Cable & X-Force #15-17
A three-parter of which it can truly be said, “That was three issues of Cable & X-Force.”
This series completed its initial storyline in issue #14, with Hope having joined the team, and the source of Cable’s visions having been explained. Now, we get something that’s actually quite rare in modern superhero comics – a routine story in which the heroes simply have an adventure within their status quo. It’s not something that fits very well with the fashion for making every story long enough to justify a collected edition.
But Cable & X-Force is in an awkward position, because after this it’s doing a two-month crossover with Uncanny X-Force, and then both books are being cancelled. They’re being replaced by a title called simply X-Force, but to judge from the solicitations, only Cable is carrying over to that book. So, there’s no opportunity to start anything big, and a few months to kill before Uncanny X-Force is ready to join in with the crossover. That, I suspect, is why we find ourselves here.
I observe in passing in issue #16 has a cover that bears no relation whatsoever to the content, which makes me wonder quite when the relaunch decision was made.
At any rate, the status quo of this book is that Cable is having precognitive visions that let him see disasters coming, and he dispatches his team to deal with them. There are essentially three stories here, but rather than give them an issue each, Dennis Hopeless has mixed them in together. So Colossus and Domino get to sort out a problem with some Sentinels, Cable and Hope deal with the Reavers, and back at base, everyone else has to deal with the Adversary. He was last seen back when Forge was in X-Factor, I believe, and has been trapped in Forge’s mind ever since. He escapes and causes chaos, the idea being that this also cuts off the back-up that the other two missions were expecting.
It’s a nice enough way of linking the three stories together, and it makes sense to use the Adversary, given that he’s the closest thing Forge has to an arch enemy. None of these stories is of any great importance, though, and the closest there is to a broader plot development is a confirmation that Cable no longer has telepathy or telekinesis. But since he hardly them anyway, preferring to just shoot stuff, it’s not an earth shattering development.
Artist Gerardo Sandoval is a new name to me. He’s done a bit of work before for Marvel and Top Cow, and his art’s dynamic enough in an early Jeff Matsuda kind of way. He does a good demonic Adversary too. But the script here calls for some difficult stuff, and it’s clear that he’s struggling at points. A giant Sentinel head sliding down a mountainside ahead of an avalanche and careering towards a town below is intelligible, but not really as dramatic as it’s meant to be – though many artists would have found this one tricky, I suspect.
More dubious is a scene where Cable and Hope are supposed to be pursued by a monstrous creature formed by fusing loads of low-ranking Reaver cyborgs into a giant ball. Here, Sandoval more or less throws in the towel and presents a grey blur, with characters moving rather randomly in space. It’s a badly botched scene, even allowing for the fact that it wasn’t easy.
There are a few nice ideas along the way – I like the premise that, having possessed Forge’s body, the Adversary is still trapped in X-Force’s headquarters, because it’s made of steel (which is basically iron), and so he can’t magic his way out. There’s something in that, both as a plot twist and as a set-up to have the Adversary try to lure everyone into making a hole in the wall for him. But it’s not really followed through as well as it should be; his reality-warping within the base is impressive enough to beg the question of why he doesn’t just magic up a bazooka and use that to blast a way out. (Maybe the idea is that you can’t work around the rules of magic like that, but if so, somebody needed to ask the question.)
It’s an okay few issues; the characters have strong voices, the concepts are reasonable, and it’s nice enough to see the heroes just going about their business for a few issues. But basically it’s routine Cable & X-Force, no more or less.
Wow. Marvel gambled with two simultaneous X-force launches and they both fell flat. Padding this book out for a crossover didn’t help. I like the move Marvel made with Arena and Young Avengers telling complete finite stories on the strength of the story and creators. I think Hopeless and Larroca could have made this book better under that circumstance.
I wouldn’t say they really “fell flat” – they have sales in the 28000 range, above things like Thunderbolts, Secret Avengers and FF. They aren’t exactly genre redefining runs, but Cable and X-force was basically what it said on the tin. I’m almost suspicious that this might actually be Marvel actually thinking ahead with their brand, especially given an X-force film is coming up supposedly.
By fell flat I don’t means sales just a sense that they were lack luster, one seems to have told its story quick and the other is dragging (we got a Cable and Hope series and I’m not sure we ever got the uncanny team ever in the same comic.)
I think you do bring up an interesting idea abot the X-Force movie. Will we see the publishing side so ready to cater their product for competing studios? Any sales bump they get won’t be great or long lasting. I guess we will find out come April/May with Spidey.
I don’t feel like either book really got a chance to breathe. Cable and X-Force is definitely the stronger of the two, and had a strong, clear idea (Cable gets visions of the future, his team needs to do dirty jobs to stop it). Unfortunately, beyond a couple quick run-ins with the Avengers, they never got the chance to really spend time on the whole “outlaw” thing. Instead, it just became a lot of bombastic/tongue-in-cheek threat-of-the-day solving. Which is fine, but I feel like it’s a bit of a wasted opportunity. Granted, the book definitely seemed to be going in that direction in the first few issues, so it might’ve been heavily truncated by editorial edict. I think they also got a bit hemmed in by whatever Giant Universe-Ending Crossover Of the Year Marvel was doing.
Uncanny X-Force was really just a Psylocke book. The story with Psylocke and the Fantomexes felt a bit tacked on (especially since Cluster never joined the team, despite the covers), but it’s not as if Storm or Puck ever felt integral to the plot. I never really bought Cassandra Nova or the Revenants as a real threat here, alas. Still, bringing Cable and Bishop back together might provide some good story fodder.
(I think there’s been word that Dr. Nemesis will get to stay in the new X-Force book, so there’s that at least).
“I’m almost suspicious that this might actually be Marvel actually thinking ahead with their brand, especially given an X-force film is coming up supposedly.”
Given that it wouldn’t be by Marvel Studios, Marvel has no personal investment in popularizing the X-Force brand.
@Jamie
Other way round; Marvel publish X-Men and Spider-Man comics to tie in with movies they don’t own not becasse they’re deluded enough to believe that reminding comics readers these characters exist will have any effect on the box office (as you say, they’ve no real reason to care), but because they’re deluded enough to believe the vast superhero-movie audience with no interest in comics will buy them once they recognise the name.
Can’t say I’m surprised, or sorry, to see Psylocke’s X-Force cancelled. I wouldn’t mind reading a Psylocke book, but it just never did anything compelling. I was glad to see Adrian Alfona too, but even with his art I dropped the book a while ago. Cable was ok, but could have benefited from a larger story being told. I think FF, Young Avengers, and Arena all worked so well because of there larger arcs. If Marvel isn’t going to let books have at least two years to get off the ground, they are better off going into it with a dedicated creative team with a story to tell, rather than these status quo books that go nowhere and get dumped.
The thing is that while films don’t have any long term effects on a book, and as Blade proves, doesn’t have any direct bearing on whether a character can support a book at all in the current market, there can be short -medium term benefits from doing so in the right conditions. Given the idea that generally speaking the pool of people who might buy a superhero comic is pretty set, a B-list title like X-force could benefit from bringing over comics readers who hadn’t been exposed to the property before – it’s certainly not because of quality that the most recent issue of Bendis’ Guardians of the Galaxy sold twice as many copies as the equivalent issue of the DnA run.
I admit that I’m interested in reading up on Guardians of the Galaxy since it’s apparently good enough to make a movie out of. What should I be looking at getting? The whole 25 issues by Abnett and Lanning? (I’m going to stay away from anything Bendis)
Classic GotG set in the future was good under Valentino in the 90’s but will be nothing like the movie. Abnett and Lanning basically did cosmic Avengers and it was really good in fact better than the Avengers at the time (in my opinion as an 80’s Stern fan.)
“Other way round”
There’s no evidence, aside from creator-owned (or “creator-owned”) films like Watchmen and 300, that films increase comics readership.
Classic GOTG was very very bland ’90s fluff.
If you want to read up on the GOTG that the film is based on, read Annihilation Conquest and the 2008 GOTG series.
I still think it’s worth tailoring a comic series to resemble an upcoming film even if the film is only likely to attract existing comic book readers (at best) to that series.
The first X-Men film did renew my interest the X-Men. The first Blade got me interested in a character I was already familiar with but never cared much about.
Anyway, if that’s what they have in mind, nothing wrong with that.
The one problem with the DnA run on Guardians is that it doesn’t have a clear starting point as such. If you have a working understanding of cosmic characters then you could just jump on at the beginning of GotG #1, but the setup for the series really happens in the Annihilation: Conquest event it spun out of (specifically the Starlord and Quasar minis), which in turn spun out of Annihilation. I started with those Conquest minis and read forward from there, but I believe Starlord and Drax at least are set up a bit earlier in Annihilation.
It’s even better (worse?). The new characterizations of Starlord and Drax were set-up in the Thanos series and Drax miniseries that preceded Annihilation. It takes about twenty-five issues for those two to reach their GOTG status quo. Quill’s slow development was one of the better parts of the entire affair, but much of it seems to have discarded for the new series regardless.
Along those lines, it’s somewhat disconcerting how much his appearance has changed under McNiven’s pencils.
“There’s no evidence, aside from creator-owned (or “creator-owned”) films like Watchmen and 300, that films increase comics readership.”
Indeed. But as Paul and Al often point out, just because it’s never worked before is no reason for Marvel (or DC) not to keep doing it.
Bendis discarded pretty much everything for the new series. He’s ditched the “galaxy” part, because his GOTG are focused on guarding Earth. He’s ditched some of the characters for no particular given reason (other than matching the movie cast). He’s added Iron Man for no particular story reason (other than Iron Man wanting time away from Earth, followed immediately by the GOTG relocating to Earth.) Gamora now has daddy issues and everyone has to constantly refer to her as “Thanos’s daughter”. Bendis has silently retconned Thanos’s “unkillable” status at the end of the Cancerverse storyline (which fits the Thanos Rising miniseries idea that Death might be a figment of Thanos’ imagination.)
But for getting into the previous version, you could just jump in with Annihilation. No, you won’t get all the lead-up, but you don’t really need it to understand things.