A Retrospective Review of Liefeld’s X-Force (1991)
December 5th, 2008
I took some time today to re-visit some old comics. I mean really old. Which ones? The New Mutants #100 where the X-Force team is officially brought together for the first time and marking the end of The New Mutants as a series. Then I read X-Force #1 through #9, Rob Liefeld’s plotted run of the comic before he, and other “comic superstars”, left Marvel to start up Image Comics.
The reason I came back to these is because I’ve gotten to thinking about comics nowadays and how they don’t seem to have a lasting effect on me like they did when I was a teen. Perhaps it came down to the time, to the experiences I can now bring into comics, why certain themes impress me more than others? The list could run on and on.
I have started to hit comic book shops in my surrounding area and have started digging through their back stock. I’ve purchased about 80 comics in two weeks during my explorations. Mostly I started grabbing old 90s stuff that caught my eye and I got curious about. In other cases I’d shuffle my fingers through old series I stopped collecting just to see who had what, and was it theoretically possible to try to continue where I left of in the early 90s.
This is what lead me to reading my nine issues of X-Force. I found a small shop with an X-Force back stock box FILLED with the series. I just had to know if I wanted to invest in it once again. Maybe one day I’ll be able to collect the 100 issues of The New Mutants (from the 1980s) that came before X-Force! I’ve got maybe 30 issues between #58 and #100 so this will be a challenge… I need to train myself with lighter goals first.
Below are my quick thoughts concerning these early X-Force comics (#1 -> #9).
9/11 in Comics a Decade Earlier?
Hearing characters use statements like “acts of terror” and “threats to national security” in a series of comics released throughout 1991 was jarring. These are statements ingrained in most of the minds of the US public through mainstream media outlets. It’s crazy to think these terms existed 10 years prior to 9/11 and in the minds of comic geeks everywhere as plot devices.
There was a terrorist attack on one of the twin towers by Black Tom Cassidy and Juggernaut that resulted in one of the towers getting blown up–not completely… but hearing the characters talk about it pulled this comic series forward more than a decade, resulting in a plot that just didn’t seem dated… even though the character hairstyles sure as hell did.
Somebody’s Misery is MY Misery
I am pretty sure I’m not exaggerating, and I’d hate to go back to confirm this detail, but (possibly) every comic had SOMEbody wanting to put SOMEbody out of SOMEbody’s misery. Was this an inside joke between the writer and the editor?! SOMEbody please stop it already… (I wonder if this continued after Rob Liefeld left the series (about issue #9)?
What’s In a Name? “Evil” Presumably.
I’ve never liked the name of the villain group, “The Brotherhood of Evil Mutants”, it seemed out of place and pulled me out of the created reality of the story’s world. What group would rationally apply “evil” into their group name? A group that’s gonna have every righteous team up their asses in no time, that’s who.
I mean the team has villains on it that I actually enjoy seeing work together (or not)… but “evil“… ugh. The black & white obviousness went against everything anti-hero that X-Force stood for!
It was relieving to actually read the writer trying to have Toad explain it as a choice or somesuch to define how they angle their “mutant superiority” agenda by choosing the “evil” path to getting their message out. It didn’t help reason it for me; it only confirmed its ridiculousness and Marvel’s unwillingness to let go of past story-telling constructs (aka making the good guys good and the bad guys bad).
The present “Brotherhood” finally removes the pointless, brainless, adjective which remedies this mental speed-bump that slowed down my automobile of enjoyment.
Gratuitous Threat Making
Every book was littered with threats of killing, or gutting, or bleeding, or something someone… to death of course… until you know… they were dead. Or characters saying “enough with the threats” or that they were going to end threats by doing something that involved their enemies not being able to give the threats, like breaking jaws, slitting throats, or, um oh ya, killing them!
I was amazed that the plot could actually hold up and move along with every page spread having one incident of this blatant XTREME! lingo of extravagant violent acts shoved down the readers’ throats of awareness–OK, that made no sense–I blame the comics.
Where they trying to prove how XTREME! this X-angle of a team was? Man, too much… and still there was a story… it was fascinating experience to struggle through this repeated dialogue but still want to know what was going to happen next. I’m marveled by HOW they actually pulled that off.
X-Gas Masks, X-Smoke Grenades, X-Shark Repellents
About 95% of the characters (ok, so I don’t know the exact percentage… alot in any case) have more bags and pouched on their bodies then they have any actual use for. I mean, if they reached into them once and a while it’d make sense–maybe… pointless still I think, but at least a bit more sense–the pouches would have a purpose!
Otherwise, they seem bulky and unfitting. Not even Batman needs this many pouches–and he’s the token icon role-model for pouch-wearers everywhere! This seems like it was a 90s phenomenon in comics solely spear-headed by Rob Liefeld. Hmmm… is it a coincidence cargo pants became huge in the pants market at about this time?!
In Conclusion
I will indeed be hunting the back bins for–at the very least–the next 10-11 comics of the series. The artist changes which could be good, could be bad–really depends if you can ignore the awkward anatomy Liefeld would get away with.I say “gets away with” because as much as people like to complain about him NOW… HE made that book sell and the FANS made him a superstar. I think comic fans need to stop jumping on opinion wagons whenever it’s the next “cool” opinion ot have. Seriously, stop it.
I’m not of the school of folk that bash him at every opportunity. I think his art holds some value, it was actually pretty simple considering the active line work in the inking, the backgrounds were sparse but at least didn’t distract the action, it was dynamic during combat if somewhat repetitive (aka I’m not a fan of every goddamn character being a stretchy ninja-type), and the accessorizing could have been toned down… but guess what, it sold books and got the story moving along!
Having guest penciler Mike Mignola (from Hellboy comics) do Cable’s back story in issue #8 was a pleasant surprise. Back when I was a teen I can see this art possibly having thrown me off and I’d hate to even think it affected my decision to discontinue buying the series, but alas those were different times. I’m a fan of Mignola’s art style for specific story telling and I think issue #8 delivered when I seriously thought it was going to fall flat. Seeing the art not attached to Hellboy was a little weird at first, but I gained a new appreciation for his hard lines and deep shadowed style after finding a prematurely cancelled episode of The Amazing Screw On Head.
In the end, reading these 10 comics again I came to realize how much I had actually forgotten about these stories and how much of these characters’ personalities just didn’t shine through for me. Coming to them now I can appreciate the less obvious psychological angles being developed that I can only expect where explored during the next 17 years of story telling by other writers.
This makes me excited for when I hit another old series from my old collections for sure!
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