“Sorry. I Intend On Getting Drunk And Writing Impenetrable Prose.”

Myles from X-Statix is probably my favorite character in comics currently being published. Well, it’s either him, or Henry McCoy from New X-Men, who like Myles is a furry animal man, an insecure intellectual who may or may not be gay, and severely depressed. The best scene of last week’s X-Statix #3 was the one in which a miserable, drunken Myles stumbles through his library, contemplating whether or not his love for Phat is genuine or truly a cynical ploy for attention. He tries to rationalize it – are he and Billy Bob in a state of “gay-slash-not-gay”, like “multi-sexual cats in Schrodinger’s box?” He thinks about how his teammates are in similarly contrived conflicts with one another, and begins to wonder if they are subconciously allowing themselves to sacrifice their free will and go along with these scripted conflicts to keep things interesting. After all, as Tike declares later on in the issue, they aren’t real superheroes. They’re entertainers. So, are they being scripted, like entertainers? Is it all just Doop playing the puppet master? Yes. Of course. But then what? How do reality tv people adjust when the edited-for-broadcast, engineered-for-conflict semi-fictional parts of their lives end, the season’s over, and they have to go back to being regular people again? Is it as simple as riding that fame out, milking it like Tike and Dead Girl? Do you try to go home again after becoming someone else, like Billy Bob? Do you try to prove yourself like Guy, to try to regain self-respect? It’s all a bunch of question marks at this point in the series, and it seems unlikely that Peter Milligan will try to answer any of them, but rather to just pile up more questions for his audience to ponder. X-Statix is quality stuff. You should read it.