Welcome to Loneliness & Cheeseburgers Presents: Uncanny X-Men (Vol. 4), Issue #1!

What makes these X-Men so damn uncanny? Are they, perhaps, ASTONISHING?

Because, you know what, that would be…

zzzzzzzz

Uncanny X-Men (Vol. 4), Issue #1 [March, 2016]
Written by: Cullen Bunn

We begin in Detroit, my old stomping grounds! What horrific events will transpire here? Gang shootings? Arson? A Red Wings victory? It’s a convoy of armored cars. The two men in the front car are talking about getting paid to maim and kill people, which is always a precious conversation, until Magneto shows up to fuck up their Cheerios. “I am Magneto… although I assume you already know my name… and why I’m here. Your employers… Someday Enterprises… have drawn my ire. I claim these vehicles… and your cargo… as my own!”

Enough with the ellipses, you fossilized old Boomer. Magneto uses his ultra-magneto powers to lift the cars off the road. Men try to gun him down with the same kind of AR-15s that shot Donald Trump’s ear off, but it doesn’t work because Magneto flips those bullets around and sends them from whence they came! “Don’t make me repeat myself,” he warns, eyes narrowed like Fry in that meme.

The two men in the front car are ready to go out guns-ablazin’ too, but a very large fucker named Sabretooth crunches down on the hood and smashes the windshield into a million tiny little smithereens. “There was a time, buttercup…” he says to the driver, “…I woulda scooped yer brains out before you even had the chance to soil your britches. Lucky for you, I’m the kinder, gentler Sabretooth.” He walks away leaving the dude’s britches thoroughly soiled. We’re talking soaked, man. Just a hurricane of urine and diarrhea.

Now a woman flies in to be a jerk. Her name is Monet. Then another woman swoops in to be a jerk. Her name Psylocke. They all bicker amongst themselves like schoolchildren while effortlessly, almost absent-mindedly, taking out the enemies. There are a lot of very large panels showing these dudes getting their asses handed to them. Magneto sprays the scene with bolts of electricity to the point where he overtaxes himself. “Death… still pulling at me… trying to drag me back…”

A semi-truck with the goods attempts to peel out of there. Monet summons one last X-Man: a predator drone of a hunk of man named Archangel. He used to be Warren (“Angel”), but he’s a bad guy! And he plows right through the windshield of the truck with so much gusto that I’m surprised no one has died five times in a row.

Shit, I need to post a panel now. Here you go:

Stop fighting, kids, or I’m taking away your ketchup.

“…weren’t hurting anyone…” says a man bleeding on the street. “…we’re a… public service… they wanted our help…” Then he asks who the hell all these X-Men are, and the only answer is a full-page spread of the five of them posing magnificently. Magneto, Sabretooth, Monet, Psylocke, and Archangel. Remember their names for me, because I’m dumping that info out of my brain along with knowledge about tying shoelaces and the nuclear codes.

“Take a nap,” Psylocke thinks, knocking the guy into a forever sleep. Death, see. The big D. Getting shafted by the big D, see.

Finally, they are all able to get the goods. Magneto opens the back of the truck to extract the cargo: large cannisters containing mutants. “Look at them… these mutants… placing themselves in suspended animation… so blissfully unaware of what is happening around them… so damnably selfish.”

Sabretooth knows these mutants are afraid of the Terrigen mists, but Magneto calls them fools.

One cannister opens. The woman inside, disoriented, asks the general audience if the mists are gone and if it’s safe to come out. The answer is NO.

Another cannister has been pierced by shrapnel, and the guy inside is bleeding out. Another mutant, a healer, a middle-aged man wearing a garish flannel shirt, stumbles away.

I’ll give you something to choke on, missy.

The man just responds that he never wanted to be a mutant anyway. He never asked for it, fuck it, get away. Nevertheless, he does heal the dying man and everything is now potatoes and gravy.

“I did it, all right? Now… can’t you… just let us go back to sleep? Please?” begs the healer-type man. “Until all this… horror has passed?”

Magneto scoffs at the word “horror”. Like this: SCOFF! Then he does a lot of fancy-talkin’ about how the Terrigen mists are toxic to mutantdom and, since new mutants aren’t manifesting, these canned losers should be out there to be seen. I don’t get the logic, but I’m not a senile old man like Magneto. “And the X-Men… those who would have protected you… have gone into hiding. You have no idea what true horror looks like.”

So he demands the freshly exhumed, sleepy mutants to go out there and find help or help others or whatever. And if ever catches them selling themselves out again, he’ll recognize them as an enemy to mutantkind and he’ll deal with them accordingly! Fifty lashes with a cat o’ nine tails should to the trick! And it WILL NOT be as sexy as you’d like it to be at all.

The X-Men enter their ship, the Blackbird, captained by Magneto. Even with the fully-functional autopilot, Magneto still likes operating the ship manually to feel in control. A woman named Elizabeth who, as far as I’m concerned, showed up out of nowhere, finds his use of the word “control” funny, considering she suspects Magneto is using these new sleeper mutants as a control group to monitor the chances of mutants surviving out in the world on their own. Magneto neither confirms nor denies this, but reminds Elizabeth that he knows why she’s really here.

Blah. Elizabeth takes the controls from Magneto and grumbles about how nice it would have been to have a healer on board. Could’ve been fucking useful, but oh-fucking-well, right? Elizabeth calls the ship a possible safe haven for these individuals. Magneto responds that there’s no such thing as a safe haven. This guy’s a poopypants downer is what he is.

Under a bridge, a woman hacks and coughs while her young child tries to soothe her and calm her down. “…maybe I can help,” says the healer as he approaches the woman. “Just… relax. This only takes a moment.”

The heaviness in the woman’s chest and throat leave! It’s a miracle! Thank you, mysterious and frankly creepy stranger! They all celebrate a victory for altruism, and then the healer gets shot in the head.

It’s just that he owed me $5.

The culprit is the leader of a team of very bad, rough looking dudes. Monster faces, pointy teeth, that sort of affair. THE DARK RIDERS. The problem with the healer was that he was a healer. An affront to nature. A slap in the face to natural selection. The mutants are done, they tried and they failed. Only the strong survive!

The Dark Riders will set things right! Muahahahaha!!!

Final Thoughts

This sucks already. Which of these characters am I supposed to care about? Stupid. And you have a stupid name, Cullen Bunn. I should’ve skipped this shit!

grumble