X-Force #1 Review

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Reviewer: Jesse Baker
Story Title: A Force To be Reckoned With

Written by: Rob Liefeld (story idea) and Fabian Nicieza
Penciled by: Liefeld
Inked by: Liefeld
Colored by: Brad Vancata
Lettered by: Chris Eliopoulos
Editor: Bob Harras
Publisher: Marvel Comics

Ah Rob Liefeld; the Adolf Hitler of comics to some comic fans. One of the most hated individuals in the comic industry, one of the most vile and loathed individual figures to ever pick up the pen and ink and draw a comic book. I could go on and on about the man, ranting and raving about the crimes Robby boy has committted in the last 15 years. But this review is late enough as it is so let’s get to the crux of the matter: I’m going to be reviewing X-Force #1-9, which basically accounts for more or less the entire Rob Liefeld run on the series. Starting from the very beginning with the first issue. So let’s get the farce on the road!

X-Force #1

The story opens with a bunch of people leaving a ship in the middle of no-where in Antartica. The narration says it’s June 4th as the artists formerly known as “The New Mutants” prepare for their first real mission as soldiers in the service of Cable. As Cannonball and “Domino” discuss the EMP device they are using to jam Stryfe’s defenses, the team prepare to storm the headquarters of the Mutant Liberation Front (AKA MLF) and stop them once and for all.

Cut to a two-page shot as X-Force rush at a group of hooded green suit wearing flunkies as narration introduces the members of X-Force. For those who have forgotten (or have blocked it out of their minds):

Cable: Leader of the team and mutant poster boy with a written-on-the-fly backstory, plenty of guns, and an in-your-face attitude that Liefeld would use to create a slew of rip-off characters in Rob’s assorted Image comics when he bailed from Marvel a year after this book was released. At this point Cable’s backstory doesn’t have him as Cyclop’s son Nathan, and his relationship with Stryfe was made even more convoluted in New Mutants #100 with Fabian Nicieza deciding it would be neat if Cable and Stryfe were twins as opposed to Liefeld’s original plan to have Stryfe turn out to be a woman underneath all of that masculine body armor.

Shatterstar: A poor man’s Longshot except he has swords, a frilly white costume complete with the trademark Liefeld shoulder pads/boxing helmet combo, and a really long pony-tail. While many will slag the Shatterstar character for being one-dimensional (especially when written by Liefeld), later writers (Jeph Loeb and Fabian Nicieza) would make Shatterstar somewhat interesting by revealing him to be gay and hooking him up with New Mutant/X-Force member Rictor after Liefeld left the series.

Huh? I read this title like the 90’s crack cocaine it was, and I can’t remember ‘Star ever evidencing gay leanings… I remember the Benjamin Russell/crazy ward/not-exactly-reincarnated stuff, but not this. Weird. Editor K.-

Feral: Speaking of Liefeld stock characters, Liefeld ditched long-time New Mutant Wolfsbane for this sack of cat sh#t character. When you get rid of a character with depth and personality (i.e. Wolfsbane) and replace her with a one-dimensional cardboard cut-out, you have to be on drugs to think it is a good idea. No personality or depth whatsoever, just a nasty bitch who’s only personality trait is that she is a jerk just because. While everyone likes to target Cable as the poster boy for all crappy Liefeld characters, I think Feral is the real poster child for all of Liefeld’s crappy characters. Especially when you consider that “one-dimensional cardboard cut-out” pretty much can be used to describe just about every single one of Liefeld’s Post X-Force characters when Image launched.

Warpath: Formerly Thunderbird II of the Hellions, James Proudstar got his own code-name but his dead brother’s costume. Not much else to say, except that joining X-Force was an actual step-up for the character, given that the rest of the Hellions were killed off to get the new villain group “The Upstarts” over as the new big bad two months after this comic was published.

Cannonball: The only original New Mutant left. Later becomes a Highlander, then not a Highlander when the people who own the Highlander franchise threatened to sue Marvel over the whole plotline.

Boom Boom: The only X-Factor kid left on the team after Louis Simonson moved the X-Factor teen characters to New Mutants. Cannonball’s love interest and the target of Feral’s hate. Tosses explosive energy time bombs and dresses in pink ’cause she’s a girl.

“Domino”: Not really Domino, so much as Deadpool’s shapeshifting girlfriend Copycat. Copycat is pretending to be Domino so she can help her boyfriend bring down the team for her boss, who happens to be Cable’s son Tyler. It’s convoluted and I’ll cover it in later issue reviews. Anyway, “Domino” is Cable’s mysterious albino girlfriend with a doglike black circle around one of her eyes. Later stories reveal she’s a mutant, with generic “good luck” powers a la Longshot that never got used at all.

OK, back to the story: the X-Force team takes out the grunts as Feral offers to cut out Boom Boom’s tongue for Warpath, when Boom Boom complains about the seemingly constant stream of grunts.

Cable tells Feral they’ll talk about cutting out Boom Boom’s tongue later as Shatterstar tells Cable that the MLF has finally arrived to fight the team.

Unfortunately, Shatterstar uses Mojoverse time to tell Cable what direction the MLF are entering the room. Cable yells at Shatterstar to learn Earth time.

The MLF coming out to fight are: Kamikazi (who immeadiately disappears), Wildside, Forearm, and Reaper. Fighting begins as Shatterstar chops off Reaper’s hand! As black blood pours out of Reaper’s wrist, Shatterstar then kicks Reaper in the face while telling him that his teammates don’t kill so he won’t either.

Meanwhile, Warpath hits Forearm in the back as Forearm puts Cable in a bearhug. Liefeld’s patented illogical artwork strikes in this sequence, as Warpath is behind Forearm and then suddenly he’s not only in front of Forearm, but Cable isn’t even being held in Forearm’s four arms, as the flunky is sent flying across the page.

But despite being saved, Cable’s still bitching because the ring-leader of the MLF still hasn’t been nailed yet. Cut to a double-paged, sideways spread that shows the leader of the MLF (and Cable’s spitting image) Stryfe. And look! It’s Thumbelina, the fat chick who’s mutant power is that she can shrink! Stryfe tells her to get his personal teleporter and zentai fetishist Zero to teleport the rest of the team away while he blows up the base. Thumbelina asks about the MLFers currently in combat, but Stryfe is all “F@ck them! We got to save ourselves!”.

Um, I’m pretty sure you’re misusing your quotation marks there Jesse. Not that Liefeld dialogue wasn’t usually crap or anything, but Marvel wouldn’t allow the F-bomb in their mainstream books in the ’90s.

Thumbelina leaves as Stryfe gives the command to nuke the base, which is the foreshadowing “Nathan-0-0-0”.

With ten minutes until the base blows, Feral the psychopathic cat girl attacks Wildside. Wildside is an interesting character in the sense that his power is that he can make himself and others invisible, but all of the writers (including Liefeld) wrote him simply as a 5th rate Sabretooth wannabe. Anyway, the two fight and we get another Liefeld artwork screw up as one panel has Feral wearing a necklace of sharp teeth around her neck, which magically doesn’t appear any other time in the book.

Feral breaks Wildside’s jaw and is about to kill Wildside when Cable reminds her of Cable Rule of Fighting Evil #132: Killing is wrong unless it’s in self-defense, when the person you are wanting to kill is the proverbial runt of the villain group you are fighting, and when you are are Cable. Then and only then is killing acceptable.

As the countdown for ten minutes untill the base explodes starts, everything begins to rumble and Zero the zentai fetishist shows up to teleport Wildside and company away. Suddenly, Stryfe shows up on a nearby landing strip (or as Liefeld draws it, a balcony). Cable fires energy blasts at Stryfe, who ominously says to Zero:

“I think not, Nathan….. Or whatever it is you are calling yourself this time… I think not…”

Cue Zero opening a portal for Stryfe to escape as Cable yells at someone to stab Stryfe’s eyes out. Suddenly there is the shot of Forearm being Cable, being shot by “Domino” non-fatally. Don’t worry though, even though we don’t see Forearm again in the issue, he lives to see another day as Cable teleports the team back to their ship. As the ship goes off, the base explodes and Cannonball complains that it’s pretty lame that the big battle they spent six weeks training for ended with the bad guys getting away. A sentiment Cable agrees with, seeing how Stryfe got away.

Cut to a shot of New York skyline and a caption saying it’s now June 5, 8: 34 AM. Sunspot and Gideon are beating up some robots in a training excercise. Ah Gideon, another worthless Liefeld character. A balding rich guy with a pony-tail and generic “copy other people’s power” power, Gideon only did anything important or worthwhile in Fabian Nicieza’s book “New Warriors”, when Gideon showed up and spent an entire issue torturing the New Warriors using Marvel Boy/Justice’s telekinetic powers. Before leaving the book, Liefeld would make Gideon a Highlander, which got the character killed off years later when the people in charge of the Highlander threatened to sue Marvel for ripping off the franchise.

Sunspot is Gideon’s apprentice, after his dad died and Roberto needed help running his dad’s company. Gideon of course, killed Sunspot’s dad to get Sunspot under his thumb, because he thinks Sunspot is the Highlander. Sunspot complains about the training exercise and tosses in a mocking recitation of Xavier’s usual spiel about the X-Men Danger Room is used to train the X-Men to hone their powers.

Gideon procedes to praise Sunspot’s growth under his mentorship, as they joke about an upcoming hostile takeover meeting planned for 3:00 PM at the World Trade Center. Cue ominous music!!!!!!!!!!!!

Cut to Antartica, as new character Commander George Washington Bridge walks up and investigates the remains of Stryfe’s base. For those blocking out memory of him, GW is a black guy with white hair/goatee and white pupilless eyes. He tells a dude in white winter weather camoflage that catching Cable is beyond SHIELD’s capacity as he screws up and mistakes Stryfe’s left behind security system device for Cable’s. As he leaves with his quest to catch Cable as his new priority, we cut to the Adirondack Mountains. For those with short memory, the Adirondack Mountains was the place where the Mark II Sentinels set up a base in X-Men #57-59. Cable’s base is the same one used by the Sentinels in that story (and countless “What If?” and futuristic storylines as the one place mutants could hide because of the Sentinels being idiots unable to look in their old bases) and Cannonball narrates a brief description of the base and how Boom Boom has quickly gotten tired of the 200 channels the base’s television gets.

Cable is working on the ship as Cannonball asks the big question: Why’s Cable got a hard on to destroy Stryfe? Cable says it all goes back to a strapping young black haired twenty-year old Tyler…..

OK, this a big moment of sorts in terms of how they made up the whole Cable/Stryfe origin as they went along. Cable gives a story about how he took on a young black haired twenty-something known as Tyler. Things were going fine (and possibly romantic, given the way Cable describes him) until one day Tyler and Cable drifted apart. Then one day Tyler resurfaced as part of a mutant terrorist group called the “Mutant Liberation Front” which was led by a guy in armor and a pointy helmet called Stryfe. We get a flashback panel of Stryfe’s head and Forearm, Wildchild, Tyler, Reaper, and Tempo as Cable explains that Tyler died on a mission and that Cable’s been out to avenge his love… I mean his protege’s senseless death by killing Stryfe.

This is NOTHING like the ultimate story about Tyler that we eventually got from Marvel: Hell, Tyler looks NOTHING like the Tyler Rob Liefeld draws here, as Tyler is made to be a blonde haired SON of Cable back when Cable and Stryfe were living in the future. Stryfe kidnapped Tyler and permenantly brainwashed Tyler to be his flunkie. So when Stryfe had Tyler kidnap one of Cable’s soldier underlings and had Tyler attempt the same type of permanant brainwashing technique on her, Cable shot his son and left him for dead.

But Tyler survived and slipped back in time as his father went back in time and annoyed his dad some more before ultimately getting gutted by Wolverine and dying.

Cannonball is naturally shocked at all of this as “Domino” shows up to tell Sam that the rest of the team are ready to work out with him. “Domino” mentions that she’s suprised that Cable finally explained to the team why he hates Stryfe. “Domino” mentions knowing Cable’s got a birthmark on his ass (which I assume she actually saw, given that we soon see in upcoming issues that Cable and “Domino” BOTH have seen the other up close in the nude). Suddenly, wham! Cable starts moving wrenches with his mind and “Domino” (who has a horrible pony-tail going) acts like this is all normal. Cable’s telekinetic powers are discussed as one of many secrets Cable is keeping from the team. “Domino” complains that holding secrets back will piss off the team sooner than later, but Cable vows to beat up his teammates if they get pissy at the way Cable is keeping them in the dark about his background.

Cue ominous music as Gideon and Sunspot arrive for the hostile take-over meeting at the World Trade Center. Long story short, the company Gideon is taking over via a hostile takeover has cut a better deal with Black Tom Cassidy, letting him take over the WTC with his flunkies. Gideon keeps Sunspot from beating Black Tom up as Tom takes a seat at the conference table and puts his feet on the table as he proclaims that everyone is his hostage.

Cut to a helicopter with a rather large chamber inside where GW Bridge is talking to Nick Fury on viewscreen. Nick Fury gives GW Bridge full authority to deal with Cable as GW decides it’s time to call in…. WEAPON X

Casual 1991 Reader: WOLVERINE? FUCK YEAH! HE AND CABLE ARE GOING TO HAVE IT OUT OLD SCHOOL STYLE!

Sorry. It’s not Wolverine. It’s a black haired cyborg, with metal arms and legs who looks like Keanu Reeves. But that’s a review for another day.

BONUS MATERIAL
At the end of the issue we get the “Cable Guide”, basically one page bios of various X-Force characters told from Cable’s POV.

Deadpool: Evil but willing to switch sides in battle for money, which Cable talks about doing, if not for the fact that he can’t stand Deadpool and likes bullying him around.

Feral: Mystery lady who loves to kill, which worries Cable’s ability to control her. Which will come to be a big worry given that we ultimately learn that Feral not only murdered her family and framed her sister for the crime, but will betray the team to join a team that DOES encourage mindless killing.

Shatterstar: “Screw Shatterstar!” Cable says as he makes it clear he has no intention on helping him fight Mojo in the future.

GW Bridge: Once upon a time, Cable used to be a part of Space Patrol Delta with a young man named Bridge Carson….. No, that’s a totally different and much cooler guy name Bridge. Cable is talking about the white haired “GW Bridge” who used to be part of a mercenary pack called “The Wild Pack”, which Cable led. Cable talks about how GW was the token black guy (which we later learn isn’t exactly true as the team had two black guys, a red skinned giant, and Domino the albino wonder) and how GW sold out and became a tool of the United States Government.

Letters Page
People write in to talk about the whole “Stryfe and Cable have the same face” thing. We also get a blurb talking about the 1991 relaunch of the X-Books as the Peter David X-Factor revamp and the launching of adjectiveless X-Men is mentioned. We get a teaser ad in the letter page of the adjectiveless X-Men book with the Blue Strike Team (Cyclops, Wolverine, Beast, Psylocke, and Gambit) featured prominently.