X-FORCE vol 7 #10
“The X-Equation”
Writer: Geoffrey Thorne
Artist: Marcus To
Colour artist: Erick Arciniega
Letterer: Joe Caramanga
Editor: Mark Basso

This is the final issue of the series, and as you might expect, it feels like a desperate rush to the finish line. It’s also legacy issue #300, so the main story gets thirty pages, which helps a bit. There’s also a ten page back-up strip (which we’ll come to) and a three-page cover gallery.

X-FORCE

Forge. According to Sage – who’s apparently right – his powers instinctively directed him to stop Moses Magnum’s scheme, without him ever actually understanding on a conscious level what he was doing. (Yes, Moses Magnum. I know. We’ll come to him.) It turns out that this is not a story about the dangers of blind faith as I’d been thinking – Forge was just right all along to trust in his intuition. Sage claims that Forge was deliberately drip-feeding information to the team (in the sense of it being what his powers told him to do) at the point when it would be most effective to make them stick to the plan. The idea seems to be that Forge knew that he was manipulating everyone to do whatever was required for the plan, even if he didn’t know precisely why it was all meant to work.

Forge is apparently just playing along with Magnum’s attempts to recruit him. Despite Diabla’s clear warnings that she never got the chance to finish testing and preparing Forge, Moses falls for it entirely.

Captain Britain. She refers to Diabla calling her “eldritch” in issue #7. What Diabla said was “But you have something extra, no? Something… what is the English word? ‘Eldritch.'” According to Besty, while Diabla merely has the tools to use magic, she is magic – apparently meaning that she has a greater affinity with it than Diabla does.

Askani. She gets to cure Rampage.

Tank. He’s Colossus. Nobody explains what the Tank thing was about. We might speculate that the idea was something about him being ashamed or traumatised by his activities under mind control during the Krakoan era, and that the fake Colossus was supposed to provoke him into reclaiming his identity. If that’s the idea then it’s just barely hinted at here.

SUPPORTING CAST

Sage. She shows up with a bunch of X-Sentinels to save the day. These are the X-Men-impostor Sentinels built by Steven Lang from X-Men #99-100. Their appearance here seems largely arbitrary. Sage mentions that “Someone I know was reverse engineering them.” In the absence of anything better, we should probably take it that she got them from the Toybox facility that she acquired last issue.

John Wraith. This issue is so abbreviated that much of his dialogue consists just of referencing Bible verses. Presumably this is for his own amusement, as he can’t possibly think that most people will get the references.

• Proverbs 17:17 is “A friend loves at all times, and a brother is born for a time of adversity.”
• Proverbs 12:15 is “The way of fools seems right to them, but the wise listen to advice.”
• John 16:4 is “I have told you this, so that when their time comes you will remember that I warned you about them. I did not tell you this from the beginning because I was with you.” It doesn’t have an awful lot to do with anything either side of it.
• Luke 21:36 is “Be always on the watch, and pray that you may be able to escape al that is about to happen, and that you may be able to stand before the Son of Man.”

Surge. Her role in Forge’s intuitive scheme was to provide her gauntlets, which could be used to disrupt Magnum’s control of his Magnum Force energy. This causes a great big explosion which destroys Magnum’s equipment and saves the world. Surge is returned to life as an energy being with no recollection of anything that’s happened since her death in issue #5.

VILLAINS

Moses Magnum. It turns out he’s the employer of La Diabla and her crew. He also seems to be the red-captioned narrator who gets a couple of pages to talk about Professor X and Magneto, and the failure of their crew.

Moses Magnum is, shall we say, an odd choice of character for the big reveal in the final issue of X-Force. The character has been around since the 1970s but is mainly a villain from the wider Marvel Universe. He started off as an arms dealer character, before showing up with superpowers in X-Men #118-119 – the story where Banshee loses his powers. His only other appearances in the X-books were in Dark Wolverine #78-80 and Storm vol 3 #4-5.

The character has been written in wildly inconsistent ways over the years. Sometimes his powers are about earthquakes, sometimes (as here) he’s an all-purpose energy manipulator. Sometimes he’s about profit, sometimes he’s a criminal, sometimes he’s a racist. There isn’t really a consistent core to him.

In this issue, he believes that the mutant/human conflict is based on a false premise, because mutants are human. His plan is to unleash a catastrophe on the world, which he believes will force humans and mutants to unite and lead to a better future. Apparently, this is what Nuklo was supposed to be doing in issue #5 by opening portals that unleashed monsters all over the world. This interest in improving the human race through mass slaughter seems to be new, but according to the added pages in Classic X-Men #25, he did originally get his powers from Apocalypse. He was also trying to impress Apocalypse in Avengers vol 3 #8-9. His agenda here is arguably an echo of Apocalypse Classic.

For some reason, he has a base in the “Deviant city of Dys”. As far as I know, Dys itself is new, but the Deviants are a well-established hidden race originating in Eternals.

The narrator gives us a long list of trivia about Moses Magnum:

• His “known allies” are identified as:
  • Apocalypse, as noted above.
  • Norman Osborn. This is pushing it. Norman Osborn used him as a pawn to get good publicity for Daken in Dark Wolverine #78-80.
  • Kigali Clan. This is a criminal organisation which he was running in Storm vol 3 #4-5 (2014).
  • Interpol, the CIA and SHIELD. I’m honestly not sure what any of these are meant to be about.
• His “known enemies” are identified as:
  • Power Man and Iron Fist. He fought Power Man in Power Man Annual #1, but I don’t think he’s ever dealt with Iron Fist on panel.
  • “X-Team 4”, presumably meaning the X-Men line-up that fought him in X-Men #118-119.
  • The Avengers, who fought him in Avengers vol 3 #8-9.
  • Black Panther. A slightly odd reference: he has fought the Black Panther, but as a guest star in Deathlok vol 2 #22-23.
  • Iron Man. He fought Iron Man in Shuri #5.
  • Nation of Canaan. This is the Deathlok storyline again.
  • Nation of Japan. That’s X-Men #118-119, when he was threatening to use his powers to sink Japan.
  • Nation of Wakanda. That’s Deathlok again.
• Sage adds the following:
  • “A volcano couldn’t kill him.” That’s X-Men #119 again.
  • “A black hole couldn’t kill him.” That’s Shuri #5.
  • “He fought the X-Men and the Avengers to standstills.” That’s the same X-Men and Avengers stories already mentioned.

La Diabla. She implies that her interest in Forge is only due to orders from Magnum. Her role was to “test” Forge in a way that would win him round to Magnum’s agenda. Since the book is being cancelled, the story has to skip straight to Forge joining Magnum anyway, despite La Diabla not having achieved anything yet.

As usual, she has some non-English dialogue. For some reason, this time it’s not in Spanish, but in Esperanto.

• Her line “Forprenu la grandan koleron de la besto. Farigi denove gia homa kago” is “Take away the great anger of the beast, make it its human cage again.”
• “Basta” is “enough”.
• “Ponte kaj pordego” is “Bridge and gate.”
• “Fortikajo” is “stronghold”.

Rampage. Askani helps him to control his monster persona, reframing it in his mind as tiny. This seems to cure him, and he’s very grateful.

Zanda. She’s from the Jack Kirby Black Panther run in the 1970s. She was the fake Colossus, but we don’t find out what the point of that was, or what she’s doing here at all, really. She thinks Magnum and Diabla are “fixated on Forge”.

CAMEO APPEARANCES

Professor X. The opening flashback shows:

• Professor X and the early Silver Age X-Men training in the Danger Room (very early, given Iceman’s boots)
• The Silver Age X-Men fighting the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants, probably in their debut in X-Men #4.
• A late 1970s X-Men line-up – Banshee, Colossus, Cyclops, Nightcrawler, Phoenix, Storm and Wolverine – fighting a Sentinel. I initially said here that there wasn’t a point where this could fit into continuity, but as pointed out in the comments you can just about shoehorn it in.

Magneto. The other flashback page, loosely designed to mirror Professor X’s, shows:

• Magneto as a child in a Nazi concentration camp.
• Magneto with his Brotherhood of Evil Mutants.
• Their own version of the fight with the Silver Age X-Men.
• A panel of Magneto standing over a heap of bodies; Magnum’s narration suggests that this is somehow meant to represent the period when he was ruling Genosha as a mutant-supremacist nation.

“Beginning Now”
Writer: Fabian Nicieza
Artist: Edgar Salazar
Colour artist: Chris Sotomayor
Letterer: Joe Caramagna
Editor: Mark Basso

This is a 10-page anniversary back-up strip set between X-Force vol 1 #25-26 – which, per the original stories, is a week-long gap which Cable spends recovering from life-threatening injuries inflicted on him by Magneto in the 1993 crossover “Fatal Attractions”. Part of it consists of Cable’s AI, the Professor, recapping X-Force’s history up to that point, and what the Professor knows about future versions of X-Force through being a time traveller. The rest is a possible happy-ending timeline where Cable becomes the new Professor X and mentor of the next generation. The specific flashbacks are:

• Magneto attacks Cable and tears him apart: X-Force vol 1 #25.
• X-Force carry him back to their Camp Verde base: an expanded version of a panel from the end of that issue.
• Cyclops sends baby Nathan into the future to grow up: X-Factor vol 1 #68.
• Cable’s first meeting with New Mutants Cannonball, Sunspot and Boom-Boom, helping them to defeat Pyro and the Blob: New Mutants vol 1 #89.
• A version of X-Force with Domino, Forge, Cable (wearing an eyepatch), Dr Nemesis (he’s the guy with white hair, goggles and a facemask) and Colossus. This is Cable & X-Force, from 2013-4.
• A version of X-Force with Cable in a headband, Psylocke, Marrow and Fantomex. This is X-Force vol 4, from 2014.
• A version of X-Force with Shatterstar, Boom-Boom, Deathlok, Warpath, Cannonball, Domino and the kid Cable. This is X-Force vol 5 from 2019.
• Days of Futures Past Wolverine is killed by a Sentinel. This is Uncanny X-Men #142.
• A generic shot of the Age of Apocalypse timeline.
• …and from there on, we’re into new alternate timelines.