INGLORIOUS X-FORCE #10
“Past, Present … and Future”
Writer: Tim Seeley
Artist: Michael Sta Maria
Colour artist: Romulo Fajardo Jr
Letterer: Joe Caramagna
Editors: Mark Basso & Alanna Smith

COVER: X-Force (minus Cable) pose with their guns. This is the final issue of Inglorious X-Force, but the series effectively continues next month as Fugitive X-Force.

PAGES 1-5. X-Force fight Cable/Catharsix to stop him from killing the future Kamala Khan.

This picks up from the end of the previous issue, when Cable (possessed by Catharsix) travelled back to the future to try and kill Kamala Khan, as seen in issue #1, and the rest of X-Force followed him.

“According to the fan profiles I’ve read of Reed Richards, changing time results in a whole new universe.” This is how time travel used to officially work in the Marvel Universe, as established in Fantastic Four. In practice, a lot of Marvel stories don’t work by those rules at all, and the X-books have never taken them very seriously. Nonetheless, the future Kamala Khan evidently has no memory of these events.

The version of Cable who visited this rally in issue #1 isn’t here because he showed up after Kamala was assassinated, something which doesn’t happen in this version of events.

Catharsix. We established in the previous issue that Cable was possessed by Catharsix, a fungal entity created by the version of Apocalypse from Cable’s dystopian future. Essentially, this creature is trying to pursue Apocalypse’s dream of global conflict (as he sees it) by killing Kamala Khan and averting a timeline where she brings about peace between humans and mutants. He claims later in the issue that the “constant conflict” is also weakening “this universe’s immune system”, whatever that means, and that this will somehow allow him to conquer all timelines, presumably by infecting them.

“What? This is all of it!” This timeline seems to have no superheroes on call beyond the handful of superhuman agents who are actually guardian Kamala. This doesn’t seem to be particularly relevant to the plot of X-Force, so it’s probably a reference to the current direction of the Marvel Universe being established in Armageddon.

For what it’s worth, though, when Cable arrived at a version of this world in issue #1, his AI claimed that numerous mutants were present, and that “many of the others are associated with the ‘Xavier Dream Project, aka X-Teams”. Possibly the idea is that a version of X-Force still showed up in that version of the timeline, and lost.

“So the names inscribed on his metal arm were what?” We never exactly get a direct answer to why Cable had the names of the X-Force members inscribed on his arm when he arrived in the present day in issue #1, but see pages 11-13 below.

PAGES 6-8. Catharsix defeats X-Force.

The basic thrust of this story is that Catharsix sidelines the team by using Cable’s telepathy to set Archangel and Hellverine against one another, to trap Boom-Boom in memories of her abusive father (the dream panel shows her in the costume she used to wear in the 1980s), and to taunt Ms Marvel with her unsuitability for the team. Killing them, it seems, would risk screwing up the timeline.

Resonant. Resonant died in issue #8, when he stumbled upon Cable being possessed by Catharsix. Cable killed him as a result. Just before he died, he did indeed touch Kamala’s bangle, which is presumably when he left the remarkably chatty message we hear on this and the following pages.

Resonant also reveals that his metal powers allowed him to communicate with Cable’s techno-organic virus. All this suggests that Resonant was much better with his powers than most of the Mutant Liberation Front members, who generally came across as amateurs.

PAGES 9-10. Catharsix pursues President Kamala Khan to the police station.

The guard, Brickwall, is a new character.

PAGES 11-13. X-Force defeat Catharsix.

The basic idea here is that Cable’s suppressed true personality was able to communicate through the techno-organic virus; Resonant learned via the techno-organic virus why Cable recruited these characters; Resonant has passed this information to Kamala; and Kamala has shared it with the rest of X-Force using the telepathic link that Catharsix inadvertently created between them.

The fact that Cable was communicating through the virus also explains why the list of names appeared on his metal arm, as Akihiro more-or-less explains.

According to Kamala, Cable believed that Akihiro and Warren both remind one another of their monstrous sides, and he wanted to show them both that they could be more than that. And he saw Boom-Boom as a potential leader (something nobody else saw, which is why she sees him as the one mentor figure who truly understands her). No specific reason is given for recruiting Kamala, but the suggestion seems to be that Cable wanted to raise her ambitions beyond being a local superhero – though it’s not like she wasn’t in the Avengers and the X-Men before.

PAGES 14-17. Cable is purged of Catharsix.

Catharsix is apparently immune to Akihiro’s version of the Penance Stare, because he doesn’t perceive himself as having any sins at all. However, Akihiro is able to torment him with the guilt of his host.

Again, the explanation of what’s going on here is a little bit hard to follow, but the general idea is that Cable was unable to accept the death of his wife Aliya (in a flashback in Cable #1), which led to him being vulnerable to infection by Catharsix (at the end of issue #8, which was apparently a confused memory rather than a time-slip). Catharsix has then laid dormant in his body waiting for the right time to emerge.

We’re reminded of Archangel rejecting power over life and death in issue #5; he still has his little-used Death Seed powers, however, and seems to use them to kill off Catharsix once and for all.

A guilt-ridden Cable heads off on his own to try and sort out the damage that he’s done to the timestream, though he also now seems preoccupied with his late wife, who he’s hardly mentioned in years. The rest of the team are sent back home, separately from Cable, and against their will.

PAGES 18-20. X-Force return to Cavern-X.

This isn’t the headquarters where X-Force were based in the series to date – as Archangel point out, that base is presumably under the control of Domino and her rival X-Force team from the previous issue. Instead, this is Cavern-X, the headquarters of the X-Force team from Uncanny X-Force (2010-12).

The team then discover that in the time they’ve been away, another X-Force group has shown up, and is killing other mutants. Their working theory (which is presumably correct) involves the various missions which Cable took the group on over the course of the series. These missions were supposed to have somehow cleared the X-Force members of Kamala’s murder, though quite how never really made sense. With hindsight, they now suggest that Catharsix was actually gathering data on the locations of mutant targets, and acquiring the “Kalikast” technology which Kali was using to make her Sentinels look like any character she wanted. So whether it’s a plan B or just for a laugh, Catharsix has created a bunch of X-Force impostors and used them to frame the team for murder.