X-Force #44, July 1995
One of the most homaged comics covers is
X-Men #138, the issue in which Cyclops leaves the team after the events of the
Dark Phoenix Saga. Cyclops stands in the foreground, bindlestick in hand, while
the rest of the team sits in the background, looking sad. Adam Pollina
re-created the cover in X-Force #44, an issue that saw Cannonball get promoted
to the X-Men.
Issue 44 marked a new direction for X-Force. The Age of
Apocalypse had just ended, and a new creative team took over the book in
Pollina and writer Jeph Loeb. The team moved back into the X-mansion after
their last base – a former hideout for Arcade – self-destructed, and most of
the team got new purple-and-yellow uniforms, cementing themselves as an
extension of the X-Men brand.
Cannonball’s invitation to the majors was a first at the
time. None of the New Mutants – X-Force’s forebears – had ever joined the
varsity X-squad, despite expressly being recruited as the next generation of
X-Men. Less than a year before, Jubilee, the youngest X-man, was technically
demoted, shipped off to Emma Frost’s Massachusetts Academy with the rest of
Generation X.
Sadly, one team’s Cyclops is another team’s Maggot. Save for
a pretty sweet fight with Gladiator of the Shi’ar Imperial Guard, Cannonball
got lost among the X-Men, a team that was already plenty big, and eventually
left to rejoin his former playmates. He has since bounced back to the X-Men, to
a reformed New Mutants team and now is an Avenger, arguably an even bigger team
to get lost in.
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