{"id":2890,"date":"2015-03-07T16:21:32","date_gmt":"2015-03-07T16:21:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=2890"},"modified":"2015-03-07T16:21:32","modified_gmt":"2015-03-07T16:21:32","slug":"x-force-vol-3-endsmeans","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=2890","title":{"rendered":"X-Force vol 3 – “Ends\/Means”"},"content":{"rendered":"

The\u00a0third volume of Si Spurrier’s\u00a0X-Force<\/em> run is also the last. \u00a0Given the sales on the one hand, and the imminence of\u00a0Secret Wars<\/em> on the other,\u00a0you have to wonder\u00a0whether Spurrier would have let this run for longer given the choice. \u00a0But it doesn’t feel rushed;\u00a0Spurrier makes his point in this fifteen issue run and draws a line under it. \u00a0Yes, there are unusual narrative jumps in the closing issues which could be a sign of\u00a0cancellation-driven compression, but they’re played (successfully) as deliberate creative choices.<\/p>\n

Put shortly, Spurrier has devoted his run on\u00a0X-Force<\/em> to critiquing and rejecting the entire concept of the team – that is, the darker, paramilitary version of the X-Men that Rob Liefeld\u00a0brought about in 1991, and which formed the template for\u00a0the recent versions.<\/p>\n

The basic\u00a0arc of this series is to set up X-Force as a typical ass-kicking team of grim heroes,\u00a0and have Hope (relegated to the fringes as MeMe) increasingly realise that the team is not in fact a collection of awesomely cool\u00a0bastards, but a dysfunctional crew\u00a0whose questionable\u00a0moral values are only outdone by their questionable\u00a0mental health. \u00a0So\u00a0Spurrier\u00a0does the usual set pieces that\u00a0glorify that sort of team and, in an understated way,\u00a0undercuts them. \u00a0The vindictive torture of the captured baddie, which often gets tacitly filed under “the ends justify the means”, ends up\u00a0killing him and producing nothing of value whatsoever – preventing it from justifying anything. \u00a0And so on.<\/p>\n

By these closing issues, it’s abundantly obvious that Spurrier has no real interest in the aspects of the plot that would normally be at the forefront, and he’s going out of his way to\u00a0tell the audience that they ought to feel likewise. \u00a0The mechanics of raiding an enemy base are\u00a0glossed over because Hope’s narrator is far more interested in the character dynamics. \u00a0Arnim Zola is revealed as a disguised Mojo but nobody is interested in listening to his speech about his motivations. \u00a0Volga, previously presented as the arch-villain of the series, is captured between issues and turns out to have nothing to do with the resolution at all.<\/p>\n

That last one could, as I say, be a sign of Spurrier compressing the plot. \u00a0But whatever the genesis, it works as a creative choice. \u00a0It ties up the loose end of Volga’s plot (or cuts it off, at least), but it forcefully rejects the\u00a0supposed importance of\u00a0that plot, and also means that what would otherwise be an thematically inconvenient moment of triumph for Cable’s approach gets bumped off panel to minimise\u00a0its impact.<\/p>\n

Along similar lines,\u00a0the series starts pushing the idea of a series of Cable clones to its logical conclusion. \u00a0The book started off\u00a0by passing them off as the same\u00a0character,\u00a0before making clear that it was a different Cable clone each day,\u00a0copying over the memories from the day before. \u00a0The logic of that is that none of them is the real Cable at all, and indeed here\u00a0Spurrier drops the pretence of treating them as a single pseudo-character, by having multiple Cables in operation at once. \u00a0It plays neatly into the\u00a0subplot of his degeneration; not only\u00a0are his moral choices becoming increasingly questionable but his very integrity as a narrative concept is\u00a0starting to fray.<\/p>\n

Just as in\u00a0X-Men Legacy<\/em>, Spurrier\u00a0is not exactly afraid to speak through his characters to spell out the big ideas. \u00a0There are essentially\u00a0three here, though I rather suspect they were intended to coalesce into one. \u00a0First, there’s a general rejection of the dark\u00a0superhero team as a debased version of the genre;\u00a0Forgetmenot spells this one out in issue #13 when he tells us that superheroes are a “dumb dream” but “a dream worth having”, and says that if “you spend any time around here\u2026, all you’ll see is the dream being torn to shreds”.<\/p>\n

Second, there’s a rejection of any sort of “Us vs Them” philosophy (that phrase\u00a0also gets used as the title of the final issue, in case\u00a0anyone still hadn’t picked up on it), presumably in favour of an aspirational\u00a0ethics of inclusivity. \u00a0So Cable’s numerous speeches over the course of the series about putting together a team to protect and promote the interests of the “mutant nation” are, by the end, explicitly held up as wrongheaded and dangerous. \u00a0By looking out for his own group,\u00a0apparently,\u00a0the story sees Cable as contributing to a\u00a0form of competition which is ultimately mutually destructive; true heroes ought to be trying to rise\u00a0above it. \u00a0Fantomex, with his\u00a0determination to re-mould the world to conform to his idea that he’s the best at everything,\u00a0winds up as the\u00a0symbol for this worldview;\u00a0it’s not\u00a0so much his\u00a0self-interest that makes him dangerous, as his unalloyed competitiveness.<\/p>\n

Third, there’s some sort of celebration of the values of the ordinary, common person. \u00a0Hence Forgetmenot as the outsider bringing\u00a0a sane perspective to characters who have got caught up in the rules of their own little micro-genre; hence Hope as the normal\u00a0one watching from the margins in a team full of crazies; and hence the actual Meme getting to do something important in her final moments.<\/p>\n

This is where it gets a bit vague. \u00a0For one\u00a0thing, it’s far from clear what the values of the ordinary, salt-of-the-earth person have to do with a rejection of tribal competitiveness, or indeed with a reassertion of the values of the traditional superhero as against the dark antihero. \u00a0I suppose on one view Spurrier is trying to offer an alternative “anti-hero” model\u00a0but it’s woolly at best. \u00a0And\u00a0while it works to put Forgetmenot and\u00a0MeMe in\u00a0this role – he’s intentionally a character who doesn’t fit as a regular hero, and she’s a deliberate cipher –\u00a0the story also wants to present this realisation as a generational shift from Cable to Hope. \u00a0That requires\u00a0Hope<\/em> to be tacitly\u00a0positioned as every-girl,\u00a0a role for which\u00a0she is not particularly well suited\u00a0given her back story (and the fact that virtually every other writer has played up her exceptionality). \u00a0Spurrier’s solution to this problem is basically to ignore (though not contradict) all her\u00a0inconvenient features, which works to a point, but only to a point.<\/p>\n

There are other glitches here too. \u00a0The sequence at the end of issue #11, with Fantomex turning on the team, is horribly confusing\u00a0as to what\u00a0sets him off. \u00a0The plot mechanics by which Fantomex inadvertently generates a cure to Volga’s infection,\u00a0thus allowing the reset button to\u00a0be hit on Hope and Cable,\u00a0are convoluted and arbitrary. \u00a0And Spurrier’s tendency to speak through his characters is sometimes too obvious –\u00a0“He’s what happens when you live your life in competition instead of community” is a perfectly reasonable summary\u00a0of Fantomex, but not a very good line of dialogue for Marrow.<\/p>\n

And it’s nice to see that the final arc gets\u00a0largely consistent art, with Rock-He Kim doing four of the issues. \u00a0(The other is by\u00a0Legacy<\/em> regular Tan Eng Huat, and\u00a0close enough in style.) \u00a0I wasn’t wildly keen on Kim’s art at the start of this series, but it’s grown on me, and seems a lot less stiff than it did at the outset – possibly because he’s dumped\u00a0the digital painting effects in favour of\u00a0line work which feels much more expressive and lively, and possibly because the slightly muted feel to some of Kim’s work is less of a problem the less interest the book itself has in its action sequences.<\/p>\n

X-Force<\/em> is not going to displace\u00a0X-Men Legacy<\/em> as Spurrier’s magnum opus in the X-books. \u00a0But, as with\u00a0Legacy<\/em>, it’s a book with plenty to say, perhaps even too much, in a line which all too often feels like it’s marking time\u00a0these days. \u00a0It’s inconsistent but it’s\u00a0got ambition and ideas, and it feels like a coherent story\u00a0on its own terms rather than a cog in the line. \u00a0Worth your time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The\u00a0third volume of Si Spurrier’s\u00a0X-Force run is also the last. \u00a0Given the sales on the one hand, and the imminence of\u00a0Secret Wars on the other,\u00a0you have to wonder\u00a0whether Spurrier would have let this run for longer given the choice. \u00a0But it doesn’t feel rushed;\u00a0Spurrier makes his point in this fifteen issue run and draws a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2890","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-x-axis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2890","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2890"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2890\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2957,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2890\/revisions\/2957"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2890"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2890"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2890"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}