, and after asking how many there might be, the mysterious mystery man tells her it’s not the number she needs to worry about. It’s how powerful they are. Power plus revolution. We don’t even have Cyclops on their side right now, it seems. That’s a fly in the ointment, as your 145-year-old grandmother might say.

Loved by other mutants. Hated by the normies. Scott “Cyclops Fucker” Summers is the one to watch for. He may be totally mentally unstable. In fact, he is! Have fun!

“Summers is rescuing mutants all over the world…”

He’s also jacking off a lot in public, and people sort of have mixed feelings about that.

“But the reason Scott Summers is so popular is that they don’t know the real him. They don’t know what he’s capable of. They don’t know that he’s a monster,” says bottom-half-of-face man.

Maria Hill is tired of this guy taking up her time at this point. If he’s got nothing new to say about Scott Summers that S.H.I.E.L.D. doesn’t already know, then she’s gonna g–

“His powers don’t work anymore.”

BBBWWWWWHHHAAAAAT??! comical double-take

They’re broken, see? Yeah…yeah, broken. Screwed up. Fizzling. Off the rails, you hearing me? Broke during the *Phoenix debacle” (I still don’t really know what that is) and he’s trying to hide that fact by not blasting motherfuckers with his eyeball furnace.”

“The face of the mutant revolution is crippled,” she asks, not believing her ears.
“That seems to have gotten your attention,” he replies.

She still doesn’t believe him. It just isn’t consistent with what they’ve seen.

He asks her if she heard about what happened in San Diego the other day. Some young man on the street just started producing these large, bouncing balls out of nowhere. There was a robbery attempt and it just started to happen, pinging around the room and knocking people over. It happened again when the police attempted to take him down. The cop looks like Stan Lee, lol.

Boy? Pfft. He looks big enough to be three boys!

The police and security talk amongst themselves about this new mutant piece of shit when who should arrive but SCOTT SUMMERS and his troupe of MUTANT MISFITS! “That mutant has rights,” Cyclops Summers says intimidatingly. He’s got his crew of five others with him (Editor’s Note: Check the cover! -T)

-Australian Short-Hair Girl is now named Tempus. As in, stuff with time.
-Mr. Goggles hasn’t picked out a name yet, but, as mentioned before, he heals people. I’m gonna name him right now: “Stimpack”!

Cyclops tells these human police fucks to back away now before he launches fire out of his dick at them. They don’t comply. They aim their guns at them and call for backup. Terrible idea, who taught you how to deal with unhinged mutants? Dumpster Police Academy? Magneto magnetizes their guns and pushes them away. Frost then instructs Tempus (née Eva) to create her time bubble and trap them in a time bubbly vortex, stopping them in their tracks. Not bad for only four days of mutantity!

This kid is named Fabio. Cyclops grabs his hand tenderly, ever so tenderly, and smiles at him like an unregistered sex offender. Then they go through the whole spiel. Kid doesn’t know what’s going on, Cyclops tells him he’s a dang mutant and his power appears to be ball-related. That’s a new one. This girl over here points can manipulate time, and this guy over here points can heal people, and you points make balls. Congratulations on sucking hardcore. Want to join the revolution?

Hold that thought. A 900-ft tall Sentinel comes crashing through to pound these mutants into sticky mutant paste. Oh great, they’re being hunted. Why was Cyclops yelling and hollering on TV about a revolution in the first place? Downright cockamamie! Very visible! No good!

Ok, well, fuck. Cyclops tells Magik to take the kids back to school, but she’s tied up at the moment and they need Stimpack to help heal some stuff.

Magneto tells these kids to respect their elders and listen to Scott Summers! He’s cool and a good role model and he’s NOT REGISTERED! Yet.

The Sentinel continues to hand their asses to them on a bronze platter. They don’t even deserve a silver platter. Frost comments on how old Magneto is; can’t even stop these Sentinels. Magneto gets indignant but then agrees. “Not so long ago I would have had the power to fold these nightmares into themselves… but, it seems those days are behind me.”

More Sentinels show up. These are human-sized and they don’t look as dangerous but I’m personally assured, because I have Level 1,000 clearance, that they are indeed quite dangerous.

CLANG THUNK CLANG CLANG THUNK THUNK BING BANG BING BANG BADA BING BADA BOOM

Just like Cyclops, Magneto’s powers are broken. He uses whatever magnetic force he has left to fashion the cops’ guns into metal arrows (stupid) and fling them at the Sentinels. They are stopped, but Magneto grabs his head and screams in the universal expression for “my head hurts now”.

Magik leaps up with a sword and slices through the giant Sentinel’s head like butter. Stimpack heals Magneto, which the rest of the team finds touching. A new mutant and already he’s healing his buddies! Daawwwww!!

Time Girl and Healer Boy and this is just the beginning. Now we got Ball Kid. Things are really picking up.

NOW Magik can whisk everyone back to the school. Cyclops does a lucky blast that destroys the rest of the robot. He didn’t even know he was doing it until he was done. He could have easily fucked up the whole block. He could have easily killed his X-Men buddies. But he didn’t, so whew. But now he’s wobbly and woozy.

Fabio freaks out and doesn’t want to go, but Tempus Eva assures him that she felt the same way and everything is going to be ok. He’s with friends now! So forget your old friends and your family. They are dead to you now forever. Come along!

It was S.H.I.E.L.D. who sent those Sentinels to kill Scott Summers specifically, but she is told that it’s a really dumb idea? Do you want to martyr him? Do you want to kill everyone around him? Use your brain, man!

Listen, Toots. You can’t kill him. Don’t kill him. Don’t make him die, ok? You have to taps pointed finger on table to emphasize each word expose. him. for. the. monster. that. he. is. so. that. he. can. feel. bad. and. cry. while. watching. This. Is. Us. and. eating. Stouffer’s. pot. pies.

“He’s a broken man,” says Mysterious Man Who Will Soon Be Revealed, I’m Sure. “Spiritually. Physically. You need to show that to the world. What he should be doing is healing – retraining himself… he should be pulling himself back together under the public eye. He should be in jail.”

Scott Summers, however, is an arrogant piece of shit. So he’ll never do it on his own. He thinks he’s cock of the walk! He thinks he can succeed at his revolution. He doesn’t know shit!

Maria Hill finally agrees to help, but she has no idea what this guy wants her to do.

But she does know who this guy is.

It’s Magneto.

He wants Hill to get Scott Summers to reveal himself. He wants her to get him to self-destruct in public. He wants this because Scott Summers fucked him over. His powers suck, and he wants to stick it to him.

And, of course, he’s willing to help.

cue Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D Minor

Final Thoughts

I should’ve been able to see this a mile away, but I’m dumb. Of course this was why Hill was terrified when Magneto pulled out that little metal disc that ended up being a map hologram. Duh.

Let’s go, Magnet Man. Let’s see what ya got. Epstein the motherfucker!