And lo, the skies parted and the light shone down upon us as the world was gifted with the greatest comic book of all time this week. An event nearly 50 years in the making rode into our lives on a tsunami of awesome and fansanity! For here is an issue that has made my years of being a comic book geek and scouring the back issue bins worth it. Your favorite superhero and mine, the Mimic, has thrown down the gauntlet of mediocrity and declared in one voice that he would not go quiet into the night!

How did Mimic not even make the cover?

The X-Men will never be the same. And we are all blessed for it.

Comic rating: INFINITY/5: Scrumtrulescent!!

Don’t get me wrong, this isn’t a perfect issue. We spend an inordinate amount of time focused on characters who aren’t Mimic. I don’t know what writer Christos Gage was thinking, but considering the badassery of his treatment of Mimic in this issue, he’s easily forgiven. But there’s a lot to slog through. The comic is called Mimic and the X-Men, after all. I suppose he had to squeeze a few other X-Men in there. Otherwise, what would Mimic have to joi…oop! I don’t want to spoil anything in this opening blurb. That would take away everyone’s fun!

And there is nothing more fun than reading the greatest comic book ever published starring the coolest, most underused superhero to ever grace our eyeballs!

Join me for the glory of the word after the jump, if you can contain your excitement. We’re in for one hell of a ride!

Holy crap, everybody! Mimic’s gonna explode!

Don't worry, they won't kill the star of the book on the first page

Some genius (cough, Beast, cough) screwed up last issue, and now our Hero is going to be blown to smithereens! All he wanted to do was keep his best friend Omega from exploding, and now his self-sacrifice has come back to bite him on the ass. Ain’t that always the way, you get nuts with the self-sacrifice? And I guess Rogue is going to explode too. Both Mimic and Rogue tried to absorb Omega’s bombitude, only for all of them to turn into bombs that threaten to blow up all the X-Men and the entire Jean Grey School! What the hell, Omega!? This is all his fault, lousy character that he is.

For some reason, everybody seems far more worried about Rogue than about Mimic. Gambit rushes in to give Rogue a big, sloppy hug, because those two used to date. But I guess Rogue is dating Magneto now, because she’s into old guys who used to be megalomaniacal super-villains. Mimic, who seems to be taking this whole ‘about to explode’ thing in stride, takes some time out of his busy schedule to show Rogue that he is interested in a little x-gossip.

Whether it's Rogue's love life or his friend Omega, Mimic cares

Ain’t that just the most adorable thing? I still don’t know how Mimic and Omega became bros, but Gage is really pushing that aspect of the characters. They barely said two words to each other back when they were on the Dark X-Men together. But I guess when you get summarily dropped back into comic book limbo when your boss, Norman Osborn, gets arrested, you’ve got to hang on to whatever friends you can.

Then we get a glorious scene as Rogue shows off her X-Men trivia knowledge. What’s that? Mimic was the first ever character to join the X-Men after the first five? Hells yeah he was!

Squee Factor: Medium

We even get a flashback to Mimic’s greatest X-Men hits! Sure he used to be a jackass back in those days, but this is the point of continuity people! He’s learned and has grown from those past experiences to become a better person! Can you say ‘the most amazing character growth over the course of 50 years’? Of course you can!

For all the sepia-toned history buffs out there

Really now, Mimic, don’t give Beast too much credit. He can easily be blamed for placing you all in your current predicament. He’s all big and blue and furry and stuff, so don’t be patting him on the back yet. He’s the one who can’t figure this problem out. Well that’s not entirely true. It seems Beast has one idea: put everyone into a telepathic coma for all eternity! Yep! That’s the great Beast’s plan. He’s going to have Rachel just mind-zap the lot of them and turn them into vegetables until maybe the explosive energy goes away. Basically just shove’em all off into comic book limbo again, to live life in stasis tubes in Beast’s lab.

Would somebody get this guy away from the science stuff, please?

Anyway, Rogue has her own little moment of cathartic release and her own flashback. What is this, Lost? But she drops some truth on Mimic about how being an X-Man and a teacher has helped her deal with her power absorption powers. These two are totally becoming BFFs! If Rogue weren’t into creepy, power-hungry old guys, Mimic might have a chance!

They're totally bonding over similar experiences!

Remember how I said Beast’s idea was to just dump everybody into a coma? Well apparently that’s the last resort. First he’s just going to throw every random member of the X-Men at the problem to see if any of them solve it. Guess what, they don’t. Gambit, Husk and Chamber all try and all fail. Though Mimic does have a fun little scene where he tries to peer into Chamber’s soul, but the jackass doesn’t appreciate just what Mimic is trying to do for him.

Chamber is just jealous that Mimic is hogging the spotlight

Husk takes it worst of all, and that’s fine. Because she’s Husk, and life has been kind of downhill for her ever since that time she had flying sex with Archangel in full view of her mom and family. She couldn’t save Mimic, she should feel bad. She storms off in anger, and then all of a sudden Toad shows up with a mop to try and comfort her. If you read the most recent issue of Wolverine and the X-Men, then you’ll know that they’re pushing a Toad/Husk romance. I’m liking how Husk isn’t the star of any one particular comic, but every book seems to be telling this Husk subplot about her powers going wonky. And that is more than anyone has written about Husk in ages!

Anyway, we have to endure a few Mimic-less pages as Toad tells Rogue how much he secretly loves Magneto, and that she could call him, and then–HOLY CRAP WHAT THE HELL HAS HAPPENED TO TOAD!??

World of Warcraft called...

When did he become a goblin? Pointy nose, long pointed ears, 3-feet-tall; what the hell is going on? It’s like he’s devolving into a Tolkien character. Man, Toad totally made the wrong choice of leaving Utopia for Westchester. At least back on the West Coast he was still rocking his movie-esque look. Since the Regenesis, Toad has been getting shorter, uglier and now more gobliny.

But fear not! Toad leaves and we focus back on the Mimic!

Like the smooth badass he is, Mimic has decided to hang out by a pretty pond, because all the girls love a sensitive guy. Sure enough, Rogue comes out to join him, and she’s still unwilling to say Magneto’s name. She opens up to Mimic (because they are besties now) about how Magneto makes her feel, but she’s still not ready to commit to a phone call to tell him she’s about to explode and die.

Thankfully, Mimic saves us with another flashback.

Where is the Super Skrull when you need him?

Christos Gage did his god damned homework, baby! This guy needs to be crowned as the king of all nerds. Not only does he love Mimic, but he clearly went back and re-read all of Mimic’s previous appearances to make sure he wrote the character right.

Am I going to die soon? Is that what this is? Did some loving God decide to give me the greatest Mimic comics ever in preparation for my eventual passing? Is this the world making peace with me before I die? Because I would totally be cool with that…maybe.

But I can’t die yet, not when Mimic is so awesome that he figures out how to solve the problem!

Like putting to much air in a balloon!

Naturally, Beast is reluctant to use Mimic’s awesome idea of shorting out their powers. That’s just how the Beast rolls, I guess. He doesn’t want anyone else upstaging him in the science department. Well Mimic doesn’t care what Beast thinks, they’re totally doing this. Rogue and Omega are down with it, so Beast gets outvoted like a chump. Turn in your Nobel Prize of Science, furball!

Everybody’s really sappy for a few more panels, as Rogue still refuses to tell Magneto she loves him, so she settles for another hug from Gambit. That guy just can’t let go, it seems. Anyway, Rogue says she has laundry to do, so could they just get this over with? That lady has her priorities straight. I hate leaving dirty clothes around the house too. Omega promises to buy them all drinks afterwards, so at least he’ll do something right.

The three of them zap-dang-doodle themselves and Mimic and Rogue are cured! They’re not going to explode anymore! Everybody is so overjoyed that the Mimic survived! Even Beast gives him props. But it turns out they were all double-crossed…by Omega!

He's a fink!

Omega has finally decided to do us all a glorious favor and kill himself. Seriously, does this guy have any fans? He was introduced a few years ago by killing Alpha Flight! Everybody loves Alpha Flight! Omega hasn’t done jack for anybody else since, always just languishing around because nobody wants to touch such a worthless, pathetic character. So rather than let Mimic’s excellent plan cure everybody, Omega just reabsorbed all of the explosion juice out of Rogue and Mimic. They’re gonna be fine, and Omega is totally fine with blowing up. Everybody wins.

But hells nah! The Mimic ain’t just gonna sit by and let his best friend explode! Mimic is made of tougher stuff than that! He’s a god damned superhero, dammit!

Mimic is not afraid to open his heart

So Omega opts for the Beast’s insane telepathic coma plan, and he asks Mimic to put him out of his misery. Mimic copies Rachel’s powers and then uses them to shut down Omega’s higher brain functions, like a boss. Mimic also delivers the kind of speech that we all wish we had the guts to tell our best friends, but none of us is as courageous as Mimic.

Pass the Kleenex

Doesn’t that just bring a tear to your eye?

Frankly, it sounds a little gay, and I’ve seen it suggested that maybe Mimic and Omega are lovers. Bollocks! If they were in love, why make it so subtle? If you’re going to suddenly make Mimic gay, why not just come out and say it? Why hide it?  Because they’re not gay, they’re just super best friends. Like Sam and Frodo or Turk and JD!

So Mimic gets all boss up in this hood and does the deed, knocking his best friend unconscious in order to save the school. He’s a hero! Beast checks Omega’s vitals and says that, yep, Mimic succeeded and Omega is in a coma. Now they’ll wrap him up in a stasis tube and wheel him into the corner of the Beast’s lab, never to be heard from again. How many times has Beast ever promised he’ll never rest until he solves a specific problem? Probably a million times. His lab is probably filled with projects where he said he’d never rest until he completed them.

Doesn’t matter, though. All that’s important is that Mimic has ditched the best friend ball and chain, and now he’s ready to embrace a destiny that we have all waited nearly 50 years to see. What follows are the four greatest comic book panels I have ever read in my entire life, and I say that without a trace of hyperbole.

And here is my reaction to reading those panels:

HOLY CRAP! Mimic rejoins the X-Men!!

I’ve waited for this one single moment for my entire comic book geek life! And it’s so deliciously amazing! It’s everything I could have possibly wanted or hoped for! This is the single greatest Mimic-starring comic book in 50 years of comic book publishing! Gage brought this on with class and skill and true love for the character. And as a comic book geek, is there anything we love more than when our favorite characters get the credit they deserve?

I just want to smile forever.