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X-FORCE #124
"Edie and Guy Finally Do It"
Highly Recommended (10/10)
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Marvel Comics
Writer: Peter Milligan
Artist: Darwyn Cooke
Colors: Laura Allred
Letters: Mike Allred & Blambot
Editor: Axel Alonso
Price: $2.25 US/$3.50 CAN |
Given that X-Force has been a title built on controversy, satire
and dark humor, I was surprised to find this issue a relatively straightforward
character development issue. While Milligan has certainly been doing a lot of
characterization on these characters, seeing a softer side of U-Go Girl was
quite unexpected and welcome, and this may have been my favorite issue of the
book so far. It doesn't hurt that guest artist Darwyn Cooke was a perfect choice
for this issue, maintaining a visual similarity to Mike Allred but putting his
own spin on the book as well.
From the beginning, Edie
Sawyer has been one of the stars of the book, and one of the most interesting
characters. We've started to see, in recent issues, how she is less the poster
child for the uncaring, party 'til you drop X-Force members she pretends to be
and more a person with vulnerability and weakness that she's trying to hide.
This issue really gets into U-Go Girl and fleshes her out completely, turning
her into one of the most well-realized characters in the book, sexy and flashy
but at the same time very real.
In another case of pop art
imitating life, I get the sense that Edie's story could be that of a hundred
Hollywood starlets, who hide their difficult upbringing and troubled youths
behind smiles and sensuality, and it was interesting to see her new boyfriend,
the aptly- (if formerly) named Mr. Sensitive making her face up to her past.
There's a sweetness and innocence that still lurks behind Edie's worldly ways,
and the revelations about her family, as well as her interaction with that
family, revealed a down-to-earth girl inside the party girl.
Impressively, Darwyn Cooke
manages to capture both worlds of Edie Sawyer and X-Force. The cover, and indeed
many of the images of U-Go Girl, are amazingly sexy, and yet there's an almost
Norman Rockwell charm to the way we see her with her family or in her homestead.
I was particularly taken with the photo of a younger Edie with a gap in her
teeth, or with the splash pages of her teleportation, which show her using her
power for fun and not on combat missions.
Though all of the characters
in X-Force have been given more depth and psychological underpinnings than you
would expect from what is in many ways a satirical book, the Orphan and U-Go
Girl have stood out as the stars of the show, and this issue puts them even more
front and center for some engaging development of them as people and a couple. I
only hope that after all of this development, one of them isn't going to die in
the upcoming story, but at the same time, the unpredictability that comes from
thinking it might be one of them is what keeps me fascinated with the
book.
Email Randy Lander comments about this review, or discuss it on the Fourth Rail message board. |
