X-Force #1 Review

X-FORCE #1
Written by Christopher Yost & Craig Kyle
Art by Clayton Crain

Team Claws was surprisingly strong in this debut issue. I had some hopes with Yost and Kyle at the helm, but I can't lie, my expectations were about as low as the original Liefeld monstrosity of a book.

Thankfully, while not perfect, this is book might actually serve a greater purpose and if you were a New X-Men fan, this is picking up on a lot of Purifier related material, specifically what happened with Nimrod.

First up though, Cyclops is a Skrull. There can be no other explanation that I can think of for the numerous things he's done during and post-Messiah Complex. He formed a temporary kill squad during MC to track down and kill his son, Cable. His son. On no evidence and for no reason other than Cable saved the baby from Sinister and the Purifiers. He's told Wolverine to abandon his teammates and go kill anyone who gets in his way of finding the baby in the final part. Here he reforms his little kill squad again and, yet again, includes Laura, a teenager Logan entrusted to the X-Men to look after and keep from being used as a killing machine again. He even tracks down Proudstar and recruits him, despite knowing how much the death of Caliban affected him, and still sends him off with his personal death wish to kill for him. Add in his complete indifference to Xavier's death or missing body in the recent Uncanny X-Men and I can't think of any other explanation for this completely out of character Cyclops.

Phew. With that mini-rant out of the way, let's get back to business. You all know the story now, Cyclops wants a kill team for proactive solutions. First stop is the Purifiers, who have just attacked a SHIELD installation and procured an unknown object. Seeing as it's the first time they've killed humans, Cyke sees this as a something quite dangerous for mutantkind and wants it stopped now. He sends X-23 in first and has Wolverine and the rest of the team meet up with her. Wolfsbane was told to stay behind (as if that'll happen).

From here, there's a lot of blood and killing as we find out more about the Purifiers' goals. Seems they have the Nimrod still strung up on a cross and the little thing they stole turns out to be Bastion's head. They attach Bastion's head to the Nimrod body and it reforms into the more humanoid Bastion model, who quickly informs the Purifiers that there are mutants near by, leading to more killing.

This all ends with the Purifiers pulling out a captured Wolfsbane with a gun to her head. X-23 calls their bluff and continues killing as the issue ends with a BANG and, I assume, Wolfsbane's death. However, I'll go out on a limb and say either Bastion killed the Purifier or maybe Hepzibah recovered enough to follow them and fired. I can't see them killing off Wolfsbane, what with her being pregnant and all [note: see comments - I misread the opening pages with Siryn confessing and mistaked it for Wolfsbane. She is not pregnant.], but I guess I can't discount it either.

If you've seen previews, the art is pretty good. Everyone is a little too muscular, though. Wolverine has arms bigger than his head in some scenes. I like it on the whole, but it comes off a little too, I'm not sure how to describe it, but plastic-like springs to mind. It's like the characters are posed in each panel and not natural or fluid. Everything has a pin-up feel to it instead of telling a story. So, I like the art and I don't at the same time. It's a pretty ambiguous description, so you'll just have to look at some previews if you haven't already and decide for yourself what you think of it.

Verdict - Check It. It's a solid first issue. I think we'll know for sure whether this is just some cheap 'what if we put 5 Wolverine-like characters in one book!' premise or an actual comic with a decent story and reason for following along every month.

On a personal note, as I read a lot of books through the 90's, so I'm kind of happy to see Bastion return. Zero Tolerance might not be a big deal to most, but I enjoyed the pre- and post-Onlsaught (up until Joseph clone nonsense) era X-Men and, for me, it's awesome seeing Bastion used again.

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