The Matt Signal Advent Calendar 2014 Day 21: X-Force #44

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.
 

A Second Look at a No. 1: X-Force (1991)

1991 was the most transformative year for the X-books since Len Wein and Dave Cockrum created the All-New, All-Different team in 1975. That fall, the books were revamped like a network’s fall TV schedule. Suddenly there were enough X-Men for two titles, X-Factor was now a government-run team made up of brilliantly written C-stringers, and Wolverine and Excalibur … OK, not every book underwent a huge makeover.

But two months before the Blue and Gold teams and Havok’s first gig as team leader, there was X-Force, the book that took a bunch of skinny, gangly-looking New Mutants and turned them into jacked weapon-wielding warriors under the direction of Cable, a paramilitary leader who looked like an AARP rookie on steroids.

Early X-Force followed the proto-Image format of the rockstar artist getting top billing and a writer, in this case Fabian Nicieza, who started working with Liefeld on New Mutants, scripting Liefeld’s plot. The same concept drove Chris Claremont from X-Men. Then the artists themselves – Liefeld, Jim Lee, Todd MacFarlane, et al – left several months later to found Image Comics, leaving Marvel with a major talent drain on its hands and giving rise to the Scott Lobdell era of X-Men.

One of these trading cards was polybagged with each X-Force #1

This X-Force had a different relationship to the X-Men than the X-Forces of the past decade. Whereas the modern X-Force started as a band of killers and trackers within the X-Men, the original team were fugitives hunted by the government, putting space between them and Xavier’s school and even some of their former teammates in the New Mutants.

Gone are the whimsical trips to Asgard and colorful characters like the alien robot who bonds with a boy who can understand any language. Now, everyone looks like they went to the Van Damme/Segal/Lundgren school of acting, where even older gentlemen like Cable and SHIELD Commander G.W. Bridge are Mr. Universe specimens. Domino at one point calls both Cable and Cannonball “beef bags,” a phrase that could not be applied to the coal-miner’s son just a few years prior, when he was being drawn by artists like Bill Sienkiewicz.

Even the introductory tag line sounds like it fell out of an action movie: “Some would call them heroes. Some would call them rebels. They fight for a fading dream in a world of nightmares.” Now, imagine that being read by the late Don LaFontaine, accompanied by “Rated PG-13. Exploding onto a screen near you this fall.”

P.S.: Three guesses what the G.W. in G.W. Bridge stands for, and the first two don’t count.

Picking up from New Mutants #100, Cable’s group starts out small, with his confidante Domino (who is eventually revealed not to be Domino), ex-New Mutants Cannonball and Boom-Boom, former Hellion Warpath (brother of dead X-Man John Proudstar), and new, Liefeld-created characters Shatterstar (warrior from the Mojoverse with the double-bladed sword) and Feral (Morlock).

The book opens with X-Force planning a raid on the Mutant Liberation Front, the group of thugs run by Stryfe, who will go on to become the focus of a major X-Men event in a year’s time. In the meantime, enjoy muddling through an endless string of clues about Cable’s and Stryfe’s pasts.

And the first Sign That This is Not the New Mutants occurs on Page 9, when Shatterstar cuts off MLF member Reaper’s left hand. Reaper essentially reacts like the Black Knight from Monty Python and the Holy Grail, holding his stump and saying, “Yeah, but you won’t kill me.” Feral then snaps Wildside’s jaw on Page 17. Note that the largest acts of violence are being perpetrated a) by the good guys and b) by the newest, Liefeld-created characters. As violent as they are, though, Cable’s rule is clear: “You can kill in self-defense, not for sport!” Because at this point, the Comics Code is still in effect. That said, he sees Stryfe two pages later and says, “You’re dead, end of story,” without Stryfe having attacked.

Meanwhile, in the B plot, former New Mutant and future Avenger Sunspot is training to run his family’s company – and take out assassins, or something – with his adviser Gideon, who clearly cannot be trusted because he is bald except for his long, flowing, green ponytail. The two prep for a hostile takeover by fighting robots, then end up getting taken over hostile-ly themselves by Black Tom Cassidy, leading to a pre-9/11 explosion at the World Trade Center that at the time was a novel idea.

Speaking of Gideon, there are at least three characters in this book – Gideon, Domino and Shatterstar – who are drawn with ponytails worn high on the head. And most of them are dudes. Now, I may have only been 11 at the time, but I do not remember this being a major fashion trend. There was never an episode of Saved by the Bell in which Kelly, Jesse and Lisa all wore high-on-the-head ponytails, and certainly not one in which Mr. Belding did. Thankfully, Liefeld apparently abandoned that fashion choice by the time he started pilfering his X-Force designs to create Youngblood for Image, but the ponytail menace didn’t start and stop with him. A Topless Robot post from 2013 points out that Omega Red, created by Liefeld compeer Jim Lee, and temporary Thor Eric Masterson also sported some sick ponies, though Masterson’s didn’t ride high on the head.

P.P.S.: Yes, that is my Gideon action figure. Maybe one day I’ll collect all the Externals.

Appropos of nothing: Bridge at one point refers to Cable as “the silent explosion.” Come on, guys. A fart joke? You’re better than that.

Dan Grote has been a Matt Signal contributor since 2014 and friends with Matt since there were four Supermen and two Psylockes. His two novels, My Evil Twin and I and Of Robots, God and Government, are available on Amazon.

I've Got the Runs: Scott Lobdell's Uncanny X-Men #286-350

When people write about legendary X-Men storytellers, they usually start with Chris “Pappy” Claremont, who took one of Lee and Kirby’s lesser efforts, stripped out what he had no use for and told 16 years of generally brilliant long-form, interweaving arcs.

Then they talk about Grant Morrison, who brought a dark, leather-jacket wearing, indie sensibility to New X-Men, gave Charles Xavier an evil twin, killed Jean Grey (A-gain) and made us care about a guy who looked like a sickly chicken.

But there’s a third guy, in between those two, one who fell into fortune as Marvel saw a mass exodus of talent in the early 1990s and ended up guiding its then-top franchise through most of the decade. And making Colossus miserable.

The story of how Scott Lobdell took over Uncanny is the stuff of legend. In short: He happened to be walking past editor Bob Harras just as Harras needed somebody to finish some X-scripts in 1992. Scripting turned to full-on writing duties at the tail-end of a revolving-door period in which Claremont, Jim Lee, Whilce Portacio and John Byrne all left the X-books.

What follows is six years of crossovers: 1992’s “X-Cutioner’s Song” (Stryfe attacks Xavier, cripples Apocalypse, kidnaps Cyclops and Jean Grey and claims they’re his parents), 1993’s “Fatal Attractions” (Magneto founds Avalon, convinces Colossus to join the Acolytes during his sister’s funeral), 1994’s “Phalanx Covenant” (introduces Generation X), 1995’s “Age of Apocalypse” (creates an alternate reality ruled by En Sabah Nur), 1996’s “Onslaught” (shunts the Avengers and Fantastic Four into a pocket universe) and 1997’s “Operation: Zero Tolerance” (human-sentinel hybrids imprison mutants).

For his grand finale, Uncanny X-Men #350, in which he passed the torch to Steven Seagle, he wrapped a long-developing story tying Gambit to the massacre of the Morlocks.

In between, he created what was intended to be the next wave of mutant heroes in Generation X, a team of largely brand-new characters with the exception of co-headmasters Banshee and Emma Frost and teammate Jubilee. Where are those kids now? Well, Jubilee’s a vampire teen mom, M recently migrated from Peter David’s X-Factor to Brian Wood’s X-(Wo)Men, Synch and Skin are both dead, Chamber was revealed to be a descendant of Apocalypse, Penance was revealed to be two mutants in a coat and Husk went on to have a creepy romance with first-generation X-Man Angel during Uncanny’s gas-leak year.

Crossovers and forgotten characters aside, Lobdell, like Claremont, was a master of the breather issue, those great standalones in which the X-Men would stop whatever it is they were doing to play softball or have Kitty fight demons on Christmas. And it is with that in mind that we present the 10 best issues from Lobdell’s initial run (he came back in the early 2000s to put Colossus out of his misery and cure the Legacy Virus).

297: The post-X-Cutioner’s Song issue. Jubilee bonds with Professor X by taking him rollerblading, as he had temporarily regained the use of his legs, an event that has happened more frequently through the years to the point where it’s no longer special, but at this point it still had some punch, especially during the scene in which, as Xavier’s lower half weakens once again, Jubilee guides him back to his chair. 

303: Illyana Rasputin dies of the Legacy Virus. It’s real sad.

308: The X-Men play football instead of softball. Jean proposes to Scott, and I’m reminded of every joke Chris Sims ever wrote about Cyclops.

309: Xavier does some hardcore flashbackin’, during which we see a young, pre-Acolytes Amelia Voght nurse Charles back to health after he had been crippled. They apparently dated right up until Charles started collecting X-Men like Pokemon, because she thought his “Gotta catch ’em all” attitude would draw unwanted attention to them.

315: Colossus, who defected to the Acolytes after a rough couple months in which his brother turned out to be both alive and a madman and his sister died, plays defense counsel during a kangaroo-court trial of the Neophyte on charges of aiding the enemy. Voght plays prosecutor. Judge Exodus, in charge on account of Magneto's current vegetable status, is swayed just enough by Colossus' complete lack of legal training that he lets the Neophyte off with mere banishment from Avalon.

318: The post-Phalanx Covenant, pre-Generation X issue, in which we learn Skin is as much of a sad, wrinkled sack as he looks, and Xavier ships the team's spunky, youthful heart down to the freshman squad. Also, Beast rocks out to the Stones.

325: Lobdell shows us how much he loves Claremont by having the X-Men play softball AND recreating the old "Storm fights the leader of the Morlocks in the sewers" gag. Also, Colossus returns to the mansion for an issue before heading over to Excalibur to beat up Pete Wisdom.

336: OK, so no one’s trying to defend "Onslaught," but as a recovering Teenage Cyclops Fan, there's a panel in this issue, after Onslaught has taunted the heroes with the imprisoned Charles Xavier inside him, where all you see is half of Scott's face, fangs bared, and a quiet "Take him." At this point, he's not just leading the X-Men into battle, he's commanding members of the Avengers and the Fantastic Four. Joe Madureira might as well have drawn a panel showing Scott’s testicles grow two sizes like the Grinch’s heart on Christmas Day.

340: Iceman started growing around this time, beyond the traditional "Let me show you your true potential" stories that got written every few months. At this point, he and Cannonball had been working undercover inside Graydon Creed's presidential campaign. Bobby got found out, and in retribution, the Friends of Humanity beat the crap out of his dad, who himself was an FOH-level mutant-hater. This leads to a great Bobby-Bastion confrontation later on in Operation: Zero Tolerance.

341: By this point, Cannonball had been an X-Man for about two years, and Lobdell had done a whole bunch o' nothing with him. The X-Men didn't need a Cyclops Jr., so he ended up playing a hayseed rookie as if he weren't leader pro tem of X-Force when Cable was out of town. In this issue, however, he finally gets to shine by wailing on Gladiator.

Dan Grote is the author of OfRobots, God and Government and My Evil Twin and I. He and Matt have been friends since Bane broke the Bat.