X-Force
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X-Force was a Marvel Comics superhero team, featured in an eponymous monthly series from 1991 until 2002 and a miniseries running from late 2004 to 2005. It was one of many spin-offs of the popular X-Men franchise.
The first X-Force - the group most commonly associated with the name - grew out of the X-Men's 1980s junior team, the New Mutants. Led by the gun-toting cyborg Cable, X-Force was generally more militant and aggressive than the X-Men.
Although sometimes accused of emphasizing flashy art and big muscles and guns over character development, the series was tremendously successful in the early 1990s. Its popularity cooled after Rob Liefeld, the original artist of the series, left. Marvel attempted various reforms from 1995 until 2001, with varying success. Eventually low sales prompted Marvel to dump the original team.
In 2001, Marvel introduced a new, sardonically-toned X-Force, resembling the original only in name. That team was composed of young mutants gathered together and publicized to be media stars by a corporation. The team was renamed X-Statix in 2002 and is now better known by that name. After that was cancelled, Marvel released a six-issue X-Force miniseries plotted and drawn by Rob Liefeld and using many of the original characters.
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The Original X-Force
The Liefeld period
X-Force was concocted by illustrator Rob Liefeld, who started penciling The New Mutants in 1989. The immense popularity of Liefeld’s art allowed him to take over creative control of the book, introducing Cable and several over hard-edged characters in 1990 and 1991. With help from writer Fabian Nicieza, who provided the dialogue for Liefeld’s plots, Liefeld transformed The New Mutants into X-Force in 1991. The line-up of the early team included:
- Cable, originally a mysterious gun-toting anti-hero cyborg, later revealed to possess telepathy and telekinesis, although he continued to rely on firearms
- Domino, a former world-class mercenary who possessed “luck powers,” allowing probability to turn in her favor and who was Cable’s lover
- Cannonball, a Kentuckian who flew at jet speeds and was team leader under Cable
- Siryn, the daughter of the Irish X-Man Banshee who inherited her father’s “sonic scream” and ability to fly
- Sunspot, a Brazilian who absorbed and rechanneled solar energy
- Shatterstar, a warrior from an alien dimension who possessed superb fighting skills and limited energy-projection abilities
- Boom Boom, a rebellious teenager who could produce “plasma bombs”
- Warpath, who, like his brother, the shortly-lived Apache X-Man Thunderbird, possessed super strength and speed
- Rictor, a Mexican who produced powerful shockwaves
- Feral, a cat-like mutant with claws, fur, and enhanced senses
The main opponents of X-Force during its first year were the terrorist Mutant Liberation Front, led by Stryfe, a masked mutant with a mysterious link to Cable. Early issues also featured the wise-cracking mercenary Deadpool, the immortal Externals, and a new version of The Brotherhood of Evil Mutants, the X-Men’s oldest enemy group.
Propelled by the wildly popular and bombastic art of Liefeld, X-Force became one of Marvel’s best-selling comic books immediately after its debut. The series rivaled Amazing Spider-Man and Uncanny X-Men in popularity, particularly with the adolescent demographic. Toy Biz responded by introducing an X-Force action figure line, along with its X-Men line, a rarity for a comic book property not adapted into a television program or film.
Many comic book fans were critical of the series, though, complaining that it relied on big guns, big muscles and big explosions rather than plot, a criticism that would be made of later Liefeld comic books as well. Writer Mark Waid and painter Alex Ross parodied X-Force and other anti-hero groups from the early 1990s in the 1996 DC Comics mini-series Kingdom Come, which portrayed a future where a generation of violent anti-heroes had replaced the familiar DC characters. Their leader Magog bore an intentional resemblance to Shatterstar and Cable.
Liefeld’s tenure on X-Force did not last long; he illustrated the series only through issue #9 and stopped providing its plot after #12. Liefeld became increasingly frustrated that he did not own the characters he created and that his art was being used on a variety of merchandise while he received little royalty pay. Along with six other popular Marvel artists, Liefeld left the company to form Image Comics in 1992.
The mid-1990s: Nicieza and Loeb
X-Force continued with Nicieza taking full writing control and Greg Capullo illustrating. Nicieza, who also wrote X-Men, helped plot the “X-Cutioner’s Song” storyline that overlapped into most X-Books in the fall of 1992. In that story, Stryfe frames Cable for an assassination attempt on the X-Men’s founder Professor X, leading to a clash between the X-Men and X-Force. Meanwhile, Stryfe captured and tormented Cyclops and Jean Grey. At the story’s end, it was revealed that Stryfe and Cable are identical and one is Nathan Summers and the other his clone (Cable would later be revealed to be the actual son of Cyclops). “X-cutioner’s Song” helped jolt Cable to new popularity and his own solo series was launched in 1993.
After "X-Cutioner’s Song," X-Force continued under Nicieza and Capullo (eventually followed by penciller Tony Daniel), but sales dipped and the new creative team of writer Jeph Loeb and illustrator Adam Pollina significantly revised the team in 1995. Loeb brought back elements from The New Mutants, including more subtle and character-driven stories, team uniforms, and housing the team with the X-Men at the X-Mansion in upstate New York. Feral and Rictor left and Cannonball was recruited into the X-Men. Caliban, a super-strong albino mutant who possessed the mind of a child, joined the team. Loeb's stories included revelations about Shattershar’s origin and the transformation of Boomer (formerly Boom Boom) into the more aggressive Meltdown. Fans' responses were generally positive.
The Post-Cable period
In 1997, under writer John Francis Moore, X-Force broke away from Cable and the X-Men. Moore portrayed X-Force as carefree 20-somethings exploring the open road. The roster of that incarnation was Meltdown, Sunspot, Warpath, Siryn and Danielle Moonstar, a former New Mutant who could create apparitions of her opponent’s deepest fears. Many fans felt the series had become directionless and sales dropped.
In late 1998, Moore and new artist Jimmy Cheung established X-Force’s headquarters in San Francisco, returned Cannonball and later Domino to the team, and added Bedlam, a mutant who could disrupt electronic equipment, but that version also failed to revive the series.
In 2000, writer Warren Ellis, who was known for his dark, sarcastic style, was hired to revamp three X-Books, including X-Force. His stint on X-Force, co-written by Ian Edginton and illustrated by Whilce Portacio saw Bedlam, Meltdown, Cannonball and Warpath under the leadership of Pete Wisdom, a British mutant, former intelligence operative, and member of Excalibur, who could turn his fingertips into red-hot blades. Sales were disastrous, prompting drastic changes.
Cancellation and replacement
In early 2001, Marvel's new editor-in-chief Joe Quesada cancelled many X-Books, arguing that so many titles featuring closely-related groups of mutant superheroes was redundant. X-Force was not cancelled, but completely re-imagined with an entirely different group of mutants using the X-Force name. In X-Force #115, Warpath, Bedlam, Meltdown and Cannonball all appeared to die in an explosion, though all have subsequently returned. The next issue, #116, saw the introduction of writer Peter Milligan and artist Mike Allred's new, sardonically-toned X-Force, starring a group of colorfully dressed and emotionally immature young mutants put together and marketed to be media superstars. This team, and the series along with it, were retitled "X-Statix" in late 2002, following X-Force #129, the series' final issue.
For more details on this X-Force/X-Statix, see X-Statix.
Recent Activity
Although all members of the final version of the first X-Force were apparently killed in an explosion, it was later revealed that they survived but disbanded.
In 2001, New X-Men writer Grant Morrison introduced X-Corporation, a global mutant rescue mission. Since then, many former members of X-Force have been seen in various X-Books as X-Corp operatives: Sunspot in Los Angeles, Domino in Beijing, Cannonball, Rictor and Siryn in Paris, and Warpath and Feral in Mumbai. More recently, Cannonball has been an X-Men member and Domino joined the new Six Pack in Cable & Deadpool.
In 2004, Marvel released a new six-issue X-Force mini-series, once again plotted and illustrated by Liefeld, with dialogue by Nicieza, that gathered many of the characters featured in the first X-Force, to the predictable critical panning, yet decent sales. It is currently being prequelled with a 4-issue X-Force: Shatterstar miniseries.
External links
- X-Force v2 #1 (http://www.milehighcomics.com/firstlook/marvel/xforce1/)