X-Force is a bit of a wild ride for me. I mean that in two ways. The book itself is a wild ride, unexpected and shocking things happening in it all the time, its also a book that goes rapidly from pretty good to OMG AMAZING very rapidly.
X-Force 14 and now 15 have gone into this OMG territory, elevating the book up to Grant Morrison levels of creativity.
The premise behind X-Force is simple, the reality not so much. Logan thought what he was doing was creating a team to deal permanently with threats to mutankind, one without any direct involvement of the governing body of Utopia.
What he has ended up doing is creating a situation in which Archangel has become the new Apocalypse, and with that, we have entered easily the best Marvel story of this decade.
Archangel has ascended to become Apocalypse, not En Sabah Nur, but the position he held, that of the Celestials aid in evolution. Fearing what House of M has done to the course of evolution on the planet, he seeks to restart life on earth at the beginning to get things back on track.
This book is full of great SF style concepts. Its cast is sublime, and its villains, for the first time in a Marvel book in YEARS, are literally bone chilling.
Archangel is surrounded by a sort of cult, consisting of the Dark Beast, the previous Apocalypse's ultimate Horsemen, and Apocalypse's son Genocide. All that stands between them and restarting life on this planet are Deadpool, Fantomex and Deathlock. The is a book that has made me love Deathlock, a feat I thought impossible.
Two other things I love about this book are how aware it is of the rest of the Marvel Universe. That there are places and things in the Marvel Earth that are relevant to what they are doing, and so they go there or reference them. Too many books these days ignore that sort of thing if its not convenient, making a much poorer shared world. The other thing, would be Remenders treatment of Deadpool, as a character, a tragic character in fact, that wants to be a hero, but has trouble, and who is often incredibly insecure. Its wonderful that the Wade can once again be handled by someone who actually cares about making him a person instead of a joke with legs.
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