X-Force post-game: part two

When we left off (and we only left off because I figured if I kept going, I'd never stop. I still might not), Fantomex had cloned Apocalypse in the world, without the rest of the team knowing. He quickly gets embroiled in a caper (death-caper) with Deathlok units from the future intent on capturing the World and ushering in a new age of evolved robotics. Fantomex barely escapes after a totally rad fight with a bunch of Deathlok versions of heroes from Marvel's present timeline. The original/normal Deathlok shows up (he can feel love, unlike his fellow units) to aid Fantomex and attempt to protect the World. After an unnerving sighting of the X-Force team as Deathlok units, Fantomex is finally aided by the real team who, Deadpool informs him, were very close to not coming for him. This story ends up leading very much into Remender's run on Secret Avengers (winding down as I write this) and asks more questions about whether X-Force (and heroes and general) are going too far in our world.

Little bloodier than our Nightcrawler

Okay, I don't really want to get into every arc for review here (OKAY, I totally do, but I don't want it to be so long and make it feel like anyone who is curious about the series can't go in and read it). I'll speed ahead. Archangel goes bad, like they knew he would, they visit the Age of Apocalypse timeline (one timeline around the same point of its history as Marvel but where Charles Xavier was killed before forming the X-Men, leaving Magneto to do so, and Apocalypse has all but wiped out humanity) and come away with a new teammate in AoA Nightcrawler. This Nightcrawler is almost absurdly interesting, though I think a flaw of having so many irons in the fire in this book and only a few places to then..deposit...that iron...look, this metaphor kind of fell apart somewhere but WHATEVER, a flaw of the series is not being able to really get too much into AoA Nightcrawler. We still see a lot of him, certainly enough to ascertain a bit of his character, and it might just be my adoration of Nightcrawler peeking in here, but there's a great tense atmosphere developed that I think had to be rushed a little to fit everything. In our team's universe, Nightcrawler was a paragon of virtue and, despite that, Wolverine's best friend. In the AoA universe, Wolverine became the next incarnation of Apocalypse and ruined everyone's lives. Deadpool, too, was a traitor to mutants and Nightcrawler had killed him (less a paragon of virtue in that world). ANYWAY, they get into it here and there, but I think I loved the idea so much that anything short of 20 issues dedicated just to that would have been a disappointment to me.

Back to our story, there are some deaths, there is some killing, there is some Otherworld, there is some future travel, there are some secrets revealed (Apocalypse cloning, X-Force is a thing that exists, Apocalypse-child-now-named-Evan is going to be sent to Wolverine's school) and some people leave the team. I didn't rush through this because it's not worthy of talking about because I think I've proven to you by now that I REALLY do believe it's worth talking about; I rushed through it because I don't want to let myself blabber on too long about it. Let me know if you'd like to exchange tweets or emails or tumblrs or blog posts or long and heartfelt discussions about it.

ANYWAY, the final storyline involves Wolverine's son Daken rounding up some of the team's big villains and kidnapping Apocalypse in an attempt to undo the work Fantomex did trying to make sure he was raised right (he had loving, computer-generated parents in the World). When the team tracks them down, they have a decision to make that shares some similarities with the very first storyline. Is Evan too far gone down the path of Apocalypse? Will they have to kill him again?

I'll let you find out the answer on your own. It's too great a book to straight-up ruin it, especially where it's not even two weeks gone.

TOMORROW: The talk I've WANTED to have the last two days about character development in Uncanny X-Force. I kept trying to, then needing to talk about story. That's how you know this book is great, I'm too conflicted between great characters and great story to limit my gushing.