It doesn’t really deliver on the premise of being an anniversary issue to celebrate X-Force and instead, gives us the most boring X-Force line-up to date.2010 pse bows Shipping: Free.
CABLE X FORCE SERIES
As an anniversary issue, it lacks any heart and it never feels like it’s actually paying any sort of tribute to the series or its characters.Īt the end of the day, X-Force: Killshot Anniversary Special is less an X-Force book and more of a Cable book. And Killshot doesn’t have that self-awareness, nor does it realize the fun it could have with this premise while delivering an action-packed story. That was part of what made the original X-Force so fun too, seeing this character have to interact with the likes of teens like Boom Boom. Reloaded poked fun at the over-seriousness of a character like Cable and had a lot of fun with the idea that this gruff, super gritty ’90s dude just happened to always be some babysitter for a group of kids.
X-Force: Killshot does the exact opposite of what made Cable: Reloadedwork so well.
Remember when his art looked like this? Yeah, this was probably his best work. The art certainly isn’t the worst thing Rob Liefeld’s ever drawn (no, that might actually be the original X-Force), but it really isn’t his best work either. Several MLF characters have been appearing in background panels or have had small cameo roles in several Krakoa-era books, so why did they suddenly decide to flip the switch and help Stryfe? Are there going to be any repercussions for these characters because they tried to help Stryfe? Who knows? The other thing that’s weird about this issue is that it doesn’t really do much to explain what the MLF’s motivations are. It feels weird for an “anniversary” issue of a series to not feature any of the myriad of characters who appeared in the first series’ 129 issues (like Sunspot, Mirage, Rictor) and to instead so heavily feature this guy. This issue makes more noise for Major X, who no one was looking forward to seeing in an X-Force book, than any actual members of X-Force. Shouldn’t your “anniversary” issue be a tribute to the characters who made the series a mainstay? Why is The Thing here? Who knows? And other characters like Warpath and Cannonball feel so underused they might as well not be there at all. But I can’t help but read this series and wonder why this team isn’t a more recognizable X-Force line-up? Where was Boom Boom, Feral, Siryn - these were characters that were on the team during Liefeld’s first nine issues of the 1991 series, so it feels odd they aren’t here at all. And I won’t lie, Cable assembling a team of characters from different points in the timestream is actually a really cool idea. It’s the same exact layout of characters in the same exact position - the only differentiating factor here is that the characters are occasionally a different version of themselves. The first three pages are pretty much the same layout over and over - it’s visually quite boring. Literally nothing that made the original X-Force book special at all is in this title. And so, X-Force: Killshot #1 feels less like the “30th-anniversary tribute” to the title that we were promised and more like a boring, self-indulgent Cable story that takes itself way too seriously. X-Force: Killshot #1 assumes that the best parts of X-Force are Cable’s adventures - not Cable as a team leader for all these rambunctious kids, but Cable himself.