Welcome to Loneliness & Cheeseburgers Presents: Uncanny X-Men (Vol. 4), Issue #5! In the previous installment, in a fucking nutshell, Magneto and Triage are hiding in Genosha and then the Death Riders or the Dirty Devils or whatever you want to call them teleport to Genosha to, presumably, kill Magneto and Triage.

Thank god it’s almost over. I couldn’t be less invested in a storyline if I wanted to. Did people buy this stuff when it first came out and then punched a hole in their walls they were so mad? Because I have a fresh wall right in front of me that needs plenty o’ punchin’.

Uncanny X-Men (Vol. 4), Issue #5 [May, 2016]
Written by: Cullen Bunn

FINALLY, IT’S THE SUSPENSEFUL BATTLE BETWEEN THE X-MEN AND THE DARK R—zzzzzzzzzzz.

“The Dark Riders sealed the tomb!” yells Sabretooth. “We’re trapped in here!” Well, maybe you shouldn’t be cavorting around an ancient pyramid looking for Dark Riders in the first place, you dang group of numbnuts.

Monet “M” St. “M” Croix disagrees, and she flies through meters of stone, punching through all of it without even hurting a pinky finger. Let’s go guys! Anticlimactic events await!

In Genosha, the Dark Riders look around some ruins for their main target: Triage. They yell for Magneto to hand him over so they can be on their way. Despite Triage’s “BRRRT!!” face, Magneto considers this proposition…

…but then he uses his magnetic Magneto powers to launch a car right into one of them. FUH-WOMP! Then he uses the car to block laser blasts from the hooded-missing-eyeball guy. Magneto gets injured by this, but he’s still able to speak in labored sentences with plenty of ellipses. Triage is like “we have to move, motherfucker!”

He doesn’t move, though, motherfucker. He doesn’t move at all, motherfucker.

Get up and move, Triage! Stop fooling around like a silly billy!

So Triage gets stabbed. That’s not really good for him, now is it? “Kid can heal himself,” says hooded-missing-eyeball guy (I believe his name is Gauntlet?). “Lock his brain down, Psynapse. Make sure he’s worm food.” And worm food he is, before he even dies! The worms are crawling all over him already. Look at those worms go.

Well, now you’ve gone and done made Magneto mad as heck. He picks off a couple of Dark Riders like they were ants, mocking them for trying to fight him out in the open where he has the advantage. Gauntlet has his gun aimed at Magneto ready to snipe his stupid melon off his neck. “I want you to know… I respect you,” Gauntlet says. “But you’re too damn dangerous to live.”

This is when the panels get chaotic as the rest of the X-Men team pops into the fray. Gauntlet immediately throws a pity party. Magneto tricked them into wasting time while the rest of the X-Men showed up! Grrrrr! Arrrrgh! Raaawrrr! And, in the havoc, whatever mechanism that was locking Triage’s brain down is lifted. Triage gets up and starts healing his impaling wounds. He chides Magneto for using him as bait, but Magneto isn’t listening. Magneto does whatever Magneto wants and no one is going to stop Magneto. Not even Patrick Stewart!

“You’re an Inhuman, right?” M says as she punches a big Dark Rider who looks like The Thing with horns. “Your people use the Terrigen mists. And the T-mists killed someone… someone I cared about!”

Psylocke wipes Harddrive’s brain clean. Good work. “The Dark Riders are finished,” claims Magneto. Then he launches into a self-righteous speech that I won’t even talk about here. Magneto is long-winded and, frankly, embarrassing everyone by talking.

Then Magneto blows up the entire island of Genosha to kill the last Dark Rider – Gauntlet – as they all fly away in their ship happily and triumphantly. Even Triage thinks this is mega-fucked up. “Genosha was destroyed a long time ago, Triage,” Magneto says simply. And conversation is over.

Is fourteen seconds a long time ago? I can never remember anymore.

“Funny how you never mentioned that you’d wired the entire place to blow,” says Sabretooth disconcertedly. Magneto merely tells him that he’s not going to disclose everything to the team. No trust. Go fuck a duck.

“But where are you going to hide now?” Triage asks. “Where will we lay low? Genosha was your home.”

“The destruction of Genosha was a warning to the world,” responds Magneto. “I have no intention of ‘laying low.’ And you do not need to worry about where we will be residing… there will be no place for you there.”

This Magneto guy is a real jerkass, isn’t he? Not in the cute, cuddly, lovable Wolverine way either, unfortunately.

The X-Men take Triage to Limbo – X-Haven – which looks like Hell and is adjacent to Hell because it really is Limbo. Storm is there to welcome him. Everyone lives happily ever after.

“Thank you for bringing him,” Storm says to Psyclocke.

“Erik needed convincing,” Psylocke responds. “He doesn’t buy into what you’re doing here.”

“Why doesn’t that surprise me?” Storm says, shaking her head. Ohhhh, that rapscallion Magneto! Disapproving of Limbo, blowing up islands. Will his antics never cease??

Storm invites Psylocke and M to stay in cozy X-Haven. They have a Keurig! But no, they’ve got their own thing going on. And in spite of everything, Magneto has good intentions! Somewhere. When they find out what they are, they’ll let her know. “Just take care that you don’t become more like our enemies and less like X-Men” Storm warns. Storm warning! Get it?

In the Savage Land, whatever the fuck that is, War Room X has been activated with all essential systems and operations to Magneto’s specifications. Sabretooth has a question for Magneto about Triage. “You knew he could heal himself, right? You knew that if he got cut down, he’s be all right.” Psylocke cuts him off there. Magneto didn’t know the Dark Riders would actually come and was gambling. “And when you gamble, you have to be willing to lose something.”

I’m not familiar with this euphemism. Is this about how hard and not-worth-it it is to have sex with M?

Psylocke pulls Magneto into the other room to speak privately. She relays Storm’s wishes to have her and M join her in X-Haven. She reminds Magneto that secret plans will bite him in the ass if and when great X-Men such as a herself, M, and Sabretooth defect.

“’X-Men.’ If we’re going to fight for whatever shred of Xavier’s dream remains, I suppose that’s what they are,” says Magneto. “But never forget that Xavier had his secrets… and so do I.”

We end in Los Angeles with a conversation between the two biggest who-cares characters in this story, Mystique and Fantomex, while they fly in their ship. It’s so fucking boring that I’m going to skip it. They flirt and give each other fuck eyes while being combative. Yawn and ho hum.

The issue ends with Magneto stopping the ship in its tracks to talk to them. And sweet homely Jesus it’s finally over.

Final Thoughts

Boo to all of this! The next five issues of the story are part of the Apocalypse Wars event, so if I ever get around to that I assume that more regular X-Men players will be in the mix. And you know what happens when you assume, right? You make a C-U-N-T out of D-O-N-A-L-D T-R-U-M-P.