Previously On X-Men: ‘Inglorious X-Force’ #2 Best Of The Batch

In a relatively middling week for the X-books, Inglorious X-Force stays on top with a strong follow-up to its successful inaugural issue.

Inglorious X-Force #2

By Tim Seeley & Michael Sta. Maria

Cable trains the new X-Force as he tries to weed out suspects in the future murder of Ms. Marvel.

• The cover of this issue is maybe an homage to X-Force #14.
• Kali, at least in the video she posts, vaguely resembles Stryfe (cape, spikes, headgear with wings forehead wings), which would fit with her leading a new version of Stryfe’s old Mutant Liberation Front (it may also be a suggestion that she doesn’t believe in the group’s stated goals and has her own agenda, like Stryfe).
• Seeley seems to be suggesting that Archangel is channeling his early disdain of Wolverine to Daken; while it feels like Daken has been more “Wolverine” than “super-villain” for awhile now, the two haven’t shared enough page time for me to really knock this as a regressive bit of characterization.
• The Blasphemy Cartel are villains from Jed MacKay‘s 2022 Strange series (the one with Clea as the Sorcerer Supreme).
• Barberry Boone, their current leader, is a new character.
• The Pope Lick monster is a real urban legend from Kentucky.
• Kamala referring to X-Force as “grimacing knuckleheads” made me chuckle.
• She still has her hard light mutant/MCU-synergistic powers, but only seems to draw on them as a last resort.
• Ms Marvel says that “One time I fought a clone of Thomas Edison with a parrot for a face.” That’s the Inventor, who first appeared in Ms Marvel vol 3 #5 (2014).
• The angel Anielle actually appeared prior to this, in Gambit’s second miniseries (from 1997). This is her only appearance since then.

The implication with this issue is that Cable is going to spend each issue clearing a different murder suspect/team member, and honestly, I kind of dig that approach — it both suggests that Seeley is planning on telling a complete story in five issues (which is good in this day of not being able to assume anything more than five issues no matter if your book launches as an ongoing or mini) and also that he has plans for the direction of the book beyond this initial “who kills Ms. Marvel?” mystery (which is good for a series launched as ongoing if it gets to continue past #5, rather than trying to stretch that initial mystery until god only knows when).

Psylocke: Ninja #2

By Tim Seeley & Nico Leon

Psylocke battles Elektra.

• Psylocke says that she’s calling on the muscle memory of Kwannon’s body to fight, which is meant to further explain how Betsy can do the kind of ninja stuff Kwannon can do despite having not trained in martial arts (the explanation given with the whole Betsy/Kwannon body swap retcon back in the day was that a little bit of each’s memories hung around, which is how Besty could do ninja and Kwannon knew about the X-Men).
• This issue shows how Psylocke came to first manifest her psychic knife, having first done a broader, more explosive psychic attack on one of the Chaste before realizing a more focused (the focused totality, in fact…) attack would be more effective.
• The issue ends by synching back up with Uncanny X-Men #256 (which showed Psylocke in the same tank with the same headgear/breathing apparatus as here).

This is basically an issue-long fight with Elektra and the Chaste, filled with a bunch of generic fighting dialogue and internal monologue, and it’s fine for that (but pretty boring). More broadly, this issue seems designed to immediately bury the “fight Elektra” angle and swing back to synching up with the original Psylocke body swap story. Which is for the best — revisiting that story within the context of the later Matsu’o/Kwannon relationship retcon is the more interesting angle — but it makes me wonder what the point of the Elektra stuff even was. I guess just an excuse to have TWO sexy ninja ladies on a cover.

Rogue #2

By Erica Schultz & Luigi Zagaria

Following her encounter with Mystique, Rogue’s powers go out of control and she randomly ends up fighting an anti-mutant militia.

• It’s revealed here that the mission Rogue is having flashbacks to involved stealing the device from Project Pegasus which Mystique used to free the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants in Rogue’s first appearance in Avengers Annual #10 (specifically, by inhibiting Iron Man’s armor, allowing her to use him as a projectile to knock out the prison’s power).
• Constrictor was revealed to have died of a terminal illness in Sam Wilson: Captain America #5 back in 2016; his death was part of a plotline that involved his fiancé Diamondback struggling to find the money to pay his medical bills and returning to super-villainy as a result, making it a weird kind of death to fake, as Gambit suggests here. Constrictor did appear in Fantastic Four #7 last month, but it’s possible that was his son (who inherited his mantle/equipment).
• When Rogue’s powers are fritzing out, she begins physically manifesting aspects of Nightcrawler, Hope Summers, Dani Moonstar, Pixie, Glob, Emma Frost, Magik, Beast, Blob and Colossus.
• There’s a really nice double page spread featuring the De Luca Effect as Rogue fights her way across the anti-mutant militants.

A step down from the first issue, with Mystique refusing to tell Rogue what she needs to know for no reason other than “because there’s still more issues left in the series” followed by a bizarrely coincidental battle with a bunch of goons. The art is still nice, but it already feels like the story is getting stretched to fit the format, which isn’t good.

Spider-Man & Wolverine #10

By Marc Guggenheim & Gerardo Sandoval

• Kaare Andrews is a no-show for the final issue of the series designed to be a showcase for his art. In the end, he drew six of the series’ ten issues, and failed to draw every issue of either multi-part arc.
• Mariko was resurrected by Gorgon in Old Man Logan #32, which is also when she adopted the moniker of Scarlet Samurai (a riff on her half-brother’s identity as the Silver Samurai).
• Despite the way this issue frames Mariko and Wolverine’s meeting as their first since her resurrection, the pair met in Wolverine (vol. 7) #6 during “X of Swords”, suggesting once again that Marvel could really use someone whose job it is to read scripts before the comic is published and correct that sort of stuff.
• Something about Arachnix just being handed off to Reed Richards and returned to his reality feels like a distinct de-escalation of the threat level he represented earlier in the story. At the same time, I get it, the series is ending and we need to shuffle him off the board without killing him.
• Each of the principal creators pens a brief editorial at the end of the issue eulogizing the series. Oddly, Guggenheim pats the team on the pack for having a consistent creative team, saying that’s rare in this day and age. Which, true, but also, suggesting a creator finishing 6 of 10 issues is some model of consistency — especially in a creator showcase book — seems really weird, even if the artist drawing the other four issues was always the same.

Putting aside the fact that the big emotional moment of this issue — Wolverine and Mariko reuniting for the first time since her resurrection — already happened years ago, this is a perfectly fine conclusion to the story. But I’m not exactly going to miss this book.