Previously On X-Men: ‘X-Force’ #10 Concludes With A Whimper Then Celebrates 300

In this week’s batch of X-Books, the latest iteration of X-Force concludes at the same time it celebrates reaching 300 issues, 3K makes their next move in X-Men #15, Illyana reunites with an old friend in Magik #4, and Deadpool and Wolverine battle Stryfe-zombies in Deadpool/Wolverine #4!

Spoilers below!

X-Force #10 by Geoffrey Thorne and Marcus To

The final issue of this volume of the book (rushes to) wraps up the La Diabla plot (and really, the entire overarching plot of the series), revealing Moses Magnum as her master and the identity of Tank before a backup story by Fabian Nicieza and Edgar Salazar celebrating 300 issues of X-Force across its various volumes.

• La Diabla’s master and the whole arch villain of the series is revealed to be Moses Magnum, a relatively deep cut villain. He debuted in the 70s in Spider-Man comic, battled Luke Cage in a Power Man annual, then battled the X-Men in Japan during their “World Tour” arc (specifically X-Men #118-119, which is the story where Banshee loses his powers stopping Magnum, sidelining him for the rest of the Claremont/Byrne run).
• Some added pages in the Classic X-Men reprint of that story revealed he got his superpowers from Apocalypse (because the number of standard comic book pages increased between when the original X-Men stories being reprinted came out and when Classic X-Men was being published, they’d get a couple-three new continuity-insert pages added to them). Much later, he turned up in Dark Wolverine #78-80 and Storm (vol. 3) #4-5.
• His goal here/in this series is to unite the world through tragedy, which is why he sent Nuklo off rampaging and brought in all kinds of monsters from alternate realities earlier in the book; the idea established here is that Forge’s power was intuitively leading him to stop Moses Magnum (by building and deploying the “machine” that is this iteration of X-Force) without really knowing why, culminating in him using Surge’s gauntlets to disperse the big energy bomb Magnum is readying in this issue.
• Needless to say, this is all a terribly rushed info-dump of a conclusion, given this is the last issue of the series, and clearly wasn’t intended to be.
• Rectifying one of the big wrongs of the series, Surge returns at the end, a being of pure energy (though Forge didn’t know this would happen when he allowed her to die in issue #5). Start your bets on how long before Surge shows up anywhere again and whether or not she’s still a blue energy being when she does.
• In a reveal no one saw coming except for everyone, Tank turns out to be Colossus. No direct explanation is given for WHY he was disguising himself as Tank all this time.
• The fake Colossus on La Diabla’s/Moses Magnum’s team is Zanda, a character from Jack Kirby’s Black Panther run and arguably an even deeper cut than Magnum. It’s also not really made clear why she’s involved in any of this (Ed Note: Also, the reveal happened so fast, I missed that’s what it was revealing).
• The “X-Men” Sage and John Wraith bring into the fight are repurposed X-Sentinels, from X-Men #100.
• Continuing the X-Books’ recent run of “new volumes hitting big legacy numbers” this is also X-Force #300 if we get all previous iterations of the book (including stuff like Uncanny X-Force but excluding Cable and X-Force). It is celebrated with the now-typical “backup story and three page collection of tiny thumbnail covers of the three issues” approach.
• The backup story is written by Fabian Nicieza with art by Edgar Salazar. It takes place between/during X-Force #25 and #26, while Cable is recovering from injuries he sustained battling Magneto during “Fatal Attractions”. Presented as a rundown of Cable/X-Force’s history from the perspective of Ship/Professor (the sentient AI that was guiding Cable back then), it works as a fun retrospective of the series, though it’s (understandably) heavy on the Cable-related X-Force stuff, largely ignoring the Wolverine-led iterations of the series that kept it alive through much of the 21st century thus far.

An ignominious end for a series that was rarely great but occasionally good enough with flashes of potential. The Moses Magnum reveal is wild, the Tank reveal (at least as presented) is dumb, and the whole thing feels like a footnote that will get largely ignored/forgotten going forward. Looks great, though. Looking forward to see where Marcus To goes next.

X-Men #15 by Jed MacKay, Ryan Stegman and C.F. Villa

The X-Men continue their search for Quentin while battling Piper Cobb’s evil twin who has taken control of the massive Acanti starship and refashioned it into a monstrous body for herself.

• Piper Cobb’s evil twin remains unnamed.
• She is said to have the power of “biokinesis”, the ability to reshape flesh/organic matter. Beast cites Lionel Jeffries/Scramble, from Alpha Flight, and Kenji Uedo/Zero, from Generation Hope (one of the Five Lights) as comps, though the arguably-more well-known Morlock Masque would fit the bill as well, I believe.

• Illyana summons some demons and puts them to work, as the relationship between Illyana, Limbo and Madelyne Pryor (who is ostensibly meant to be running the place as seen in this week’s One World Under Doom #3) continues to be muddled in the From the Ashes era.
• Juggernaut is grossed out by Illyana’s deal with the demons (she lets them drink her blood in exchange for their limited service), though she rightly points out he can’t really throw stones given his powers come from a pact with the demon Cyttorak.
• The Quinjet a contingent of the X-Men are using here is from X-Men: From The Ashes Infinity Comic #15.
• The Chairman of 3K appears briefly, wearing a Cerebro/Darth Teeths-style helmet.
• The 3K Doctor can teleport people, leading to some speculation that they could be Astra.
• The “X-Men” who pop up on the closing page are the 3K-created mutants who previously appeared back in the first issue of this series; it’s said that Wyre is their leader, and the references to their poor performance in Santo Marco is also a reference to issue #1.

Another fun, well-paced issue. MacKay, Stegman, Villa and company are mostly riffing on the hits here, but they’re doing it with style.

Magik #4 by Ashley Allen and German Perálta

Illyana teams up with former teammate Dani Moonstar to prevent the fall of another of Liminal’s seals.

• This is the first issue of the series with a cover that manages to balance the cheesecake J. Scott Campbell “Sexy Demon Blonde Babe”-ness with some sense of what the book is actually about.
• Dani and Illyana, of course, go way back, to the original New Mutants, as well as the adult New Mutants “X-Men Squad” of the Utopia era and the Krakoan New Mutants book.
• It’s revealed here that Dani has been recruited into the Society of the Eternal Dawn, the same secret society to which Cal (and his deceased grandmother) belong, on the strength of her experience fighting supernatural threats (like the Demon Bear from New Mutants #18-20, which gets referenced here).
• It’s said that while Liminal has been stopped by the society before, his current rise is happening faster than usual, due to the proliferation of mutants making it easier for him to use mutant sacrifices (which are more powerful) to open the seals.
• Dani’s psychic arrows have been modified by the society to affect demons.

At times, the dialogue between Illyana and Dani is a little too “tell-y”; it reads as if it exists ONLY for exposition directed at readers, rather than things two old friends with a long history together would naturally say to each other. Otherwise, Allen displays a strong understanding of the bond between the two women, making Dani a welcome addition to the book’s cast.

Deadpool/Wolverine #4 by Benjamin Percy and Joshua Cassara

Wolverine and Deadpool fight against a zombie hoard to avoid falling back under Stryfe’s control.

• Maverick says he made his deal with ONE in order to get out of a federal penitentiary; near as I can tell this is new information (his last appearance was in the Mystique miniseries, where he was working as a contractor for SHIELD).
• Whether he’s being genuine or not, Stryfe says his mission is to prevent future calamities he knows are coming from befalling mutants/the world, which more or less casts him in the same role as Cable back in the day (go to the past to fight in the present in order to save the future).

• With this out the same week as the abrupt end of X-Force, I have to ask…why isn’t this just X-Force?

All things considered, this is little more than an excuse to have Wolverine and Deadpool fight some zombies. But there’s a grindhouse sort of appeal to that (and the art, of course, is great), while the Stryfe material does at least advance the book’s plotline somewhat.