Monday, December 21, 2015

Wolverine and the X-Men by Jason Aaron issues #25-26


Being a young mutant (especially if you're an up-and-coming X-Man) is a stressful life, more so when you're a part of the MARVEL NOW! roster. You ain't catching a damn break. Everyone is out to get you, whether it's a bunch of rich, murderous tweens, a former golden boy/leading man who killed everyone's father surrogate, or the garden-variety crises about time warp, alien invasions, and, in this case, the latest survival lesson Headmaster/Professor Wolverine requires you to pass in his class. It's a real marvel that not everyone is trying to rebel against the system like one Quentin Quire. Issues #25-26 takes select students (Q, now-feral Broo, Idie, Shark Girl, Eye Boy, Glob Herman, Genesis, and Sprite) into the unavoidable rite of passage for every apsiring X-Man: Savage Land. With the chaos perpetuating their lives already, the headmaster found this a necessary thing to do because, as stressed by Wolverine after Beast cautioned him not to do it, "nothing brings together a family like a bunch of dinosaurs trying to eat them"

Well, it's gonna go well when that is the kind of mindset a teacher has during a field trip! What do you think, genki anime girl?

"Bring on the innocent giant reptiles and let's rock this field trip killing spree, teamwork style!"

Right on, genki anime girl. The Field Trip Killing Spree Brigade (or the FiTriKilSpriBri, yes, it rolls in the tongue, doesn't it? Get used to it because that's how I'm shortening it) is now left all alone by their headmaster to fend for themselves in the wilderness of dinosaurs and they are not working well together as a team AT ALL. Meanwhile, said ass-crack of a headmaster is watching them from a distance on top of trees, making serious contemplations about his teaching prowess as he observed the select eight students--I'm sorry--the FiTriKilSpriBri flounder around for a bit until Quentin Quire trying to get them to work together (WHAT?) finally drove everyone apart and they all went their separate ways. An earlier conversation at Blackbird revealed that Wolverine had just assigned Q the leadership role for their team-building exercise since, after all, the late Professor X has publicly nominated the rebel kid mutant for the position of Student Council President. Wolverine smugly brings the actual ballot with him and cast the final vote that officially made Q president and so during the onslaught of their killing spree as the field trip brigade--or the FilTriKilSpriBri--he decided to step up to the plate and fulfill his potentials. Only so his comrades can abandon him, seeing him being the golden boy as a sickening joke. Yeah, next time just mind-control them, Quentin. That should work.
On the other hand, Glob Herman bullies Genesis about his future as a supervillain since he is Kid Apocalypse, and Gen actually starts to cry a bit and flies off, determined to prove he is going to be a hero not a villain. Sprite comes along, urging him to slow down and cool his head. I get the sense that Sprite has a thing for him. Why not? They are going to be X-Men and X-Men randomly hook up left and right, yo! And then we have the continuing saga of Catholic guilt and crisis of faith with Idie Okonkwo as she blamed herself YET AGAIN for what happened to Broo and was more than welcome to the idea that she should stay in Savage Land as penance because she's a freak of nature and she is ashamed of being a mutant. FUCKING DAMMIT GIRL GET OVER YOURSELF, JESUS FUCK ON A POGO STICK!


Idie on torturing herself with guilt and being an overall self-defeatist concerning her mutation

Look, I am in no way belittling her crisis of faith because Loki knows I have been there and it's a horrible, crippling feeling of loss and grief. I just get so angry that none of the adults who are supposedly taking care of her are trying to actually help her with this. Kitty is too busy with young Jean Grey. I don't think we have seen Ororo interact with her. And Wolverine--not the type to talk about feelings anyway--just threw her in the middle of a dinosaur kill-fest with the rest of her classmates who have different set of problems than her and definitely fundamentally incomparable. Hey, okay, so bad stuff keep happening around them both within and outside of school and sure you have to prepare them physically and mentally for the dangers ahead, but what about someone who is spiritually starving like Idie? Moments like this, I wish Nightcrawler is alive. He's also a Christian and he could have helped Idie cope because he speaks her language, but instead she runs off to meet some priest who turned out to be a cyborg being controlled by the Hellfire Club. And the fucking teachers know about this! They know HC is targeting their students for recruitment but it's like they don't even try to genuinely express their concern over the welfare of each individual student and wuld rather just squeeze them as one collective they can just drop off in the middle of nowhere with prehistoric beasts and expect to fight for survival. NICE TEACHING MOMENT, JEAN GREY SCHOOL FACULTY. You're all jerks!

Anyway, the next issue is about Dog Logan, Wolverine's long-lost brother from a hundred years ago. He's another jerk who decided to take over the field trip as he captured Wolverine so he can watch n horror as Dog picks off his students one by one, adding more to the shit-pile of what these children have to go through already. Yeah, you know what, fuck it. I'm gonna be rooting for the tween Hellfire Club now because at least they're honest enough about their agenda (which is to turn young, impressionable mutants into an army of bad choices) unlike these so-called teachers of Jean Grey School who don't know a damn thing about nurturing and raising troubled kids that they end up only screwing said kids in the long run. If it's a choice between going full-on evil mutants or passive-aggressive, unhelpful good guys trying to set you straight but obviously don't know shit, then my money from now on is on the former. Go get 'em, Kade Kilgore! Yup, you know the heroes are badly written when a reader like me is now beginning to root for the bad guys!

Also, I think Scott's recruits in his title The Uncanny X-Men are actually doing better than Wolverine's students. They're actually working together and they trust one another and their teachers Emma, Ilyana and Scott even if their relationships are always put to the test by non-believers of their revolution cause. So that's the bar I'm setting for Quentin and the gang from now on. They all need to get their shit together!

Anyway, here is the updated infographic of the faculty and student body of the JGS.


And here is the amusing curriculum of JGS. I chuckled a bit on some parts until I remember that these assholes should do A BETTER JOB honing these kids and STOP FUCKING AROUND because they need to be the adults who set good examples on the future generation of X-Men, especially now with the fluctuations of new mutants enrolling. Jesus fuck, if this lackadaisical system of doing things keeps up then it's a good thing Marvel is completely wiping out mutants in their universe and starting anew. Going by what I've seen here alone in Jason Aaron's characterization of the JGS teachers and their relationships with students, I am actually thankful about that change.



RECOMMENDED: 7/10

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