Fear Itself: Uncanny X-Force #2 & Vengeance #2

I'm getting towards the bottom of this week's comic pile, which means these are the comics I really didn't want to read... I'm hoping for mediocre comics here, but realistically? I'm expecting the worst.

Fear Itself: Uncanny X-Force #2(of 3):

Summary: After Jonathan Standish's live execution of a young superhero, X-Force has made Standish and his fanatical Purifiers their number one target. To that end, X-Force has Archangel scare the Purifier they captured last issue into giving up all the information on Standish as the guy knew. As for Standish, he's doing some weird experiment involving the human brain, and trying to figure out a way to kill as many people as possible in order to save them from the devil(I'd assume the Serpent) Marvel's super-powered characters had summoned. In other words, he's out-of-his-mind crazy. After learning what they could about Standish from the goon, X-Force hops in EVA and heads into Earth's orbit to wait for Standish to stage his next big attack. While in orbit, Fantomex gets word that Standish had sent several Purifier soldiers out into random towns and cities across the US, with the Purifiers randomly shooting and killing people. Realizing that he couldn't stop all of the Purifiers, Wolverine tells Fantomex to bring the team down to the nearest town, while Psylocke tells the team that she only needed one of the Purifiers alive since she could tear the location of Standish out of the captured Purifier's mind. With that, Wolvie splits the team into numerous smaller groups and has Fantomex drop the X-Forcers off at the locations of several of the Purifiers, with orders to take one of the Purifiers alive. Wolvie heads out first and kills his Purifier(nice example there, Logan...), while Deadpool manages to subdue his Purifier, but finds out each Purifier had a bomb attached to them to make sure they wouldn't be captured... Needless to say, Pool's Purifier explodes. Psylocke and Fantomex arrive at the next Purifier, which leads to the Purifier arming his bomb. Psylocke doesn't want to let this Purifier kill himself since she needed him alive in order to tear through his mind, and attempts to stop the bomb. However, upon tearing at some wires, it seems the bomb goes off. From there we head back to Standish one more time and see that he built a bomb using... um, I'm not really sure... Human brains?

Thoughts: I was really enjoying this comic right up until the ending, which I obviously didn't get. Standish kept talking about how the human brain could produce 25 watts of electricity, and wound up hooking up 8 people's brains to a bomb... Or something. *shrugs* I'm sure it'll all become clear next issue. Probably... Like I said, before the strange ending, I was really enjoying this one. Rob Williams did a pretty good job writing the X-Force team, although there was one part while the team was in EVA that bugged me involving Psylocke, who was pondering if maybe Standish was right and “super-people” were the cause of the eventual end of humanity... At least he righted that weird move by having Psylocke look pretty bad-ass during her fight with the Purifier. As for the Purifier Psylocke and Fantomex were fighting exploding? I'm gonna say that Fantomex made the Purifier think he exploded with his misdirection allowing Psylocke to capture and/or get the location of Standish from the Purifier's mind. So yeah, there was some good and some bad, in other words, an okay comic book.

Score: 6 1/2 out of 10.Wooo, that is the Psylocke you DO NOT want to see coming your way!


Vengeance #2(of 6):

Summary: Miss America manages to fight off the demons that were trying to get Kid In-Betweener, before returning to the Teen Brigade's base with Kid In-Betweener. While that's going on, the Young Masters(of Evil) are setting up shop in an abandoned Hydra base. Meanwhile, Kid In-Betweener speaks cryptically to the Teen Brigade, who decide to move their base to a new, more secure location. The Defenders are joined by the AWESOME Daimon Hellstrom, who warns them that he had visions of an evil, destructive presence invading from another reality. From there, the Young Masters break into the facility holding the corpse of Bullseye because they want to... Well, they aren't all that clear on that... Steal the body? Take credit for killing him? See for sure that he was dead? It's probably one of those three things. While the Young Masters are gawking at Bullseye's corpse, Lady Bullseye arrives on the scene and warns the Young Masters to leave Bullseye alone lest she killed them. One of the Young Masters, Mako, decides to disobey Lady Bullseye, so she decapitates him... Well, she did warn them. From there, Lady Bullseye tells the Young Masters to leave so she could... I'm not quite sure, but it appears that Lady Bullseye wants to jump Bullseye's bones... Get it? Because she wants to have sex with him and he's a corpse! Ah forget it... We end this issue with Kid In-Betweener talking his cryptic talk to the Ultimate Nullifier.

Thoughts: Well then. I have no idea what I just read! Necrophilia, demons, the Red Skull doing weird Nazi things back in 1944, a cosmic being in the body of a child... This was just ALLLLLL over the place!! You know what the weird thing is though? I'm STILL curious enough about where the hell this is all going that'll I'll probably pick up the next issue. And that's with me only understanding every seventh page... I KNOW there's a good story hidden in here someplace, and by god, I'm going to find it!

Score: 4 out of 10.Yeah I'll admit, that was pretty awesome.