Inglorious X-Force #6
“Less Than Zero”
Writer: Tim Seeley
Artist: Michael Sta. Maria
Colorist: Romulo Fajardo Jr.
Cover Artist: R.B. Silva and David Curiel
You can’t have an X-Force without a Mutant Liberation Front for them to fight. With Stryfe no longer a factor, the MLF needed a new leader, and they found… a TikTok creator?
What’s Old is New Again
Now that the mystery of who the future traitor is has been solved—for us readers, at least—it’s time for this series to move on to its next phase. Which is actually a bit more interesting than the prior one, funny enough.
The Mutant “activist” (more like terrorist) Kali, leader of the MLF, is blowing up on social media. She is turning huge numbers of people against mutants, specifically Ms. Marvel. It’s drawing plenty of recruits to her cause—but it’s also put her in X-Force’s crosshairs.
Setting a trap using a familiar face for old-school X-Force fans, Cable and company work as a cohesive unit to take down the MLF members. With them beaten and their powers neutralized, it’s time for Cable to ask them some questions about Kali.
Meanwhile, Domino is wandering around lost and haggard, with no memories. All she has to go on is a photo of her X-force team. Her questions manage to attract the wrong kind of attention…
As Seen Online
This is a very old-school X-book. It feels like something I would have read in the 1990s.
That’s a good thing, by the way.
This book has mystery, a secret traitor, all the soap opera goodness of “who’s hooking up with whom,” and more.
Let’s break it down.
The mystery and the secret traitor are tied together. Cable has ruled out Archangel, Hellverine, and Boom-Boom as suspects for the "One of Us" that will kill President Ms. Marvel in the future. In his mind, that opens the pool up to "all of mutantkind." So he basically went from three suspects to everyone being a suspect. Yeah, he's not paranoid. The irony is, the one person he doesn't suspect is himself, and guess who the traitor really is? This is where the mystery comes into play. We know he is possessed, but we don't know by what or why. So that is really what's driving the book now.
The soap opera aspect is a classic part of the X-Men and their offshoots. Here, you have a little triangle developing between Boom-Boom and Hellverine, who are hooking up on the regular, and Archangel, who has a bond with Boomer thanks to him saving her life a few issues back. Half the team being in a love triangle? I'm sure that won't be a problem at all. You also have the soap opera classic of amnesia, this being the affliction that Domino is currently dealing with. You see, she found out what's wrong with Cable, and that wouldn't do, so he erased her memories most thoroughly. Now she's wandering around New York, carrying a picture of the original X-Force but not knowing why.
With all this going on, it's a wonder the team ever finds time to fight baddies, but somehow they do. Here they have turned their focus to the new MLF, headed by social media leader Kali. She's like Stryfe in how she can lure people to her cause, but she's got a much bigger platform and audience than he ever did.
As a fan of X-Force going back to the beginning, I liked seeing the appearance of the Zero unit as bait for the trap. The MLF recruits sounded like you'd expect indoctrinated mutant teens to sound, but not to the extent that they were completely annoying. I did really enjoy seeing X-Force work as an actual cohesive unit to take them down, and the reveal that they were so well-prepared for the teens because they overshared on social media was just perfect and sadly very realistic.
I'm looking forward to seeing where the hunt for Kali takes the team next, along with when Domino's going to cross their paths again, and what's really going on with Cable. Marvel has a bad habit of only giving books ten issues these days, so that's a lot of dangling threads to wrap up in three issues. We'll have to see if the creative team can pull it off.
Follower Count
Writer Tim Seeley is reunited with original artist Michael Sta. Maria this month, just in time for things to kick into high gear.
Seeley's script does a terrific job juggling the big plot moments with the little character bits. The opening scenes of Ms. Marvel at high school show that she’s still trying to live a normal life, while also introducing the level of influence Kali has achieved. The interplay between the various team members gives you just enough idea of personalities if you didn't know who they were, without slowing the pace down too much. And as I said earlier, it was nice to see the team work as a cohesive unit against the MLF. Overall, a much-needed improvement from the missteps and letdowns of last issue.
Sta. Maria has a style that's clean and not too flashy, which actually works well for a book about a more clandestine special operations unit. Everyone has their own unique look and style. The action is well-rendered with easy-to-follow panels that still have some dynamic angles and staging. The amount of pouches all over Cable's body does edge a bit into parody territory, but we can always blame that on whatever is possessing him (oh God, I hope it's not Rob Liefeld). Speaking of, Cable's handiwork is immediately visible on Domino, who has a thousand-yard stare thing going on as she wanders around New York in her tattered clothes, holding on to an old picture even though she doesn't remember who the people in it are.
The color work by Romulo Fajardo Jr. is like X-Force itself—it's only flashy when it needs to be, but it's reliable and can get the job done. Everything is rendered in clean shades without too much brightness or shadow, and the power effects are varied. I especially liked the rainbow mist cloud of the MLF teleporter. His work here isn't going to break new ground or win any awards, but it's solid and unobtrusive, and sometimes that's enough.
Look Within for Answers
Inglorious X-Force #6 helps the series recover from last issue's missteps, and gives us a confrontation with the new version of the Mutant Liberation Front that shows how some things never change, just the people in charge. Mutant terrorism by TikTok is a topical idea, and one that gives plenty of options for opponents of X-Force. At the same time, the mystery of what is going on with Cable deepens. Hopefully Marvel won't cut this book off early and will give it the time it needs to tell its story—there are too many interesting threads here for it to be forced into a mad race for the finish line.