X-Force #4 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
X-FORCE vol 7 #4
“Two Seconds Later”
Writer: Geoffrey Thorne
Artist: Marcus To
Colour artist: Erick Arciniega
Letterer: Joe Caramagna
Editor: Mark Basso
X-FORCE:
Forge is still refusing to remove his telepathy blocking headband, something that gets quite heavily stressed in this issue. As in the previous issue, he’s puzzled that the information he’s getting from the Analog doesn’t seem to match with the actual location of the problem. He concludes that something’s interfering with it but doesn’t seem inclined to depart from his blind faith in it. He still gets fazed by seeing even an alternate reality Storm.
Captain Britain and Askani are getting increasingly impatient with Forge’s secrecy. Betsy uses her Captain Britain role for the first time in the series by letting the team travel through Otherworld in order to reach the Nexus of All Realities in Florida as quickly as possible; normally she can only go to Otherworld and return to where she came from, but the Nexus is a special case because it’s already connected to Otherworld in its own right.
Betsy and Rachel both seem to expect some sort of trouble in Otherworld given “the way you left things with her” – the obvious candidate would be Saturnyne, and there’s a brief shot of the Starlight Citadel in the background.
Sage apparently keeps thinking with the “computer” side of her mind even while unconscious, not that it seems to do any good.
Tank once again makes a weapon appear in his hands out of nowhere, though again it’s no more complex than an object to hit things with. We’re told he has comparable strength to the Thing. He seems to be getting slightly more chatty as the series progresses, although only to the extent of volunteering relevant information.
Surge continues to do generically heroic stuff.
GUEST STAR:
The Man-Thing shows up in his role as guardian of the Nexus of All Realities.
VILLAINS / ANTAGONISTS:
Nuklo continues to wander around causing damage, presumably under the influence of the same person who reverted him to mental infancy (which was noted last issue to have been imposed on him). His routine of splitting into multiple bodies and reuniting comes from his debut in Giant-Size Avengers #1.
Some Mindless Ones from the Dark Dimension are wandering around Hart Home along with the other monsters, but they’re probably just there to recognisable.
The Avengers show up at the end of the issue. Specifically, these appear to be the Avengers from the “Forever Yesterday” timeline in New Warriors #11-13 (1991). Earth-9105, if you were wondering. They’re the enforcers of an Egyptian-themed USA (the United States of Assyria). It’s kind of an inverted racism world, which also had a mutant rebellion going on.
The costumes have changed a bit from the original group, and the line-up is slightly different, but presumably this is indeed the same time. Horus, Storm and Captain Assyria were all in the original story. There was an Iron Man on that team, but he had red and yellow armour, so the armoured guy shown here might be a War Machine. The Black Panther analogue is new – although since he’s wearing white, he might be called something else.
REFERENCES:
Page 4 panel 1: “In the picosecond after she dies, I’m thinking. Of course I am. I’m always thinking.” This line from Sage’s narration also appeared at the start of issue #1; the first sentence was repeated at the start of issue #2. Curiously, it wasn’t in issue #3.
Page 8 panel 2: The Temple of the Dragon’s Breath. This temple first appeared in New Warriors #22-25 and has also showed up in Night Thrasher, Thunderbolts and Ironheart over the years. It hosts the Well of All Things, another nexus of realities – although none of X-Force seem to be aware of that. The “American soldiers” Sage mentions were called the Half-Fulls; they included the New Warriors supporting character Chord, and Night Thrasher’s father Daryl Taylor.
Page 10 panel 3: “[Sacred geometry] attaches mystical meanings to certain geometric shapes and proportions.” I’m not saying Sage just looks this stuff up on Wikipedia, but…
Page 10 panel 5: “I have seen this. It appeared just before Nuklo vanished. As if it transported him from here.”
Page 15 panel 2: “Hart Home, Florida.” The specific location is new, but it was the last of the four locations that Forge saw in his vision in issue #1. (Which means we’ve already reached the end point of that vision.) Its Spanish name is given as “El Cielo Escondido”, meaning “the Hidden Sky”.
Coincidentally, Chord (Night Thrasher’s surrogate father figure, and Silhouette’s biological father) from the Half Fulls, just died recently. His funeral opened the Night Thrasher: Remix limited series.
Is it just me, or does this series have the worst covers?
I’m not entirely sold on this series, but reviving a bunch of early New Warriors stuff is a great way to get me there.
Note that Sage says that Tank is familiar with Systema (a Russian martial art) as well as sumo and muay Thai.
The Temple of the Dragon’s Breath vanished after the New Warriors fought Tai, Silhouette’s grandmother, and an obscure villain called the Left Hand. Night Thrasher shot and seemingly killed Tai and she and the Left Hand fell into the Well of All Things, triggering a chain reaction that caused the Temple to vanish. It would be weird if the Left Hand is behind this but then again,. Perrikus is the main villain in Phoenx’s first arc, so obviously Breevort doesn’t mind using obscure non X-villains for major arcs.
X-Force doesn’t know what happened in the Temple with the New Warriors all those years ago. Interestingly, Firestar probably knows- she was absent from that mission because her boyfriend was being tried for murder but the other New Warriors should have told her what happened- it was the first time Night Thrasher killed,someone. Maybe if the Krakoans asked Firestar for information about the villains she knew about instead of harassing her because she was an Avenger, X-Force would know these things.
The idea seems to be that BOTH the Well and the Nexus are coneencted to Otherworld.
I’m just going to mention that we saw Storm join the Avengers in two alternate reality stories. In the Forever Yesterday reality, the Sphinx took over the world. In another one, Kang caused a nuclear war that wiped out all life in North America. So clearly, Storm joining the Avengers is a good idea. 🙂
Whyyyy is this book sooooo baaaaad???
I kind of like that the writer’s take on Sage seems heavily influenced by Grant Morrison’s way, *way* too literal take on Sage, with proper pauses to “process” and everything,
I don’t know if that’s been the angle in general, since I couldn’t stomach the previous X-Force (note an emerging pattern here…) for a millisecond. But if it’s not overused, it can be amusing, and help produce this weird sense of distance and unreality.
But by the goddess. Genuinely, to those who might be enjoying this: what captures your curiosity? Because I can’t feel *anything* about these characters and this set-up – and I’m really fond of at least Rachel and Forge…
Is Captain Assyria being white meant to be reflection of the Sam Wilson Captain America? Is this inverted racism team going to be three token white dudes in a team of 5?
Maybe it’s just the art, but I took Captain Assyria to be light-brown-skinned, not white. And obviously, we’ve no idea who’s in the “Black Panther” or “Iron Man” suits this time around. But returning from the previous appearance are definitely Storm and Horus.
A bold move, invoking the Assyrian Avengers after so long.
I’m willing to keep giving this book some space. There are enough mysteries that I want to see resolved (who is Tank? Why did Forge hire two telepaths then prevent them from reading his mind? Who is Sage referencing dying at the beginning of each issue?), that I’ll willing to put up with the monster of the week and the bad characterization of Rachel and Betsy.
If the Avengers from that New Warriors story hadn’t appeared, I’d be done with this series. It’s repetitive, and I don’t care enough about the main plot/ mystery to overlook the uninspired writing. I hope Marcus To works on a better comic in the near future, as his art is the best part of the series.
I’m not reading this series, but it seems like “Forge is blindly following an algorithm he built but doesn’t understand, inside a literal black box” seems like a better fit for an X-Statix premise (or X-Factor) than X-Force.
Funny. I am enjoying this X-Force series much more than most. Which is a very low bar, all things considered.
I expect any random X-Force series to be boring, pointless and plotless. The first and the previous one both were, IMO.
This one… is not.
I bet that the “picosecond after she dies” bit will turn out to be Sage narrating the whole first arc as a flashback from the mo,emt of her own dying due to the sudden-yet-inevitable-betrayal that Forge is gonna pull any issue now. (Which in turn will get revealed to be a necessary step in Preventing The Apocalypse(tm).)
I hope I’m wrong, because that structure feels really hackneyed to me.