THIS WEEK IN NERD

In which Ashley breaks down nerdier corners of pop culture.

Uncanny X-men issues #140 and #141 (Days of Future Past). Only two more issues left!

 

Issue #140 brings us back to the Xavier Institute where Colossus is chopping trees down and Angel is flying above him, watching (typical). Angel is actually Warren Worthington III and if you couldn’t tell by his name, he’s insanely rich and slightly entitled. While everything is peachy keen at the institute, we now flash back to the Wendigo situation a.k.a Nightcrawler is shitting his pants right now. The Wendigo actually brought the Hulk down once. Nightcrawler is running for his life, he can’t teleport because he doesn’t know where he is and Wolverine and Alpha Flight are no where to be seen. Nightcrawler ends up teleporting away, only to find himself facing the Wendigo again. The only reason Nightcrawler gets help is because the Wendigo hadouken-ed him into the cabin where Wolverine and the gang were devising a battle plan. Anyway the Wendigo eventually gets taken down when one of the Alpha Flight members turns into a wolverine and tears his heart out of his chest. Problem solved. Take that, Canadians.

 

Meanwhile, conveniently after the fall of the Wendigo, the Canadian government disbands Alpha Flight. Nothing says “good job!” like getting fired. The ending of Alpha Flight then segways into the official story of the Days of Future Past.

 

Issue #141 shows us a grown up Kate Pryde (Kitty) in a demolished New York City in the year 2013. As she walks through the city, she mentions something about a rendezvous with Logan (Wolverine). She then finds herself surrounded by a group of Rogues that are essentially a mutant hate group. Kate Pryde reveals that she’s was forced to wear an inhibitor collar that neutralizes her mutant ability to phase through objects.

 

Wolverine comes to her aid and saves beats the crap out of the Rogues. We find out that Wolverine is part of a Canadian resistance army, Sentinels (remember those assholes from the last article??) have taken control of most of the world, and that the human race is divided into three classes: H for baseline human – clean of the mutant gene, A for anomalous human – a normal human possessing mutant genetic potential, and M for mutant – hunted down and either killed or contained . Wolverine gives Kate the last component of the Jammer (I’m guessing it cancels out the collars) so she can smuggle it into her mutant internment camp. Damn.

While Kate makes her way back to the camp to meet up with the last four X-men remaining: Logan (Wolverine), Kate (Kitty Pryde), Ororo (Storm), and Peter (Colossus), along with Franklin Richards (the stretchy guy from the Fantastic Four), and a telepathic/telekinetic named Rachel. Surprise! Magneto is also alive. I’m convinced that he can’t die. Anyway, now that the gang’s all here, they can use the Jammer to use their powers again.

Rachel uses her powers to send Kate back in time to her younger self, bringing us to the year, 1980 and directly after the Alpha Flight was disbanded. Kate wakes up in her younger body and tells the 80’s X-men that her consciousness is her future self. She warns them that on this day, the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants (led by Mystique, the creepy blue chick that shapeshifts) will assassinate the presidential candidate along with Professor X, which will set in motion the future of a Sentinel controlled world and nuclear holocaust. The X-men are cautious to believe her, so they all fly to Washington (where Prof X is at the moment) to have him mind scan her brain. While on the plane, Kate reveals the Brotherhood’s motives were to force humans into respecting the superior mutant race. The plan actually backfired and drove humans to hate mutants even more. One thing lead to another and the Sentinels were activated to eradicate mutants. The Sentinels then took it upon themselves to get rid of the non-mutant superheroes as well (Fantastic Four, Hulk, Iron Man) and also took over the world.

Fast forward to 2013. While Kate is in the past, the current remaining mutants are escaping the internment camp and making their escape through the subway tunnels in New York City. The Sentinels end up finding them and Franklin and Magneto die. I still firmly believe that Magneto is not dead. Franklin is a little bit of a bitch, but Magneto is freakishly resilient for an old man.

 

At the end of this issue, we zip back to 1980 and the Pentagon where Mystique is disguised as a Department of Defense employee. No doubt where she and her band of merry fellow terrorists are about to kill a lot of people. The only difference now, is that the X-men are here to foil their plans. Mwahaha.

 

Find out if the X-men (past and present) will make it out alive in the next article of… This Week in Nerd!