Since 1999, the Doris Day Animal Foundation have run a program called Comics for Compassion, where they attempt to spread their message of not being a jerk to your pets. Their biggest coup thus far has been convincing Marvel to hand over an entire issue of X-Men to the cause, with a story where those selfish mutants stop thinking about themselves for once and consider the plight of oppressed and abused animals, who are being rounded up by miniature dog-shaped Sentinels and put into kennels. Okay, so we made up the latter part of that sentence, but the rest of it is totally true and totally bananas. As each of the Comics for Compassion titles had to feature animalistic characters, the story Can They Suffer? from X-Men Unlimited #44 began with Squid Boy - whose mutant power is one of those Ronseal deals - discovering a bunch of dead fish whilst swimming in a lake. He asks Jean Grey to use her psychic powers to locate the people responsible for cutting up all his scaly pals, which she refuses. That is until the team come across a mutilated dog, whose mind she reads and causes Jean to go full PETA. First Wolverine tracks down the kids responsible, who it turns out have been going on a spree of animal torturing like a group of budding psychopaths would. Recognising his own kind, Logan threatens to murder these children, before Jean turns up and offers the much nicer alternative of causing the boys to feel the same terror and pain they inspired in their furry victims. The message is clear, kids. Beat up animals and the X-Men will threaten to kill you and then mentally scar you for life.
Tom Baker is the Comics Editor at WhatCulture! He's heard all the Doctor Who jokes, but not many about Randall and Hopkirk. He also blogs at http://communibearsilostate.wordpress.com/
