X-Force #38 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
X-FORCE vol 6 #38
“Xeno”
Writer: Benjamin Percy
Artist: Robert Gill
Colour artist: GURU-eFX
Letterer: Joe Caramagna
Design: Tom Muller with Jay Bowen
Editor: Mark Basso
COVER / PAGE 1. The Man with the Peacock Tattoo creates a Frankenstein’s Monster out of X-Force parts. Not what happens in the story, but it relates to the Omnimutant.
PAGES 2-5. X-Force arrive in Genosha.
X-Force here meaning just Domino, Deadpool and Omega Red. Black Tom, Beast and Sage don’t go on missions, and this story is set during the period when Beast is keeping Wolverine prisoner (i.e. probably between Wolverine #27-28).
Domino seems to be saying that despite her luck powers, she’s been rather depressed by the whole experience of being in X-Force – which isn’t that far out of line with her mercenary career, but admittedly doesn’t give much space for the recklessly cheerful side of her personality. At the end of the issue she ascribes this specifically to her torture at the hands of Xeno, but the logic of what she’s saying here is that she felt this way even during the period when her memories of her torture at the hands of Xeno were wiped.
Deadpool is in fact using the word “peritoneum” correctly. It’s a membrane that surrounds the abdominal organs.
The Donner Party was a group of American pioneers whose trek west went disastrously wrong, leading them to spend the winter of 1846-1847 stuck in snowbound mountains, where some of them turned to cannibalism.
PAGE 6. Recap and credits.
Where Monsters Dwell. The strapline refers to a Marvel series that ran for 38 issues between 1970 and 1975, reprinting old horror stories.
PAGES 7-8. Max flees the Man with the Peacock Tattoo.
As established in the previous issue, the MwtPT considers himself to be carrying on the work of the Genegineer, who cloned him but treated him as a lab experiment. There’s at least some ambiguity about how far he’s genuinely trying to bond with Max and sees him as a potential heir – though the last panel of the scene appears to come down on the side of “not genuine”, which is the least interesting answer.
PAGES 9-13. X-Force hack the XENO database and discover the Omnimutant.
The Omnimutant is… whatever it is that the MwtPT was somehow able to create using the Krakoan egg that Beast leaked to him two issues back, plus Max’s powers. How does any of this give him access to X-Force’s DNA? Who the hell knows. There was a whole data page about it last issue, but it made no sense at all.
XENO. Meanwhile, XENO’s plan turns out to involve cloning people in positions of influence and replacing them with compliant clones (also including powers that they’ve stolen from captive mutants along the way). This is presumably the personal scheme of the Man With The Peacock Tattoo – it doesn’t have a great deal to do with the original explanation for XENO’s origin, which involved renegade factions of various government bodies joining together after their employers decided to stand them down rather than aggravate Krakoa.
PAGE 14. Data page with more details on the Xeno scheme. None of the three individuals mentioned are pre-established characters.
PAGE 15. The Man with the Peacock Tattoo is interrupted before dissecting Max.
Presumably he’s just going to kill the kid and clone him, though it’s not exactly clear why it’s necessary to strap him down in order to do that. The Man reverts to superficial sympathy here, promising to “bring back a better version of you” – i.e., clone him, doubtless in more compliant form. Of course, there are echoes here of Krakoan resurrection, and the Man himself clearly thinks of clones as real people – he is one, after all.
PAGES 16-19. Max helps X-Force defeat the Omnimutant and the Man with the Peacock Tattoo.
So… how did Max escape the gurney? I suppose he must have got one of the other clones to break out and free him?
PAGE 20. Data page. The Beast casually argues for killing all of the XENO clones via their psychic signal. Given that these are infiltrators in positions of influence, who are apparently programmed to be anti-mutant, and who would presumably have a lot of opportunities to do damage if X-Force tried simply distributing a list of names, this is actually one of the less ludicrous things Beast has suggested of late. But Sage is obviously correct to point out that the clones are people in their own right – there are enough duplicates on Krakoa to prove the point, after all – even if her only suggestion for why they might alter their attitude is the possibility of greater freedom once severed from the XENO psychic network. It’s more Beast’s disregard for the very notion of a moral dilemma arising that makes him unsympathetic here.
Curiously, Sage claims that some of these clones have been in place for years. I’m not sure that works in Marvel time, unless he had access to psychic powers from some source even before capturing Kid Omega.
PAGES 21-22. Domino hands the Man over to his creations.
This is Domino’s revenge for being tortured in issues #1-2.
PAGES 23-24. X-Force head home.
And this is Domino’s closure – despite having passed up the opportunity to capture the Man with the Peacock Tattoo, she gets to be the straightforward hero in this scene who brings Max back to Krakoa.
PAGE 25. Trailers.
“But mass murder…”
“Nah”
I do not have a single polite word for how far Beast has travelled into ridiculously sociopathic territory.
At this point, the only way to salvage Beast as a character would be to kill him and reset him to about the late 80’s/early 90’s when he was still fun.
I miss the Hank that’d go out on the town with Wonder Man and have dozens of women fascinated by him after he became an Avenger.
So domino’s closure is that she doesn’t kill TMWtPT, but leaves him strapped to a gurney in a room of monsters, then blows up the entire building?
And then clones humans are real, but xforce has no compunctions about blowing up all of the mutants/chimeras in peacock’s lab?
So after 38 issues, the Man in the Peacock Mask is finally defeated by not by X-Force but his own incompetence in not properly securing a powerful child.
Honestly, that fits. Percy’s Beast always fails, and save Wolverine X-Force are the idiots who still listen to Beast. The Man couldn’t lose in any scenario that would give X-Force a win. How dull.
There’s more I could say, like how the Man blabbed about his secret base in front of a prisoner and it still took Domino’s luck finally popping up like a game hint for them to figure that out, or how a bunch of anti-mutant figures all mysteriously dying at the same time seems like it might cause problems, but why bother?
Terrible and underwhelming on all counts. Not sure why Percy thinks the conclusion of any of his character arcs counts as meaningful payoff of any sort–especially given the length of time these plots and subplots have been gestating. Things just *happen* to Domino on and off for almost 40 issues, and she’s still effectively sidelined for the conclusion of it because Max bails her out from being maimed by Omnimutant/poor man’s chimera. How is she really any different from the beginning of her journey? (Sage’s alcoholism arc similarly lacked any true stakes or consequences, as Domino just casually forgave her for almost getting her killed.) I’m blown away that this is the longest running book in the Krakoa era.
This just gets worse with each month…
Causing a bunch of (cloned) “people in positions of influence” to simultaneously die is going to *look* like a serious global terrorist attack. One which could possibly get legitimately linked to Krakoa. Even leaving aside the moral dimension, this seems like a huge risk.
For that matter, killing them would be leaving a huge opportunity on the table. With the Genegineer (believed to be) dead, there’s nothing enforcing the clones’ loyalty. The information on the clones is potential *blackmail* material, turning all (or at least many) of those influencers into assets. One could even try a softer approach: “Are you *sure* you want to take anti-mutant stances? You yourself would show up on scans as possessing an X-gene.”
Exactly. One of the main problems of this book isn’t just that Beast’s cartoonishly evil, it’s that he’s incredibly incompetent. And given that other characters seem to ignore that, it’s… not clear how much of that is intended by Percy, if it is intended at all.
I think Beast’s incompetence is intentional, although perhaps not meant to be as comically so as it is. Percy has been very clear that he’s commenting on the CIA, so I think this is SUPPOSED to be the idea that intelligence agencies create new problems while fixing other problems and that it all becomes impossibly convoluted and self-defeating.
Aaron Elijah Thall > At this point, the only way to salvage Beast as a character would be to kill him and reset him to about the late 80’s/early 90’s when he was still fun.
I don’t mean to offend anyone, but I don’t see the point of the ‘let’s use the Resurrection Protocols to regress problematic characters’ idea that is so prevalent among fans. It honestly sounds like something a nostalgia-monger like Mark Waid would come up with.
It’s like with Trial of Magneto, where some readers were convinced that they were going to bring back 60’s Wanda to fix the character. Far better to actually fix the problems currently plaguing the character and move the character forward. Look at how it’s worked out for Wanda – a solo book, part of the next Avengers line-up and a Summer 2023 Marvel event.
Let’s put it another way – if the current villainous Beast emerged from the ‘fun 80’s Beast’, what’s stopping the reset Beast from developing into this Beast again? Are we just going to keep resetting him every few years?
I still have some faith that Percy has a way out for Beast – he said he pitched a complete story to JDW before the book launched.
Mathias X > I think Beast’s incompetence is intentional…
I think Percy is going for a take where the Beast is becoming dumber the longer he stays in X-Force. His body has begun to change as well, going from an ape-like to a bloated ogre-like build. We’ve seen before in New X-Men how Beast’s body evolution matches his mental changes.
Mathias X > Percy has been very clear that he’s commenting on the CIA, so I think this is SUPPOSED to be the idea that intelligence agencies create new problems while fixing other problems and that it all becomes impossibly convoluted and self-defeating.
I think it’s a bit more severe than that – he’s saying institutions like the CIA and X-Force are conceptually corrupt – corrupt due to their mission statement rather than due to their members. These intelligence agencies are born out of fear of other people and don’t fix any problems at all.
Nowhere is this more obvious than with the writing for the X-Desk leader, Dolores Ramirez. Duggan introduced Ramirez as a Storm fangirl and well-meaning mutant ally who just happened to be involved in the CIA. Under Percy’s pen, she does shady things like purchasing Maverick to infiltrate Krakoa because allyship doesn’t mean anything when you work for the CIA.
Most of the deranged plans Beast pulls in this series are inspired by the real-life deranged plans the CIA pulls. The Russian mutant parade is McCarthyism, the space prison is Guantanamo Bay, the Terra Verde stuff is standard CIA procedure on developing countries with competing resources.
I think Beast gets most of the attention from readers because he’s had the most drastic change but honestly every single member of the Krakoan incarnation of X-Force has changed for the worse since they joined X-Force.
Beast – slippery slope of fascism
Wolverine – turned into a mindless murder weapon, akin to his Weapon X days
Sage – substance abuse
Domino – memory suppression of torture
Colossus – unwittingly turned into a double agent
Kid Omega – performance anxiety drove him to suicide
Black Tom Cassidy – increasingly worse identity disorders
Forge was heading down the immoral weapons manufacture road but joining the X-Men pulled him away from that path.
Deadpool is comic relief, Omega Red hasn’t changed much but the presence of a child predator on the intelligence agency speaks to how low X-Force has fallen.
So the big question I believe Percy is answering in his run is not ‘How do we fix the Beast?’ but rather ‘How do we fix X-Force?’. Beast will redeem himself over the course of answering the latter. My current thinking is that Percy will end the run with ‘X-Force as an intelligence agency’ being abolished and a new diplomacy-based institution established in its stead, with Sage as the new leader.
I also think the closest comparison to what Percy is doing in X-Force is what Hickman was doing in New Avengers. I see a lot of similarities.
The first three issues of both books are spent on an inciting incident that justifies the formation of the team (first 616 Incursion for NA, Professor X assassination for XF).
The team is formed under the best of intentions but kept secret and isolated from everyone else (the Necropolis for NA, the Atlantic Pointe for XF).
The most moral member of the team (Captain America for NA, Jean Grey for XF) leaves the team after the first few missions after disagreeing with the methods the team is using. Steve was mindwiped, Jean left voluntarily.
Nonideal circumstances led to desperate measures and the team begins the slow descent into hell. New Avengers eventually ended with the Illuminati going to war with Steve’s S.H.I.E.L.D. Avengers so I wonder if Beast’s increasingly fascist X-Force will eventually come in conflict with Jean’s X-Men.
Another similarity is that Beast used to be a member of Hickman’s Illuminati as well. Over the course of NA, most of the Illuminati members lost something fundamental to them as a consequence of the path they headed down. Namor, Black Bolt and T’Challa lost their kingdoms. Dr Strange lost his soul and became a Black Priest. Iron Man lost his mind and the faith of the team he founded, the Avengers. Mr Fantastic lost his family and the Fantastic Four. When the universe was rebooted, these losses forced these men to change their behavior and embrace a better path.
But Beast never lost anything in NA (partially due to the mutants being deemphasized at that point). This meant that he had no incentive to change in ANAD Marvel. All he needed was a new cause (protect Krakoa through any means possible) for him to go down the darker path once again.
In a recent interview, Percy seems to hint that the Wolverine-Beast conversation in issue 1 was the trigger that led Beast to embrace this path.
https://www.cbr.com/wolverine-x-force-beast-benjamin-percy-interview/
Benjamin Percy: If you look at Issue #1 of X-Force, the very first scene after the cold open is about Wolverine and Beast. This is during the honeymoon phase of Krakoa. Beast is out harvesting plants and marveling at the biological wonders available to them. But his fascination blinds him to risk, and he is almost killed by a monstrosity the island has born. Wolverine saves Hank at the last second. Just as Logan is about to take the monster out, Beast pleads with him to “let it be.” You can see, in this moment, the glimmer in both their eyes. Wolverine doesn’t trust this place, and of course, he’s going to walk away from it eventually. And Beast…well, he’s all in.
GN
Thank you for the summation. I seem to be getting more mileage from this title than most, but what you posted just elevated this whole run for me.
@GN re: Forge: I would argue that trading his Krakoan weapons contractor gig for DNA splicing and non-consensual cloning of Caliban with Mystique is worse.
I was thinking the same thing… but it seems to have been presented as an awakening call of sorts for Forge.
Moonstar Dynasty> I would argue that trading his Krakoan weapons contractor gig for DNA splicing and non-consensual cloning of Caliban with Mystique is worse.
The non-consensual cloning is what I meant by ‘immoral weapons manufacture’. When X-Force Forge joined the X-Men, he was collaborating with Mr Sinister and had created a chimera skin-suit to aid him on his secret missions only the QC knew about.
Like Luis Dantas mentioned above, Forge later had a wake-up call and burned the suit. His latest mission (together with Monet, Prodigy and Sage) is much more collaborative in nature.
@GN: That was seriously a great analysis and I’ll have to reconsider the run in that light.
@GN: The description was confusing to me because in X-Force, he was literally designing and constructing weapons, bio-suits, firearms, etc, and your characterization read as if him joining the X-Men was an indicator that he was no longer on that path. What he did with Caliban–which is, in my mind, far worse–wasn’t even for the purpose of offense or defense, but for a recon/search and rescue mission.
The epilogue to that particular mission where Forge burns Caliban struck me as odd; at this point, isn’t this version of Caliban a living, breathing clone with autonomy? He basically created this clone, used it, and then murdered it. And someone taking the real Caliban out for a round of drinks absolves him from these choices? Based on this, I don’t agree that this version of Forge is actually better than the one in X-Force.
Forge doesn’t change by joining the X-Men, he changes as a result of his experiences during the Vault arc. He starts it at full-on X-Force amoral “anything is permissable for the sake of the mission” attitude, making deals with Mister Sinister, planning secret missions that impact millions of lives, and weaving together mutant minds and DNA into a machine. And he initially doesn’t see it as sentient – he literally says “You’re a tool and I am am the craftsman!” And then turns it off with the press of a button.
But by the end of the story, the suit’s doubts and questions to Forge have worn through to his conscience. In the end, he accepts Darwin’s choice and fails the mission. He saves Laura even though she wasn’t the target for the rescue. He ends the fight with Serafina by telling her the honest truth. When the mission is over, he burns the suit and says it’s “giving it the funeral it deserves” and says that he’s seeing two ghosts. That’s a clear turn from calling it a tool. He created an abomination and he ultimately realizes he has to show it mercy.
The drinks are setup earlier in the arc when the suit asks him how it came to be, and Forge says he took Caliban out for drinks and asked if he could use his DNA and mind to rescue someone, and that Caliban said yes. The suit knows this is a lie and says as much. Fast forward to the end, and Forge does actually seek Caliban’s consent after the fact, and does actually receive it. Forge never needed to keep secrets; his lie could’ve been true if he’d just asked. He proceeds to explain what he did and to apologize to Caliban, which is anathema to his X-Force self who would do neither. He may not receive or deserve absolution, but he is directly seeking it by story’s end and that’s a change.
And as GN noted, this is reinforced in the current Brood arc, where he duly consults Sage, Prodigy and M on his crazy plan. He doesn’t listen to them and does it anyway because Forge is stubborm like that, but he’s being open and honest with people again.
“Forge does actually seek Caliban’s consent after the fact…”
That’s not how consent works.
And we never actually saw an apology; all that was implied was that Forge would possibly come clean about his immoral behavior. And as a result, Caliban–who has historically and repeatedly been used and abused to deploy his powers against his will against his own people, now by both friends and foes alike–still doesn’t get the respect he deserves.
That ending really bummed me out, especially since Sentient Suit Caliban was clearly enough of a person to be an instrumental part in persuading Serafina from annihilating Forge to begin with. And then–again!–without being consulted with or giving consent, Forge euthanizes him by flamethrower. It’s hard to buy into any arc of change here when Forge has suffered zero consequences for his casual and gross disregard of consent.
And also, though it’s a minor point, a flamethrower might be the very worst choice for a ‘mercy’ killing.
I can’t very well disagree that the creation and murder of suit Caliban was abusive and immoral.
But I am hoping that we will see further developments. If nothing else, I get the sense that the Forge who recently joined the current X-Men team was a bit less considerate than the one who asked Caliban for permission after the fact. There is a long road ahead, but Forge may now be at least considering it.
Or maybe we are headed to some sort of crossover with X-Force, which I don’t think he ever formally took leave from. It can be interesting to see him play off the current version of Beast. Come to think of it, X-Force doesn’t seem to have a well established roster now, although that may be about to change. Apparently Forge’s latest formal interaction with that team was being killed by them in X-Force #27 almost a year ago. He seems to have been resurrected off-panel in the short time between that issue and last year’s Hellfire Gala one-shot.
Incidentally, have we really never learned Forge’s real name?
Luis: The short version is no. In the Ultimate universe he was called Jonathan Silvercloud and Claremont apparently called him Daniel Lone Eagle in his notes. Neither of them have ever been used in 616.
Also, correct me if I’m wrong, but hasn’t Forge typically been one of the more amoral X-Men? I mean, he started out as an arms dealer and seemed fairly dark in X-Factor. Or am I misremembering this?
He was a fairly dark character, but he came at a time when the X-Men were fairly dark as a matter of course.
His early interactions with Storm made him appear considerably more balanced than her IMO. I don’t think that is what Claremont wanted, but that is how it appeared to me.
Then there was the prolonged time when he and Banshee were attempting to build an X-Men team out of assorted characters. Again, he was IMO one of the most upbeat characters then available.
I was caught a bit off-guard by how manipulative and insensitive he was when he joined X-Factor. But X-Factor #95 came in late 1993. That was a difficult time.
Forge’s two original sins were (a) creating the Neutralizer and (b) betraying his friends in Vietnam to save his own life. Regarding the former, the major extenuating circumstance is that he was trying to stop an alien invasion. Regarding the latter, I think Claremont saw him as similar to Conrad’s Lord Jim- someone who was eager for adventure as a young man, committed a horrible betrayal in a moment of cowardice and spend the rest of his life trying to make up for it.
Re: Storm- Claremont had a habit of having her behaving badly- almost drowning Maddie, seriously considering killing Havok for no real reason, stabbing Forge without hearing his side of the story- and then having everyone forget about it shortly after.
I can’t believe how bad this book is. Percy is showing an incredible degree of incompetence and lack of subtleness.