Cable and X-Force 5, Daredevil: End of Days 6

Cable and X-Force 5
Hopeless (w) and Larocca (a) and D'Armata (c)

Like Iron Man yesterday, this book was fun. It was intentionally a little removed from the way it's been the first four issues, focusing on the characters more than on any plot. There was still plot but it took the back-burner to show how these guys interact with one another and how they hide from the law. After the Eat-More catastrophe, Cable and his X-Force are laying low in Mexico while some steam hopefully blows off. Domino forces Colossus to relax by drinking and other things (EXPLICIT things) while Forge and Dr. Nemesis compete in video games and a cage fight between a giant robot and a scorpion-beast (SPOILERS: this issue is worth reading). Cable goes to Hope's home to explain why she can't come with them and why he's kept her out of all of this. It essentially boils down to the idea that his whole team is already pretty far gone in all this, where Hope is still seen as a hero in the wake of AvX and that will buy her goodwill that he wants her to be able to use how she wants. He wants her to try to live a normal life.

There are a lot of intricate character examinations happening around here, including Cable and Hope's relationship and the character Hopeless is establishing from Colossus. I think that's one of his biggest challenges but clearly one of his bigger strengths right now. Colossus is a great Marvel character who has some depth to him and has been through absolute hell over the last few years (in Fear Itself, he assumed the powers and anger of Juggernaut before, in AvX, taking the Phoenix Force). He's done horrible things and he's tried to maintain his very good guy inner being, but it's been extremely hard. Being Juggernaut hardened him and now, after AvX, he's cracking. It's not an easy place to come in and write the character from. He takes on a massive amount of guilt in this arc after watching men he befriended while undercover in the Eat-More factory die, on top of everything else he has going on. The issue ends with him handing himself in. We've got a lot of interesting stuff coming from this series and, if I had to choose right now, this is my favorite X-Force book out at present (granted, it has five issues and Humphries' Uncanny X-Force has two).

Daredevil: End of Days 6
Bendis and Mack (w) and Janson, Sienkiewicz, Mack and Maleev (a) and Hollingsworth (c)

Things are happening frustratingly in this book, which I suppose could be a choice that the writers have made to show how frustrating things are for Ben Urich right now. I suppose all the slow reveals and the building questions with no answers and the pile of corpses that Urich keeps running into could all just be, rather than to set plot, to set tone. So we all know what it's like feeling frustrated by a case that never seems to end and never seems to resolve. Maybe this case won't resolve. Maybe that's the pull of it all. Maybe Urich will never figure out who the new Daredevil is and why everyone connected to Matt or to Daredevil ends up dead or missing. Maybe that's the end game and why we haven't seen any resolutions up to this point. Maybe this series shouldn't have been eight issues for that.

I'm going to start by saying I find the art in this series phenomal. I've touched on that a bit here and there. It feels like a melding of all of Daredevil's past art (which is certainly something they're going for by bringing in big name DD artists who have had some hand in his development over the years). More than that, it feels like the art of Daredevil's distant past melded with the more recent, grittier past. We also, in this issue, get two full-page David Mack spreads, which are incredible. David Mack's artwork is one of the reasons I became so cemented into comics. I was already pretty well in when I read his two Daredevil arcs about Echo and I came out saying "good god, this is art. This whole form is truly art." It was pretentious and I know that but whatever. It was amazing and awe-inspiring. So I will not speak ill of any of his art ever. It's all phenomenal and the two pages in this book are no different. The art overall is pretty great.

It's the story and the writing that's bugging me. Again we've gone through another issue where just about nothing has happened. I get that writing is a process and that telling a story is more than just action and answering questions right when they're asked. However, you have eight issues and we're through six and we've answered approximately zero questions. I do appreciate that the word "Mapone" didn't come up in this issue, forcing us to keep asking what that's all about. But the back-and-forth dialogue feels out of place and it appears in every scene with any two characters. And again, no questions answered. As we close this series down, we must be getting somewhere. I guess we'll find out.