Spider-Man and the X-Men #1-6

 Spider-Man and the X-Men #1-6

Originally released in 2014

Written by Elliott Kalan

Art by Marco Failla

While I've read this series before, I remember it being funny and it's the source of a much-memed panel.  Plus it's been a while, so I figure I'd go back to it.  Wolverine is dead (shockingly, it doesn't stick), so he needs a substitute at the Jean Grey School.  Naturally, he calls on Spider-Man.  The rest of the X-Men generally don't like Spider-Man. (which probably plays a part in why Wolverine picked Spidey specifically)

The book gets off to a good start with Spider-Man facing off against the unfortunately named "Unus the Untouchable".  I'm aware that he's been around since the very early days of the X-Men, but there's something about that name that I just find hilarious.

As it turns out, Wolverine's request to teach came with a caveat - one of the students in that class is a spy.  Wolverine's not sure who it is, or who they're working for, but it's up to Spider-Man to find out!  This is going to go hilariously wrong.

When his attempt at talking to the students doesn't work, Spider-Man takes a trip to the Danger Room (which his students clearly want) despite his concerns about the name.  After nearly getting crushed by a robot, he takes the kids on a field trip to the museum in order to make a point.

While trying to teach them that they need to work together or face extinction (like the dinosaurs should have worked together, I guess?), they encounter one of Spider-Man's enemies, Stegron the Dinosaur-Man, along with an X-Men villain Sauron.

Stegron and Sauron have teamed up (Stegron thinks they're equals, while Sauron clearly thinks he's in charge) to convert Staten Island into the New Savage Island.  I don't know enough about New York to know why Spider-Man looks down on Staten Island, but one of Spider-Man's students, Shark-Girl, appears to have sided with the dinosaur villains.

Naturally, Sauron's plan (or rather Sauron and Stegron's plan) is to turn humans into dinosaurs, leading to this immortal exchange:

The other students that Peter's looking after (aside from Shark-Girl) are Eye Boy (who's covered in eyes and is meeker than the rest of the group), Ernst (who's seemingly a young woman who looks like an old woman and might have super strength? Her accomplishments so far have been off-panel, though that might be part of the gag), No-Girl (a disembodied brain that communicates via telepathy, which unusually the reader doesn't read), Glob Herman (who has translucent skin with his eyes, bones, and organs visible beneath), Hellion (who seems incredibly arrogant), and Rockslide (who can be kind of a jerk, though he immediately jumped in to defend people so Spidey's ruled him out as the mole).  They're all captured, along with Spider-Man, while Shark-Girl goes free.

It seems too early in the series for the traitor to be revealed (that seems more like something that would be saved for the end of issue 5), so Shark-Girl turns out to be faking her loyalty to Sauron and Stegron. (the other students used the phrase "Cyclopsed-out" to say "betrayed"; I can't remember if it's in reference to Avengers vs. X-Men, where he seemed to go mad with power after getting the Phoenix Force, or Inhumans vs. X-Men, or something else that I'm not thinking of at the moment)

Sauron's master plan seems to fall apart the moment that the heroes gain an advantage - Stegron doesn't seem too willing to help Sauron, and Shark-Girl is willing to exploit that rift between the two dinosaur-themed supervillains. (also, both of them have crushes on her; character ages seem unclear at the best of times, and even moreso when lizard or fish people are involved, but considering that Shark-Girl is a student, it feels gross)

On their way back to the Jean Grey School, Spider-Man and his students are captured by the Chameleon, who's working for Mojo. (while I've read this before, I only really remembered the first issue or two; it seems like every issue or two, there's a team-up between an X-Men villain and a Spider-Man villain)  Mojo captured Spider-Man to serve as a talk-show host, and he brought the students along because X-Men are ratings gold!

Between Mojo's holograms and the Chameleon's disguises, the villains do their best to mess with the heroes, though both have their flaws. (obviously, sixty-six Spider-Man villains aren't going to show up out of nowhere, and the Chameleon can't copy powers - or Gambit's particular accent, as he finds out the hard way)

Issue 4 starts off with an All-New Sinister Six, with a line-up that is somehow lamer than Boomerang's line-up from the Superior Foes of Spider-Man. (the villains are less than D-listers - their leader is Swarm, a Nazi made of bees, and the only member of the team that I've actually heard of is Melter, a Silver Age Iron Man villain)

Out of Spider-Man's students, Hellion seems like the most likely candidate for the spy given his lack of concern about killing villains (though that seemingly means, from a storytelling perspective, that it wouldn't be a surprise if we was the spy, so he's probably not one), and the X-Men aren't too pleased with Spidey's teaching methods.

Spider-Man does confess to Storm why he's here, and she gives him permission to keep teaching in spite of he and his students getting kidnapped twice in three days.  Meanwhile, Beast challenges Peter and his class to a SCIENCE FIGHT!!! (That is, a competition in the form of a science fair)  Peter splits his students into teams to work on recreating Sauron's technology, while Beast isn't really much for delegating (or letting his students do the work).

Glob finds No-Girl going through Peter's office, where she's digging through his notes, which (combined with Peter having psychic shielding to keep Rachel Grey from reading his mind) really seems suspicious.  However, when Rachel tries to break through No-Girl's shielding, she determines who the mole is, narrowing it down to Glob, Hellion, or Ernst.

The science fair is interrupted by an attack by Deathbird, heir to the Shi'ar throne, and the forces of the Brood, who have been possessed by symbiotes.  They're quickly driven off thanks to Spider-Man knowing the symbiotes' weaknesses, but Rachel Grey still doesn't trust Spidey, coming from a post-apocalyptic future and being extremely paranoid about any potential threats to mutantkind.

The class chases Deathbird to a S.W.O.R.D. space station to fight off the symbiote threat.  Throughout this, Glob is struggling with low self-confidence, not helped by the rest of his class assuming he's the mole.  To try and prove his innocence, he volunteers to do something dangerous but heroic.

He even survives this, much to Spider-Man's relief.  Spider-Man makes it through his teaching with no student fatalities, which gets him something that sort of qualifies as praise on his teaching evaluation.

The end of issue 5 also reveals who the mole is, leading into issue 6.  While other series in the past have been cancelled at five or six issues, this feels like a natural conclusion to the series rather than the writer being forced to rush to an ending with little warning.

The mole in question is working with Mister Sinister, though for sympathetic reasons.  Spidey isn't particularly knowledgeable when it comes to X-Men villains, so the idea of a villain named Mister Sinister gives him a ton of mockery material.

Naturally, Mister Sinister betrays the student that he's working with, as he's not particularly concerned about the idea of people having free will.  On top of that, his contribution to the Spider-Man villain side of things is more thematic rather than involving a Spider-Man villain, as he's cloned a team of X-Men to do his bidding.  The clones are mostly mindless, though, which gives the students a chance.

The final battle cheats a little when it comes to the students fighting Mister Sinister; Spider-Man gets knocked out partway through it so we don't see how they fight him off.  Still, it leads to some entertaining moments in the aftermath, and some touching ones as well with the students standing up for the mole, Spider-Man, and each other.

As it turns out, the book was cut short due to Secret Wars, but even with that taken into account, it feels like a fitting ending to the series, showing how the characters all grew in a short amount of time.  This series was a lot of fun, taking Spider-Man out of his comfort zone and exposing me to lesser-known mutants.