X-Force #55

X-Force #55
Writing: Jeph Loeb
Art: Adam Pollina

What Went Down: We open on Shatterstar holding Meltdown, formerly Boom Boom, right above one of the SHIELD Hellicarrier’s engines. She throws a time-bomb in and counts it down. On the bridge, Dum-Dum Dugan is in charge; G.W. Bridge is currently running SHIELD because I believe Nick Fury died over in the Hulk series. Anyway, alarms start going off and Dugan starts yelling at people. A shadowy figure tells Dugan that he’ll take care of it and that mutants fall under his jurisdiction. Contessa Valentina shows up to tell Dugan not to freak out.

In other parts of the Hellicarrier, different squads of X-Force members break in. Cable is teamed with Caliban, who is tasked with locating a particular mutant. Cable brings up some recent X-Force events while they walk. Domino and Siryn discover a load of invisible lasers, but Dom is able to use her luck powers to avoid them while shooting out all the weapons emplacements.

Meltdown and Shatterstar are attacked by some SHIELD troops, but Meltdown discovers they’re all LMDs, so they can use lethal force on the robots. After defeating them, Tabitha searches the ship’s databases and discovers that Sabretooth is still alive, but his location is classified. She blows up the computer because she is still angry about Sabretooth’s betrayal of her sympathies.

Back on the bridge, Dum-Dum yells at his people some more. As X-Force makes their way through the ship, they tear out a variety of systems. Caliban leads Cable to a big round door, saying they’re objective is behind it. Cable contacts the rest of the team to meet them there, and they proceed to combine they’re powers to open the door. Inside, they find Cyclops strapped to a machine. Also, SHIELD has surrounded X-Force while they were opening the door.

G.W. Bridge appears to tell X-Force that Cyclops is a prisoner of the U.S. government. The team pretends to surrender, but Cable uses his powers to free Cyclops of his headpiece allowing him to take out all the SHIELD soldiers with his optic blasts. Bridge is the only one left standing, so Cable punches him out. The team escapes, and Jean Grey picks them all up in a jet. She shares a kiss with Cyclops afterwards.

In an epilogue, Warpath is enjoying a relaxing beach vacation with Risque after disappearing during a battle in a previous issue. The cliffhanger is that he doesn’t know if he wants to leave Risque to rejoin the team.

How It Was: Well, this feels like an unnecessary detour. Granted, it’s not taking up an X-Men issue, but it’s still hard to see why any of this was necessary. We never get to find out why the Friends of Humanity turn Cyclops over to SHIELD or what Kelly’s huge secret was. I also can’t picture X-Force fans being thrilled about having all the book’s plot lines derailed for a meaningless crossover with Uncanny X-Men.

Still, parts of this story still work as a kind of big, dumb heist caper. It’s nice to see the members of X-Force working together to infiltrate the ship so effectively, and there’s some decent action and interactions. Since I’m primarily an X-Men fan, it’s nice to see Meltdown following up on Sabretooth since that’s one of the few character arcs I’m familiar with. Almost everyone clearly has one or two subplots they’re going through, which is nice, but I get the distinct feeling that none of them are furthered with this issue. Also, I don’t like how Domino’s power becomes a plot device to easily overcome any obstacle.

The main problems come from the fact that the whole issue is dedicated to solely rescuing Cyclops and the incompetent portrayal of SHIELD. Yes there is some alluding to factional infighting within the organization, but SHIELD still comes off as being run by a bunch of idiots, which is usually the case when they’re in any book other than they’re own. All Dum-Dum Dugan does is yell for the whole issue, and as far as being worthless goes, the same goes for G.W. Bridge. It’s exciting to see that Bastion might get involved, but then he disappears after the beginning of the book and nothing comes of his telling off Dugan at all.

This is not really where the story in Uncanny #333 needed to go. It feels like a needless distraction for X-Force, and it’s hard to get excited about SHIELD in the 90s without Nick Fury. This feels like a competent team book, but it turns out to be nothing special, which is a shame since this was a golden opportunity to gain more readers. You can almost feel how hard this series wants to be X-Men with the logo at the top of the cover, or at the very least recapture its initial popularity.

C+

Sabretooth Special #1

Sabretooth Special #1
Writing: Fabian Nicieza
Art: Gary Frank

What Went Down: After escaping the X-Men in Uncanny #328, Sabretooth encounters current X-Force member, and former Morlock, Caliban. Sabretooth taunts Caliban, saying that X-Force won’t allow him to be himself. When Caliban hesitates, Creed electrocutes him with some nearby electrical wires.

We learn that the X-Men squad tasked to capture Sabretooth is made up of the five original X-Men. Jean scans the city telepathically, but for some reason Creed’s head wound now makes it harder for telepaths to find him. Cyclops and Iceman go to one of Sabretooth’s apartments to see if he shows up there. He does, and beats up the two X-Men before escaping. Iceman pursues, but he is forced to ice off Creed’s escape after Sabretooth takes a hostage.

Sabretooth escapes to a subway, but wouldn’t you know it, the Beast coincidentally happens to be on board. So they fight as well. As Sabretooth is about to kill Beast Cyclops shows up in the nick of time, so Creed runs away again.

This time Archangel catches up to him and grabs him off the ground, believing that Creed will have nowhere to go in the air. Sabretooth damages one of Warren’s wings, causing both of them to fall, but Iceman manages to save Warren with some ice. While Iceman takes Archangel to the hospital, the rest of the X-Men continue the search.

Jean manages to pick up some thoughts from Sabretooth, and learns that he is trying to get to Boston to kill the Generation X kids. She finds him, and knocks him around with her telekinesis. Cyclops blasts him, but he gets faked out and pulled through a window. The X-Men give him a lecture on why it is important to be good as they fight him, all the while asking Sabretooth what he wants and why he is doing this. Jean gets a hold of him telekinetically, and Cyclops realizes that the thing Sabretooth wants is his own death. Jean drops Creed, and Cyclops has to shoot him in the head to stop him from hurting some cops.

Creed seems to die, but we all know that isn’t going to last. Val Cooper packs him up so that he can join X-Factor. Cyclops tells his friends that it’s sad that Sabretooth technically won since he got what he wanted.

How It Was: Fabian Nicieza returns to the X-Men for this special one-shot, with its shiny cover and lack of advertisements. Yes, this is the same format that the Age of Apocalypse one-shots had, except this doesn’t feel nearly as epic an event as those did. This feels like a genuine attempt at a cash grab since all of the gimmicks feel completely unnecessary. Don’t get me wrong, it’s nice to have no ads, but this comic is definitely not worth five bucks.

This isn’t to say that this comic is bad;  this just doesn’t really feel like that pivotal of an event for the X-Men. Nicieza does manage to present a really neat portrait of Sabretooth. Instead of revealing Sabretooth’s motivations, Nicieza leaves them up in the air and this actually works to some degree. It’s also frustrating to have months and months of set up be brushed aside as "Creed was faking it" for unknown reasons. What is neat to see is all the other characters guessing at his motivations: he’s angry, he’s enjoying his freedom, he’s planning revenge, or maybe he wants to die. The whole idea of the book seems to be that nobody knows what Sabretooth wants, including himself, and there is kind of an interesting idea in that which doesn’t get fully explored here.

The original X-Men are an odd choice for the stars of this one-shot. Surely characters like Wolverine, Gambit, and Bishop have closer ties to Sabretooth and thus would have been more interesting to bring into conflict with him. I guess that Nicieza was looking for X-Men to combat Creed’s philosophies as well as his body. But I really like the dynamic he has with Jean Grey where, like Wolverine, he respects her because she is willing to do what is necessary to him because she hates him as much as Logan does. And the scene where Archangel gets his wing broken is pretty shocking, but unfortunately leads to months of him complaining about how much his wing hurts. There’s a little too much sermonizing from the X-Men on the importance of control and knowing one’s purpose, but that’s them taking the high ground; it would be weird if these particular X-Men were only throwing insults back at him.

The real problem with the plot is that it’s trying to set up Sabretooth as this psychopathic killer that needs to be captured before he can kill hundreds of people, but then he never kills anybody. He has plenty of opportunities with the X-Men, Caliban, police officers, various hostages and random people, but he always lets them go. This probably has to do with the Comics Code, but it really cuts the drama to have a violent killer who forgoes every opportunity he has to kill.

The end is completely anti-climactic since we all know that Sabretooth can heal himself, so why even go through the motions of pretending he’s dead? And the fact that the telepaths can’t track him, but can read his mind just enough for plot convenience is a little contrived. But this is still a pretty good chase scene for a character that did play a significant role in the X-Men for a time. The plot isn’t exactly revolutionary, and this probably didn’t need to be double-sized, but it does get the job done with some decent action.

C+

Uncanny X-Men Annual #18

Uncanny X-Men Annual #18
Writing: Glenn Herdling and Jeph Loeb
Art: Ian Churchill and Tim Sale

What Went Down: Another annual, whoopee—64 more pages to describe. This exciting issue starts out with some young boys gathered around a campfire. While passing around a skin mag, one of the boys is made fun of for reading what appears to be a New Mutants comic book. Anyways, the boys are then surprised by a hooded creature that turns out to be Caliban, the Morlock and former Horseman of the Apocalypse. The boys run away frightened, and Caliban steals all of their junk food. He needs all of this food because it turns out that he has kidnapped Jubilee and chained her up in the sewer. His plan is to get the X-Men to send Sabretooth down so that Caliban can kill him and take revenge for the Morlock Massacre.

Back at the mansion, the X-Men have discovered Caliban’s ransom note asking for Sabretooth in exchange for Jubilee. Stevie Hunter is there to feel sorry for not being around to stop him, as if it would have mattered or she was still relevant to the X-books. Xavier decides to ask Sabretooth for his assistance, but the villain refuses unless Jean Grey will give him the “glow.”

Back in the sewer, Jubilee tricks Caliban into unchaining her, and she escapes. Because it is dark and there are monster alligators in the sewers, Caliban catches up to and recaptures her. Over with the X-Men, Kitty Pryde has showed up in a special guest appearance from the pages of Excalibur because she has the closest relationship with Caliban. She’s still a little bitter about betraying Colossus’ confidence during the Fatal Attractions storyline, and she seems very sensitive about this plan as well. Jean gives Sabretooth the glow with her powers, but she doesn’t stop and overwhelms him with it. Kitty and Sabretooth, in his restraints, are then sent off to find Caliban.

Caliban re-restrains Jubilee and goes off to “save” Kitty from Sabretooth. Sabretooth starts off his partnership with Kitty by attacking her, but Kitty holds her own. We also learn that one of the panels on her costumes turns out to carry nunchucks, which she uses to beat the tar out of Creed. After threatening to solidify her arm in his brain, Sabretooth agrees to play ball.

Caliban manages to shut the gates and flood the area where the heroes are. Kitty refuses to save just herself, and instead saves Creed as well. But in a radical twist, they are both attacked by a giant sewer squid. No, really. Caliban shows up to save Kitty from the squid, and Jubilee tries to convince Sabretooth to save them all, which he does.

After Sabretooth kills the squid, Kitty uses her powers to free Jubilee from her restraints; Sabretooth takes the opportunity to exploit Pryde’s powers and get himself free as well. Once free he attacks Caliban, but Jubilee and Kitty manage to get the restraints back on. Caliban refuses to accept help from the X-Men, and the narration at the end describes his state as the passing of the Horseman and the birth of the Hound, whatever that means.

What Else Went Down: Bishop is in the middle of an adventure with his former XSE partners Malcolm and Randall. They are um… escaping from somewhere while getting shot at from the air by… someone. Malcolm falls off a platform, but Bishop manages to pull him up. Malcolm thanks him, and then we find out that the whole story was a Danger Room sequence. As Bishop  leaves the Danger Room, Jubilee asks him if he wants to go rollerblading. Bishop refuses at first, but then reconsiders after her disappointed reaction. He asks if they can go walking instead, and Jubilee seems very happy.

How It Was: Another year’s worth of stories, another giant annual. The real question is why this story is in Uncanny when it stars one character from Excalibur, and two characters that normally appear in the other X-Men book. Oh well.

Looking at the story, it’s very average…kind of mehhh. There are some good moments; I like the animosity and tension between Kitty and Sabretooth, and Jubilee gets some really good humor in. I’ve never heard of Glenn Herdling, but he does write a really cool Kitty Pryde—with nunchucks. It’s awesome to see that Kitty has progressed from a scared new girl like Jubilee to a badass who can hand Sabretooth his behind with total confidence.

Unfortunately other than the fighting between Creed and Pryde, the only other action in this issue involves the X-Men fighting a giant squid, which is very silly. There are some okay scenes in the beginning with Sabretooth, but they only really establish that Creed is a jerk, which we already know. Caliban is one-dimensional and while his motivation is understandable, his execution leaves a little to be desired as far as being an interesting or fearsome villain. And this may be a nitpick, but I still can’t understand why Stevie Hunter is still appearing in these books. I have no idea what purpose or relevance she has to the team at this point, since she was originally Kitty Pryde’s dancing instructor when Kitty was a child. There’s certainly an opportunity to make her relevant, but her and Kitty never interact with each other at all.

Churchill’s art is really dark and edgy, which is appropriate since most of it takes place in a sewer; plus it’s a Sabretooth story. Churchill shows up years later as the regular artist in the 2000s, so this is a pretty good precursor to that brief run.

As for the back up strip, there is not really anything to it at all. We never even see whom the XSE are supposed to be fighting during their mission, and we really don’t get anything from their interactions that we didn’t get from their first appearance in Uncanny. There’s nothing really substantial at all; if you hadn’t figured out that Bishop was trying to get over his feelings about the future and adjust to the present, then you really haven’t been paying attention. The only thing notable about this story is that its creative team is the same one behind the very successful Batman: The Long Halloween and Batman: Dark Victory stories, and they worked together on the show Heroes.

Really, this is a forgettable one-off story that, while consistent, isn’t really anything to write home about. There are some cool moments for Kitty Pryde fans though. The back up story isn’t even worth mentioning again, it’s so inconsequential.

C