Thursday, December 24, 2015

Wolverine and the X-Men by Jason Aaron issues #31-32



Most important thing first: Kade Kilgore looks uber cool with his sexy-styled black hair, blue shades and that tight red shirt. Look, it's been a while since I've been smitten and rather actively attracted to an X-Men villain so I do think this is a special occasion that deserves to be mentioned. And it's not my fault he's only twelve years old, okay? I don't have strong impure thoughts of ravaging him (NO WAY) but I would settle for cuddling him and ruffling his hair. He's my Justin Bieber, all right? He's also an entitled, over-privileged and self-indulgent massive prick who wants to destroy the mutant race while also being able to profit on the fear of the human masses concerning said mutants. He set his sights on the Jean Grey School of Higher Learning since it opened its doors, and after thirty issues, his slow and gradual schemes have finally paid off. He managed to steal away four students from JGS; Glob Herman was not-so-shockingly enticed to join; Broo was just taken because he's back to his feral state, all thanks to a cranium injury via gunshot, whilst Idie enrolled to Hellfire Academy to avenge Broo, and Quentin is there to ensure she is okay, and to unravel the inner workings of Kilgore's plans. 

The first two installments of The Hellfire Saga as featured here in issues #31-32 are off to a good start. Here are the highlights:
  • The Hellfire Academy, much like the JGS, has the most enchanting classes, focusing on how to be a villain, and how to do it right. Issue #31 takes us into their wonderful educational itinerary where Mystique teaches Introduction to Evil; Dog Logan has an extensive physical education program which is more or less like what he had before in Savage Island; Husk is both the head librarian and lunch lady who screams terror nonsense at the students while tearing the skin from her face, and a collective bunch of second-rate villains teach the ins and outs of hell itself, public relations that guarantees your demands during hostage situations are met, and one-on-one fights with fellow students during midnight. It's much like JGS, only you are given tools to be the bad guy instead of good, and where detention could literally mean your death sentence as Quentin Quire quickly found out.
  • Sauron and Dr. Xanto Starblood, professor in lectures of chemical warfare and surgeon for biological terrorism respectively, teach the fascinating and gruesome arts of SCIENCE! This is so very Hogwarts with way more evil stuff in the lesson plan!
  • Also, Toad is once again the school janitor. That was a really cruel twist of fate that I should have seen coming. Poor Mortimer. He betrayed JGS because of his obviously psychologically unstable girlfriend Husk, and who is now being a bitch to him, stating that he's embarrassing her in front of her colleagues or that he's smothering her with his love and devotion or something.
  • No wonder that by the end of the next issue, he began to see the error in his ways (ergo, realized he was in love with a very mentally disturbed woman), and might even try to save Quentin from getting killed prematurely (more on that later).
  • Meanwhile, the JGS faculty scour the earth in futile attempt to locate the hidden Hellfire Academy. Rachel Grey goes nuts, reading billions of minds globally and assigning statistics on who is sleeping, fucking, plotting a murder, screaming--look, Ray-ray, girl-friend, you better catch some break to recuperate from being you. Srsly, you're starting to scare me a bit when you get this freaking telepathic in a global scale of invasion. Even Storm agrees, but she is much more stressed about the fact that Wolverine announced that once they locate and save the runaway kids, he is shutting down the Jean Grey School for good. Yikes. But it takes a big man to admit that they all fucked up in helping these kids so in a way I'm proud of him for doing this.
  • Quentin Quire continues to rebel against authority (much to Kade's disappointment, he was hoping he would be the star pupil). But unlike in JGS where he essentially gets a slap in the wrist and isolation from his peers for a while, Issue #32 reveals that in Hellfire Academy, detention means he gets multiple punches to the face and was even thrown inside the Siege of Perilous, whatever the fuck that was (which apparently created Philistine who is not a mutant at all but someone with dark magic much like Ilyana), but it completely rejected Q. Philistine just took this as a challenge and proceeded to subject Q to more torture. Yay.
  • Idie is really convincing as she effectively blends in, able to guard her thoughts of murder spree once she finds whoever was responsible for shooting Broo in the head. It was odd because Quentin was unable to defend his mind from this and yet Idie was obviously getting away. Unless that's what Kade Kilgore and Philistine wants her to believe. Oh no. At the end of issue #32, she officially becomes a member of the Hellion battalion or something. Very Nazi.
  • Wolverine baits the Bamfs using whiskey so he can put collars in them and  they can teleport him to places until he stumbled upon one of the Hellfire henchmen who is also working for Sabretooth, the academy's headmaster. Wolverine is getting close to finding out where HA is hidden so by the next installment, he's probably going to lay waste to it with some reinforcements. Exciting stuff ahead. These first two installments already had Mystique in sexy teacher outfit and, as an assignment, had students from her class try to get Quentin's teeth bashed out because each of his tooth equals a hundred points for her class that would guarantee them passing. What more amazing feats of education can we expect next time? I'm riveted. 
  • While we look forward to that beguiling clusterfuck, here's a great class picture of the Hellions, and the infographic of the faculty and student body, and their curriculum of the Hellfire Academy:

RECOMMENDED: 8/10

No comments:

Post a Comment