Uncanny X-Force #11 – Review

by Rick Remender (writer), Mark Brooks (penciller & inker), Andrew Currie (inker), Dean White (colorist), and Cory Petit (letterer)

The Story: X-Force heads off to the Age of Apocalypse to acquire the celestial life seed.

The Review:  Somehow, Rick Remender has become the 90s guy and in a totally good way.  Once again, by revisiting the Age of Apocalypse this month, Remender finds himself making a distinctive callback that often deplored time and manages to make it cool again.  Well, almost.  A picture of Scott Summers with longhair still makes the character look ridiculous and full of 90s “attitude,” but I digress.

In venturing to the Age of the Apocalypse, Remender really succeeds in conveying the fact that X-Force are in a different world, a different reality.  Part of it is that unabashed acknowledgement of this being a relic of the 90s, as it makes the comic feel as though a group of 2011 characters ventured into an older comic world.  Beyond the metatextual stuff, however, Brooks and White also illustrate the setting brilliantly, making it look like a grimy, war-torn dystopia out of Ridley Scott’s nightmares.

Remender also shows that he recognizes the benefits of working in an alternate reality, as it allows you to ignore the rules that Marvel continuity usually forces upon you.  Hence, we have X-Force meeting up with a team of mutants largely composed of characters that are deceased in their home reality, characters that had strong ties to them.  While that works well as far as the interpersonal dynamics of the book go, it’s also just really cool for the reader to see these mutants out and about and kicking ass.  Hell, one of them is actually a villain that seems to have taken Wolverine’s hero role in the Age of Apocalypse, which is even more amusing.  And then there’s the last page, which is sort of an “oh no you didn’t” moment where Remender really shows the amount of fun he’s having with a reality where dead suddenly isn’t dead.

The character-work is solid as well.  Dark Beast is just as much of a dick as you’d expect and his dialogue is characterful and enjoyable.  Deadpool also continues to be fun under Remender, staying fun but never over-the-top.  It’s also amusing to see him occupy yet another uncharacteristic role: we’ve seen him as the team’s moral compass and now we’re seeing him as the pessimistic realist.  Deadpool.

Uncanny X-Force #6 – Review

by Rick Remender (writer), Esad Ribic (pencils), John Lucas (inks), Matt Wilson (colors), and Cory Petit (letters)

The Story: Fantomex fights to keep the World safe from superpowered Deathloks, but will X-Force bother to save him?

Review:  In some ways, this latest installment of Uncanny X-Force is a disappointment.  A big part of what made Rick Remender’s title, for me, so special was the team dynamic and the relationships among this small band of five.  Yet, this month, instead of an X-Force book, we get, for the most part, a Fantomex/Deathlok team-up with action scenes all over the place.  That’s well and good, Fantomex is as fun as always and the action scenes are drawn in exciting and intense fashion by Esad Ribic, but it’s not the book at its best.

That being said, amidst this Deathlok story, there are some really cool ideas.  For instance, what would a world look like without superheroes?  According to Remender, pretty damned awesome.  The future these Deathloks come from is one without superpowers and, as such, it’s a utopia.  It’s a really neat move by Remender, as seriously, how many times have we seen a burning, future dystopia due to a lack of heroes?  It’s one of the most well-worn plot points in superhero comics and for Remender to reverse this entirely is not only brilliant, but it also puts X-Force into yet another moral conundrum.  After all, in fighting the Deathloks, they are preventing a lot of deaths, but they’re also possibly stopping utopia from being reached.  And when Remender reveals just who hope is pinned on and who the rebel is in the future, well yeah, that just makes that conundrum all the wonkier.

Interestingly though, the opening scene of the book is probably the strongest, even though it has nothing to do with Fantomex, Deathloks, or the World.  It’s a conversation between Psylocke and Captain Britain that is really well-written and a great piece of introspection for the character, showing Betsy’s increasingly tragic situation regarding her role in X-Force.  The twist at the end of this scene is wonderfully sad, even pathetic, and the whole scene shows Remender’s strengths as a writer.

I think this fantastic opening may also play a role regarding my comparative disappointment with the Fantomex/Deathlok stuff.  All the bluster and action just felt a little shallow compared to this awesomeness.  That being said, Fantomex is pretty darned funny and is as charming as ever, so the comic never drags.