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Review: Uncanny X-Force #10

By | May 20th, 2011
Posted in Reviews | % Comments

Written by Rick Remender
Illustrated by Billy Tan and Rich Elson

A reporter prepares to release photographs of X-Force killing military personnel leaving the squad with one of the hardest choice of their lives, how to deal with her? Nothing can prepare you for the ending, or the ramifications as X-Force are forced to unite with a former servant of Apocalypse! Ramping up to one of the biggest chapters in X-history, and yes, you’ve heard it before– but nothing will ever be the same.

The last time I reviewed Uncanny X-Force, I wasn’t especially favorable to the one-and-done story of Magneto’s past. While I generally think Uncanny X-Force is one of Marvel’s best titles, let alone one of the best things Rick Remender has done for the company, that issue majorly missed the mark. However, one less-than-great issue certainly isn’t going to stop me from reading one of my favorite titles – especially now that we’ve gotten to one of the first big “events” of the story: The Dark Angel Saga. It has been teased for quite some time, and now Remender is putting on the big show we’ve all been waiting for.

Hop after the cut for some thoughts on the latest issue.

Since the “return” of Archangel (if you can call it that), many people have felt that the return was somewhat lackluster. While it was great to bring the darker half of Warren Worthington back into action for bloody action in the pages of Yost and Kyle’s X-Force run, the tremendous implications of what that means was one that was never really addressed. Archangel has been a tool for Apocalypse for the longest time, and while Warren certainly did his best to also kill Apocalypse, the two have always been linked due to the nature of Archangel’s creation.

Then we have Uncanny X-Force from Rick Remender and a cavaclade of reknowned artists. Right off the bat, Rick put Apocalypse back into the picture, with his presence always lurking in the background through the pages of the book. In the most recent issues, we’ve seen Warren descend further into madness, only to be helped by his lover Psylocke to try and keep in check. But with Uncanny #8, we saw the straw that finally broke the camel’s back, and now Warren isn’t feeling much like a Worthington anymore – which leads us to now, #10, and the prelude to the Dark Angel Saga.

The plot of this week’s issue is that the brutal attack from #8 that drove Warren fully into madness was filmed and leaked to a member of the press, who doesn’t entirely know what to do with the information. Unfortunately, the information gets back to Archangel, who decides to take care of the leak on his own – and that means nothing good for anyone. So now, while the X-Force have always been on somewhat unsteady ground, the team must finally fight one of their own while still trying to keep the nature of their team and mission covert. Undoubtedly not an easy task for a group of X-Assassins.

While the last issue was trying to be an emotional look at the nature of this hit squad, this issue returns what made the title so entertaining in the first place. Uncanny X-Force began as a dark superhero romp of sorts where trust was uneasy and the missions were always dire, and that’s where the book succeeds in content. With Archangel fully on the loose, it’s up to Wolverine to put him down literally for the fate of the future in a rather great sequence of events. There’s always the issue of how did Wolverine track Archangel so quickly, but there’s no denying the rather cinematic quality of the entire ordeal, which is probably one of the finer action sequences the book has had – and this book has had quite a fair amount of action in it.

What really works about the storyline is that this legitimately feels like what we’d been waiting to see, even if we didn’t fully realize it. Remender certainly put a shocking stamp on the book with the first three-issue arc, but at the time we read the initial Apocalypse storyline I doubt anyone really assumed that Remender would be working with such a specific string of events in order to keep Apocalypse relevant. Yes, we’ve seen Fantomex hiding a child Apocalypse in the World, but thanks to a nice appearance from a “new addition” to the team, we are given a legitimately reasonable segue to the Age Of Apocalypse. I don’t think I’m the only one who thought it was quite odd to hear that this more than a decade old storyline was going to be rehashed (again), but Remender’s inner comicbook logic lines up in a way that makes traveling across universe legitimately seem like the only plausible option. Of course they have to go to the Age of Apocalypse, because how else do you stop a being like Apocalypse in a world where Apocalypse is dead? Name dropping the Celestial’s creation of Apocalypse just goes to further show that Remender has a clear grasp on what he’s doing, and he’s not just playing with the Apocalypse mythos to play with it; he’s using it all because he has a damn good story to tell.

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The only real drawback to the issue is the artwork. Billy Tan is in charge of the issue with help from Rich Elson, but all the major complaints I had about Tan’s work in the previous issue are still relevant with this. A lot of the character work is inconsistent as Tan tries to make the characters look his way, and it takes away from the visual element of the comic book, especially in regards to Wolverine’s costume. There are times where the visuals really do work, with Paul Mounts colors adding a wonderful scenery to the battle between Wolverine and Archangel against a blood red sky. It’s just the inconsistency of the book that really knocks it down a few pegs – not to mention that Elson and Tan’s styles don’t really mesh together in a rather noticable way right from the opening of the comic. Elson draws big and muscular characters, whereas Tan draws much slimmer and toned characters – they don’t mesh, even thematically given the scenes each artist draws.

Uncanny X-Force #10 is still a strong start to the story, all art aside. Remender has clearly been building up to this for some time, and I can assure you that with whatever happens next in one of Marvel’s few completely unpredictable series, it will be made that much better due to the build-up Remender has given us for the past 10 issues. The pay-off has already begun; now we just get to see what Remender has planned for what’s next.

Final Verdict: 8.0 – Buy


Matthew Meylikhov

Once upon a time, Matthew Meylikhov became the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Multiversity Comics, where he was known for his beard and fondness for cats. Then he became only one of those things. Now, if you listen really carefully at night, you may still hear from whispers on the wind a faint voice saying, "X-Men Origins: Wolverine is not as bad as everyone says it issss."

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