This ain’t your daddy’s X-Force.

Sure, Cable is the man with the plan, and original member Boom-Boom is there, but that’s where the familiarity ends. This new iteration of the team is less friendly, less equipped, less cohesive than previous incarnations.

Which makes them a powder keg, just waiting to explode.

Team-Building Exercises

We start with a television broadcast from Kali, the leader of the new Mutant Liberation Front. She’s kind of like Magneto for the TikTok generation, which confuses and frustrates Boom-Boom to no end. Angel and Hellverine couldn’t care less, however, as they are “training” (read: beating the stuffing out of each other). And what’s Cable doing while his “kids” are fighting? Trying to figure out which of them is going to kill Kamala Khan, aka Ms. Marvel, aka the future first mutant President. So, you know. Nothing major.

No sooner does Kamala show up for some training, Cable announces it’s time to leave, they have a mission. Unbeknownst to them, their base is being watched by Cable’s old flame Domino, who follows them on their mission.

The target is a group called the Blasphemy Cartel. Made up of former S.H.I.E.L.D. agents, specifically of the magic-focused W.A.N.D. division, they have gathered under the leadership of a man called Barberry Boone. Their specialties? Necromancy (control over the dead) and Hemomancy (blood magic). Needless to say, things get a bit messy.

Despite being far from a well-oiled machine, X-Force manages to get the job done, and Cable manages to secretly clear one of the team from suspicion, while also accomplishing steps towards another secret agenda all his own…

Strange Bedfellows

The original X-Force, having been made up of the former New Mutants, were more like the X-Men than they cared to admit. They were teammates, they were friends, they were family. This new X-Force? They’re barely acquaintances. This makes for a lot more drama, but it doesn’t do much to many any of them very likable. So far, if I were reading this book in a vacuum, here is how I would describe each of the cast:

Cable - grizzled man from the future working multiple secret agendas.

Angel/Archangel - a rich guy with a chip on his shoulder, and a dark side.

Hellverine - the apparent son of Wolverine, who’s a chip off the old block in all the wrong ways. Also apparently a Ghost Rider?

Boom-Boom - the sassy, snarky party girl who provides much of the comedy relief, and also she blows stuff up real good.

Ms. Marvel - the only seemingly “good” person in the bunch, who’s learning a whole lot more than anyone should about their own future.

Domino - has a history with Cable, is watching everything the team does through the scope of a sniper rifle. Also she keeps talking to the squirrel that’s apparently following her around?

Now, I’m not saying any of those are bad characters, if that’s the best I can come up with for characterization of everyone two issues in, then I’m going to have a hard time investing in most of the cast.

Plot-wise, things move at a good pace and there’s some good action. Seeing magic used in an X-book that doesn’t include, well, Magik, is unique and interesting. The Hemomancy brings to mind the Bloodbending from Avatar: the Last Airbender, which is a uniquely creepy power for a bad guy to have. Speaking of the bad guy, he’s a bit of an enigma, I didn’t find a lot there to really care about him. He was just an obstacle for X-Force to overcome, and a temptation for Hellverine specifically. And his accent was a bit over the top, it was like some of the worst takes on Gambit or Rogue that you can think of. Just too much.

Modus Operandi

The regular creative team of Tim Seeley (words) and Michael Sta. Maria (pictures) are once again on duty this month, and the two continue to work well together. Seeley keeps the plot moving, although he does bog things down in exposition around the middle of the book. The characters all have fairly unique voices, it’s just that if you don’t know a lot about them coming into the book, you’re not going to get a whole lot to invest you in them beyond the surface stuff. As an old-school X-fan, I am familiar with Angel and Boom-Boom, but Hellverine is a mystery to me and the book isn’t giving me too many clues to solve it.

Sta. Maria’s art works well here, everyone on the team has a very distinctive look - no team uniformity here. The action, which there is plenty of here, is rendered well. Again, everyone fights in their own unique style, and the panel layouts keep things dynamic. Plenty of cool uses of powers, and lots of different magical effects. He falls into the modern trap of not doing much with backgrounds throughout a lot of the book, but with so many speed lines and power effects during the action scenes, it’s not as noticeable as it could have been.

Coloring is handled by Romulo Fajardo Jr., and he gets to really cut loose with lots of different effects - mutant powers, magic spells, TV broadcasts - everything looks dynamic and stands out in its own way. I do wish that the palette for the book as a whole was a little less “bright,” since the title carries a darker tone, but I’m not sure how much of that is his choice and how much is just the nature of modern computer coloring. As with the art, there are enough cool things going on that I can overlook a quibble like that.

That Old Black Magic

Overall, Inglorious X-Force #2 is a book that is full of action and intrigue, but it comes at the expense of deep characterization. The book is built on multiple mysteries - why were those names carved on Cable’s arm, which one of them is the future culprit, what else is Cable hiding - but that doesn’t mean that the cast should all be virtual enigmas. In fact, with the central throughline of the book being “who will murder Kamala Khan,” we should actually be getting to know the characters intimately, in order to make the eventual betrayal hurt all the more. But again, I think the modern versions of the X-books basically assume that we all have a deep knowledge and understanding of the characters being used, and that is not always the case. Every issue could be someone’s first, and that’s a lesson that books like this one could stand to remember.

None of this is to say that this is a “bad” comic. In fact, Inglorious X-Force #2 is a pretty solid book on the whole. It just isn’t using its cast or its central premise to the best of the creators’ abilities, and I find that to be a bit disappointing. It’s not enough to put me off the book yet, it just means that the end of each issue leaves me wanting - and not in the best possible way.