Fucking Comics: The Teen Titans VS The X-Men Part 8: The Everlasting Joy of Sending Children into Battle.

Now, your the sergeant of a military squadron and you've used all possible resources to breach the magnetic barrier that has surrounded the base that was under your watch. Your running out of ideas, this will probably have a negative effect on your career, the president just called to tell you that if you don't fix the problem fast, your going to find yourself someone's bitch at a secret CIA gulag in Alaska if you don't get those missiles back. So what do you do? What do you do indeed? Well apparently the best idea the sergeant has is to allow a bunch of civilians, who are minors, in flashy clothing take a shot at getting past the barrier. Apparently that's the only career saving idea he could come up with. Now, if you ask me, it looks like it's only a dome around the surface of the base, why doesn't someone just dig under it and get past that way?

This is exactly the reason why they shouldn't allow Cos-Players into the army. But to give him some credit, at least he didn't dress up like Cammy from Street Fighter.

Anyway, I have to love how Cyclops just shows up and is able to get close to the sergeant without getting taken down and tells him the X-Men will solve the problem. The X-Men then go in for the attack, once again Stan takes this moment to remind us once again what each characters super powers are as they are trying to get past all the troops. You know. In case we forgot in the last couple of pages.

Cyclops uses the power of his optic beams to blast through the magnetic shield. The result knocks him out, and staggers Magneto. Magneto, not to happy with being interrupted by a group of kids fires a bunch of interceptor missiles.

A little over kill much? Shit, that's like using a cannon to kill a fly isn't it? Plus why use the missiles? Couldn't Magneto just use his magnetic powers to bring the buildings down on the X-Men? I mean there would have been faster and more deadly ways to off them.

The X-Men do manage to dodge and destroy the missiles, so Magneto joins the battle and tries to crush them with scraps of metal (So now he does what I suggested) but of course Cyclops just woke up and uses his optic blast to blast away the rubble.

Magneto then sets a cart of rocket fuel on fire and shoves it at them, Iceman saves the day with an ice shield. The cart explodes, and Magneto thinks he's killed the X-Men, but suddenly Cyclops' optic blast bursts out of the ground and the X-Men attack. See, whereas DC Comics probably would have used the ice shield and stopped there with the "How the heroes saved themselves" explanation, Stan at least respects your intelligence enough to know that a shield of ice would not stop an exploding cart full of rocket fuel and that the only chance for survival would probably burry yourself deep into the ground. Anyway, the X-Men have a quick battle with Magneto, where Cyclops blasts him, then Magneto escapes using a magnetic wall to prevent the X-Men from following him. After being commended

Hey Magneto, I hate to steal your thunder while your gloating over your victory and everything, but you lost the little head piece thing you have on your helmet, dude.

for saving the day, the X-Men then return home, their mission a success.

I think the only gripe I'm going to have to make here is the sudden ending, which is a common thing that Stan Lee was notorious for in his early days. He'd spend so much time with exposition, explaining the characters abilities ad nauseam, and make a lengthy introduction which essentially said "look what these characters can do!" before battle at the end of the story, which would usually last for about a few pages, and the story ending in a quick two panel closing.

Stan did refine his craft and got better with time, but I tell you, he had no idea about pacing back then. A lot of old Marvel stories are painful to read because ol' Stan "The Man" Lee decided to retell an origin and then spend a lengthy couple of pages with the characters showing off their powers, before any plot occurs.

On the other hand, I'd prefer to deal with all that filler than to read a story where the characters have zero character development (except for "I can run fast" or "I can talk to fish") where the villains are the most absurd and non-threatening entities anyone could ever think of, and the battles are usually exceedingly wacky and usually resolved at the last minute by the hero(s) using their power in a way that makes no sense.

Without a doubt, the first issue of X-Men, although kind of corny in a lot of ways, is a better story than the first appearance of the Teen Titans. Marvel the champion of this little comparison, and I think I've more than proved my point that Marvel wrote stories for smart people, while DC catered mostly to stupid and possibly mildly retarded people. And if you didn't get laid in the course of reading this review, I also proved my other point that it didn't matter which one you liked, you still aren't getting any.

This concludes this edition of Fucking Comics! Further editions are forth coming, however, in the future we're going to be taking a look at individual issues as opposed to themes. I think things will be more fun that way.

As usual, you can find both the stories I mentioned in this review in collected volumes by each respected company. The Brave & The Bold #54 has been recently reprinted in DC Comics' Showcase Presents: Teen Titans and X-Men #1 has been reprinted many times, most recently in The Essential Uncanny X-Men Vol 1, which is available from Marvel comics.