Spinning out of the X-Men story event, Extermination, comes an all-new X-Force series. A new era for Cable means a new era for his bruising band of mutants.
***SPOILERS LIE AHEAD***
Out goes Old Man Cable, in comes Kid Cable and with him comes a bunch of questions. Most of the old X-Force squad is back together and they want answers from the younger version of their leader who killed his future self.
Kid Cable breaks his partner, Deathlok, out of a Transian military facility before being intercepted by X-Force. This handful of scrappy heroes gets blamed for the assassination of Transia’s leader which inspires the country to declare war on all mutants.
First thing’s first, good on Ed Brisson for dusting off Deathlok and putting him on a team that he immediately fits into. We get to see a bit of his chemistry with Kid Cable, it’s an interesting dynamic.
Kid Cable presents us with a chance we haven’t really had before in exploring the younger years of Nathan Summers. We’ve seen stories and moments of a younger Cable, but never have we had him in an ongoing at such a young age. Brisson will no doubt utilize the opportunity and take us places we haven’t been before with the character.
One exciting detail with Kid Cable that we’ve seen already is that he’s not the man we’ve grown to know yet. Obviously with him being much younger, he’s not the old man that’s twelve steps ahead of everybody and always has a backup plan. It’s going to be a fun ride seeing him learn how to become the ultimate mutant warrior that we all know and love.
The rest of our X-Force team is composed of all-time favorites (minus Boom-Boom for now). They all have years of collaboration to build on, Brisson doesn’t skip a beat or set any of them back. He’s got a really good handle on them in X-Force #1.
Our antagonist being a cowardly and devious mutant-hating military leader means our ragtag group of mutants will have plenty of enemies to plow through. Brisson’s script not only sets up our team really well, but also develops the villain and his plot successfully in only a few short pages.
Stylized violence is always the best kind. The way people’s faces disappear from bullet blasts is done in an artistic and elegant fashion. There’s a sleekness to action sequences that benefits from the more cartoon-ish art direction.
The art style also allows each character to have their distinguishing features exaggerated. Everybody looks very much their own and in a new light that is both pleasing and accurate for each character. Dylan Burnett and Jesus Aburtov’s art allows the story to be deadly serious without getting up it’s on ass too far.
X-Force #1 doesn’t reinvent the wheel or show us anything we really weren’t expecting, but it’s damn good comic book entertainment. The potential of Kid Cable and his all-star supporting cast makes this a must-read for all X-Men fans.
