INGLORIOUS X-FORCE #1
“A Force to be Expected”
Writer: Tim Seeley
Artist: Michael Sta. Maria
Colour artist: Romulo Fajardo Jr.
Letterer: Joe Caramagna
Editor: Mark Basso

COVER: The core four members of the new X-Force. There’s a fifth character too, but we’ll get to her.

This is the first issue of a new series, which gets the “Shadows of Tomorrow” banner. The previous volume of X-Force only ran for ten issues in 2024-2025, and has nothing to do with this iteration whatsoever. It is, however, very keen to position itself as a successor to the original X-Force from the early 1990s. The cover doesn’t have a legacy number, but it would be issue #301.

The story title might be referencing the story title of X-Force #1 back in 1991 (“A Force to be Reckoned With”).

X-FORCE:

Cable. This version is looking a bit battered. He favours skulking around in a cloak, even when turning up in someone’s office, and seems to be using “synthetic flesh” to patch up the appearance of his face (presumably covering up the techno-organic virus). He still presents himself to everyone as an all-knowing authority figure with the perspective of a time traveller from the future, but there’s a definite impression here that this is partly an act and that he doesn’t know as much as he thinks he does.

The issue opens with him arriving in a future timeline shortly after the assassination of the President (who, we find out later, is a future Kamala Khan). He doesn’t seem too surprised at first by the chaos around him, but then the timeline starts glitching, and he seems surprised to have shown up late. It’s not really clear what happens next (intentionally): the glitches continue, he passes out, and he wakes up in the present day in the abandoned HQ of the original X-Force. He seems to have blacked out and at least believes that he used his Timeslide technology to escape here. He doesn’t seem to remember the timeline glitches; at least, if he does, he seems remarkably untroubled by them.

A message written on his metal arm points him in the direction of Archangel, Hellverine and Boom Boom; the further words “One of Us” are apparently interpreted by him as a message to himself that one of those three was the killer, though Domino shows up on the last page to strongly hint that he’s got it wrong. At any rate, Cable’s solution is to recruit these three names to join him in a new X-Force ostensibly with the mission of protecting Kamala Khan (who isn’t due to be in any danger for years) and changing the timeline where she dies. However, it seems that this is actually a way of testing to see which of them is the killer.

He doesn’t have access to all his usual resources; his AI stops talking to him once he arrives in the present day and histleporter isn’t working. That still leaves him with an aircraft and the 90s-style armoury that he had at his base, though.

Archangel. As in X-Factor (by the end), he can change back and forth between Angel and Archangel at will. Since X-Factor fell apart, Warren has turned his attention back to running Worthington Industries. We first see Warren addressing a meeting of disgruntled shareholders.

Some of their complaints appear to be legitimate – Warren himself acknowledges that the business is going badly, and one man quite rightly berates his involvement in X-Factor as embarrassing. Curiously, one woman asks him “why do you refuse to put WI business above X-Corp” – surely X-Corp fell apart with the Fall of X?

Others are pressing for less pro-mutant activities and more focus on profit. There’s a lot of Trump-era “in this environment” stuff (which, frankly, stands out as an unusually direct anti-MAGA comment by the standards of modern Marvel).

Warren claims to want to retire his Archangel persona, but instinctively switches to it when he thinks he’s under threat. Cable’s sales pitch to him, which evidently convinces him to come along, is that he’s fooling himself in rejecting Archangel, and that he’s only truly free in that form when he’s free of social constraints.

Hellverine. Hellverine’s status quo hasn’t changed since the end of his solo series. He’s still a Wolverine/Ghost Rider hybrid who’s focussing on attacking assorted evildoers – as we meet him, traffickers in Madripoor. Cable sucks up to him a bit by implying that he’s a better fighter than Wolverine, but his main pitch is that Akihiro is being offered a chance to prove that the seemingly inevitable can be changed, and in some vague way escape his past. Akihiro’s first instinct is to steer well clear of Cable, who he regards as a self-righteous hypocrite, but evidently he’s talked round.

Boom Boom. We last saw Boom Boom as part of King Bedlam’s version of the Hellions over in Jed MacKay’s X-Men, but for some reason she’s now living in California and using her powers for demolition work. She finds this very dull, apparently because it’s the normal world, but probably also because it’s controlled destruction which must need a lot of careful planning. (She does seem to be doing it properly and safely.)

Cable completely misreads her, expecting her to resist being dragged back into his world, only for her to immediately accept before he can even explain what the mission is. She openly adores Cable, claiming (not unreasonably) that he’s the only team leader who ever really understood her and knew what to do with her. Unlike Archangel and Hellverine, she has absolute confidence that Cable knows what he’s doing, and that he’ll have chosen them all for the right reasons. She seems to share his nostalgia for the original X-Force team, and selects one of her early 90s costumes.

She immediately starts flirting with Akihiro, and Warren seems to take it as read that the two of them will be a couple. Akihiro was still in love with Aurora the last we heard, though.

Ms Marvel. She’s back to being a neighbourhood hero in New Jersey (there’s no mention of NYX), and her costume no longer has any X-motifs on it. She knows who Cable is and wants nothing to do with X-Force. Even when Cable tells her that he’s trying to preserve her future presidency, and she agrees to give him a “brief trial period”, she insists that she’s a local super hero and that she’s going to stay in her community. She gives them her contact details and the address of her “fan fiction club”.

In at least one future timeline, she becomes President of the USA. In fact, we already knew this – she appeared as President in All-New Wolverine #33-35, the “Old Woman Laura” arc. It’s news to Kamala, but she takes it in her stride.

In a fairly obvious sign of trouble to come, as soon as Kamala has left, X-Force destroy the Safe-X headquarters that she was trying to protect.

SUPPORTING CAST:

Belle. Cable’s usual modern day AI starts the issue talking to him as normal, but simply stops working after he arrives in the UK.

Domino. She shows up at the cliffhanger, keeping an eye on Cable through a sniper scope. Quite how she knew to be looking for him, we’ve yet to find out.

VILLAINS:

The Mutant Liberation Front. This seems to be a completely new incarnation of the group, although Cable presents it as a re-formed version of the “movement”. Bear in mind that Cable’s main reason for going after them is actually to speak to Ms Marvel, so the MLF themselves are just a pretext as far as he’s concerned. Their goal is to bomb the Jersey City headquarters of Safe-X, a “mutant detecting app”. By Marvel Universe standards, their bomb looks decidedly home made. Cable couldn’t care less about Safe-X; once Ms Marvel is safely out of the way, X-Force torch the place.

The field team comprise four members, though only three get clear introductions in captions. For the fourth, you have to peer at the graphics for X-Force’s briefing on the previous page. They are:

• Unveil. Apparently the field leader of the team, and the briefing graphic lists her powers as unknown. However, a version of Unveil previously appeared in the Age of X-Man world in Age of X-Man: Apocalypse & The X-Tracts, also written by Tim Seeley. In that story, her name is Sharesse, and she can turn to mist. Inhaling her mist makes people undetectable and restores erased memories.
• Speedburn. He’s new. According to the graphic, his powers are “friction/heat manipulation”.
• DePop. Also new. His powers are listed as “functional immortality”, whatever that means.
• Resonant. And another new character. He’s the one in the background who doesn’t get an introduction and fights Boom Boom while wrapped in something on the next page. The graphic lists his powers as “monument assimilation”. Don’t ask me what that means.

The MLF wear street clothes, aside from Unveil; based on X-Tracts, she isn’t wearing a costume, but she’s simply in part mist form at all times.

The field team answer to Kali, described as an influencer who is the core of this new MLF. Kali appears only as a skull emblem and speaks to the four MLF members throughout the fight. Kali encourages them to treat Ms Marvel as an outsider appropriating mutant culture (despite acknowledging her as an actual mutant).  Kali gets a typescript font and generally speaks in quite formal English. Despite this, Kali declares “Kali Sez:” before giving any direct instruction.

Kali seems quite level headed on a tactical level, with no interest in fighting a losing battle against X-Force – in contrast to Unveil, who seems to be up for the fight.

CONTINUITY REFERENCES:

• Cable mentions “Professor”, the AI that he used to talk to back in the 90s.
• Cable’s photograph – which he finds in his old base and subsequently frames – shows the original line-up of the original X-Force. From left to right, it’s Domino, Warpath, Boom Boom, Shatterstar, Feral, Cable and Cannonball. Since it’s the founding line-up, Domino is actually the impostor Copycat.
• The Adirondacks Mountain safe house was X-Force’s base in the early issues of X-Force vol 1.
• One of Warren’s investors complains that “X-Factor was an embarrassment to your family’s legacy and this company”; he’s talking about Angel’s ill-advised involvement in the government-sponsored “From the Ashes” incarnation of the team, from the 2024-2025 X-Factor series.
• Warren says that he “played the part [of Archangel] when Wolverine or Cyclops asked”, referencing his previous stints in X-Force teams.
• Cable mentions that Akihiro “used to run” Madripoor’s docks. Akihiro seized control of the Madripoor underworld for a short time after Daken: Dark Wolverine #5 in 2011.
• Boom-Boom’s list of former X-Force members includes “Sam” (Cannonball) and “big Jimmy” (Warpath).
• Warren refers to “my old X-Force unit’s base in Arizona”. That would be Cavern-X, from Rick Remender’s Uncanny X-Force run.