Last time we left off with X-Force, Domino had been hunting an assassin 007-style. In the final pages, her luck had come back as she was faced with somebody truly surprising: herself.
Domino is a character who has been raked through the rubble of hell and back again. She is a mutant experiment gone wrong, and had recently wound up back on the operating table being skinned alive. The last thing she would want to see is a reverse version of herself pointing a gun at her head. The implications that there may be clones of Domino is a tough pill for her to swallow, and it should be considering her history.
Back on Krakoa, Domino reflects on the information she had just learned. There is a beautiful moment in which she wades into the water, reflecting on her life, dealing with both the trauma and anxiety she had experienced. As she swims under the water she thinks:
“The assassins breached Krakoa because of me. Mutant and human lives were lost because of me. The X-Gene has been weaponized because of me. When I sit still, my anxieties speed up… so I don’t sit still. As long as I’m moving, the shadow-stained worries and doubts can’t multiply. When I swim, my ears deafen to all noise except the heart knocking in my chest. But eventually, I have no choice but to face what’s waiting for me on the surface.”
Beautiful.
Not only does this paint a vivid picture of what it is like to deal with anxiety, but it lets the reader into Domino’s head.
Domino is joined by Colossus for the second half of this issue. It’s nice to see these two together again since their previous run on X-Force. Personally, I have been rooting for these two to get back together since Kitty left Colossus. They just work – someone who is so deeply emotionally scarred, paired with a boy scout who tries his best to see the positive in life. They are truly yin and yang.
The two old lovebirds follow a lead from Sage, and they discover a whole train full of Domino clones. Together they are relentless as they battle through these failed experiments. Domino doesn’t stop moving, just like she said, sustaining serious injuries until her clones are defeated. She drops into the arms of Colossus.
“When I come back… I want to keep it all. All the pain. I want to remember everything. Do you promise me, Peter?”
Wow.
The writing of Benjamin Percy on X-Force is truly a work of art. It is poetic. To dive so deeply into a character’s inner psyche, exploring facets such as trauma and anxiety, is not easy to write. I commend Percy for his ability to sew these so beautifully together through Domino. I cannot recommend this run of X-Force enough.
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