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Professor X is MLK, Magneto is Malcolm X
Believe it or not, that's what Stan Lee had in mind for the racial undertones beneath X-Men when he first thought it up way back in the day. And when you think about it, it's there. MLK wanted to work with the whites to promote equality, rather than be hated and feared. Malcom X, early on, at least, really had a hate on for the white devil. And, just as Magneto and Charles Xavier collaborate when things are at their most dire for mutants under a common banner... MLK and Malcolm X did begin to agree on civil rights legistlation toward the end of their sadly shortened lives.

Now, the only thing that bugs me is why the homo sapiens' hating mutant Magneto named his organization "The Brotherhood of Evil Mutants". What kind of a PR move was it for Erik Lensherr to label his organization's own motives as "evil"? Well, Jim Krueger tried to justify it in Earth X as Magneto's way of handicapping Xavier more than a wheelchair could. If he was "evil", Xavier had to be "good", and therefore couldn't have Logan go whacking people anonymously all willy-nilly to promote his peacenik agenda. Sorry, Krueger, that's only worth half credit, as far as I'm concerned. No... my theory... is that unless Stan Lee labelled Magneto's crew as "EVIL!" they may have gotten a fan following. Seriously. Magneto does lash back at some despots, and other madmen. Hell, once he tried to off the Red Skull in a Iron Man comic for WWII atrocities, if I remember right. The Brotherhood's agenda is grittier than the X-Men's, to be sure. Their members are a bit more morally askew, definitely. I don't see as why they're sometimes out to kill all humans. Taking control over them, maybe... but they could do so with subtlety. It's all an interesting way to look into the politics of the wonderful world of Marvel... and gives some perspective as to what the House of M really means. Anyway... on with the review.


HOLY BALLS... I MEAN... OH MY STARS AND GARTERS... X-Men Unlimited #10 (Marvel)

Check it out... for the price of one comic, you get two, yes two stories about Henry McCoy, AKA the Beast. Our first story sees the day to day workings of the Xavier Institute, and how the Beast very often has difficulties as a guidance counselor. You know... I don't buy this. The guy made the cure for the Legacy Virus. He ended the threat of the Phalanx in space another time back in the nineties through bio-engineering. His IQ is off the charts, to put it plainly. And you're telling me Henry McCoy can't deal with the angst-ridden psyches of your average adolescent? Bah. If I had the Beast as my high school counselor, I'd probably have an internship looking at exploring the mutant gene and be up to my *ss-crack in scholarship money. He's a certified genius, man. And his people skills are bar none. Remember when the Avengers were on Letterman? I do. Hank was there, and his charming self. So he's more leonine now, so what? Show me any kid, even a kid with mutant powers, who'd f*** with a guy who's battled Magneto, Mr. Sinister, Apocalypse, and countless other megalomaniacal madmen, and come out with at worst, blue. He looks like he could rip your face off. No kid would drop out of my high school with that kind of motivator. None.

Well, part two of our story is a flashback to when Hank got a lift back to his parent's farm after his "accident" at the brand corporation that would forever make him furry, and animalistic. He shows up in bandages, not unlike the Invisible Man would. Interesting thing about this story? Hank checks up on an old girlfriend. Let this be filed under evidence for those who think the Beast was kidding when he said he was gay during Morrison's run on New X-Men. Until he gets caught sleeping with Northstar... I'm not going to try and lay claim. Hell, this is one of the greatest debates about a character's sexuality since Rainmaker back on Gen13. Ah... hot bisexual comic book heroines... sorry... my mind can wander... this book is an okay look at the Beast as a character, but doesn't give us too much on him. I will continue to wait for the next great Henry McCoy solo story... because this wasn't anything more than average. NEXT BOOK!

REIGN OF THE SUPERMEN REUNION... SORTA... Superman #220 (DC)

Okay, so Kal-El decides to go chill with Superboy on the Kent family farm, and they're trying to have a heart to heart... aww.... how about that. Superboy finally drops the fact that he's half Lex Luthor DNA to Superman. So, to judge him... Clark uses his Super-Vision to look at Conner's soul. (What the? I don't remember Superman literally doing Soul Seaching. He won't even use his vision to check out girls in their panties... and now he can judge your heart like some Egyptian god or something?) The good news for Superboy... Clark believes he's got more good in him than anything.

Well, meanwhile a team of scientists goes in search of...(cue National Geographic music) the Eradicator! Working with the scientists... an unimportant cameo from John Henry Irons (the dude who WAS Steel.) Yeah, other than the Cyborg, the Reign of the Supermen cast is here! So what's gonna happen? FIGHT! For whatever reason, the Eradicator deems Superman AND Superboy unworthy of their legacies and tries to waste them. Judgemental, ain't he? So, Superman and Superboy start a beatdown on him... when suddenly... one of the scientists presents is an OMAC! It intercedes and lays out the Eradicator before disappearing! Damn OMACs! Get back in your own miniseries! I get the first good brawl in Superman in awhile, and you go and interrupt and f*** up the whole thing. This OMAC crossover is starting to irk me. If I had to venture an easy way to end it... somebody will download a computer virus to Brother Eye. If only it was that easy...

MR. TERRIFIC... IS THERE A MORE SELF-CONGRATULATORY NAME? JSA #76 (DC)

Seriously. Why didn't he just name himself Mr. Spectacular? Mr. Amazing? Mr. Whoop-Evil's-Arse-and-Also-Has-A-Big-Penis? I'll get over the name thing. Okay, so after last issue, for illegal governmental action in the nation of Khandaq, Atom Smasher is on trial. And, he pleads guilty, giving him a long prison term. Hawkman, being the overbearing jerk of the DCU (ahead of Batman on points in that department) is outside the courthouse trying to browbeat Wildcat, Alan Scott(classic GL) and Jay Warrick (classic Flash) into taking things into their own hands. We'll never know if Carter was trying to propose a jailbreak though. Why? Because a guy outside turns into an OMAC and goes to off the whole JSA.

Again with the OMACs interrupting a good story. Damn. Well, while the OMAC takes down just about everybody without much difficulty (come on, it's faster than a guy using the Speed Force AND more powerful than a Green Lantern? Bullsh*t. No human technology is THAT impressive. Even if Batman did help with the design somehow.) But we keep seeing that the OMAC has difficulty even detecting Mr. Terrific. It's mostly a machine. And Mr. Terrific's T-Spheres make him invisible to technology. Bill Gates must hate the guy, is all I'm saying. After several panels of Mr. Terrific (don't call him Mr. T) realizing it can't see him, and not doing anything to help... it finally sees him and goes to tear him a new one. Doesn't happen though. Atom Smasher takes the time to enlarge, ruining his new prison uniform, to simply STOMP on the OMAC, making it retreat. What the? A Green Lantern ring is ineffective, but a huge foot in the robot's *ss does the trick? Sigh. OMACs. I hate 'em already.

CLAREMONT IN THE HOUSE OF M? NO! LOCK THE DOORS! Uncanny X-Men #463 (Marvel)

Yeah, the saga of reality-hopping Meggan, Captain Britain, Psylocke (should be dead), and Rachel Summers continues, and still gives me migraines. At least this issue, Psylocke's not a man. That's the good news. The bad news is, the story now takes place in the House of M. The team is aware things aren't quite right, as evidenced by Brian Braddock attacking Saturnyne, or Rachel and Betsy running around trying to figure out what reality they're in. I can't even tell you what this means in the long term. They've had reality change around them so much, nothing even clicks for me anymore on this book. Well... almost nothing.

Remember when in Uncanny X-Men a few months back... when Xorn was there when the X-Men battled the Brotherhood at the mansion? And they got rid of Black Tom Cassidy, Mammomax, and a few others by sucking them into the black hole that's his head? Well, Juggernaut and Nocturne got pulled in there too. And this issue hints that the both of them may have somehow (it's Claremont, don't ask me how it's the same two) arrived in the House of M, and are wanted fugitives for whatever reason there. The only reason this didn't earn Claremont perennial TRAIN WRECK OF THE WEEK honors, is I thought I'd cut him some slack for a change, and more importantly, Juggernaut will be back. I know. I'm almost as big a Juggernaut mark as I am for Deadpool.

GIGOLO OF THE SEAS... Aquaman #33 (DC)

Okay, So Arthur's on a boat with Esther, who tells him the sea is dull. So he shows off and makes a whale surface off of the bow of the ship to wow her. And she's like... "Wait, did you make that whale come here with your mind?" DUH! Everybody, and I mean EVERYBODY in the DCU, metahuman, human, and pet, knows that Aquaman can talk to sea creatures. It's ALL he can do, really. And you've boned him, Esther. Man... get a clue honey. Arthur makes a date with her for that night.

Anyhow, we have Arthur failing to get the people of his kingdom to realize they can't trust Black Manta... (man, how can you not know that...) an interlude toward an ally of Aquaman's true nature... and finally... Arthur gets a talking to from Garth, his son. So what's Garth so moody about? Seems that he knows about Aquaman bedding Esther, and forgetting about his wife. Yeah, MERA. She's not well. Okay, she's completetly infirmed. Arthur's happy to see her again, so happy, in fact, that he forgets about his date with Esther. Hey, what did you respect, Es? Your name is Esther, and you're a dumb girl who didn't know he could talk to fish. She's Mera, the queen of the seas. You never stood a chance, girlie.

TRAIN WRECK OF THE WEEK Iron Man: House of M #2 0f 3 (Marvel)

Yes, this book is bad enough that I feel it outweighed Claremont poisoning the Children of the Atom again this month. I admit, no blame lies on Pat Lee's pencils, which are perfect for Iron Man, and any futuristic looking robots, or tech gear. But this book takes characters that are staples of the Marvel U, and shows that they are completely lost in the Scarlet Witch's illusions, to a point where I can't stand them. Tony Stark has defied his father so much that he inadvertantly has been deemed a terrorist of the state. Mind you, he's big with the humans for fighting the mutant serving sentinels who work to help Magneto lord over them... but he's still branded a terrorist. Tony's lucky break? Magneto's consultants are convinced that under the armor... it was Johnny Storm.

Well, seems Johnny and Tony need to save Hank Pym for unknown reasons from the mutant police force. They show up, and the crowd attacks the officers in an act of rebellion. During their rescue of Pym, he pushes a trigger that kills the mutant security force. Seems Mr. Pym invented a device that can attack the mutant genome. And he left lots of them, everywhere to commit genocide. Now, I know that Hank Pym invented Ultron. But making him into the creator of a potential mutant holocaust in an alternate universe makes the wife-beating mad scientist with small fan base even more distant from us. And Tony and Johnny Storm as the only hope to undo his madness... yeah... there's gonna be some mutants left as goo before long. The flow of the story is awkward, and seeing Tony get bullied by some anonymous two headed mutant wasn't exactly a good way to make us like House of M Tony Stark. They've managed to make some of our favorite heroes downright unlikable. Hopefully this doesn't affect the ones we know in regular reality.

ALL SHALL KNOW DOOM SPEAKS IN THIRD PERSON... Fantastic Four:House of M #2 0f 3 (Marvel)

So if Johnny Storm wasn't on board that fateful trip into space... who was? John Jameson. Yeah, seems he, Reed Richards, and Sue Storm died on board that ship. Ben Grimm lived... and provided Doom with the research to remake himself and his family. In any reality, Doom more than likely will try to rule the world. So, he's looking to overthrow Magneto for treating him like a whipping boy.

Now, I have some predictions. One... for beating on the It, the It will betray doom when he makes his move. It's the sort of thing that always foils Doom's plans. Two: Magneto's electromagic powers don't work as well in the dimension Doom has proposed for the new prison system. Three: Doom doesn't kill Magneto in the end. I mean... it's the Scarlet Witch's dream world. She isn't gonna let anyone kill her daddy, unless they make her fertile in return. Hang in there... House of M is half over.

WHERE'S BILL O'REILLY TO DECLARE A NO-SPIN ZONE? Detective Comics #809 (DC)

Okay, so the War Crimes storyline begins now. Arturo Rodriguez, a city reporter who has long since defended Batman, can't anymore. Why? The gang war from War Games killed off scores of people. Among them was Stephanie Brown, the Spoiler. She was working for Batman, and died at the hands of Black Mask. Or did she? Dr. Thompkins has gone missing, and so has Stephanie's medical file, which is now being read publicly on TV. When Batman finds out Vera, another doctor at the clinic checked it out a week earlier and had a falling out with Doc Thompkins over... something.

Well, seems someone has killed Vera, and tried to frame Batman for the murder, as if he's trying to cover up Stephanie's death. Nice. Especially the touch with a Batarangs as the murder weapon. The sick part? Batman alters the murder scene, cleaning up some of the blood and replacing the Batarangs with knives in the corpse to absolve himself of suspicion. Pretty amoral, if not effective for his own benefit. Like I've been saying for awhile... Batman is nuts. Oddest part? According to the Spoiler's medical file... she should've lived. But, he's trying to figure out who's badmouthing him, who is Aaron Black? Batman knows... we'll have to wait to find out next week. When he confronts Black, though... we get an ambush from...JOKER! Who says he knows who Bruce really is... uh... oh. I'm officially hooked on this story after twenty pages. Well done.

HE IS IRON MAN... LET'S MUCK UP HIS ORIGIN (SING IT LIKE THE SONG) Ultimate Iron Man #3 (Marvel)

I'm just going to come out and say it. I like that regular Iron Man is just a guy in a suit. Well, Ultimate Iron Man has a healing factor from a prototype skin suit, and a supergenius stemmed from the fact that his brain functions are not just limited to his brain. His entire body THINKS. Right. At least he's starting to cease to be blue all the time. That, and he's starting to invent all sorts of armor and gadgets at a young age.

Most importantly to put this book in the right direction, we get to see James Rhodey introduced. He and Tony develop a friendship based off of... well... Tony being a persistently friendly genius, and Rhodey being a moody, hypersensitive one. Rhodey's got issues with racist white rich kids punking him out, and Tony is... well... white and rich. So how does Tony endear himself to him especially? By telling him all black people like fried chicken, watermelon, can dance real funky and slam dunk a basketball. As Dave Chapelle once said..."HAHAHAHA... Oh... Lordy... all this racism is killing me..." Thankfully for young Tony Stark, Rhodey can detect sarcasm. He even agrees to help Tony test out his armor prototype, which is lots of futuristic metal, and a football helmet. Now all they need to do is survive some particularly malicious school bullies. Sigh. Not the best incarnation of Iron Man, that's for sure. I wonder if this one will hit the bottle though? Maybe not at the age of ten... but soon enough, I'm sure... drunken antics are a must for me to love this book.

WHOA... I KNOW KUNG FU... Ultimate Spider-Man #81 (Marvel)

So after talking about his meeting with the Kingpin with Detective Jean DeWolfe, Spidey opts to go try and take Hammerhead down. And its now that we're given a true treat by Brian Michael Bendis. We get Ultimate Shiang Chi, Master of Kung Fu, and Ultimate Iron Fist discussing their training, and local Asian gangs causing trouble and making Shiang be a vigilante when Hammerhead shows up with like fifty thugs. He's looking to put a bullet in Shiang's head as a lesson to those who'll oppose him. As a comics fan, I love some action sequences now and then... and this one didn't disappoint. Shiang catches a bullet in his hand before an all out brawl worthy of a Jackie Chan flick breaks out, pencilled wonderfully by Mark Bagley. As Hammerhead tries again to line up his shot while Danny and Shiang are distracted... Spidey arrives on the scene. One solid punch to the head, and Spidey's whining about a fracture. Wah. Proportional Strength of your Aunt May's fragile old *ss there, Pete.

Peter's got a gun to his head, and everyone freezes inside to look... and before Hammerhead makes his move, Mark Bagley gives us another treat. Black Cat arrives on the scene, in a splash page to make fanboys everywhere drool. She lets Hammerhead know she likes her Spidey without exit wounds out the side of his skull, thank you. Now, this will be an interesting setup for next issue. Why, you ask? Well, Peter's single. Yeah, he's gonna get a little something-something from Felicia Hardy, and odds are she'll be clawing his back up in no time. (I had other cat innuendos lined up for this, but thought I'd keep the vulgarity to a temporary minimum in the interests of good taste. At least until the next review, anyway.)

LAUGH OF THE WEEK Gotham Central #34 (DC)

Facts are facts. And in comics, one thing is a solid truth. Dead Robins sell books. Seriously. People voted to see Jason Todd die, and all picked up the issues surrounding his death to make a collector's profit. Well, based on that, this arc of Gotham Central will also be quite the commodity. Seems corpse of a teenage boy popped up dressed as Robin. GCPD is dealing with crime scene photos being leaked to the press, establishing if the boy involved was just a kid in the suit, or actually THE Robin, and an assault by what may have been Batman upon the Penguin. Well, the supposed Batman gets shot by Detective Romy Chandler, and plays opossum for a minute before popping up, breaking her nose, and leaving with her gun. Apparently, that's the only way Bats does this. If you shoot at him... he gets you in trouble by stealing your police issue.

So in the interrigation rooms, Kid Flash, Cyborg, Speedy, Wonder Girl and Raven all assure the GCPD it's not their Robin, and their key witness arrives to really make her point. Starfire. Now, the long haired Tamaranian beauty in her scantily-clad glory offers to be more persuasive. We get a panel of Detective Chandler going... "Men." Not a surprise that they're all gawking. But then, another detective points out... "You think?" and points with her pen at Detective Montoya, who's drooling just as much. Hey, everyone loves Starfire's hot *ss. Even lesbian Gotham City detectives. Best joke of a slow week, but still good stuff.

We get Robin himself arrving on the Central rooftop to talk to Stacy, and assure her he's alive and to tell the station. She agrees, provided he gets back Chandler's gun from Batman. They both laugh and long for the days where the GCPD and the Bat-Family worked together. Stacy goes back inside where she takes a phone call... one from Gotham Harbor patrol... they've got another dead Robin, this one drowned. Hey... like I said... Dead Robins sell books.

SMELLS LIKE JESSICA DREW IN HERE.... New Avengers #8 (Marvel)

Narrowly missing on both Laugh of the Week, and Book of the Week, is this comic. So why'd it not get either award? Well, I'm sure I've thrown enough of my accolades in the direction of Brian Michael Bendis already, for one. For two, there's a slight continuity problem in the book atypical of BMB. I couldn't bring myself to overlook it. Bear with me... Captain America and Iron Man try to help the Sentry figure out his origin, and why the only record of him is from a comic book. They know Bob Reynolds exists... but the Sentry? And what about his nemesis, the Void? He's coming too...

But, our other location in the comic is the battle between Wolverine, Luke Cage, Spider-Man, Spider-Woman versus... the Wrecker. We get a good flashback to the recruitment offer Tony Stark made to Wolverine to become an Avenger. After getting belted through somebody's closeline and rose bushes... Logan realizes... "I haven't made a good decision in fourteen years, I swear to God." With the boys beaten down, that leaves Spider-Woman alone with the Wrecker. And herein is my problem with the book... Spider-Woman uses a little known power she has, that she's perfected. She discovered when she's nervous or charged up, she releases a powerful pheromone that makes men get attracted to her, and is a great way to distract them. Of course, she uses it to buy enough time against the Wrecker for the guys to sneak up on him and whoop his sorry *ss. Now, after the fight, Wolverine says he can feel the pheromone coming off of her. True, Wolvie could smell that... but he never has before. On ANY level, let alone cranked up like she did. So, with my hangup for this new power development... it's still just another amazing Bendis work.

HULK SMASH T-REX FOR ATTACKING SAM NEILL! 1602:New World #1 of 5(Marvel)

I loved Neil Gaiman's 1602 for Marvel. But... Grek Pak is scribing this one, and he's got big shoes to fill. Issue one of this five part story introduces us to the Elizabethan Hulk. Bruce Banner was a Scottish seneschal to King James, until he realized that he may be one of the witchbereed, with his transformations into the Hulk. Well, seems like the New World in 1602 is not, in fact, the one that would become America. Instead, it looks like its actually the Savage Land, what with the large population of dinosaurs to contend with. The Hulk learns two things. Hulk like brontosauruses, and Hulk hate T-rexes. Keep that in mind.

Peter Parquagh works for the first periodical in the New World, the Daily Trumpet, and Jonah Jameson. His girlfriend, Virginia Dare, still does not know the nature of her powers. Well, when dinosaurs start to run through the town square, Peter uses the powers he gained from a recent spider-bite to save her. When the beasts are ready to trample him, though, an albino T-Rex wards off the brontos before they make him roadkill. It's Virginia, morphed into that animals' form. It looks like the crisis is averted, until the Hulk arrives to Smash Virginia T-Rex. One thing disappoints me about this book. Even though Banner is a Scot, and so is the Hulk... neither wear kilts. If I saw the Jade Giant in a kilt, it'd get book of the week. Remember that, Mr. Pak,.

BOOK OF THE WEEK: JLA:Justice #1 (DC)

Two words as to why this was the best book out this week. ALEX... ROSS... Yeah. That one. The one who paints every panel of his comics. The one who did the covers for Earth X, and I lamented that his influence wasn't felt more within every panel. The man who made Kingdom Come, a masterpiece of writing and art, is back again. And he's looking to top himself.

See, our story is that every night, everyone on earth is having the same nightmare. Judgement Day is coming, and no one will be spared from the destruction. No one, save Superman, and perhaps the Atom. We get a look of what the end of the world may look like, and it almost resembles the destruction of Krypton. Well, as a result of believing nobody will prevent the genocide from the JLA, Lex Luthor's Society of Villains will take them out one by one. First up, Aquaman is gonna have to contend with the Black Manta. The written dialogue in this book, I can't do justice to. And the art is on par with Kingdom Come. Alex Ross did not rush this thing. I remember previews I saw from months ago, and the whole first issue was on par with it. Please, to comics fans everywhere, I plead with you... buy this book. You'll love yourself for it.


So what did we learn this week? We learned that Aquaman lets his sea cucumber do all his thinking for him. We learned that at the rate things are going, the OMACs will start popping up in Marvel Books, and eventually Bone, ElfQuest, or any other comic on the market. Heck, an OMAC might pop up in Harry Potter 7 at this point. We discovered the Hulk would probably disrupt the entire plot of The Land Before Time if he was in that animated feature. We also learned that Alex Ross is still the Michaelangelo of comic books. Lastly, we learned that Spider-Woman wields the power of hot *ss, and it probably would work on Renee Montoya.

That's all for now... until next time, this has been the... WORST...BLOG...EVER!