Welcome to Loneliness & Cheeseburgers Presents: Uncanny X-Men (Vol. 3) Issue #2 – “Poink is the New BAMF”! And yuck, that’s a worse name than all the tripe Scott Lobdell dug up for his Red Hood and the Outlaws issues. Well… yeah, that’s not true at all. In the previous installment Magneto shows up to S.H.I.E.L.D. headquarters with one mission: bring down Scott Summers, and bring him down in the public eye. The whole world needs to see his downfall. And he’s willing to assist S.H.I.E.L.D. in any way possible because he’s a big baby about Cyclops stealing his powers.
The new recruits from the beginning of All-New X-Men are there: Eva, the time-manipulation girl. Christopher, the healing boy. They’re going to help the bad guys do the revolution thing.
Where’s Wolverine in all this? Drinking a tall glass of Miller Light and stroking his schlong while watching Ratched on Netflix. That Sarah Paulson is something else, right Wolverine?
Uncanny X-Men (Vol. 3), Issue #2 [April, 2013]
Written by: Brian Michael Bendis
“Poink is the New BAMF”
I just love this big splash page with this menacing red/black motif showing the backstory of the X-Men and the synopsis of Magneto preparing to help S.H.I.E.L.D., and it’s all very serious looking, and then it says “POINK IS THE NEW BAMF”. Brings everything back into perspective.
Emma Frost walks along a stone wall in a frosty, snowy, mountainous area. She’s poinky and BAMFy, you might say. She wears three layers, but half her torso is exposed to the elements, so kudos to the costume department for weather-appropriate superhero outfits for women.
She suddenly screams and falls to her hands and knees. “The quiet is going to drive me insane. All this quiet. All those years I could read everybody’s thoughts. Anybody. Everybody.” She laughs bitterly to herself that she spent all that time trying to block it out. Now she would do anything to get those voices back in her head.
And I mean anything. ♫ But she won’t do that. ♫
Powers broken. Half the woman she used to be. Wah wah wah. She used to be the Queen! The White Queen! Wah wah wah wah! Now look at her! Look at her! Wah wah waaaah!
In short, go fuck youself with a spiky cactus, Scott Summers. Right up the ol’ butt chute. Also, the Phoenix. Also, Jean Grey for bringing the Phoenix in the first place. Also, Scott again, for fucking Jean Grey. Also, Jean Grey again, for fucking Scott. Without a cactus! It’s inexcusable.
Frost spends a lot of time thinking her thoughts, probably because she has nothing else to listen to right now except her own thoughts. A lot of her thoughts are about blaming people for her situation, including Tony Stark, of which I have no context for. Then she finally blames herself, which is more like it! I guess there was betrayal? Scandalous!
Love triangle stuff notwithstanding, Frost is also preoccupied with being stupid enough to actually confront Cyclops about it. Then he got mad. Of course this was gonna happen! Why did she bother?! Stupid stupid stupid!
If you hurry, we’ll have time to catch the pancake breakfast at the Matrix convention!
Oh shit, uh… hey there, Cyclops! Heh heh heh…did you, uh, did you hear anything just now? And Cyclops says he had heard some. Enough. That’s awkward.
Hey! This is a good thing, right Frost ol’ buddy ol’ pal? You can project thoughts! That’s better than before, right?
NO! IT’S NOT RIGHT, SCOTT, YOU IMBECILE FROM DUMBSHIT MOUNTAIN. Emma wasn’t trying to project her thoughts, ergo, it’s not better than before you colossal dingus. It’s worse, because now she can’t think of anything without worrying about someone hearing it. All those crazy fetishes and all those credit card numbers. There’s a lot on the line here!
Time to face the facts, Jack. They’re up shit creek with only a regular paddle. They need a mutant paddle! They need help. And they need to figure out how they can retrain themselves on their respective super-hero-power-dealies. So, if no one will help, then they’ll have to help each other. So who wants pancakes?!
Hey you mopey mopes, get it together. Everyone hates everybody, so let’s just move the fuck on.
Scott and Emma go back and forth projecting their anxieties and insecurities, so this must be a Marvel comic! Here’s Emma’s problem: she’s so used to reading Scott’s mind that she hates not being able to anymore, and it sounds like Scott’s newfound privacy upsets her tremendously. I have a hard time sympathizing with this, but at least Scott’s now free to fantasize about boning 45 women at the same time now with impunity.
Emma asks Cyclops if he wants to get back together with her. Scott dials it down to 43 and tells her that he doesn’t see how it that would be possible. Frost agrees with that. Scott dials it back up to 45.
Is this about the Mutant Revolution, Emma? Aaarrrrghh, I TO-O-O-O-O-OLD you that I thought you wanted to be a part of i-i-i-i-it! Fine, leave. See if I care. I still have Magneto! For all I know! Ha!
OK, maybe this isn’t about Scott and Emma anymore. Maybe this Mutant Revolution thing is about a greater good. Future made better by how they shape it. So strap on your teachin’ boots, we have youngins to train! “We have never had students this raw,” Scott tells her. They’ll need all the help they can get. So start rawdoggin’ them! What would Professor Charles Montgomery Patrick Stewart X Jean Grey Luc Picard Xavier do?
Emma knows everything Cyclops is saying is right. Of course he’s right, he’s the infallible Scott Summers. Ooooh, ahhhh, let’s throw a goddamned parade for the Great One.
“He wasn’t the saint you remember him as,” Frost tells him. And he knows.
Frost has one last thing to say before they go: FUCK Jean Grey. FUCK her. FUCK FUCK FUCK her. She’s glad she’s dead. If she could come back to life only to die again, that would be great. If she could come back to life only to die again by being MURDERED, that would be fantastic. MURDERED BY FROST. Hahahaha, she can imagine wrapping her fingers around that bitch’s throat and–
Ok, we’re good now! Illyana just pulled up the car.
Jesus Christ, people. Dress for the weather once in a while.
Illyana gives them both a good up-and-down. “Are you guys back together?” she asks with a look of disdain at the mere thought. Cyclops answers in the negative. “Thank the Dark Lords,” Illyana responds. How very Magik-al.
Then the magik one disappears with a KRAK of scary Thor-type lightning. Frost stares at the area with giant blue eyeballs, somewhat terrified. Sounds like another woman to be jealous of very soon.
The two lovebirds start walking away.
“I miss being in your brain,” Emma tells Scott.
HOW DID SCOTT REACT? CHOOSE!
a) “I miss being up in your guts.”
b) With silence.
MOVING ON! Let’s go back to that time from the last issue where the Sentinels arrived to bust the party and they tried to stop them with their barely-powers. Well, the new recruits are being shown a film of the event. Someone somewhere was recording the action, somehow, for some reason. The ignorant youths don’t know what these Sentinels are, so the seasoned X-Men are like “oh yeah, these are the things that will try to kill you constantly”. And why were they attacking in the city? Probably because somebody sent them! Some mutant-hating jerkass that wants us in the sewers, Futurama-style.
Fabio (the Ball Kid) is freaking out, because yesterday he was working at a classy corn dog restaurant and now he’s being chased by robots. Cyclops tells him to chill like the other two, but they’re also freaking out.
Oh yeah, that’s right. There wasn’t that much of a real explanation of what’s going on here! Nice to meet you, I’m Cyclops. You may have heard of me, my name gets around like your mother! Hahaha! Relax, kid.
Fabio doesn’t believe this stupidity. He wants to go back to selling corn dogs, but Magneto continues showing him his classroom presentation.
Yeah, that may be so, but why aren’t you and James Marsden ever in the same room at the same time??
There’s too much repeated info here, but some other major points include 1) you guys are the new mutants, 2) new mutants haven’t shown up in many, many years, 3) and now you have to do mutant stuff instead of relaxing and living a normal, comfortable life.
Heavy stuff! Personally, if I found out that I could suddenly untwist pretzels with my eyeballs, I wouldn’t want to be drafted into a Mutant Army against my will. I’d want to just sit at home and play more Xbox.
“I thought mutants were born mutants,” Eva says.
“You were born a mutant,” responds Magneto.
“And I just didn’t know it yet?”
“That is exactly right.”
Hold the phone! How do we know that everyone isn’t born a mutant and they just don’t know yet? Plot hole!
“And the rest of my family?” Eva continues.
“It’s hard to say,” responds Magneto.
“Will I ever see them again?”
“You’re not being held hostage, young one.”
Ha! Nice way of psychologically holding them hostage, you magnetic slut. Christopher is thrilled; he hated his stupid, boring life and now he gets to be an X-Man. Fabio is less than thrilled; he wants to keep making corn dogs and now he has weird balls. Weird balls that fly out of him for no reason! And even Scott Summers finds this power peculiar. Even among mutants, some mutants are on the F-tier.
Cyclops asks Kid Balls if he can do his powers thing. Right here and right now. He wants to see what Fabio’s balls are made of. Fabio is nervous. So, apparently, they’re not made of steel.
Fabio concentrates. He concentrates and concentrates. Then the balls start a’flyin’! Hoooo-wee! Balls to the wall, my friends.
Wheeeeeeeee!!
After the dozens of balls stop pinging around the room (or “poink”, which would explain part of the issue’s atrocity of a title), Scott comments that he shouldn’t do that inside anymore, you ugly mutant. Everyone agrees. Especially the ugly part.
Christopher asks where they are. It’s the New Charles Xavier School for Mutants, aka Bad Guy Mutant HQ for Revolutionary Purposes. They show the whole floor plan! There’s a hangar, an arboretum, a meeting/Danger Room, the Danger Room mechanism, the dorms, the classrooms, the cafeteria, the War Room, the service area, the rumpus room, the holodeck, the lion, the witch, and the wardrobe! Have fun, kiddos. No hanky-panky, you hear?
A kid named Benjamin, who appeared in All-New X-Men as the face-shifter, asks if they all have to live here. Emma Frost throws some more psychological hostaging in his direction about that. Scott doesn’t get what these stupid kids are so afraid of. MUTANT BOARDING SCHOOL! This is some Hogwarts shit, you guys! Thousands of quadrillions of kids would love to be in your position. Learning magic. Fellatin’ Hagrid. This is the dream!
Eva and Christopher love the idea of living at the school, but Fabio agrees with Benjamin. Magik jumps in on Scott’s spiel. Being from Russia, the word “revolution” brings with it some negative connotations for Magik. Words are scary. So be more sympathetic, you out-of-control hotheaded asshole. She’s sympathetic; she used to be terrified and unwilling and meek. And things got better.
She flips her sword around menacingly, scaring the children. “When I was younger I would say to myself: What I wouldn’t give to live a normal life. But we’re not – none of us in this room will ever have ‘normal’. Because we are to be punished for being different? No.”
Eva knows what the answer here is: “Because there is no normal.”
Frost crosses her arms approvingly. “She’s the smart one.”
Still not sitting well for Fabio!
Corn dogs! Corn dogs corn dogs corn dogs!!!
Fabio makes a good point, though. He doesn’t want to drop his whole life and never see his family again. Christopher doesn’t understand this, probably because he was beaten and tortured and hanged and impaled as a child, but he has nothing that he wants to return to. Fabio thinks this is depressing. Eva wants to stay, but she does want to at least say goodbye to her family. And tell them she’s ok. And tell them what’s going on. And get her toothbrush. And her underwear.
Scott says NO! “The authorities will be looking for you. They will be at your home. Interrogating your family.” In short, no underwear for you, young lady.
The kids start to get uneasy with being around Scott Summers. Eva wonders if this guy even understands what she wants to do, especially if her mother would be in danger because of her.
Emma Frost brings a touch of bedside manner and offers the kids, whoever wants it, help seeing their family again. All of them will help. That means you too, Magnet Face.
Scott concedes, and I think part of his problem was that he didn’t want to take the 900-hour flight to Eva’s native Australia. Good thing we got Magik, who has portals like that video game Portal without the portal guns!
They all get ready to hop through space and time. Scott asks Eric Magneto Clapton if he’s coming along, and with a wry smile Magneto tells him to have fun. He has errands to run…
SUSPICIOUS?? Yes!
This trip to Australia has bought Magneto time to do some treason. He pulls out a phone and invites someone over while they’re gone. For some sexy times.
The X-Men group are in Coast City, Australia, headed toward Eva’s house. Benjamin doesn’t like that the portal took them through Hell and back, literally, but Magik flirts with him and these two are going to get their bone on soon.
Is that a promise?
Scott tries to keep the group together and have them stay calm and guarded, but Eva breaks away and yells for her mom at the house. They hug, Eva’s mom thought she was dead, the police said she was kidnapped, there are many tears, and Aspergers Face Scott Summers saunters up to the both of them and makes chit-chat about mutants.
Meanwhile, the rest of the group gets ambushed by a group of ne’er-do-wells descending from their aircraft. Some real hooligans. I even recognize some of them!
Captain America, Iron Man, Hulk, Hawkeye, Black Widow… and the rest!
”AVENGERS ASSEMBLE!” screams the dumb one (Cap).
Final Thoughts
Oh Jesus fucking Christ, get the hell out of my X-Men comic book. I’ve seen enough of you guys lately!
I hate it when the Avengers assemble!
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