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