Giant-size X-Statix #1 (September 2019)

Why do Marvel covers have a distinct tactile sensation compared to most other comics?

If only I could remember anything from the past at all, I bet I'd remember a whole bunch of stuff from Peter Milligan's X-Force/X-Statix run. Sure, I remember little things here and there. Like the big head in the background on the cover is obviously Zeitgeist even if Zeitgeist was blasted in two by a helicopter's machine gun fire when the group were trying to rescue a boy band. Oh look! I remembered more than I ever would have guessed I could remember! I don't know if the woman saying, "Guess who!", is U-Go Girl or U-Go Girl's daughter because I think U-Go Girl also died somehow. The rest of the characters I vaguely remember, like Mister Sensitive and Dead Girl and Doop and the gay werewolf and the gay flabby guy. Unless that flabby guy is the flabby daughter of the flabby guy? He or she is looking a little bit androgynous. I don't recognize the guy who looks like he's starring as the Cowardly Lion in a local production of The Wiz but maybe he's Tike Alicar's kid? Did I spell The Anarchist's name correctly? Maybe I should have just called him The Anarchist to begin with? No, no! I'm trying to prove I can remember stuff!

Luckily, Marvel comics loves to waste the entire first page of their comic books on recaps and credits. I say "waste" because I want to appear intelligent by forming the declaration as a critique but really I'm weeping in joy because I can't remember so many things that I secretly think my brain has a drinking problem. I bet it wakes me up at night to get fucking wasted and then, being the brain of a genius and all, it drinks just enough and in just the right way so that it kills off all the memory brain cells that would have remembered that I was up all night drinking. Then it also kills off loads of brain cells where I stash all of my comic book memories which wouldn't be such a big deal except that I have this fifteen year old comic book blog which gives the illusion that I know something about comic books.

Let's all catch up together!

Was that enough information? If that was really enough information, why did I spend 80 or more dollars on all of those issues? How could around 600 pages of story be condensed down to two fucking paragraphs?! You know what? Never mind any of that! I have a more pressing issue regarding the M&M advert on the inside cover!

Am I supposed to believe the Brown M&M just had her ass eaten by the red and blue M&Ms?! Because I do believe it.

I don't think the yellow and orange M&M ate her ass; I think they ate each other's asses, based on the color mix around their mouths. Also the way they're looking at each other as if maybe they're sorry they just got caught up in whatever the fuck just happened here. You might be wondering, "But what about the green M&M that Sean Hannity wants to fuck? What's she up to?" I saved her for her own scan because she doesn't just do rim jobs; she does full blown bore jobs.

The spoon might be a bit much. But maybe the spoon's what really attracted Hannity to the green one.

Can you believe I really have nothing at all better to do with my life than this?

The story that doesn't involve M&Ms sucking turds out of each other's buttholes (they have buttholes? Sure. Why not?) begins with U-Go-Girl's sister sitting on the couch watching a Netflix documentary on X-Statix. Her name is Katie Jones because she had to change it from Edie Sawyer to avoid the paparazzi. She's a high school girl living a normal life. But that only makes for good Indie comics, so of course one night she wakes up in the cemetery at the foot of her mom's grave because she teleported in her sleep. Waiting for her, for some reason, are Dead Girl and Doop of X-Statix. Dead Girl's there to facilitate because there's a certain famous corpse that wants to give Katie a message. Doop's there to, um, film it?

Shocker! Unless we already knew this? I think we already knew this. Didn't I mention it already?

Back to the M&M story: how many M&Ms can you fit up your butthole? Peanut, of course! Leave your answer in the comments. Not that I care but I think that's how I'm supposed to engage with the audience. I'm supposed to pretend to care what readers think.

Why is Doop mimicking the movements of all the other characters? Is he puppeteering this whole thing? Is this just Doop's fantasy as he slowly digests in the Hulk's stomach after Hulk mistook him for a massive pickle?

Once Katie discovers she's the daughter of a mutant, her mutant gene kicks in extra hard core. Is that how the mutant gene works? Is it like Oprah's Secret? Thinking about it causes it to manifest? Whether that's true or not, the next day, Katie can't stop teleporting when she gets distracted and then her skin turns blue. No way she's going to avoid the paparazzi now. And all the mutie haters. Was Marvel still full of people who hated mutants just because they were mutants in 2019? Or were most people fine with them until all the dumb bastards listening to right wing podcasts and radio had their brains turned to mush just like in our world and now they hate anybody who isn't a non-mutant straight white male? Like our stupid world full of stupid idiots?

Man, I can't wait for Trump's heart to explode during one of his stupid Sean Hannity interviews. Maybe he'll sense it coming and choke Sean to death just before he dies because obviously he isn't going to want Sean to outlive him. What an amazing day that would be!

Anyway, I finished reading this comic book days ago but didn't have anything to say about it. It's a shame, really, because I love Peter Milligan and I've looked at art by Michael and Laura Allred! It's just that there's no real meat on the bones of this issue. It's like one of those skywalks that's made out of glass and connects two buildings. It allows for a nice view to look at as you go from Point A to Point B but you're not actually concerned with the skywalk itself. If it wasn't there, you'd just cross the street at ground level and nothing would have been different except maybe you'd be a little bit colder and slightly more inconvenienced. To explain that metaphor or simile or allegory as if I were Jesus Christ having to retell every single one of my stories to my stupid as fuck disciples, Milligan's original X-Force and X-Statix issues are Point A and The X-Cellent (which came out in 2023) was Point B. This issue is the sky bridge that just says, "X-Statix are back! This is the new roster! Plus they've got an evil rival team lead by their old leader, Zeitgeist! Read about those adventures in a few years!"

Giant Size X-Statix #1 Rating: ?! I hope you didn't expect me to rate this after what I just wrote! There's not really a story here. It's not even a coming of age story about a girl who realizes her destiny after finding out who her real mother was because Katie really only decides to become the new U-Go-Girl after seeing how many YouTube famous she became from her accidental team-up with X-Statix. Basically she's become the kind of person New 52 Green Arrow would have arrested when J.T. Krul was writing that series. "What?!" Oliver Queen would have said, spitting in disgust. "A person has become famous due to the Internet and she's enjoying it?! Not on my fucking watch!" Then he'd stalk her and shoot a few arrows into her and she'd be all, "What the fuck?!" And Ollie would be all, "Justice has been served this day!" Then Ann Nocenti would come along and turn him into King Lear in the saddest attempt at writing something intellectual that I've ever fucking witnessed (even more so than when Benjamin Percy took over Green Arrow and did his "AIDS equals WEREWOLFS!" story arc (no relation to the gay werewolf in this comic book)).

Anyway, I need to read some actual literature now! I'm going to read through Steinbeck's entire library in chronological order. I've already read most of his stuff but it's so good that I'm willing to re-read it all again. Cup of Gold, which I have not read before, has already made me feel seriously inadequate just twenty pages in. He wrote this at 27?! I mean, it's mostly the same thematic stuff that I covered in my book of poems, Chicken By the Gate, but I was in my 40s when I wrote that! I blame my lack of ambition for taking so long to write about things Steinbeck was writing about in his 20s. And I blame my lack of ambition on my father's absence while growing up. If I had respected him, I would have wanted to make him proud of me. But since I didn't give a fuck about his drunk ass, I didn't have anything to prove! Thanks a lot, "Dad"!

Bug! The Adventures of Forager #1

I'm already partial to this comic because it has an exclamation point in the title.

I have no idea who this Jack Kirbian Jack-ass is so let me get out my Grandmaster Comic Book Reader Bible!

Who needs the Young Animal Who's Who appendices?! This should give me all of the pertinent information I need!

Here are the important details for Bug! He's single so masturbating to his adventures shouldn't be stained by guilt. He's 5'10" and weighs 162 pounds which makes him, um, not fat? Chubby? Well-muscled? Since he's a Kirby character, I know it makes him cherubic of face and goofy of hair. He has no family and I'm assuming, by the stupid look on his face, no friends as well. He's almost certainly a virgin (unless you count fucking insects or rubbing up against a blade of grass until you adult your pants).

Forager's powers are super exciting for a Jack Kirby character of the early 70s. He can run really fast (but only in relation to people who run at normal speeds. It's not like a superpower or anything)! Wow! He can also leap like a flea which is probably a superpower unless it's just some flea DNA from his mother's disgusting side of the family. He wears shoes that let him walk on any surface which might not seem like much if you're thinking of surfaces like dirt and grass and asphalt. But you'll probably lose your shit when I tell you I mean walls and ceilings and really steep hills! His weapon is an acid pod which spurts acid all over the faces of his enemies in much the same way the comparative body part I'm redacting for polite reasons sprays semen.

Oh, and he also carries a shield because sometimes you need to defend yourself even if that's the most boring part of the comic book. Hopefully he throws it a lot even if that will inevitably produce snorts of plagiarism from Marvel Zombies. They're already priming the snort pump anyway just seeing the shield in Bug's hands!

Bug looks an awful lot like Mr. Sensitive, doesn't he? Maybe it's just that all of Mike Allred's characters look an awful lot like all of the other Mike Allred characters.

Bug decides to have a confusing memory on the first page to set up his history. It's easier to understand if you just read the Who's Who entry on Forager! After everybody is caught up on Bug's past and they're thinking, "What the fuck was that about? I guess his origin was an existential crisis followed up by believing in himself because Batman remembered his name?", Bug gives rebirth to himself.

Bug discovers he's in a basement so he begins asking all the pertinent questions like "How much did I drink last night?" or "Why does the woman I have a huge crush on not love me?!" Usually that second question leads to an answer to the first question of "Way too much!" I've spent a lot of time drinking in basements so I know what I'm talking about. I'm fairly certain every guy I've ever known has cried in my basement about a woman.

Bug follows a transparent girl upstairs where he finds a bunch of misshapen people. They refer to him as "The Sleeper" and attempt to tuck him back into his cocoon. This might have something to do with The Dreaming since I'm fairly certain I saw Brute and/or Glob in the promotional art for this book in the back of Doom Patrol or Cave Carson Sucks On A Cybernetic Eye.

Bug evades the Wakers and chases after the transparent girl where she's doing weird dream things.

Remember in the 70s and 80s, every week it seemed there would be footage of the next longest ever amount of dominoes toppling over?

The little girl's teddy bear explains being an individual to Bug because Bug thinks being a rebel is being and individual. But Bug only knows that everything he does, somebody else seems to want him to do that. So then he doesn't do it which is always what somebody else wants. The thing he's missing, being that he was raised by insect people, is that he has the freedom to do what he wants for his own reasons and based on his own desires. He's learning about free will!

I suspect somebody will soon poke a hole in that theory too and call the whole thing an unsustainable illusion which we all desperately maintain to believe until the day it all crumbles and we realize nothing matters and we embrace the dark nothingness of non-existence.

The little girl gets tired of Bug and the Teddy Bear ignoring her as they talk about Camus (with the appropriate jokes so that the plebe readers will learn how to pronounce his name correctly) and she switches up some of the dominoes. This causes them to be possessed by a bunch of DC Characters like Sandman (not the goth one), Deadman, Black Racer, OMAC, Manhunter, Metron, and two others that I don't immediately recognize. Bug topples the dominoes which eventually knock down the dominoes possessed by other characters and the PLOP TUBE! out of the room. That's when Brute and Glob stumble in to see what's happening.

Brute and Glob attempt to give Bug a bad dream but he's not dreaming so they just get their asses kicked instead. Then Sandman joins the brawl because he doesn't have anything better to do. If he wasn't here fighting Bug, he'd be perving out inside some young person's wet dream, probably.

Oh, actually Bug is dreaming and this is his dream. That's why he's The Sleeper to the other creatures in the dream. Seems weird that they'd want him to not wander around in his own dreams. What's he supposed to do? Dream he's sleeping every night? Boring!

Apparently he's still dead but then he woke up but then he woke up again and now he might be dead but dreaming or alive and dreaming or dreaming but dead and alive? I think he's just been incepted one too many times. Anyway, he helps Sandman save the world from General Electric (so the bad guy in this Young Animal book is a corporation too! Just like all of the other Young Animal books! Except Mother Panic where the bad guy is art. Unless it's art made by a corporation into fooling the masses like Fearless Girl) before incepting into a new level of reality. That one will take place in Issue #2 and probably be totally different.

I guess this book is what happens if you cross Jacob's Ladder with Inception and add a little Abbot and Costello Meet Albert Camus

Doop #2

Remember when Faster Shadowcat sang about internet dating in the days before the internet?

Last issue, Doop was rejected by Kitty Pryde. She tried to let him down easy and tell him that it wouldn't work because he couldn't speak English. But that backfired in her face because Doop reconfigured himself so he could speak English. Now, judging by this cover, she's going to have to kill him.

Can Doop be killed?

Kitty follows Doop into Doopspace where she continues to tell him that they aren't going to hit it off. Especially when Doop takes her to eat at a place called Chateau du Armpit Hair. What is Doop's obsession with armpits? Is it because of that joke about the guy on the bus asking the woman holding the handrail how she got her leg way up there?

Doop also takes Kitty to watch a blank movie screen at the Cinema of Emptiness. Then they go dancing and then out for a little target practice at the Sentinel Shooting Range. And finally, he shows Kitty some of the home movies he's been filming across time.

Hey DC Comics? Are you listening to Doop here? He has some important advice!

Doop finally removes Kitty from Doopspace so she can get back to her time travel problems in the real world. Doop wants her to say "fuck it" to time travel paradoxes and let Jean and Scott remain in the future. But Kitty's having a tough time dealing with Marvel's slacker attitude on time travel and its consequences. It's like they believe that a fictional world shouldn't suffer any consequences from time travel! The nerve of them!

But Doop's talk with Kitty seems to change her stance on the whole issue of sending Jean and Scott back. Or something. It gets a little confusing. Especially when Doop takes a trip to the future to check in on future Kitty Pryde that turns out not to be future Kitty Pryde but some kind of Mystique/Nightcrawler/Wolverine/Punisher mash-up.

Can Doop be killed?

I'm already thoroughly confused!

I thought I could follow this decently enough without reading a bunch of the other X-men comic books but I may have been wrong! Even though I like Milligan and Doop, I might have to drop this book if I continue to feel confused after a few more issues.

Doop #1

Now I have to find my Doop Alphabet Key!

Ha! That didn't take long! I read X-Force way back when because Peter Milligan was writing it and I owe Peter Milligan everything because he wrote Shade the Changing Man for which I can never thank him enough. While people were raving about Grant Morrison's run on Animal Man or they were offering up orifices for Neil Gaiman to put his wiener in or they were jerking off Alan Moore under the bleachers for any piece of text he put to paper, I was busy having my heart broken over and over again at the hands of Peter Milligan. I don't know if I could put into words what Shade the Changing Man meant to me at the time; I don't think I've ever really tried. It was just exactly the right character and the right words and the right supporting cast for me to be reading at that time in my life. It began the summer after my first year of college. I was lost between schools and between states. I was back home from my first year away and I felt like a complete mess. Shade the Changing Man made me not feel that way.

I don't expect so much from Doop! So, you know, no pressure, Mr. Milligan. Anyway! That "Ha! That didn't take long!" at the beginning of the last paragraph was about finding my Doop Alphabet Key! It was on the flip side of my key for DC's Runespeak! It was from when my friend J.T. lent me an issue of X-men to read that was about Doop and some of the things he did at the Academy. Here's the key I made simply from the text on the cover:

As you can see by comparing this to the cover, I at least got a few letters correct!

Oh man. Fucking DC. Get your shit together. I want to read stuff like this that just makes me grin with a joy that forces my face to leak in strange new ways.

He's so adorable!

This issue is called "The Real Battle of the Atom" which makes me think I'm going to get to read about events that have happened in Marvel in other comic books but through the eyes of Doop and how Doop was involved behind the scenes. Or not so behind the scenes. Or however behind the scenes or not behind the scenes a green potato thing can get.

The issue begins with Doop in a place called Doopspace. He's a marginal character living in the fringes of the Marvel Universe. Currently he's busy writing something and saying, in Doopish, "I want armpits blancmange all over." An alarm goes off screaming, "HI THERE, KITTY!" which gets Doop moving back toward the actual Marvel Universe where boomerangs are faster than bullets and New York is the only city.

Aha! So the phrase "Hello there, Kitty!" was a marker in a current space in time that alerted Doop that he was needed to change something for some reason or other, possibly that "obsession that might change the world" that was mentioned earlier in the comic that I didn't mention.

So Doop is trying to manipulate the time stream for some reason. As the above panel notes, he can drop in anywhere in the Marvel Universe to fuck around. The first panel mentions he has an obsession that might change the world and Doop has an alarm clock that is triggered by certain phrases. So Doop waits for these phrases to be picked up by his clock, alerting him to a happening in time that he needs to manipulate for his own ends.

I think I got this!

Doop arrives, hides in the shadows filming it, and says, "Wild strawberries." Then he pulls the letter he was writing out of himself, says, "Yep. This sums it up," and kisses it.

Oh yeah. Okay. I recognize this obsession. Doop has a crush on Kitty Pryde and has written a letter in English declaring his love for her. I did the exact same thing in ninth grade for Marilyn Mendoza. Except I chickened out and didn't give her the letter. It was just the lyrics to Lionel Richie's "Hello" anyway.

Apparently nobody else (or at least just Kitty) can understand Doopish. Doop actually has the guts to give Kitty the letter while saying, "The Passion of Doop." Aww! The moment is interrupted by jerko Bobby "Iceman" Drake unless his last name is different since I'm not exactly up to the snuff on my Marvel identities.

After Iceman prevents Kitty from reading the letter, stupid Scott Summers from the past takes a Sentinel's eyebeam right in his ass and dies. He's probably not supposed to be dead, so Doop should probably write him a letter or something. Or slap some sense into some healing mutant named Christopher Muse. I don't know that kid at all! Doop leaves the letter with Kitty and travels back through the margins to another place and time. Probably still part of the Battle of the Atom story since that was the title and all.

Doop should travel back to the early eighties and appear in the Wolverine and Kitty Pryde mini-series.

Wolverine flips the fuck out as he's wont to do while Past Bobby tries to figure out how Present Bobby wooed Past Kitty when Present Bobby was Past Bobby. During the chaos, Doop runs off to sabotage the X-Plane so Past Scott and Past Jean, um, i don't know! Get lost in space? I don't know what originally happened but I imagine it's what is going to happen this time because here we're finding out that Doop fiddled with the plane to get whatever happened to happen. "Fix the plot. Fix the plot," says Doop as he fixes the plane.

The next few pages show me that Scott and Jean die in the past (or just Jean because, come on! She's always dying and shit) which is why Past Scott and Past Jean make their escape. Now Present (or Future?) Jean Grey wants Past Kitty Pryde to keep a promise she doesn't know anything about!

I'm sure all of this stuff makes more sense to people that have been following Marvel's comics. But I kind of like not knowing exactly what's going on. I get enough of the story to see how it's playing out and how Doop wants to manipulate things so he can show Kitty that he loves her at just the right moment. Hopefully!

I'm starting to finally think not giving Marilyn the stupid note with "Hello" transcribed on it was the best course of action!

Poor Doop. Is there anybody in the world, real or Marvel or DC, that doesn't have a crush on Kitty Pryde? Seriously.

Instead of telling Doop it could never work for several reasons, Kitty tells Doop that it wouldn't work because he doesn't even speak human and they wouldn't be able to communicate. Which gives Doop a great idea! He tears himself inside out and begins speaking English! Ugh. I imagine her next reason for not marrying him will be that he doesn't have any genitals. I'm not sure I want to see what Doop does to himself to correct that problem.

So that's where this story ends. Doop fiddled with the past so that he could tell Kitty Pryde that he loved her before she wound up dating that idiot Bobby. Kitty declared she wasn't interested but Doop decided to makes a few personal changes so that maybe she'd see reason and realize Doop is the best character for her. Next issue, Kitty probably vomits all over Doop since parts of him are currently rotting in the hall.

This was just too cute not to scan.