There are inherent issues with making your superhero team proactive. If they foresee every threat and are always two steps ahead, then the drama of facing supervillains makes the fights a foregone conclusion. And furthermore, they run the risk of running into the Minority Report problem of predicting crimes before they’re committed. Neither of these are concerns for Geoffrey Thorne and Marcus To’s new team in X-Force #1, as it’s mostly a “meet the team” style issue. But given the setup, it’s clear some sense of that is coming, and soon.
So, what’s the setup? Spoilers past this point, but Forge has figured out a way to turn himself into an Omega-level mutant. And in the process (or perhaps because of the process), he’s discovered a way to predict “fracture points,” aka times the world is about to fall apart. Alongside that, he’s building a team to take these threats down.
To start, that includes Sage, Rachel Summers, Betsy Braddock, and a mutant named Tank who may or may not be a one-and-done character from a mostly forgotten issue of Ironheart. Deadpool is also along for the ride as a guest star, with the promise that Black Panther will show up in issue #2, and more to come.
So, one thing to point out in the makeup of this team… While Forge and Sage are not the same character or power, they operate in a similar space. Same for Rachel and Betsy, who are there ostensibly as a couple but both have varying degrees of mental powers. Tank is TBD, but the book makes a point that both he and Deadpool are the muscle.
Basically, it seems like Forge is building redundancies. And if that’s the case, he doesn’t expect them to all survive. Chances are, what Thorne and company are presenting this book as, a mix between Grant Morrison-esque big science ideas and the classic X-Force concept of black ops X-Men, is not what the book will end up being.
So what is it? I’d venture that Thorne is getting around the problems mentioned above with some sort of a feint, that Forge’s professed purpose and what the team is actually doing are two different things. I’d also suggest that they may not be as on the side of good as it seems. The resolution of this issue suggests as much, as the team deals with a problem whose solution may not be entirely necessary.
It’s obviously early going (it is just a first issue, after all). But between Forge’s level-up, an overall mystery about what he’s doing and why, and a team makeup that seems built for failure, this is an intriguing start to an already very different riff on X-Force.
X-Force #1 is in stores now from Marvel.
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