X-Factor #219:
Summary: Hot on the trail of the woman responsible for killing Mayor Jameson's friend(as well as shooting Guido last issue), Black Cat winds up getting shot with a dart and knocked out just as she crosses into New Hampshire. Madrox, Siryn(or is it Banshee now?) and Monet force Mayor Jameson into telling them some more information about the death of his friend, General Ryan. It seems Ryan was mixed up in some government program called SCARS, that was trying to recreate the super-soldier program, and was probably killed due to his involvement in said program. Jameson reveals that a Dr. Pock was the man who headed up the program, and he was living in New Hampshire. Monet, Shatterstar, Wolfsbane, Longshot and Rictor head to Dr. Pock's location and stop the woman who assassinated Ryan(along with her two fellow SCARS program buddies) from killing Dr. Pock. The X-Factor members free Black Cat and manage to capture one of the SCARS women(the one responsible for killing Ryan), while the other two escape with the aid of a helicopter.
Thoughts: Huh, that was one sucky review... Well, that's what happens when you type one of these up at 4 in the morning... Anyway, this was an okay comic, but it didn't really impress me(yet another reason for the sucky review!). I mean technically it was okay, but I just never really got into this storyline. Thankfully this was the end of the whole General Ryan/SCARS storyline, so here's hoping we move on to bigger and better things.
Score: 6 1/2 out of 10.
Poor Longshot...Uncanny X-Force #10:
Summary: This issue begins with the Shadow King(in his civilian guise) handing a reporter some film of Archangel killing a soldier while Wolverine stood by(which is what happened last issue more or less)... Needless to say, that footage would be a HUGE black eye for not just mutantkind, but the Avengers, since Wolverine is inexplicably a member. The reporter tells his editor about the footage, but wants to hand the footage over to the editor in person, since he didn't want to e-mail it across the Internet, just in case it was altered, stolen or destroyed. It turns out that the newspaper was owned by Warren Worthington(Archangel), so the editor calls him to inform him as to what he had learned. Archangel(who is currently possessed by his evil, Apocalypse side)tells the editor that this was obviously a ploy from a rival corporation, and that he'd meet up with him soon. Archangel goes to leave Cavern-X, and bumps into Psylocke. Psylocke asks why Archangel had stopped his therapy sessions with her, and he blows her off before heading out. Psylocke tells Wolvie that she feared something was wrong with Archangel, so they decide to track him to see what was going on. Archangel meets up with the editor from earlier and kills him, before heading to the home of the reporter, demanding to know where he got his information before telling the reporter that he was next. Before Archangel can do the deed, Wolvie crashes into the apartment and attacks his possessed teammate. Archangel tells Wolvie that what he was doing was for the good of X-Force before ditching Wolvie outside and going back after the reporter, who had run from his apartment to the street. Archangel catches up to the reporter, but Warren is able to reestablish a little control, battling with Archangel over who was going to take over. While Archangel was distracted, Psylocke stabs him in the head with her psychic blade, knocking him out. From there, Psylocke knocks the reporter out and makes him forget what he saw, and the team take Archangel back home. Wolvie decides that they needed to get somebody familiar with Apocalypse's work to help them figure out what to do with Warren, and the team springs Dark Beast(!!!) from the van transporting him to prison. Dark Beast goes on a bit of a spiel about how to cure Warren, with the gist of it being he needed to be cleansed with a “life seed”. Unfortunately, there was no life seed on THIS Earth, but Dark Beast informs the team that there WAS a life seed in his lab... But that the lab in question was in his home dimension, the Age of Apocalypse!!!
Thoughts: This was a REALLY solid story that sets up X-Force trying to reach the AOA, which as I've said NUMEROUS times, is my all-time favorite comic book storyline. I have NO idea how Wolvie and company are going to actually reach the AOA, since, to my knowledge, they don't have the ability to seamlessly hop dimensions. But I guess that's up to Rick Remender to try to figure out. Oh, and I'd be remiss to add that unfortunately, X-Force is going to be visiting the HORRIBLE version of the AOA that Akira Yoshida came up with in the mid-2000's... I WISH Marvel would just ignore of all Yoshida's garbage and give us the REAL AOA from the mid 90's, but alas, Yoshida's terrible AOA stuff is in continuity now, meaning there's no way around it. *sigh* Even still, I'm going to try my damnedest to enjoy the next few AOA oriented issues of this series.
Score: 8 out of 10.
YEEEEEEAAAAAHHHHH!!!!!!
Wow, who knew Dark Beast was even still around? Hopefully this storyline sees the return of some other fun AOA characters, like Holocaust and Sugar Man. The latter wasn't ever really my favorite, but it would be nice to see him again after so long.
ReplyDeleteIt's strange how up and down Uncanny X-Force seems to be. I read that first storyline about Baby Apocalypse and it was pretty good, but then everyone said the next arc was trash...and now it seems like it's good again. How do you know they're going to Yoshida's version of AOA, by the way? Maybe Remender hates that too and is planning just to ignore it...man, I hope that's the case.
Dark Beast was actually JUST in the past few issues of X-Men, with Spidey and the Lizard. Ugh... I couldn't even remember the second X-Force arc at first... It was the Deathlok/World stuff. Yeah. It wasn't very good.
ReplyDeleteAs for the Yoshida stuff, I saw some teasers with the Silver Samurai(who was introduced in the Yoshida version), so it definitely looks like that's the version we'll be getting... Plus the fact that the original AOA was seemingly destroyed at the end of the storyline, which is really the way it probably should have ended... I still like the idea that the AOA ended with Mags holding his wife and child as the bombs fell. Damn that Yoshida for sullying my memories!!!