X-Force #21-25
Craig Kyle and Christopher Yost have a great idea; the dead return to plague the living, retaining warped versions of their personalities. Sound familiar? What awful timing, this coming out so close to Blackest Night. Surprisingly enough, both stories work. One key difference is that some of the more strong-willed heroes manage to throw off their villainous ways for sad and poignant moments in the midst of the attack. (I think Banshee does it best.)
The villain of the piece is Selene, Black Queen of the Hellfire Club. She’s a vile person, and surrounding her with mostly ex-heroes is a great move. Her inner circle is Wither from New X-Men, Blink from Generation X, Thunderbird from X-Men, Eli Bard (already a villain) and Senyaka of Magneto’s acolytes. Caliban hangs around for a lot of key scenes too, although he doesn’t get to do a whole lot. That’s a powerful team!
Part of the brilliance of the story is the scope. There are so many great dead X-characters, that quick panels hint at wonderful fights happening at the boundaries of the story. Sure, Pyro gets the most lines of the resurrectees, but Stonewall, Super Sabre, the Hellions, and more all get their moments. And the format of a quick card like “Colossus vs. Stonewall” is a fun move. I don’t see the fight, but I imagine it was pretty great.
This storyline is a great capstone for Yost and Kyle’s X-Force. They’ve been leading up to this since issue one, and everything fits and makes sense. It’s a great new chapter for the X-Men.
Clayton Crain’s art works in certain titles, but man, this thing is impenetrable. I had an extremely hard time telling what was happening. There were too many stringy pieces of tech-organic virus and decaying corpses to make anything out clearly. There were dramatic moments that I think would have resonated better with a more standard art style.
Good
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