Review: Uncanny X-Force #9

Written by Rick Remender
Illustrated by Billy Tan

Magneto uncovers the existence of X-Force and the only way he’ll keep the team’s secret is if they assassinate a mysterious figure from his past! Who is so important that Magneto would employ such methodology? Why can’t he do the deed himself? The answer is buried in a terrible secret from the ashes of World War II. No man can outrun his past forever…

Uncanny X-Force is back, and this time they’ve been uncovered! So much for all that covert stuff Wolverine was doing, huh? And wouldn’t you know it, the man who figured it out just happens to be one of the X-Men’s oldest enemies and the man who ripped the adamantium skeleton from Wolverine’s bones! Given that Rick Remender (a writer not known from shying away from the dark) is penning this, we can only expect great things… right?

Check behind the cut to see if this lives up to expectations.

I don’t think that there is a more perfect fit for a book at Marvel than Rick Remender and the Uncanny X-Force (I’m hyperbolizing). X-Force, featuring the “dark side” of the X-Men with a covert ops hit squad, is one of the top books over at the X-Camp, and it went from an already good book under Yost and Kyle to an “everybody has to buy this regardless of whether you know who Wolverine is” title. It’s just been that good. Rick Remender and his various artists have managed to tell four pretty bad-ass tales throughout 9 issues (including the Point One) that have already outshined the impressive work done by Yost and Kyle when it was just called X-Force and wasn’t quite that uncanny.

So with my obvious bias now out of the way, it’s at this point that I inform you that – all things considered, this issue really was not up to par with the previous stories. In fact, an issue that by all rights should have been fantastic ended up being probably the lowest point of this series yet. Granted, in a series that has been firing on all cylinders for as many issues as this title has that low point isn’t anything to snub your nose at, but it’s still kind of a disappointment.

The issue basically boils down to this: Magneto has a hit that needs to be made, and he reveals that he knows all about X-Force and that he wants them to do it. The inherent issue I have with the issue, though, is that it doesn’t really take the time to be anything more than that. This is supposed to be an emotional issue for obvious reasons, but it never seems to get to that level. All things considered, this issue lacks a lot of substance, and it’s easily comparable to the previous issue – where Psylocke takes on the Shadow King – simply because that one issue jam-packed so much into such little space, and this issue just kind of rushes through itself. There is not a lot of dialogue, and in fact one page simply repeats the same panel with only minor facial changes to Magneto’s expression in order to show how deep he’s thinking about what he wants to ask Wolverine to do. Then when Magneto confronts Wolverine, you’d imagine there would be some kind of confrontation, but no. Wolverine questions how Magneto found them, Magneto shrugs it off and asks for help, Wolverine says no, Magneto almost cries, and Wolverine says yes. Cue assassination. In an issue literally begging for exposition and a scene that is just dying to let Remender extrapolate on the very basis of the secretive nature of the team and why they kill (as Wolverine notes they only go after “threats”, not revenge kills), there’s none.

The biggest complaint I have is when holding this story up to a comic published in 2004. Has everyone here read Ultimate X-Men? Specifically, Ultimate X-Men #41 by Brian Bendis with art by David Finch? If you haven’t, please go read that and then come back to the article. Done? Ok, good. In Ultimate X-Men #41, Wolverine is sent on a secret mission to a small and isolated town in the middle of nowhere where a child’s mutant power activates and he inadvertantly kills his entire town from radiating toxic poison. It’s Wolverine’s job to kill the kid. In a manner of speaking, this is a very similar story to Uncanny  X-Force #9. Wolverine is given the whereabouts of a nazi that tortured Magneto as a child, and Magneto refuses to kill him himself, despite wanting him dead. It’s Wolverine’s job to kill him. The main difference between the two issues (aside from plot, writer, and artist, of course) is that Ultimate X-Men managed to make you care that Wolverine was killing someone he had no connection with. We knew about this kid; we saw the horrors he did accidentally and we saw his regret. Wolverine killing him wasn’t something that he wanted to do, but had to, and we felt for that. With Uncanny, the book assumes we care about Magneto’s past enough to care he was tortured at one point, and the book also assumes we hate nazi’s enough to just want to see another one killed. While these are both actually ostensibly for me, Remender doesn’t pack enough into the issue to truly give the story an emotional resonance.

In the end, we’re left with a lot of questions. Yes, nazis are all bad, but what did this one do? How could it be something so bad that Magneto – a character who did/didn’t commit genocide on New York – refuses to take care of this himself, after sending Nemesis on a fact finding mission that no one can know about? And what could have been so bad that Magneto would not threaten Wolverine, but beg him to do the dirty work? The comic makes a lot of assumptions about our involvement in the story, and while I actually happen to be heavily invested in a character like Magneto, this story just didn’t call upon anything memorable about the character, nor did it effectively enhance on the things it did call upon. It just was. It actually feels like a filler issue between the previous stories and the Dark Angel Saga, which starts in #10. It’s a story I’m highly looking forward to, and an issue like this certainly isn’t going to turn me off to the series. It was the first book I very eagerly read when I got home, though, and it definitely didn’t hold up to expectations that Remender has set for himself.

The issue also takes a down-turn towards the art. In a recent chat we had with Rick Remender for our podcast (which should air next week), Remender stated that a lot of the artists he works with – when he gets to choose – thrill him because he’s a, quote, “art nerd.” If you look at most of his titles, they often feature rotating art teams, and the end products usually speak for themselves artistically. However, Billy Tan in this issue adds an incredibly awkward jump to what had been a great looking title. While the coloring by Dean White is pitch perfect for the series, Tan’s line work leaves a lot to be desired. There are a lot of awkward facial expressions contained on a series of widescreen panels (oh, and don’t forget Magneto’s awkwardly sized helmet, which looks rather obviously different from the helmet on the cover of the book), and you end up looking at a comic with a pattern of 4 panels per page, minus two or three here or there. The widescreen panel is usually good when showing a lot of action sequences, but in this case we’re looking at Magneto sitting and thinking, or Nemesis walking, or Wolverine walking, with maybe a balloon or two for dialogue. It ends up feeling rushed, and we can again look at the previous issue – also by Tan – which just generally had a lot more visually to it. Tan’s lack of panels in this case only serve to work against Remender, who was clearly trying to pace the issue with lots of pauses in order to get that emotion out there, but ultimately neither of their work paid off.

I know already that I’m probably not the majority. Mere minutes after I had sat down with my comics last night, a fellow writer texted me to tell me how awesome this issue was. It’s clear that the emotional resonance did hit him, and he and I share a common background with both comics and our feelings towards nazis. I just wanted more out of an issue that clearly had the opportunity for Remender, who is not one to shy away from heartbreaking emotions in his books (heck, look at Fear Agent) to really work with Magneto’s past in a way as meaningful as Greg Pak did in Magneto: Testament. There just wasn’t much there for me. I’m still a die hard fan of the title, and have absolutely no question in if I’m going to get the next book or not, but this issue certainly did not have an impact on me as a reader – especially when compared to literally any other issue of the series so far.

Final Verdict: 5.0 – Browse