Plague of Strength

Having just dropped my magnum opus, 365 Days of Brutality, I am a mental wreck. I feel like Lexington Steele ripped off my skullcap, mashed the two hemispheres of my brain together, and tittyfucked them. At points in the last two weeks I’d written so much over so long a period of time that simply articulating my thoughts in speech proved almost as difficult for me as it is for Donald Trump Jr. Since I lack his ability to coast off of money and the achievements of others, however, I felt compelled to do something that would enable me to create content without overly taxing my horrendously exhausted brain. At this point, penning an amusing sentence is harder for me than simple arithmetic is for Honey Boo Boo.

That said, a week or two ago I was listening to the Geek History Lesson podcast and I had an idea completely and blissfully unrelated to lifting and diet-to write an article about my picks for the Ultimate X-Men roster. And since that shit is far more fun with the weird-ass input of you people, I held a contest to give away one of Chaos and Pain’s new badass shirt designs to three of the best (or worst) X-Men teams you people could come up with, and a signed copy of the new book for the creator of the team I deem capable of beating my own.

The rules for the game were fairly simple:

Teams must consist of 5-8 members, two of whom must be chicks. Each person has to be a mutant member of a major X-Team. That means New Mutants, X-Men, X-Force, X-Factor, and Excalibur (though Captain Britain is not a mutant, so he’s not eligible). Beyond that, get fucking weird with it. Additionally, the team cannot contain more than two members who were together on the roster of one of greatest of the all-time great teams, those being:

• Claremont/Byrne X-Men– Cyclops, Jean Grey, Wolverine, Storm, Colossus, Nightcrawler, Banshee, and Kitty Pryde
• Jim Lee’s X-Men Blue– Cyclops, Wolverine, Rogue, Beast, Jubilee, Gambit, and Psylocke
• 80’s X-Men, which consisted of Magneto, Punk rock Storm, Wolverine, Colossus, Nightcrawler, Rogue, Rachel Summers, Shadowcat, Longshot, and Havok
• New X-Force (which if it had Cable would officially be the greatest team ever), which consists of Wolverine, Archangel, Fantomex, Psylocke, Warpath, X-23, and Deadpool

The team has to consist of the following character types:

• A Leader– a Cyclops, Magneto, Prof X. Someone with a bit of strategery to them, and has to be an established leader in X-Men lore.
• A Heavy– a smash-all-the-shit-style heavy-hitter pugilist.
• A Berserker– We all know who the archetype is here. I don’t know about you, but I build my team around the psychotic wild card.
• A Phase Shifter/Teleporter or a High Flier– I’m old as fuck, and they always had one of these goods, who were typically there to sneak around and annoy the fucking hell out of Wolverine. The high fliers always struck me as pompous little dickheads- “Whee, you can fly. So go fly your fucking ass into the sun and get out of my face,” right? The X-Men teams were never short on annoyances, and these were mine.
• A Psyker– they always have some dickhead trying to find out what horrible porn they can use for blackmail resides in the deepest recesses of your wrinkled, ugly brain matter..

So, without further adieu, here is X-Plague, the most hard-hearted and fearsome bunch of mutants up with which I could come.

The leader: Cable. A vicious slaughterbeast of a cyborg with a techno-organic infection, this motherfucker can time travel, has levitated entire cities with his mind, and beat the fuck out of Cap, Red Hulk, and Iron Man- plus he’s invisible to psychics. Though he seems to lose his psionic abilities every other fucking day, when they’re working, he’s one of the most powerful telekenetics in the the Marvel Universe. Plus, he looks cool as fuck.

The heavy: Juggernaut. He’s like the Hulk, if the Hulk was way fucking meaner and immune to psychics. Juggernaut fighting most mutants is like Bob Sapp fighting your elderly mother- it’s so unfair it’s not even comical. Thus, Juggernaut is the perfect man to anchor my team with a combination of unbridaled rage and unstoppable size and strength.

My original simile for that was “Juggernaut fighting most mutants is like a Walmart-clad Republican, drunk as fuck on Steel Reserve, stumbling through a daycare at the DNC and just stomping those little future libtards flat in a feat of unhinged rage that only a that sort of simpleton could reach. The difference there being that Juggernaut could actually fight and didn’t just hide behind guns and cops, so I suppose the simile doesn’t really fit after all.” After noting on FB that entire conversation would then devolve into an idiotic and rabid defense of an Amendment none of you have studied because it was part of that icky liberal arts education you all inexplicably hate, and the fact that it was targeted at drunken Republican “tough guys” but the lot of you would have gotten your panties in a bunch about your precious guns and superhuman fighting abilities, I dropped it. You’re welcome, super special and unique frozen precipitation!

The berserker: Sabretooth. I am all about having the most ruthless motherfuckers ever on this team, and Sabretooth definitely fills the bill. Basically a rage virus-filled badger with chainsaws for limbs, Sabretooth is a force to be reckoned with anytime he hits the field… but he can also be very, very sneaky, which is useful on a team of maniacs. You underestimate his sneakiness… to your fucking DOOM.

The high flier: Archangel. I fucking despised Angel, but after Apocalypse got a hold of him in the 90s, Archangel became one of my favorite X-Men. Utterly ruthless, he’s the AC-130 for this team, since he can provide bloodlust powered air power even when it’s against his own will.

The psyker: Psylocke. The only real murderous telepath and telekinetic of which I know, she’s an occasionally Asian broad who can make psionic weapons with her mind, is utterly resistant to psyionic attacks. Along with Sabretooth, she has the ability to be very, very sneaky, but because Sabretooth trained her in close combat, is pretty much unstoppable hand to hand, and is the equal of Professor X and Jean Grey from a psionic standpoint.

Bloodstorm. The iteration of Storm that I like even more than the mohawked Storm up with whom I grew (goddamn, I love good grammar) is the mohawked one who hails from Earth-1298- the Storm bitten by Dracula. Not only can she wield Mjolnir, but she’ll rip out your fucking throat while doing it. 30 Days of Night meets mutants? I’m fucking in.

Deathlok. Deathlok’s a badass cyborg in the MCU who’s been through more reinventions than Angelina Jolie. In Uncanny X-Force, one of the Deathloks is revealed to be a clone of the mutant Apocalypse and joins the Uncanny X-Force to fuck shit up. As a clone of Apocalypse, he’s got complete control over the molecules of his body, can heal basically any wound, and is essentially immortal- plus he’s got all kinds of crazy cybernetic weapons and technokineses- the ability to interface with anything technological.

Havok. I threw Havok in here as my kind of wild card, hail mary character. When I was big into comics, he was the unstable, rage-filled, walking volcano of a kid brother of Scott Summers, and he was awesome. Unpredictable as an AOC tweet, yet far more effective, Havok was the old school X-Men “nuclear option” with the ability to fire jets of plasma out of his chest, in a fit of ridiculous rage that would not be out of place in an e-sports tournament.

The Opposition Teams:

Martin Triviski‘s All-Chick Squad

This team was interesting because it was all chicks, and inexplicably included the most useless character this side of that dumbass dragon in Excalibur, Pixie. The combination of Phoenix, Emma Frost, and Psylocke made this team pretty goddamn unstoppable, and the addition of powerhouse Polaris and that adorable little maniac Marrow makes this a team to be reckoned with.

Co-Leader:Jean Grey. I’d always thought she was just in the X-men as a love interest, then they needed a justification to have her in the book beyond that and made her ridiculously overpowered. Both she and Magneto seem to me to be ridiculous and annoyingly overhyped characters along the lines of CM Punk, but in the Marvel Universe they’re the shit.

Co-Leader: Emma Frost. Telepathic White Queen of the Hellfire Club, Emma Frost is equal parts fantasy pinup bordello madam and evil mind reader, in addition to being able to turn herself into diamond, which is handy anytime she needs cash and doesn’t mind losing a pinkie toe.

• He had co-leaders in there because “Phoenix is batshit and unable to control murderous rage and Frost being manipulative and cold as shit.”

Psyker: Psylocke. His “personal favorite because telekinetic swords are fucking incredible”

Polaris: daughter of Magneto, Lorna Dane has the same powers as her pops in a far sexier package. As he put it, “Polaris is crazy as shit and ready to throw metal at anyone.”

Berserker: Marrow. I always thought the Morlocks were underused and underappreciated, like the Reavers. Marrow is a weird little berserker who can “can rip out her own bones and beat people with them,” which is admittedly awesome as hell, and likely inspired by Riki-Oh.

Weirdly Small Heavy: Moonstar: the other Native American X-Men member (Thunderbird being the OG), Moonstar is Hawkeye-meets-Psylocke with a telekinetic bow and arrow, plus empathic psi abilities that allow her to prey on people’s fears, and oh yeah, she’s a Valkyrie somehow, who has enough physical strength to beat the brakes off Ares in single combat.

High Flier: Pixie: The dumbest fucking character in history. She’s a fairy, and as such makes Jubilee, Boom-Boom, and Dazzler seem far less useless by comparison. Literally, Jamie Kennedy seems like a genuine comedian compared to Pixie as an X-Man. If you went through the entire roster of mutants, you would be hard pressed to find a less useful person to list in a team.

High Flier/Teleporter: Magik– Colossus’ sister who’s spent time in Limbo (and battled Baba Yaga with him at least once, as I recall), she’s basically a sexy Doctor Strange. Given the BDSM getup and her general presentation in most X-Men comics, I’d say more nerd jizz has slumped its way out of limp, Cheetos-dust-ensconced micropenises to this broad than any other.

And since we know that there is at least something of a sexual aspect motivating this team, I figured I’d look for an appropriate gif. So here you go:

Rob Pugh‘s Brute Squad

The combination of Deadpool and Wolvie on any team is gonna be potent, and I think the potential for hilarious misadventures with three maniacs (including Thunderbird) on a team with a puritanical jackass like Colossus would be interesting. It might not be a team that could take on mine and win, but the potential for an entertaining comic book would definitely be there. Also, Colossus is never more of a badass than when his lil sister is threatened, so he’s more than meets the eye on this team.

Leader: Deadpool. An egregious ripoff of lesser known DC villian Deathstroke, the Merc with a Mouth is a pansexual dickhead with what seems to be a more effective mutant healing ability than Wolvie that makes him more or less immortal. He’s a crack shot, expert hand to hand fighter, and polymath who cracks juokes nonstop as he fucks people up. If Daniel Tosh had the body of Wanderlei Silva, Wolverine’s healing factor, Chris Kyle’s accuracy with a gun, and the ability to speak 10 languages fluently, he’d be Deadpool.

Heavy: Colossus. The goody-two-shoes bruiser oaf of the X-Men, Colossus has always served as the team’s conscience and was generally a massive pain in the ass for any Gen X kid, who like myself, just wanted to see the death and destruction with brutal art brought to us by Glenn Danzig’s Verotik comics- we got enough moralizing from our cartoons as children. Made of organic metal and somewhat stronger than Eddie Hall, he’s a bitch to handle in a fistfight, but not unstoppable.

Berserker: Wolverine. I think it’s safe to assume everyone knows who this guy is.

Psyker: Emma Frost.

Teleporter: Magik.

Thunderbird. Tragically underutilized Native American X-Man Thunderbird was a 70s addition who was quickly killed off after (rightly) battling (the single least likable fucking X-Men member ever) Cyclops in every issue of his run. Your typical super-strong, extra-fast, extra-durable superhero, Thunderbird used somafera in the form of the Ghost Dance to gain his power, much like the Vikings used berserkergang, making him far cooler than just about every other superhero in the Marvel universe.

Tommy Tunaitis‘s Omega Red Team

I picked this team just for its inclusion of Omega Red, which made the entire team an interesting wildcard.

Leader- Magneto. “He’s got the chops, immune to mind games, experience, and isn’t afraid to play dirty… on top of being one of the most powerful mutants alive.”

Heavy: Rogue. “Not afraid to play dirty, and has gone toe-to-toe with the Hulk, and mopped the floor with him. Her flight/drain abilities make her a crazy wildcard… especially against other mutants.”

Berserker- Omega Red. “With the proper direction and leadership, he could easily dismantle Logan or Sabretooth… death spores, ability to press 10-50 tons, superhuman agility, stamina, healing, and secondary adamantium armor.” Though he’s a serial killer who’s invariably on the most evil of sides, he somehow ended up on X-Force during Days of Future Past, so he’s eligible for this thing.

Shifter/Flyer- Scarlet Witch. “She not only can fly, she can bend the fabric of reality itself, on a global scale. (“House of M” fucking ruled…)”

Psyker- Legion. “Mind powers barely scratch the surface of his abilities (Time travel, teleportation, energy/reality manipulation), and he’s considered one of the most powerful mutants alive.”

So there you have it. As to who I’d most enjoy seeing fight, it’s the last two teams and mine. Given that you guys seem to jerk dicks over the Captain Marvel characters, I’d imagine you’d claim my guys would come up in the loss column against the latter team, but Rob Pugh’s Brute Squad versus my slaughter-happy mutie death beasts would be about the best comic book ever drawn, provided the artists weren’t the manga-inspired hot trash that permeates comics these days.

What do you guys think? I’ve gotta give a singed copy of 365 Days of Brutality to one of these motherfuckers, and the hardcopy will go on sale very, very soon- we’re doing the final edits tomorrow and Friday.

Props to Josh Matthews for reminding me about Stacy X and the X-Ranch. Marvel needs another adult imprint. With decent artists rather than the dogshit we had with Max.

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