The X-Men go undercover -- and between the sheets -- at the first-ever mutant brothel!
Originally Published December 2001
We begin at Worthington Industries, where Chairman Warren is big mad about some mysterious investments the company has been making. He demands an explanation as to what the "X-Ranch" is.
After scowling and haranguing his underlings about it for three whole pages, we are not told exactly what it is, only that it's something he should go check out for himself.
Smash cut to Nevada, where a man named Mr. Favreau, who may be some kind of CEO, or elected official, or late night talk show host for all I know -- potentially any job where one wears a suit and might ride in a limo -- arrives, and is underwhelmed by the humble surroundings.
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| Phrasing! |
To repeat, he is thoroughly unimpressed by the enormous Victorian mansion sitting in the middle of the desert with absolutely no infrastructure surrounding it for miles and miles.
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| If you've seen one, you've seen 'em all |
Inside, he meets Madam Drache, the house mother, who promises all his darkest fantasies will be fulfilled here at the X-Ranch.
Without wasting much time on preliminaries, she leads him upstairs to his date for the night, Bette, who, he is shocked to find, ha ha ha, is a big lady.
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| I suppose "Bette" is short for "Blobette." |
Despite his misgivings -- really, one should keep an open mind when patronizing a mutant brothel -- she puts him under some kind of psychic spell to make him Okay With All Of This. Bette promises that they're going to enact all of his deepest, darkest fantasies, but knowing what I now know about a certain class of people, maybe we should stop a few degrees short of the deepest, darkest ones.
And of course, all of this will be done without physically touching, because... well, because.
In their airplane outside, the X-Men are spying on all of this this like a bunch of pervs. Nightcrawler is particularly disturbed -- I guess it bugs him that nobody in there is anyone's adoptive sister.
Their big plan is to send Iceman in. Bobby will be undercover as music producer "Mr. Friese," here for some heterosexual interspecies intercourse on a tip from a tennis buddy. Madam Drache, who has apparently never heard of discretion, tells him her latest satisfied customer, Mr. Favreau is an industrialist competitor to Tony Stark.
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| I was almost too distracted by seeing "Favreau" and "Tony Stark" this close together in 2001 to think about how bad Drache is at her job |
Drache goes on to explain what we're already kind of figuring out: there's a market for mutant sex workers she and her girls are happy to exploit. She talks about it being good and empowering, which is fine and correct, and honestly should be compatible with Xavier's vision of mutant-human harmony. After all, you don't have to endorse prostitution but it's always going to exist.
But for whatever reason, there's something really untoward about the evil Tom Curry grin Drache sports when she talks about it. I get the feeling that this comic, which wants to get its jollies on the idea of mutant sex workers, maybe isn't completely on board with the idea.
Bobby is introduced to his date, who like all sex workers is found standing menacingly in the middle of a dark room.
Flummoxed at what to do when alone in a room with a half-naked girl, Bobby opens a window and engages a little chit-chat about Miss Stacy's powers. She can use pheromones that induce all sorts of mental states, in addition to having snakeskin -- but, she makes it absolutely clear, not a snake tongue. That would be weird.
Bobby starts feeling funny in the pants for reasons he can't immediately identify, but before he can get his dollar's worth, Warren III arrives to poop the party.
Stacy, probably taking exception to her livelihood being threatened, starts a fight.
Unfortunately, her underpants kung fu is no match for seasoned superhero vet Archangel, but no sooner has he subdued the mutant woman of the night than the ranch is beset by some teleporting weirdos calling themselves the Church of Humanity.
Madam Drache unleashes her fire breath on them, but falls to their laser guns. As, sadly, do Bette and another unnamed employee.
Stacy holds her own with her prostitute-jitsu, but is saved from a killshot when Warren intervenes.
As the building burns, Bobby faces off against some of the Cardinals, bragging that since he is made of ice, he's not threatened by the fire. I, uh, I think he might have that backwards.
Sure enough, once the villains have teleported away in retreat, he reveals the whole thing was a bluff, and that the ice that comprises his body works largely in the same way that ice usually does.
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| As we all know from Pokémon, ice is weak to fire. |
The X-Men usher Stacy -- who reveals that her last name is conveniently "X" -- to their jet, where she takes a moment to critique their life-saving capabilities.
The X-Men put her in her place, then zip off back to their headquarters while the ranch simply burns, and based on all this we are to get excited for the next big milestone issue.
Further Thoughts:
I'm sure Joe Casey had a good laugh when he came up with the title for this one. Maybe as big as the one Van Halen let out when they used it for their album title a decade earlier.
This is emblematic of a time when Marvel was itching to show how grown up it had gotten by smashing taboos like "a character can't be a literal prostitute." This whole premise is a fairly transparent move to be transgressive and shock readers. Of course, there's a difference between having leeway to depict mature content, and having the maturity to depict it responsibly. As much as he might make attempts to depict at least one of the prostitutes as almost-multidimensional, Casey can't help feeling like he's snickering with satisfaction at what he's being permitted to do here. There's a schoolboyish "sex is funny" vibe from the story title on down.
Now, sex is funny, but it's not because your partner might be fat or have other unexpected traits. Sex is human desire, and the funny thing about that is when it comes up against the dictates of "polite" society or other expectations. The pursuit of sex is what's funny, not so much the actual slap-and-tickle, so stomping into a mutant brothel and gawking at the women that would be working there isn't my idea of a laff. The joke isn't on the employees, or even the guy who willingly walks into the place: the joke is on the prudes who are there out of a professional obligation and want to leave as soon as possible.
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| Shirtless, but still a prude |
Which is to say, it's hard to imagine this team having much fun at all. These X-Men are weirdly sexless. Warren is a glowering businessman, Nightcrawler is a literal priest now, and Bobby, even before coming out as gay, feels miscast as a playboy. Chamber's fling with Sugar Kane had all the intensity of a 13-year-old on his first date, the way he seemed cowed and out of his depth. Oh, don't forget, Chamber's here, at least at the end of the comic -- we spent four issues trying to recruit him, and now he has nothing to do.
Contrast with Grant Morrison's New X-Men, where complicated interpersonal dynamics are handled with some degree of maturity, including the character's sexual proclivities: the way Emma seems to be seducing Cyclops, while Jean worries about the state of her marriage. These are real people problems that I understand a lot more as I approach the age of 40, but I will admit that maybe they would have seemed a lot more foreign to me as a teenager than "What if a chick wanted to have sex with you, but she was, like, fat." Gasp.
But in case you're wondering where I stand, I say boo to that. Justice for Bette. Icon.
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