"Am I Blue"
Writer: Devin Grayson
Artwork by: Udon Studios
Month Published: February 2002
Takes Place: After "Turn of the Rogue", but before "The Cauldron, Part 1"
Synopsis/Review: After having a nightmare
in which he's being burned at the stake in a medieval German village, Kurt
is abruptly waken up by Scott. Apparently, Kurt has overslept, and he's
going to be late for school. Kurt throws on his clothes and image inducer,
still a bit out of it, and teleports out into the hallway as Scott gets
the other teenage X-Kids assembled for school, and we get a brief comic
intro to Shadowcat, Spyke, and Rogue. (And a bit of interesting dialogue-
"How come Rogue is always Rogue whether she's in uniform or not?" "The
same reason Jean's always 'Jean.'" Heheh.) As all of the students go downstairs,
we see Scott's a little overwhelmed with how many kids Xavier's taken on
recently. (Gee, I wonder how he's going to feel once the New Mutants come...)
Later, at school, we
get a taste from Kurt's perspective about how the rest of the High School
thinks that the Xavier kids are freaky... somehow (since they apparently
don't know that the X-Kids are Mutants yet). Evan doesn't care, though,
since as long as he can kick some butt, he's happy. Good ol' Evan.
Once in English class,
Kurt and Evan get an assignment- and, of all things, the teacher wants
them to write a report about "what it is that you can be at home that you
don't feel you can be at school"- which, of course, strikes a chord with
Kurt.
That afternoon, back
at the Xavier Institute, the X-Men are having a little Danger Room session.
(Oddly enough, Kurt has his holowatch and uniform on at the same time,
and it looks... pretty weird...) Anyway, Kurt manages to bamf and get the
"secret formula" that is the goal of this "mission", even though in reality
it's just grape juice. Kurt makes a rather blunt observation to Jean that
"Basically, your whole life is a struggle to be perfect-- so as not to
disappoint any of the countless people looking up to you with almost impossible
expectations." Hmm... got something you wanna tell us, Kurt? Anyways, it
bugs Jean a little bit, but after the Danger Room session is over, Scott
and Jean do a little almost-romantic complementing of each other, and it's
forgotten.
That night, Kurt's struggling
over what to put down for his English Essay (which has a little Easter
Egg on it- the date is 02/27/02, the same date this comic was released).
Shadowcat interrupts him by coming into the room, wondering if she can
borrow his history book, since she forgot it at school. Kurt gives it to
her, and Kitty asks Kurt is he sleeps like that- with his image inducer
on. Kurt laughs non-convincingly and tells her that of course he doesn't,
and the two bid each other good night. Kurt lays down to sleep and turns
off his image inducer. He has a brief dream in which he's at school, when
his image inducer suddenly malfunctions, and his real self is exposed...
only he's butt naked. (I did NOT need to see that, thankyouverymuch...)
Kurt suddenly bolts upright out of bed, and, sweating, reactivates his
own image inducer before drifting off to a troubled sleep again.
The next morning, the
X-Men are doing some early-morning yoga when Kurt is called by Xavier to
come into his office. Xavier wants to talk to Kurt about his nightmares-
even though Xavier didn't deliberately invade Kurt's privacy, he says,
it's difficult to ignore when there's a great "psychic disturbance" in
a person's. Kurt shrugs it off, saying that he's sure he'll get over them
eventually. Xavier tells Kurt that, well, that's fine, but if you ever
need to talk to me, I'm here.
Later on that morning,
Kurt and Kitty are walking through downtown Bayville to get to school-
apparently, the others had forgotten about them and left for school before
they were ready. Kitty enjoys the walk, however. Kitty and Kurt start talking,
and Kitty talks about how she was at first a bit intimidated by all the
kids at the Institute, but she's decided that she likes having people to
look up to, and all that, since it makes her a better person. However,
their conversation is interrupted by a small gang of teenage gang members
single them out in a alleyway and start bugging both of them. After a bit
of bullying, Kurt urges Kitty to run, but one of the guys has gotten a
hold of her backpack and won't let go. It gets dangerous when one of the
guys takes out a knife, but Kurt deactivates his image inducer and scares
them all off.
After the gang members
have left, Kurt reactivates his holowatch, and Kitty good-heartedly thanks
him for the save- and they didn't even have to fight! Kurt isn't convinced,
though- they ran because of his "stupid, ugly, blue elf-demon face", but
Kitty tells him that they're jerks anyway. She tells him that he needs
to ignore people like that, and that he's a "good weird", and one of the
nicest guys she knows. It cheers up Kurt, a little bit.
That morning, before
English class is about to begin, a guy sitting in front of Kurt compliments
a girl he's sitting next to on her "nice" hair that she dyed blue. Kurt
gets an idea from this, and takes out a pen and starts writing on his essay
paper...
Back at the Institute,
Xavier is having a short meeting with Logan and Storm in which he's trying
to find out from them if any of the students are having any problems. Storm
talks about how Rogue has not yet found her "center" in yoga class, and
Logan mentions how Evan isn't "sold on the keeping quiet parta things".
Both of them anticipate no problems with Kitty. And Xavier mentions with
a smirk that Kurt "has had plenty of time to settle in by now"...
Back at school, English
class is over. But as Kurt is about to leave, he's stopped by the teacher,
who asks him if anything's wrong, if he's feeling overly depressed or anything.
Kurt says that no, he's fine. The teacher shows him his paper- on which
is written a single sentence, "Blue"- and asks if he's sure, but Kurt assures
her that he's fine (and this time, he apparently has gotten over his whole
self-image debacle). Scott pops into the class and tells Kurt that they've
gotten a message from the Professor, and they've got to hurry out of there.
Kurt says good-bye cheerfully to a very confused teacher as he catches
up with the other X-Kids...
Art Comments: I really liked the
cover art for this comic. It's a really nice collage, and it shows Xavier
at the top, with smaller figures of Kurt, Kitty, Rogue, and Evan at the
bottom. However, what's most interesting about it is that the some of the
windows from the Mansion are shown at the bottom, but as you get nearer
to the middle of the picture, the "windows" fade out, leaving only the
bars holding the kids in. REALLY nice and creative symbolism, there.
However, in the actual
comic, I found the art to actually be sloppier than usual. Maybe it was
because there's more "group" shots than usual, but it wasn't good at all.
I also didn't like how they drew Kitty in some panels- half of the times,
her eyes were too big, and it made her look kinda ugly. And, in one scene-
the one where Kitty asks Kurt for his textbook- she's ludicrously tall,
her head almost touching the upper rim of the doorway, which is really
odd, considering Kitty is moderately short. And in said panels, her legs
were ridicuously long- comprising nearly 4/5ths of her height! It just
looked pretty weird and too "Animeish" for my tastes. But, in contrast,
a couple of shots got her just right. Huh...
Last Words: This comic, though focusing on Kurt, was actually more of a "day in the life" story of the X-Men with Kurt's internal feelings interspersed inbetween. However, both of these issues have been explored in the show before- "a day in the life" in such episodes as "Grim Reminder" and "Joyride", and Kurt's bad self-image in such episodes as "Strategy X", "Shadowed Past", and a little in "Operation: Rebirth". So all of this territory has already been explored before, and spending a whole comic on it is a bit repetitive. As such, even though the writing wasn't really bad, I found it rather... boring. We could have been introduced (again) to Rogue, Evan, Kitty, and Kurt in a bit of a better way, if you ask me. Like, say, on a regular mission of stopping the Brotherhood from accomplishing one of their plans, or something.
Overall Rating: 6/10 Above Average