Review: ‘X-Force’ #50 Fails To Stick The Landing
by Tony Thornley
After fifty issues, the latest volume of X-Force draws to a close. How did this final issue do, and is it a satisfactory ending for this incarnation of the team?
Benjamin Percy, Robert Gill, Guru-eFx and Joe Caramagna bring the epic to an end.
The happy, optimistic Beast of the past has found himself face to face with his villainous present self. Hank McCoy now has mere minutes to save the world from his own evil machinations. If he’s successful, he might just save his own soul…
I get ending this volume on a nice round number. It’s not something a lot of series are able to do in today’s comics industry. Hitting fifty issues at all is a big deal, but ending the volume with it, largely on your own terms, seldom happens. That’s why this issue’s problems baffle me.
The plot is fine, the character work is fine- good even in some places- but it sure needed five to ten more pages for Percy to actually finish telling his story. Instead, it ends with an abrupt sequence of three panels, with no room for emotional resolution, and an epilogue page that almost has a “Poochie died on the way back to his home planet” level caption. It was a pretty decent issue up to that point and could have been much better with a little more space for that resolution.
Gill’s art continues to be good. He sets a good pace through the whole issue, making sure each action beat gets the space it needs, and ensuring nothing gets jumbled or messy. The characters flow through the page, creating a fantastic feel that that’s halfway between a storyboard and sequential art.
X-Force #50 is available now from Marvel Comics.
Overview
I’ve liked X-Force through its entire run. It’s disappointing to see it end on such a rushed issue, but perhaps the future is brighter for mutants thanks to it.
