Uncanny X-Force #30 - Awesome Bites Back

Unless you're a politician or coach of the New England Patriots, lies only go so far. When you lie, cheat, and steal without a full compliment of lawyers and politicians in your back pocket, that shit is going to catch up with you. The heroes of Marvel and DC may be powerful enough to destroy potential earth-shattering threats, but when they lie they do a piss poor job of covering their tracks. The heroes and anti-heroes of Marvel are prone to lie every bit as much as that guy in a bar trying to pick up a girl by telling her he can get her a role in the next James Cameron movie. But you would think with the added powers and abilities of heroes, they would be capable enough of covering their asses with bribes, non-disclosure agreements, and lawsuits. I guess that's a lot harder when you're a secret kill squad.

Uncanny X-Force is not your typical superhero book in the same way getting a prostate massage from a cute female nurse is a sex position. These heroes are only as heroic as a kill squad will allow them to be. Hell, the first arc of the series culminated with a kid getting shot in the head. Moreover, the consequences of that shot led to some pretty fucked up events that few lawyers outside Mitt Romney's inner circle could cover up. In a ways, it's fitting that Fantomex was the one that set all this shit into motion because his specialty is deceiving people in ways that would impress Bernie Madoff. But since he doesn't have the money for lawyers, that deception eventually caught up with him and it's catching up with X-Force as well.

And it isn't just Fantomex's bullshit that is incurring the wrath of karma. All of X-Force is getting their ass tenderized by a new Brotherhood of Mutants that has taken their "kill these motherfuckers before they fuck up our shit" strategy and turned it against them. They already took kid-Apocalypse. They also killed Fantomex and blew up X-Force's base of operation. So it isn't just bad karma. It's like karma has a bad case of PMS and X-Force forgot to buy her tampons.

Uncanny X-Force #30 explores what the new Brotherhood has been doing with Kid Apocalypse (aka Genesis) while X-Force explored yet another dystopian future. There's a nice little scene with Genesis and Fantomex, who he thinks is his uncle. It helps remind the readers that while Fantomex was growing a new Apocalypse in the World, he attempted to make him less of an asshole by basically ripping off Superman and making him believe that he was just a good old boy from Kansas who was born with apocalyptic power. It's yet another one of Fantomex's huge lies and it isn't even of the douchy kind. Yet it's the one that the new Brotherhood is looking to expose thanks to Shadowking, who probably gets a boner by fucking with the minds of young kids. He's almost as bad as Jerry Sandusky in that sense.

Now Genesis's disappearance hasn't gone unnoticed. There's a brief scene at the Jean Grey Institute that shows Shadowcat and Beast getting understandably upset about his disappearance. Even they seem to know that losing the kid destined to become Apocalypse is bad news. Plus, they don't know where the fuck Wolverine is. But you would think they would be used to that shit.

That makes the new Brotherhood's triumph all the more satisfying I imagine. The X-me are clueless while X-Force is seemingly as dead as Fantomex, whose body they have mounted on a wall. To be honest, I would do the same if I killed someone who was as big a douche as Fantomex, but that's besides the point. The new Brotherhood don't seem to give much thought to the possibility that X-Force somehow survived Ultimaton blowing up. They just decide to kick back, shoot some pool, and wait for Apocalypse to join their ranks. Now maybe this is odd coming from an admitted stoner, but this is one instance where someone needs to be extra motivated and like Fantomex's bullshit that's going to come back to bite them.

But to get Apocalypse on their side, they first have to undo the innocent little shell that is Genesis. Now Remender could have just had Shadowking telepathically undo all the shit Fantomex did. But that's not bloody enough for an Uncanny X-Force comic. He would much rather see Genesis succumb to his inner Apocalypse on his own. So he, Sabretooth, and Daken prepare a little test to see if he's not quite as creepy as he seems. Daken tells Genesis that Sabretooth is going to walk into a gas station and start killing innocent people. The only way to stop him is for Genesis to get out and kill him first. It's a cruel, messy way to make a point, but it definitely sends the right message.

The attack on the gas station is messy, but not quite as bloody as we're used to seeing in the pages of Uncanny X-Force. Genesis makes a feeble effort to stop Sabretooth, but he avoids killing him. This allows Sabretooth to butcher several innocent people, which for him is no worse than pissing on an ant hill. Again, it's not as bloody as it could have been. Sabretooth didn't torture them first. He didn't shit on their faces or gouge out their eyes Spanish Inquisition style. He just kills them in front of Genesis in a way that will still require more therapy than Dr. Phil will ever be able to provide.

While it may not be as bloody as seeing Deadpool feed pieces of himself to Arcangel, the whole psychological torment element adds some very compelling elements to the scene. It's not unlike how the Joker fucks with people, trying to prove that we're all assholes at our core. The Brotherhood just does it with less clown makeup and more mindless violence. It's the kind of violence that almost makes you feel sorry for Genesis because he clearly is trying not to become Apocalypse. I say almost because you know this shit can't be avoided, especially when it's based around lies by Fantomex.

Since killing innocent people wasn't enough turn Genesis bad, the Brotherhood steps up their game by seeking out his parents. Keep in mind Genesis's parents are all an illusion, a lie Fantomex ripped out of old Superman comics. But to Genesis, they're still his parents so he makes an extra effort to try and save them. He breaks out of the camper where the Brotherhood had been holding them and tries to reach them before they do. He ends up failing miserably. By the time he arrives, Sabretooth and Daken have already slaughtered them. It's not too graphic, but then again his parents aren't real to begin with. That doesn't make the impact any less potent because you get the sense that it really does affect Genesis. It essentially symbolizes the kind of shit that can happen when you adopt this whole pre-emptive killing mentality.

At this point, Genesis stops playing nice and starts exercising his Apocalyptic powers. He attacks Daken and Sabretooth with the kind of force that most would expect of a young Apocalypse going through puberty. He blasts them in ways that make them look like they took a bath in Snookie's vaginal secretions and uses his powers to become that much less of a pussy farm boy. It's the first time Genesis has really flexed his powers and shown signs of being the Apocalypse we all know he's destined to become. But remarkably, yet not surprisingly he stops himself before he starts dissecting Sabretooth and Daken like Jeffery Dahlmer in a morgue. Despite thinking he had just lost his parents, he refuses to become the Apocalyptic asshole they want him to be. That says a lot about him or about how strong Fantomex's deception was. I tend to err on the side of Fantomex's deception being pretty fucking strong.

While Genesis was able to resist the urge to become too apocalyptic, it doesn't dissuade Sabretooth and Daken in the slightest. Unlike Fox News, they actually have the truth on their side. They know thanks to Shadowking that everything Genesis thinks about his life is a big ass lie. Now that they've opened the door for him to become an evil son-of-a-bitch, they can dig even deeper. They can expose Fantomex's lie completely. For a kid with Apocalyptic tendencies, that's some pretty heavy shit to process. And were it not for future solicitations of Wolverine and the X-men that showed Genesis still intact, you wouldn't be sure if he could resist his dark inclinations at this point. Maybe Sabretooth and Daken should have just gone the traditional route and got him hooked on weed and heavy metal.

Even though this book is called Uncanny X-Force, X-Force didn't even make an appearance. Usually, that would be grounds for a whole lot of WTF, but as he often does with seemingly fucked up premises Rick Remender finds a way to make it work. It's not enough to just have Shadowking tell Genesis that everything he thought about his life was a lie. Hell, that shit could have been handled in half a page. But Rick Remender finds a way to spread it out over an entire issue that turns into one massive mindfuck. And you know what? It's pretty damn awesome.

Now I'm not in favor of mindfucking anybody who isn't an ardent supporter of Rick Santorum, but Remender did something pretty amazing with this issue in that it actually made readers care about Genesis. It's not easy to forget that this kid is still Apocalypse. He's still destined to become the living embodiment of every creationists's fears about evolution. There was always a sense that sooner or later he would have to confront the horrible truth, but the way the Brotherhood is going about it in this issue makes for a compelling drama and intense character moments. It goes back to the whole nature vs. nurture dilemma that Remender first explored during the first arc. It's taking on a much more dramatic twist with Genesis as he's fighting the Brotherhood's influence. I don't want to get too attached to a kid I know will probably turn out to be the kind of guy that jerks off to genocide. But damn it, Remender is making that shit hard!

Uncanny X-Force always finds a way to break new ground. While the previous arc overplayed the whole dystopian future story, this issue once again made solid connections back to plots that have been unfolding since the very first issue. It takes elements of psychological torment and drapes them with the gritty, blood-soaked sheets of X-Force's awesome. Even though X-Force didn't show up and the action wasn't bloody enough in some areas, this issue still embodies so much of what makes Uncanny X-Force one of the most awesome X-books on the market. I give Uncanny X-Force #30 a 4.5 out of 5. The Brotherhood is going to great lengths to prove Freud wrong. They're looking to show that no matter how much you butter up a kid, you can still turn him into a sadistic asshole and you don't have to resort to parenting tips from James Dobson to do it. Nuff said!

Uncanny X-Force #28 - Time Twisting Awesome

Quick! What's bloody, brutal, disturbing, and doesn't involve Sarah Palin giving live birth in a slaughter house? If you voted Uncanny X-Force, then congratulations. You're not a right-wing douche-bag and you have a soul. But even if you lost your soul in a bet with the devil on Ricky Martin's sexuality, you could still find plenty to enjoy with Uncanny X-Force. Even without major tie-ins to the other X-books or big line-wide events like Avengers vs. X-men, it's been one of Marvel's most consistently awesome books. It's one of those rare comics that is like pizza or an orgasm. Even when it's lousy, it's still pretty fucking awesome.

Uncanny X-Force has been about as bloody as you would expect lately. It started disturbingly enough with Psylocke boning Fantomex. Then your rumbling stomach was replaced by a rock hard dick (or pussy boner for you ladies out there) when Mystique entered the picture and screwed over Fantomex in ways that are as literal as they are awesome. It all built upon a new threat that X-Force had been investigating called the Omega Clan. This group of Omega Red knock-offs not only roughed X-Force up. They led to the disturbingly awesome revelation that a new Brotherhood of Mutants had formed. Apparently, the X-men's enemies were tired of X-Force's whole secret kill squad policy and decided to give them the finger in ways that are as painful as they are explosive. It started when they managed to kill Fantomex, leaving his digital fuck-buddy EVA to save Psylocke. Then she met up with the rest of X-Force just in time for their base to be blown to hell by a fucking nuclear blast, courtesy of Fantomex's pet Ultimaton. It may sound like the freakin' apocalypse, but for X-Force it's still the equivalent of a bad hangover on a Monday when you're late for work.

Uncanny X-Force #27 ended with a bang. Uncanny X-Force #28 goes back a little further to show what happened in between the big boom. With the threat of instant vaporization imminent, X-Force had to improve and get Psylocke to mind-fuck Gateway (for some reason he's still hanging out with X-Force) into using his powers to transport them away before the big nuclear blast on the final page of the last issue went off. No one should have had any doubts that X-Force would find a way to escape, but one that involves mind-fucking a dying friend is pretty brutal. But then again if that shit bothers you, then clearly you haven't been paying attention to the last 27 issues of this series. That or you've got some kick-ass shrooms and we should talk.

So where does Gateway take them? Last time, he took them to a dystopian future run by Apocalypse. It was a future so fucked up that being incinerated by a nuclear bomb almost seems more appealing. But Wolverine got to see a live Jean Grey again so that was worth it. But as fucked up as that was, Gateway shows that he nor the Marvel universe have much originality left to spare because Gateway ends up transporting X-Force into yet another dystopian future. If you're done rolling your eyes, bear with me. It's 30 years in the future and for reasons not entirely clear, X-Force is immediately confronted by a future team of experienced killers in Cable, Hope, Deadpool, and a horribly aged Frank Castle. But before they can get to them, a future Deathlok approaches X-Force and tells them to follow him. Deadpool is immediately inclined to make a Terminator reference, but for once he restrains himself. That's something you might want to chalk up to memory because who knows when that shit will happen again.

Now I know Uncanny X-Force is supposed to be a grim and gritty book, but in a Marvel universe already crowded with dystopian futures this was especially groan-worthy. Granted, this dystopia isn't as bad as futures where super-intelligent apes treat humans like pets or hoards of angry women roam the land looking for men to castrate. It still reeks of the stench of cliche. Rick Remender has been pretty good at using novel approaches to Uncanny X-Force since it began. This just feels too underwhelming, but thankfully it's only one aspect of a much larger story.

The threat of ending up on the business end of this new dystopia's dystopian mojo leads X-Force to follow Deathlok into the sewers. Apparently every dystopia still thinks nobody is stupid and/or desperate enough to wade through raw sewage to escape such tyranny. And they wonder why they fail so often. But X-Force isn't too interested in learning about all the ways this new shitty future has gone to hell. Wolverine tells Deathlok there's enough shit to deal with back in his world and they need to get back, if for no other reason than to give his son the kind of discipline that doesn't give him a boner.

But aside from the logistics, there's also a nice moment with Psylocke and EVA. The big moment of the last issue was Fantomex's big sacrifice to save the woman who was generous/cruel enough to let him into her panties. This resulted in EVA taking over in Fantomex's absence. She reminded him that Fantomex knew what he was getting into when he sacrificed himself. Her pussy was just that powerful. However, Psylocke reminds her that she gave up her ability to give a damn in the Otherworld arc and it's still fucking with her.

These nice character moments that also lead to AOA Nightcrawler and Deadpool discussing why losing a healing factor sucks balls are part of the natural preservatives that make Uncanny X-Force so delicious. But the book at it's core is still about a more brutal side of the X-men. So once X-Force gets tired of smelling raw sewage, Deathlok takes them on a little tour of this tyrant's wet dream, which also happens to be a rip-off of Minority Report. That leads to some disturbing links between tyrants and Tom Cruise, but that's for another blog post. Deathlok shows them how the world has basically adopted X-Force's policy of killing people before they stir up shit. They witness some dystopian forces basically ripping a husband away from his wife and children to be killed because they've determined that he's going to kill those children. It sounds good on paper, but the way they do it is still a real dick move.

But how did all this happen? Why did the world suddenly determine that this whole freedom of choice shit was for pussies? Well, Deathlok explains that too. He tells them that X-Force basically failed with Genesis and he became the new Apocalypse. So X-Force expanded their ranks to other Marvel heroes and somehow convinced them that killing was okay. They were able to kill Apocalypse and the world was so grateful that for some reason they asked X-Force to use that policy to kill all the bad guys, which they did. And when there were no more left to kill, they started killing preemptively. And the mastermind behind this kill-and-fuck-due-process policy was none other than Psylocke, who in her future form looks strikingly similar to my 4th grade math teacher. Excuse me while certain parts of my body shudder in horror.

While the whole dystopian future may be cliched, this explanation actually makes a very compelling and disturbing point for Uncanny X-Force. It shows what happens when their policy of preemptive killing goes too far. It ties in nicely with some of the doubts Psylocke has been expressing in recent issues, leading to both a crisis of confidence and a willingness to bone Fantomex. Put that together, and it leads to a dystopian future. So while you may still roll your eyes at another alternate world for Marvel, at least Rick Remender made one that sent a clear and powerful message that helped refine the story.

Unfortunately, they don't get to debate the merits of preemptive killing. This is Uncanny X-Force after all. That means someone's going to start beating someone else to a bloody pulp. After telling X-Force that their shit is going to lead to a future dystopia, he skips the part where he tries to channel his inner Jehovah's Witness and tries to preemptively kill them so this future won't happen. So he's trying to end a murderous future through murder. That's at lot like doing shots of tequila to end alcoholism. Plus, it misses that whole part about Apocalypse rising to power. But then again Deathlok has never been known for being the most logical creature. How can you when your dick has been replaced by a machine with no vibrating function?

It doesn't really matter in the end because Deathlok makes such a racket that he gets his ass killed by the same dystopian police force they ran from when they arrived. Given Deathlok's tendency to make decisions that only make sense to a schizophrenic, it's not too surprising. Cable, Hope, Deadpool, and Frank Castle arrive to greet the time travelers. They seem to understand that just shooting them will take a massive shit on the space time continuum. But while Deathlok is now an even greater rip-off of the Terminator, the future dystopian police force end up facing another problem that threatens to re-enact some of the most fucked up non-incest scenes from the Back to the Future trilogy.

Psylocke somehow managed to slip away during the commotion. Unlike the others who thought Deathlok's whole rant about the morals of preemptive murder sounded like shit Glenn Beck would say when he was still a drunk, Psylocke took it seriously. Upon finding out that she was the cruel, sadistic bitch that led this future, she decided to slip away so she could do what needed to be done to end this shit. She fucking kills herself. And she doesn't do it in the quick, painless way that involves a shotgun to the head or auto-erotic asphyxia. She stabs herself in the stomach with a katana, a traditional method of Japanese suicide. It's messy, it's painful, and it's ridiculously badass. But like the death of Fantomex, it's somewhat underplayed which indicates this is one of those deaths that probably won't stick. Marvel simply can't kill a hot, sexy Asian chick that they've already killed once before. They know every teenage boy with an Asian fetish will revolt. But it's still a powerful scene from a character that has been on an emotional roller coaster for many issues now.

Rick Remender has always had a flare for the dramatics in Uncanny X-Force, if by dramatics you mean excessive violence, sex, and melodrama. With every arc of Uncanny X-Force, he tries to up the ante and do it in exotic locales. You can't claim he isn't making a similar effort with this arc. He's taken X-Force to alternate universes, miniaturized world's, and Montana. But taking them to yet another dystopian future in a world that has as many dystopias as the Duggers have broken condoms seemed a bit underwhelming. That's rare for an issue of Uncanny X-Force. Rick Remender does an admirable job of making this twisted alternate reality compelling by tying it directly to the recent events with Psylocke and Genesis. However, it still feels somewhat bland in a way that's only made up for by the heavy drama at the end.

Uncanny X-Force has very high standards and Rick Remender met most of those standards with this issue. Even if the whole dytopian future plot is more overdone than a romantic comedy with Hugh Grant, the story here still measures up to Uncanny X-Force standards. It just doesn't measure up as well as some of the other recent issues. The whole notion of the X-men beating Apocalypse and essentially making X-Force the military dictators of the world is every bit as cliched as it sounds. Considering what's been going on in the pages of Avengers vs. X-men, it almost seems like a poor man's version of the events in Uncanny X-Force. But while it may be underwhelming, it's still like saying one supermodel wasn't as hot at the other. This twisted future is still a big part of the story and one that fits nicely with the arc Remender is building.

Uncanny X-Force #28 was as solid an issue of Uncanny X-Force as you could ask for. It had the dark, gritty style that Rick Remender has made so distinct since this title began. There's some colorful wit with characters like Deadpool and Wolverine. There are also some notable twists. While these twists may not require that you re-insert your eyeballs, they'll still give you pause in a way that only seeing a naked old woman dancing on your lawn will. It's not the strongest issue to date, but it's yet another issue that continues a tradition of awesome that has made this series one of the best X-books on the market. Uncanny X-Force #28 gets a 4 out of 5. So Psylocke is going through an emo phase after losing Angel and boning Fantomex. Under the circumstances, that's probably the healthiest thing she could do. Hell, it could be worse. She could have been a hooker that accepted a free drink from Charlie Sheen. Considering what she's been through recently, I think we can all say that Uncanny X-Force is nothing if not a case study in extreme coping skills. Nuff said!