X-Force #2 - Marvel Comics

X-FORCE No. 2, March 2019

It is very clear from the frantic nature of this twenty page periodical’s plot, that Ed Brisson’s plan to “drop the reader right in the middle of it” with his “Sins Of The Past” storyline was certainly delivering the goods to this comic’s 32,420 strong audience in January 2019, courtesy of a screenplay which is simply packed full of pulse-pounding pugilism and gun-play as the “more militaristic force to assist mutants” bravely battle “to stop a mutant genocide” in East Transia. In fact, this title’s opening quarter is so ferociously action-packed that it is arguably easy to see just why Warpath’s savage bloodlust disconcertingly carries James Proudstar to the point where Cannonball has to intervene before the Apache cold-bloodedly guts a hapless member of the Transian Armed Forces with his large hunting knife; “X-Force doesn’t do this. We can’t kill when there are other options. There, I knocked him out for ya.”

However, that doesn’t mean for a moment that the “Marvel exclusive writer” simply relies upon endless sense-shattering shenanigans with which to draw in any perusing bibliophile who just happens to have picked up this particular publication off of the spinner rack. Far from it, as Issue Two of “X-Force” additionally provides plenty of intrigue in the form of President Constantin’s secret working relationship with the heavily augmented Ahab, and the senior soldier’s misplaced belief that his son Gheorghe’s grotesque mutation was as a result of direct contact with other contagiously infected Homo Sapiens Superiors, rather than “something in our DNA [which] could have allowed for such an abomination…” This enthrallingly dangerous, yet seemingly mutually-beneficial association provides plenty of character to the facially-disfigured former commandant and provides the grim-faced pair’s rather prickly exchange with lots of enjoyable menace, especially when Roderick Campbell is angrily accused of spouting dangerous Pro-Mutant propaganda when he explains that the military man’s offspring “was always a mutant.”

Just as intriguingly penned is Shatterstar’s marvellously taut relationship with Kid Cable, which at one point actually results in the two ‘heroes’ exchanging blows with one another at a temporary mutant refugee outpost on the Romanian/Transian border. It’s abundantly clear from Ben Gaveedra’s hateful distrust of the adolescent Nathan Summers that as far as Dazzler’s son is concerned everything the young time-traveller does or says will only infuriate the Prince of Blades further and cement the Mojoworld warrior’s belief that he “will never accept” this version of Ol’ Blue Eye. Such dissent within the already hot-tempered team genuinely looks set to erupt at any moment throughout this comic’s narrative and provides the Canadian author’s story-line with a palpable edginess that is debatably hard to stop reading.

First published on the "Dawn of Comics" website.'

Writer: Ed Brisson, Artist: Dylan Burnett, and Colorist: Jesus Aburtov