There’s a threat to mutants using their DNA to weaponize people, and the X-Force is on in the case! Out today, X-Force #36 serves as a great team book with Deadpool, Omega Red, and Domino in the field, with Beast and Sage supporting from afar. Can they take out XENO, and will Domino get revenge after they tortured her? Those are just two questions to examine in the latest issue.
X-Force #36 opens with Domino getting some makeup put on her by Deadpool. Something that permeates this issue is how darn well Ben Percy writes Deadpool. He’s the perfect level of nonsensical and silly without getting annoying. His humor helps keep the entertainment value up as Domino infiltrates the group in a very tense situation. He also makes a valid point about Omega Red’s name, which should give X-Men fans a chuckle.
This sequence with Domino takes up about half the issue, which seems to be extra-sized, surpassing the 22-page format. It’s nice to see this team on an actual mission and suiting the original approach of an X-Men CIA operation. There’s spy makeup, sniper weapons at the ready, and intelligence gathering. There’s even a great reference to the first Mission: Impossible movie. Throw in some gross visuals–a staple of this series–and you have an issue of X-Force that has it all in the Percy era.
Deadpool is hilarious in this issue.
Credit: Marvel
Ongoing plots are also explored, like Beast’s ongoing terrible leadership and Colossus being manipulated. It’s quite something to see how many plots Percy has continued for so long, especially given many modern comics don’t allow series to go half as long as this one. Colossus continues to be a victim that deserves saving, while Beast’s ego gets this team in trouble or even killed.
Art is by Robert Gill, and colors by GURU-eFX, with good attention to environments and backgrounds. Being on a covert mission, the setting is a key element that rings through here. Beast steals the show for character acting in a key scene later in the issue, while the goopy destruction of the assailants looks great too.
As far as gripes, the data pages didn’t really do it for me this issue. There were some clever ideas to amp up the visuals beyond memos, but the information didn’t feel all that important. One last gripe, and maybe this is because I don’t understand what happened in the last issue or when, but Beast ended the last issue in big trouble. Now he’s back to walking around. Is that an error, or was the Beast in the last issue a clone or something? It’s confusing, and nothing explains it here.
Read X-Force #36 for the feel of what the original pitch was going for, as this is the smash-and-grab side of Krakoa. We get a cool covert operation, check-ins with key ongoing plots, and a reminder that something has got to give for various characters.
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