Uncanny X-Force post-game: part one

For some reason or another, there were only two new Marvel comics released this week. I've reviewed both of them already (Amazing Spider-Man 700 here and Avenging Spider-Man 15.1 here) so, according to the rules I'm making up, I get to review other stuff that I want to talk about. Most of the time, that's Rick Remender's run on Uncanny X-Force or, as I call it, the best Marvel book for the last two years. That's not said to slight the other books at Marvel; I've liked quite a few on their own merits and it was Ed Brubaker's last year as a regular Marvel writer so I'd normally have probably picked one of his books (which are all good, Winter Soldier exceptionally so) as my favorite or as the best book of the last couple years. Instead, my choice is X-Force. That's how much I loved this book and that's why I'm going to have to spend a few days talking about it with you, the internet.

The starting team originally consisted of the winged Archangel, ninja telepath Psylocke, short and stabby Wolverine, oft-mismanaged schizophrenic Deadpool, and the mysterious little-known Fantomex. It's a team you wouldn't think to put together yet still has a fairly deep history, especially the first three listed (the last two listed particularly have a history with Wolverine). It's also a team set to do what's "necessary" for the continued existence of the mutant race. That definition of "necessary" becomes a quiet running theme throughout the book until it begins to come to a head maybe three quarters of the way through or so. Still, the team looks less like the similarly purposed Secret Avengers (who look a little cobbled together and have fewer heroes willing to, perhaps, do what's "necessary," though they might have different definitions of what that exactly means) and more like a horribly dysfunctional family. It's a great feel, not just because that's how you want a team to feel, but because that's such a staple of the X-Men. The Avengers may become like a family, but they're really just there to team up when they need to and to hang out at Tony Stark's house. The X-Men are, and always have been, bonded by genes. Even the wild cards Deadpool and Fantomex feel more at home here than anywhere else they might have been put.

The book asks a lot of philosophical questions, some of which are certainly staples of the sort of science fiction with which comic fans are bound to be familiar. The biggest question is the nature vs. nurture debate, highlighted right from the start when the team goes to assassinate the newest incarnation of Apocalypse, the mutant who eventually rains destruction down on homo sapiens in every timeline he shows up in. Archangel and Psylocke have the most personal axe to grind (just how you like your ground axes: personal), as Archangel has been tabbed as a successor to Apocalypse, making his life, and the life of his lover and psychic trainer Psylocke, far more complicated. When they finally track down the new Apocalypse, they're bewildered to find that he's just a child. A child who is already being brainwashed, for sure, but still a child. They debate whether they can kill a child for what he might (or will, if the brainwashing is already complete) become or if they can kill a child at all. As they finally decide to take Apocalypse in and try to nurture him as best they can, Fantomex shoots the child square in the head.

Seen above: character building

I know, I'm describing too much for a review of the entire series since I haven't even begun reviewing it yet, but this is all IMPORTANT. Look, if you've already read the series, just skim through it. Or don't. Maybe you'll like what I'm saying? I'm not sure, I haven't really written it yet.

I'm not usually for killing children. In fact, I'm pretty squarely against killing children. I'm very interested in the nature-nurture debate BUT that isn't really justification for killing children. If you take one thing away from this review, make sure it's this: Tim Nicastro doesn't approve of killing children.

THAT SAID, in this instance, it is the most incredible story-telling technique. On top of the extremely fast character building for the shady Fantomex, it raises questions about what the team is doing, about the breaking points of these would-be killers, about how morale works on a team of assassins, about each character in turn, and about what we can expect from this series (Fantomex shot Apocalypse in issue four). Psylocke, the one most in favor of not killing Apocalypse, is increasingly unable to cope with the murder. Archangel is pointedly quiet, Wolverine is more aggressive than normal (though he claims to understand and be grateful for what Fantomex did), and Deadpool, and this is the best one, becomes the moral center of the team, trying to get everyone to talk about it to try to move forward. Deadpool, presumed to be probably the least moral coming in, walks away from this series with a complex but very real sort of moral center. When Deadpool storms out of the meeting he tried to call saying "but I never killed a kid," Wolverine tells Archangel, the team's bankroller, to cut him loose. Archangel tells him that Deadpool has never cashed a single one of his checks, despite working for him for the last year.

Fantomex, absent during this meeting, is reacting somewhat differently. He's gone into "the World," an artificially created world with a self-contained and accelerated time-stream which stores the Weapon Plus program that Fantomex has shrunk down (thanks to a convenient shrinking gun he's stolen in the past) and keeps nearby. Inside a lab only he can access, he has cloned Apocalypse from blood he took off the body of the child, unbeknownst to the rest of the team.

WILL THIS CAUSE SOME TROUBLES? MOST PROBABLY. CHECK BACK LATER FOR MORE.