Welcome to Loneliness & Cheeseburgers Presents: Astonishing X-Men (Vol. 3) Issue #11 – “Dangerous (Part 5)”! In the previous installment, the Danger Room computer brain manifests itself as Robot Medusa (my name for it) and starts fighting the X-Men team. She kicks their asses, and that’s putting it lightly. They all seem dead! Pryde and Wolverine get impaled for the love of Cornelius! Now she wants to go after her creator, Professor Xavier.
Meanwhile, at S.W.O.R.D., Agent Brand catches wind of the catastrophe going on at the school. Their mole is trapped in the Danger Room with the other kids. After talking with Ord to confirm that Robot Medusa isn’t one of his own cronies, she decides to let the situation play out because, hey, less work for her!
How are these X-Mens gonna come back from the dead, huh? Huh? Huh?
Astonishing X-Men (Vol. 3), Issue #11 [July, 2005]
Written by: Joss Whedon
“Dangerous (Part 5)”
A “previously on…” recap page fills me on two points I either missed or didn’t know at all.
First of all, the very act of Wing committing suicide caused Professor Xavier’s only Danger Room failsafe to be destroyed. Why, exactly? I dunno!
Second of all, Professor Xavier has been living in the “ruins of Genosha” for the past year. I don’t know what or where Genosha is, or why the everliving shit he would be living there for the past year, but perhaps he knew this Danger Room was going to kill him so he rolled away on his wheelchair as fast as his little arms could? He rolled all the way to Genosha!
“You don’t have to do this.” pleads Professor X, brow furrowed, obviously referring to the killing of him that is going to inevitably happen. Robot Medusa says “fuck yeah I do, this is the only thing I was made for, smarty man”. She’s already riding the self-driving jet, the one that crashed into Xavier’s Playboy Mansion. She’s already flying over Genosha. She’s already taking a majestic swan dive off the jet.
SWAN DIIIIIIIVE!!
She bullets down to the ground and lands like a heat-seeking missile right the fuck in front of Professor X. Like, literally 10 yards away. “This ends in death, Father.” she says, or thinks, or whatever. “I know.” he answers. And she looks. And the man in the chair appears to be some dead corpse impostor.
Out of nowhere, Professor Xavier, with his lame legs, is driving a HUGE semi-truck tractor! He drives right through a wall. He drives right into Robot Medusa. He drives her into many brick walls. She looks frightened. You almost feel bad for her.
Floor it, sir! Pedal to the metal! Get those legs working for ya!
“What did you think, Child? That I’d save myself with reason? With mind games? You took out my X-Men. Any — or all of them — could be dead.” Professor Xavier is very calmly explaining himself telepathically as he drives this massive vehicle all over the damn desert. He brakes hard in front of a large (still active) high voltage switchyard. Robot Medusa is flung onto a pile of high voltage wires and starts getting fried!
“Recalibrate…reroute…kill this @#$%ing cripple.” she thinks, as her circuitry goes haywire.
Back at Professor Sexaviar’s Sex Mansion for the Sexually Adventurous, the X-Men team are in the sick bay. Everyone honestly seems fine except for Scott and Kitty, who are unconscious in their beds. Peter is sitting up clutching his abdomen. Logan and Emma are trying to siphon out as much healing power as they can from a Golden Boy Healer guy. He’s writhing on the ground, tapped out. There’s only one other Healer on the premises, and he’s in shock. No students are dead, except for that Wing sad-sack. Logan seems to think there’s something else going on, it all seems so anticlimactic.
That’s a nice roundabout way of admitting that you guys are sucking at your jobs right now.
Kitty wakes up. “Father…” she breathes. “It’s about the Father. We don’t matter.” she tells them. This has never been about them, this has always been about the Great Bald Crippled One. “She has to kill the professor.” We see Scott is also sitting up, so that’s everyone! All the X-Men are perfectly fine! It takes more than a ton of concrete or a large, sharp spear through the gut to take down any of these mutants! Geez, someone should stop them before it gets out of hand. If only some lab somewhere started developing a cure…
The team doesn’t think that even Robot Medusa could find the Professor, but Kitty (who didn’t know where he was) guesses correctly. And the “oh shit” on everyone’s faces, it was quite palpable! A real palpable “oh shit” right here. When asked how she knew, Kitty tells them about how Zombie Wing whisked her and students away to many exotic locales, including Genosha. “I remember the place pretty well.” she says, head hanging down. Looks like someday I’ll be stumbling upon the “Kitty Pryde is stranded in the desert for reasons” X-Men story arc!
Beast is going to check up on all those tasty children, you know, make sure they’re still all right, and, uh, tender. The team is going to figure out how to get their injured asses to Genosha.
Shock! Shock! Shock! Watch the monkey get hurt!
Back in the high voltage fun park, Robot Medusa’s resources are depleting. She’s trying her damnedest to redirect the electrical current and overload the grid, which she does, and it explodes into a nice boomy boom.
“Now, my Child…we talk.” says Professor Xavier, and now he and Robot Medusa are in the Matrix facing each other in cozy matching armchairs!
In the co-ed locker rooms, Peter approaches Kitty and tells her that he doesn’t think she should go with them. She’s already all geared up, OF COURSE she’s going, Peter, you awful MAN. “We can do without you.” Peter tells her in that cold, unsympathetic Russian way! She is a bit salty and sulky, and tells him that she’s an X-Men like the rest of them! She gets paranoid, thinking that Peter doesn’t want her around anymore, and launches into a rant about how he came back from the dead and now they’re supposed to pretend that he didn’t come back from the dead! And-and-and-and-and-and furthermore!…uh!…he smells! Lives are at stake here, and she’s going to Genosha! And that’s final! Grr!
Peter is bewildered but charmed, and comments that she hasn’t changed much. Peter is still trying to come to terms with being back on Earth and not being dead and all that. Apparently something happened in Genosha recently, millions of people died. I should check out what series and issues that story comes from. Kitty Pryde’s family was there when whatever happened happened. And she’s sad. And he gets that. And that’s why he thinks she should stay, it might be too much of an emotional hurricane.
She apologizes for flying off the handle at Peter, and still stubbornly wants to go. Peter tells her the train is leaving in ten minutes! Shake a leg! And also, he wants her around plenty! Around his dick, that is! Aw shucks.
Back in the Matrix, where Robo Meduso and Captain Xavier of the Starship Armchair are primed for a friendly chat, the robot snidely comments on Xavier’s use of mind games after all. It’s like, why hit me with a fucking truck, sir? Ah, because it buys Xavier time while Robo fully reboots after electrocution-related setbacks. He calls her a mutant, which sends her into a frenzied fit of insecure rage! “DON’T CALL ME THAT! I’M NOT A MUTANT! I’M NOT NATURAL AT ALL! MUTANTS ARE THE OPPRESSORS!” she bellows while taking a flying leap at him. “Not natural, and yet you take human form.” observes Professor XXX. She argues that he has his limitations just like she does, except she chooses them and he’s stuck with his. “In the end, though, aren’t we all? Our limitations? If none of us had limitations, what would God do with his time?” he argues back.
And I guess this did the trick. She crumples to the ground, robot head clean off her robot shoulders, and starts sparking. Xavier won with one sentence? Is this like when Daredevil got a guy to kill himself just by making fun of his set design abilities? These three-issue villain buildups sure do end anticlimactically.
A big mushroom cloud? When is it ever good?
At this point the X-Men are flying in a jet and are very near Genosha. Way in the distance they see a mushrooming cloud of smoke and fire emanating from the ruins. They try to get a read on the Professor’s location and/or aliveness, but it’s not working. The team flies over and parachutes down in their cute “X” parachutes.
Xavier reveals that he was able to tell the jet a fake location of their whereabouts, and it had crashed elsewhere in the ruins. Not the X-Men’s jet, the jet Robot Medusa arrived on. The X-Men’s jet is going to autodrive somewhere else now. Maybe it will go on an autojoyride.
Medusa asks Xavier if the X-Men know the real Professor Xavier. He says that he’d like to think that Jean Grey did. He throws her head behind him, and Colossus catches it. “Now make like she’s a grapefruit.” Wolverine tells him, and Colossus is ready to oblige…
“X-MEN. WELCOME TO GENOSHA. MUTANT PARADISE. MUTANT GRAVEYARD. GENOCIDE. A WILD SENTINEL KILLED SIXTEEN MUTANTS HERE IN A LITTLE LESS THAN AN HOUR…AND NOBODY WONDERED WHERE IT WENT?”
The robotic voice is not Medusa. This one is coming from the nearby ocean. And an enormous robot bug rises out of the waters like some robot bug Godzilla. It’s four times taller than the tallest standing Genosha skyscraper! It’s as big as the dickens, I tells ya!
It calls Medusa “Mother”. Medusa says “Welcome, my Child.”
The team are all looking up in awe. Only Beast is able to muster any words:
Let’s just quit the X-Man thing, ok? Sound good? I’m pretty proficient at Word and Excel.
Final Thoughts
Yeah, Beast, I have some thoughts! Just have Professor X mention God a couple times, that’ll do it! Stay tuned, the conclusion to the storyline is nigh! Just like Bill the Science Gigh!
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