{"id":5253,"date":"2020-04-15T21:56:57","date_gmt":"2020-04-15T20:56:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=5253"},"modified":"2020-04-15T21:56:57","modified_gmt":"2020-04-15T20:56:57","slug":"x-force-1-9","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=5253","title":{"rendered":"X-Force #1-9"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Every line-up of X-books needs the grim one. It’s a role that plays a little differently, though, in the context of the Krakoan era. Normally X-Force <\/em>is the book that takes a generally awful world to its somewhat-logical conclusion. But the whole premise of the Krakoan era is that the mutants are on top of the world, living in a secure tropical island utopia. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here, X-Force <\/em>becomes the book that focusses most directly on the idea that things are not necessarily very nice beneath the surface of the Krakoan utopia. It remains the most nineties and the most grim of the current line (or at least, it was until Wolverine <\/em>came along), but that grimness serves a somewhat different function here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

There’s a lot of material sharing space in X-Force<\/em>, not all of it equally successful. Benjamin Percy seems to have some solid long-term storylines going, with the introduction of the anti-mutant group XENO and some well-built teases about who’s actually in charge. Individual characters have some promising arcs too. The Domino\/Colossus angle, in which he disregards her wishes in order to rid her of painful memories – and, in the short term at least, seems to have actually made her life better by doing so – is a promising storyline. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Beast’s hubris is a nicely judged storyline too. It’s not a traditional take on the character, but it’s become a standard reading since the Bendis era, so fair enough. Beast clearly fancies himself as the character who’s five steps ahead of everyone else, and sees everything coming. It’s a role that Black Panther often gets to play in the modern Marvel Universe. But it’s a familiar trope which is cleverly subverted by making Beast not quite<\/em> smart enough to pull it off – and then having him double down and try to cover his tracks when things go wrong.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Having said all that, X-Force <\/em>mainly has a series of individual character arcs running in parallel. Beast isn’t sharing his agenda with anyone else. Wolverine is generally concerned that Krakoa is making people complacent (and seems to be somewhat less on board with the happy clappy stuff than the others, even if he’s playing along with it). Kid Omega welcomes this new mutant nationalist turn. The reasons for including Jean Grey in the cast remain a little obscure. Domino and Colossus intersect, but everyone else in the book is kind of doing their own thing. There’s no particular team dynamic here, which feels like something missing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Joshua Cassara, who draws most of these issues (skipping #6-8), is not an especially 90s artist. His style is a little darker and a little bit grimier, but also rather less graphic than you might expect. Some of the scripts are unavoidably graphic, mind you, but he does some of his best work by implication, like the torture montage on the opening page of issue #3. The slightly overdone colours give the island a lot of greenery while making it feel a little less welcoming than normal – I’m not 100% sure that’s the intended effect, but it works for the book anyway. And that two-page bar scene in issue #9 is packed with detail that rewards a bit of examination. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The oddest feature of the book is the Black Tom arc, in which random villain Black Tom Cassidy finds himself attached to the security systems of Krakoa and is so overwhelmed by the barrage of sensory input that it’s clearly driving him mad. Quite why this C-lister was selected for the role, aside from convenient powers, is unclear; quite why nobody has intervened to help him with his obvious mental health difficulties is also unclear. Hopefully there will be a reason, because otherwise it doesn’t make sense. Cassidy is meant to be an essential component of Krakoan national security, after all. You’d think people would be checking in on him more effectively. But the general idea of Cassidy’s mental downward spiral and loss of identity is being very effectively conveyed, including through Cassara’s rendition of Cassidy manifesting through the parts of the island.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The biggest problem with the book is its tendency to go overboard on the death and violence. I’m not thinking so much of the assassination of Professor X in issue #1. That probably came a little too early in the Krakoan status quo – you’d think it would undermine the mutants’ sense of security much more than it did – but in the long run it served a sensible purpose, as part of the national foundation myth. And it was a major vote of confidence for that plot point to appear in this book rather than in X-Men<\/em>. It belongs<\/em> in this book more than it would in X-Men<\/em>, but that’s not the point; it was a major story point happening in a B-title, which helps to send the message that things in these titles can matter to the bigger picture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

No, I’m thinking more of Domino’s maiming at the hands of XENO, Kid Omega getting decapitated, Logan getting cut in half and continuing to fight, or bar games where people stab each other in the head while other characters stand around and cheer. The bits that are played for comedy feel over the top compared to what’s around them, as if the book had suddenly wandered off into Lobo <\/em>territory; the bits that are played straight feel gratuitously nasty at times. Percy also killed off several X-Force<\/em> characters in his Wolverine <\/em>book, which felt unnecessary.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the reasons for the resurrection gimmick – while it lasts, and it can be removed pretty easily – is to provide an excuse to get all manner of old characters back in circulation. Another reason is to take the threat of death off the table as a routine matter, because the X-Men have stopped playing by the rules of their genre. You can still establish the threat in other ways – X-Men <\/em>does it with the Vault’s time dilation, or by sending characters off Earth where they can at least die without being backed up. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But it also encourages What If…? <\/em>syndrome, which is how a lot of Percy’s stories play. What If…?<\/em>, which largely consisted of alternate endings to old stories, was notorious for routinely descending into bloodbaths, because the series also freed writers from worrying about how to reset the status quo for the next issue. They could kill characters without worrying about the wider implications, and so they did. Incessantly. And that becomes a problem when characters who’ve been around for decades start getting themselves killed every couple of months. It’s too much and it’s time to dial it back.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But there’s a lot of interesting material in X-Force<\/em>. Far more of it works than doesn’t. It’s just that some of the bits that don’t work really <\/em>don’t work. A slightly more consistent tone, a bit more interplay between the characters, that’s all it really need. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Every line-up of X-books needs the grim one. It’s a role that plays a little differently, though, in the context of the Krakoan era. Normally X-Force is the book that takes a generally awful world to its somewhat-logical conclusion. But the whole premise of the Krakoan era is that the mutants are on top of […]<\/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,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5253","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\/5253","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=5253"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5253\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5254,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5253\/revisions\/5254"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5253"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5253"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5253"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}