Trade Waiting - X-Force Vol 1, Angels and Demons

Generally, I am willing to give most new comics, or creative reshufflings, at least the benefit of the doubt when I first hear about them. Sure, I don't end up reading most of the comics I hear about, but I am willing to pick them up if I hear good things about them. The post-Messiah Complex X-Force relaunch was not one of those books. From the instant I heard about it, I knew it was going to be just a horrible comic, but I kept hearing good things about the pre-Messiah War issues. Eventually the library got a copy of the first trade, so I decided to check it out. Hit the jump to see what I thought of X-Force Vol 1, Angels and Demons.

X-FORCE Vol 1, ANGELS AND DEMONS

Written by Craig Kyle and Christopher Yost

Art by Clayton Crain

Collects X-Force #1-6

In several ways, X-Force is a continuation of Craig Kyle's and Chris Yost's work on New X-Men, most obviously through the use of the Purifiers as the main villain as well as several character that were apart of that book. Although their run on New X-Men generally received a lot of praise, I didn't like it. While they did some good work, mostly with the characters, it was all undone by the maimings and killings, more maimings and killings, even more maiming and killings and, finally, just way too many f#$%ing maimings and killings. Seriously, it was an utterly depressing affair.

Given the dark tone that X-Force was going to have, I expected more of the same from Kyle and Yost,  which is the main reason why I dreaded reading this trade. The other reason why I expected this book was not going to appeal to me was that it looked like a really, really, really bad comic build on the foundations of the worst things to come out of the 90s. The first, and many subsequent, issue had a bloody variant after all. So, did Team Claws X-TREME!!!, a far more fitting name for the book, meet my expectations as a horrible, horrible idea that should have never seen the light of day? Oh yes, and, shockingly enough, it even surpassed them, becoming one of the worst comics I have read outside of Ultimatum.

In the post-Messiah Complex world of the X-Men, Cyclops decides it's time to get HARDCORE! and thus forms Team Claws X-TREME!!! as a black ops kill squad. Of course, there are several problems with this. First, this seems like something that you could possibly see someone like Emma Frost doing, but, honestly, this is pretty out of character for Cyclops and there is never really any good reason provided for the sudden change. I mean, if all of the shit that the X-Men have been through before, like, say, the massacre of half of their kind in an instant, wasn't enough to convince them to do something like this before, there is no way the events of Messiah Complex would have. It's a very contrived origin for the group that does nothing to help convince me that this is a good idea in any way.

Secondly, for a black ops kill squad, the only thing Team Claws X-TREME!!! can do is, well, shank people, making them pretty useless for this kind of thing. I mean, what are they going to do against an opponent or target who uses long range attacks or can fly, which is entirely possible given the nature of their likely targets.   They've got one flyer on the team, but he wasn't on the initial roster either.  This only helps to re-enforce the idea that this book is solely running on the idea that this team works because it's "cool," logic be damned.

And, speaking of logic, this leads us to the final problem - Wolverine's just wearing a palette swap of his regular costume, bright red X-logo included! Because really, when you form a black ops kill squad, you want people to know who is doing the killing. Such is this book's relation to logic.

Of course, the book could possibly overcome the problems with its concept, but X-Force just turns into a bloody mess, quite literally. The basic story is that the Purifiers infiltrate a S.H.I.E.L.D. base, kill the agents and steal something important, which is what leads Cyclops to put X-Force together (or keeps them together post-Messiah Complex, since they did form their originally).

X-Force eventually tracks down the Purifiers and learn that they have resurrected Bastion, a living Sentinel whose head the Purifiers stole from S.H.I.E.L.D., and find out that Wolfsbane was also captured by the Purifiers. X-Force eventually tracks them down, killing massive amounts of Purifiers along the way, while Bastion and Matthew Risman, leader of the Purifiers, pursue their own agendas and eventually start a civil war among the Purifiers.

That's the basic story of the collection and, to be honest, there is probably a sliver of solid storytelling in there somewhere, but it just turns into a bloody, depressing and unreadable mess. Take Wolfsbane, for instance. Peter David did some solid character work with her in X-Factor, but, here, her sole purpose in the story is to be tortured by the Purifiers and turned into a destroyed character who is probably going to end up spending a lot of time the fetal position, crying herself to sleep like she ends up at the end of this volume. Oh, and she rips off Angel's wings so he can turn into Archangel again.

Well, actually, the Purifiers use his wings create an squadron of Archangels using his blood and the traces of whatever Apocalypse did to turn him into Archangel in the first place. The creation of the Purifier Archangels is apparently what causes Angel to turn back into Archangel . This also causes him to go crazy so he goes to kill a bunch of Purifiers as well and isn't in good shape by the end of the volume. Same thing with X-23, who is already a soulless killing machine at the beginning of the trade, ignoring all of the work that Yost and Kyle did with her in New X-Men.

That's actually the best way to describe this book though - it takes things with potential and turns them into soulless shadows of their former selves. Why the hell would anyone want to read about that and why did Marvel think this was a good idea for a book? I mean, when Wolverine is basically your most up beat character, shouldn't that send off some warning bells that something is, you know, wrong!

Another problem is that the book takes itself way too seriously. It treats everything that's happening as incredibly important and deadly serious, but it only serves to highlight just how bloody depressing the book is. And the massive amounts of violence does nothing but accentuate the problems. This isn't a problem in something like Wolverine: Enemy of the State since there is a layer of absurdity to it, either from the art or writing and whether or not it was intentional or otherwise, which helps to add some levity to that story, but X-Force has no such thing because this is all Very Serious Business, but it just makes the book all that more depressing. I am not against this stuff in general and Eden: It's an Endless World, one of my favorite manga, can often be a violent and depressing affair, but there is other stuff to balance it all out. X-Force doesn't have anything to balance it out. It's just darkness, seriousness, blood and violence just piled on and on and on.

Crain's art doesn't help with any of this either. It's dark and murky and only accentuates all of the problems with the story. The biggest problem though is probably the fact that his characters don't look realistic enough nor cartoonish enough and fall face first into uncanny valley. The fact that the art, probably caused by the colouring, also causes all of the characters to look like plastic only makes things worse. So the fact that you have these odd looking plastic people slicing and dicing each other to pieces only makes the overall package even more unappealing. And then you have the colouring, which mostly consists of black, grey and red, which, again, makes the whole thing very murky and is the final layer of suck in this book. That said, Crain actually does a pretty decent job on colouring with the special effects type stuff.

Verdict - Avoid It. I know I said that this book is only slightly better than Ultimatum, but, honestly, in some ways it is so much worse. At least with Ultimatum there is a 'train wreck, can't look away' aspect of stupidity to the book that prevents it from being the depressing mess that X-Force is.  With X-Force, Kyle and Yost are skilled enough to avoid those mistakes, but that means X-Force has none of the absurdity that made Ultimatum slightly bearable, which isn't very much. So, if you enjoy watching characters turn into soulless bags of flesh while killing as many people as possible in incredibly violent ways, with little to no characterization, then X-Force is the book for you. Otherwise, there are definitely better comics out there for you to read.

Care for a second opinion on X-Force: Angels and Demons?  You can check out Kirk's reviews of the individual issues in this volume by clicking here.

Still interested in X-Force Vol 1: Angels And Demons? Buy it on Amazon.com and help support the Weekly Crisis!

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