X-Force by Spurrier vol. 2: Hide/Fear
Only one volume left in Si Spurrier’s run on this incarnation of “X-Force.” Sadly, sales on this title managed to crater even faster than the previous run so it would appear that there really isn’t room in the market for an irreverent, quirky take on the most militant and proactive of mutant teams. I’m disappointed by this news. Spurrier’s run — much like his work on “X-Men: Legacy” — stands apart from the other X-titles and makes for a refreshingly different read. Assuming, you know, its quirkiness and overall strangeness are to your liking. Oh! Also if you’re interested in reading one of the most blackly comic issues in recent Marvel history.
We get off to a measured start with a stock-taking issue that has the team recuperating on the abandoned S.H.I.E.L.D. helicarrier they’re using as a base. Here, Psylocke and Cable try to find some common ground and reconcile the fact that the former has been cloning himself each day to stave off his impending death. This is going on while his adopted daughter Hope — currently managing a digital existence — strikes up her own romance with the increasingly unstable Fantomex. Then we have Dr. Nemesis breaking some bad news about Marrow’s synthesized powers to her off base as they wind up bonding in their own way. It involves coffee and biscotti.
The structure of the issue allows us to get further into the heads of this team and see how warped and/or damaged they are. Everyone may be very good at killing the bad guys, but they’re forgetting how to act like individuals who are capable of having meaningful interactions with other people. Cable can’t react to Psylocke’s advances. His daughter is having a psychic affair. Dr. Nemesis and Marrow recognize kindred spirits in each other, and god help anyone who gets in their way. As for Fantomex… we’ll come back to him. It’s a fascinatingly chaotic setup Spurrier has forged here, and he doesn’t forget to give his team a proper villain to focus on. So things haven’t completely departed the superhero genre here yet.
Then we come to the next two issues which suffer because the writer spends most of the first one leading his audience around by the nose before revealing what the game is in the second one. A British special-forces team has infiltrated Wajiristan on the hunt for some superpowered terrorists with a reporter embedded along with them for reasons which will be revealed later. Seeing them harassed by the locals isn’t all that impressive until their secret is revealed and MI-13 — Peter Wisdom, Faiza “Excalibur” Hussain, and Meggan “Gloriana” Braddock — show up to take action. X-Force does too, and the two groups wind up clashing in absurdly amusing fashion.
Dr. Nemesis pleads for “di-a-logue” before the fighting starts. Fantomex calls one of the troopers Papa Smurf before knocking him down. Pete Wisdom slashes off Cable’s mechanical arm, and the grizzled soldier picks it right back up and hits him with it. Dr. Nemesis tries to talk sensibly with Excalibur, and then shoots her with a tranquilizer when he finds out she prefers tea over coffee. Eventually the fighting stops and both groups work toward defeating the bad guys, with Wisdom offering up what he knows about the main plot in the end. The first half of the second issue is the best part of the mini-arc, but there’s still enough creative uses of superpowers and caustic witticisms to keep you entertained in the back half.
Afterwards, the book’s momentum comes crashing to a halt because the next issue isn’t from this run of “X-Force.” It’s “X-Men: Legacy #300,” a one-off written by Spurrier, Mike Carey, and Christos Gage that focuses on ForgetMeNot, a mutant with the power to be instantly forgotten the moment he leaves your line of sight. Even if he is an X-Man and has taken part in many missions over the years, nobody knows who he is. However, he gets his chance to make a difference by helping a disfigured woman who has found herself on the wrong end of the mansion’s security system.
Spurrier handles the framing sequences set in the present day. Carey shows us what the character was up to during the “Age of X.” Gage gives us a story about the mutant from some point in his run. Of these three threads, Spurrier’s is the most engaging as he gets to really develop the character and managed to make me sympathetic to the tragedy of ForgetMeNot’s existence. Carey and Gage’s contributions mainly come off as afterthoughts, though I did like how Gage spun the “superhero sees his powers as a curse and wants to give them up” trope in an interesting direction here.
It’s not bad, but it also begs the question of what it’s doing in this collection? If you guessed that it’s because ForgetMeNot shows up in the final issue, you still get no points because it should’ve been obvious. After springing a teleportation trap on him in the bathroom (which we’re not shown, thankfully), X-Force brings ForgetMeNot to their base to help him with their current problem. We find this out in the same way that the team does — through a recording from Dr. Nemesis, because nobody can remember why they brought him here in the first place. All they know is that he’s important and they must catch him.
What follows is some beautifully orchestrated black comedy that plays off the chaotic and self-destructive natures of every team member. All ForgetMeNot wants is to get off this crashed helicarrier and go home. Instead, he winds up coming face-to-face with the team in a variety of increasingly uncomfortable situations The tone is pitched just right for things to be funny rather than horrifying thanks to Spurrier’s wit and the art from his “Legacy” collaborator Tan Eng Huat. I mean, how are you supposed to respond when Fantomex threatens to kill a man with a croissant?
Ah yes, Fantomex. Originally created by Grant Morrison as a sci-fi take on a character from French fiction, he’s played key roles in the previous two volumes of “X-Force” as his curiosity about whether there was hope for a killer like him and romantic involvement with Psylocke drove some very interesting stories. Spurrier’s use of the character here isn’t really in line with those, as he appears to have picked up on a bit from Morrison’s run that indicated the character wasn’t capable of believing in anything greater than himself. Now confronted with people who are more skilled than he is, the faux-French mutant is starting to come unraveled. Using that idea as a jumping off point, Spurrier has done a good job with depicting the disintegration of the character’s mental state over these two volumes. I won’t go into detail about his actions here, but it would seem that his next vocation will be “supervillain.”
As the above should indicate, there’s plenty of interesting stuff here. There are also problems with the momentum of the stories here, and while I liked the issue with Huat’s art the majority of this volume is from Rock He-Kim. His art actually looks like it was from human hands this time, but there’s a stiffness to it that keeps me from fully investing in the action. Even so, this is one for people who like their X-books weird. It may not be successful at everything it does, but this version of “X-Force” has been enjoyably eccentric so far. I encourage you to enjoy it yourself while it lasts.