Inglorious X-Force #1 annotations
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.
Quite an indictment of Marvel devaluing their own brands that, before the “continuity reference” section, I was wondering, “Wait a minute, Warren wasn’t on that Krakoa X-Factor team. And even if he was, how would these guys know about it?”
I feel there should be some note that Kamala Khan isn’t the first potential/alternate future mutant elected President to be assassinated, as future Dazzler was killed in the Bendis books. Though I don’t recall if Alison was killed prior to her inauguration or not.
Was Kitty elected President in X-men the End, or was she mayor of Chicago and mooted as a potential future president?
Kitty does become president at the very end of X-Men: The End. No one outside of that alternate universe knows about it due to them becoming bored and going back to their own timeline before they get the chance to see the positive ending.
The whole Angel/Archangel back-and-forth switching always struck me as a rather strange setup.
If the X-Office wants to have both, why don’t they just split Angel and Archangel into two separate characters like they did with Psylocke? Just let Warren be classic Angel and have a different character be the razor-winged Archangel.
This was more interesting than I was expecting. In hindsight, it’s clear why – the solicits were vague and generic to hide Kamala’s involvement.
It’s a pretty good setup – the heroic outsider who accepts the team’s protection but is not happy about it, the manipulating leader with a star-struck fangirl, the suspicion that one of them will be the murderer… whatever’s going on with Domino… Good setup for a 12-issue run at the very minimum.
Let’s see how long it lasts. Percy managed 50 issues, after all.
Back in the original X-Force, Cable used to lose half his face surprisingly often, revealing his robotic skull. This was around the time of Terminator 2, after all. He’d use his machines to build a new face, though I can’t remember the terminology, it was implied to be fake flesh.
The problem with Angel is people keep thinking bird wings are boring, so they bring back the metal. Even the time displaced version got a “cooler” set of wings.I say that just shows a lack of imagination.
“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.”
In fairness, Kamala was trying to protect the staff. not the headquarters, who had already evacuated by the time X-Force destroyed it.
I get that obviously not all is what it seems to be. But even taking that into account, there are some glaring holes in the plot.
Kamala seems to have been killed in the future by a bullet. But Kamala has a healing factor. She can’t be killed by ordinary weapons. The exceptions are electricity and magic. it’s possible that was a magic bullet. But in that case you’d think Akihiro would be the obvious suspect. (Or maybe Kamala somehow lost her healing factor in the intervening years.)
The dumbest part though is that the assassination takes place so far in the future. Kamala is said to be a teenager in this issue and the assassination takes place after her 35th birthday. So the assassination takes place over 15 years in the future. How can you tell if anyone will commit a murder in 15 years? Usually these plots have the incident the heroes are trying to prevent take place in the next year or two. so the planning is likely to start soon. Again, I know not everything is as it seems but still..
I don’t think it’s just that the metal wings look cool so much as Warren getting turned into Archangel is basically the only good storyline he’s had in his 60+ years of publication, so creators struggling to find something to do with him inevitably keep calling back to it.
Si-Synthetic?
“The problem with Angel is people keep thinking bird wings are boring, so they bring back the metal.”
Yeah, but they keep bringing back the feathery wings as well. Clearly, both of Warren’s hardcore fans are split on the matter. One of them prefers clasic Angel, the other prefers Archangel, and the X-Office has been trying to to cater to both of these guys. I say just make a new Archangel.
@Moo- The problem with Kwannon and Betsy is that writers and editors decided that Kwannon was the cool. sexy one. So Kwannon became the main Psylocke in X-Men while no one knows what to do with Betsy. The same thing would happen if Angel and Archangel were split in two.
@Michael- There’s a version of Warren that’s sexier than the other?
I dug this, much closer to what I’m looking for in an X-Force title than the last few attempts. Getting sick to death of Ms. Marvel, though.
“Good setup for a [10 issue] run at the very minimum”
Fixed that for ya. 🙂
Anyway, Warren wouldn’t have the same trouble as Betsy. Warren is an original X-Man. Betsy is an original Captain Britian supporting character. Big difference. The X-Men will never be rid of Warren whether his wings are made of feathers, metal, or paper maché. He’s their Aquaman.
@Moo: You say that, but when the metal wings (which are sentient, smarter than Warren, and the real Archangel) bond with the corpse of Candy Southern and some technovirus, Warren will never know what hit him.
@Steven Kaye – Not a bad idea. I wouldn’t mind seeing Archcandy.
Archcandy is now my headcanon 🙂
I wasn’t sure if I was going to pick this up, but actually this sounds worth reading. Which – being that my pull-list is so short at the moment – is something I’m going to celebrate.
Just about what I feared and expected: a same-old take on X-Force. Exactly what I never wanted.
IIRC, Warren showed the ability to freely switch between feathery and armored forms during X-Corp in the Krakoa Era. It was presented as a parallel to Kwannon’s own dealings with her darker impulses. Yes, later the 2024 X-Factor series had him claim that it was a new thing from “elective surgery”.
I assume that this is Marvel hedging their bets with what seems to have worked previously – both the feathery wings, the metallic wings, and the “revelation” that he “now” has the ability to switch at will.
I liked this one, and am glad they’re finally putting Cable back on the board. Maybe that means we’ll see Bishop and Rachel soon too, if the “no complicated continuity time travelers” rule is being lifted?
(Yes, Rachel appeared in X-Force, but only as “Betsy’s Girlfriend” with no reference to being Jean’s daughter or coming from a terrible future)
I could do without Kamala, who tends to just be an albatross stuffed into books by editorial mandate but not popular enough to actually sell them, but I guess this is just where we live now. Also not a big fan of Daken. But I like Cable, Domino, Archangel, and Boom-Boom enough to stick with it here.
“She knows who Cable is and wants nothing to do with X-Force.”
Kamala yet again showing herself to be the single smartest person in the Marvel Universe, at least in terms of common sense.
@John – Re: Bishop and Rachel. I think editorial just doesn’t want to make references to dystopian futures where mullets came back into fashion. That might be a little too dystopian for modern audiences.
This could be the first book outside of X-men to be impacted by AOR. If the reason that Cable’s time jump was thrown off was due to Scott and White Hank (Wank?) coming back through the time stream.
Warren has been a mess for years, archangel was brought back in X-force because he was edgy, Killed in Uncanny and replace with blank slate Warren in Wolverine and the X-en. Young Angel then came back and got cool fire wings, then cable killed Mimic for his original wings. At some point Warren got his memories back, and then can the ability to transform in krakoa with out the negative effects from x-forces. I think know it’s like Emma’s Diamond form same character with a different power set.
Moo:
Jokes on them. We now live in a dystopian future where mullets are back in fashion!
@Brian – We do? Shit. I had no idea. Good thing I never leave the house.
“Let’s see how long it lasts. Percy managed 50 issues, after all.”
Well considering the quality of those 50 issues he must have made some deal with mephisto to get to 50.
I read only on unlimited and by the end I was just skimming through both of his books
@Badseed- Percy had two advantages. First, after House of X. ,the X-Books were at their most popular since House of M. Second, his X-Force featured Wolverine. Currently, the X-Books are not very popular thanks to Brevoort. And none of the characters are that popular- Akihiro is nowhere near as popular as Logan, Cable is no longer as popular as he was in the 90s, etc. This volume isn’t likely to last anywhere near 50 issues.
@Moo: but, if you never leave the house, how will you get a haircut? You might already have business up front and a party in the back…
I haven’t read this comic, but if the old Adirondack base still has a bathtub big enough for two and we get overhead shots of team members inexplicably taking baths together then it’s going on my pull-list.
@Mike Loughlin- Oh, I do my own haircuts. Daily. With clippers. I’ve been rocking an Xavier dome for the past twenty years.
I highly recommend it, by the way. Not only do you permanently rid yourself of haircut/hair product costs, but the first time you do it, you’ll even feel like you’re Xavier. I did. The first time I shaved my head, I stepped into the living room and my cat was sitting on the sofa. He still recognized me, but he seemed puzzled by what I’d done. I belted out, “To me… my cat!” but he just yawned and started licking his ass. Lousy scene partner.
@Drew: Kamala might have the most common sense in the entire MU – and yet she named herself after Carol Danvers, who has the least.
@Alastair ,
Ackchyually, Teen Cable (the 2020’s divergent timeline version who is now apparently his own variant) didn’t kill 616-Mimic , he convinced him to voluntarily donate his wings to be surgically transplanted to Teen Warren so he could be successfully reintegrated in the past of 616, and then later Mimic got killed fighting DOFP-Ahab in the last major X-force story before the Krakoa Era.
@LuisDantas,
I believe that Warren may have simply been literally Lying to everybody about not being able to change* anymore to Archangel and then being able to do so again by “elective surgery” . I believe Warren was refusing to do so because he didn’t want to become Apocalypse’s Horseman again , as shown by his refusal in the Heir of Apocalypse mini-series set just before X-Factor 2024 , but was forced to do so anyway by when his automatic reversion to his Death persona when he he got mortally wounded (like during the Utopia Era when he first reverted to being Archangel from plain Angel , when he was fatally attacked by Wolfsbane in her own berserker mode) . Remember , Marvel characters are all supposed to be unreliable narrators, even in their own thought inner private thought balloons , especially XBook mutants (for instance , this is Marvel editorial’s favorite excuse they now use whenever they turn an otherwise-heterosexual character into LGBTQ)
I wish Kamala mentioned her friendship with Cyclops from their time together on The Champions. Perhaps Tim Seeley is saving that detail for a future issue.
Personally, I am fine with Warren continuing to switch between feathers and razor sharp flechettes. Feathered CEO by day and razor sharp vigilante at night!
Luis Dantas> IIRC, Warren showed the ability to freely switch between feathery and armored forms during X-Corp in the Krakoa Era. It was presented as a parallel to Kwannon’s own dealings with her darker impulses. Yes, later the 2024 X-Factor series had him claim that it was a new thing from “elective surgery”.
He was changing back & forth most of the time anyway. Occasionally, he had personality problems (notwithstanding the whole Dark Angel thing, what happened to Cullen Bunn’s pacifist take on him? He just reverted to “normal”, no), but that got “fixed” multiple times (end of Soule’s Astonishing XM, and HoXPoX leap to mind. X-Corp was even after the latter).
And did you mean M, not Kwannon?
Jdsm24> I believe that Warren may have simply been literally Lying to everybody about not being able to change* anymore to Archangel and then being able to do so again by “elective surgery”.
There were clear differences between his pre-XF2024 Archangel form and his post-“elective surgery” version. There were the talons and stuff which haven’t stuck, but possibly the biggest is that between Kyle/Yost Stabby-Force and XF2024, the black/silver version of the Archangel costume was part of his transformation into Archangel, in XF2024, we saw Archangel in a “normal” costume for the first time since the late-90s. And that’s continued here, even though he’s back in black & silver as his Archangel costume, he changed his skin & wings when he attacked Cable without assuming the costume.
@SanityOrMadness,
No-Prize: maybe the “elective surgery” he got was actually in order be able to ADD all the specific particular extra details which you noticed to his usual Apocalypse-granted transformation process LOL