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X-FORCE #118 (Best of the Week!)
"And Then There Were Six"
Highly Recommended (10/10)
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Marvel Comics
Writer: Peter Milligan
Artist: Mike Allred
Colors: Laura Allred
Letters: Mike Allred & Blambot
Editor: Axel Alonso
Price: $2.25 US/$3.50 CAN |
Very soon, DC will be launching a new incarnation of the Suicide Squad. They're going to be hard-pressed to do it better than Milligan and Allred are doing with X-Force. The threat of death is constant and real, the characters are psychologically unstable... the only component missing is the outlaw status, and in its place we have themes of media and mutant relations, certainly not a bad trade. The Ostrander/Yale Suicide Squad is one of my favorite books, and now that it has struck me how much this version of X-Force has in common with that run,
I like it even more than I did previously.
While the first two issues have been pretty
focused on black comedy and parody of our media-obsessed culture, this one takes
a look at another side of X-Force's operations, a more in-depth examination of
the toll the life takes on the team members. Orphan seems to be our
point-of-view character, as he serves as the narrator for this issue just as he
did the last, and it's intriguing to watch his uncertainty revealed in
narration, even as his actions depict him as a sure and even ruthless leader
figure. In addition, the burgeoning relationship between Orphan and U-Go Girl is
much like the one that we saw between her and Zeitgeist in the first issue.
I'm enjoying the exploration of the rest of
the team as well. Bloke's sexuality, already hinted at in his "origin sequence"
last issue, is out-and-out addressed in this issue in a refreshingly frank
scene, and quick looks at the private lives of Vivisector and Phat show their
more real (and human) personalities through the lives they leave behind to
become part of X-Force.
Allred's artwork continues to serve as the
perfect match to Milligan's dark storytelling. This book is laden with sexual
and violent aspects, and his style of artwork keeps things at a reasonable level
so that the gore and sex doesn't become the star of the show to the detriment of
the story. Seeing relatively straightforward, almost traditional super-heroic
action poses from a team of covert killers is a strange dichotomy that really
works for the book.
Milligan and Allred had already hooked me with the previous two issues, full of laughs and intriguing themes. With the addition of stronger character dynamics, they've made me love the book even more. I can see a day in the near future when X-Force will be one of my top five books.
Email Randy Lander comments about this review. |
