Fear Itself: Uncanny X-Force #3

Why look, it's another Fear Itself tie-in! Say what you will about Marvel, but they sure know how to squeeze every single last ounce of blood out of an event!

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

Summary: Thanks to Fantomex's misdirection, coupled with Psylocke's telepathy, the two heroes manage to trick the Purifier they were tangling with last issue into believing that he had successfully blown himself up and was at the Pearly Gates. Before being allowed into Heaven, the angel(who looked like Deadpool for some reason...) asks the Purifier to tell him where Purifier leader and all around psychopath Jonathan Standish was headed with his brain bomb... Yes, brain bomb. Don't question it, just go along with it. After the Purifier reveals that Standish was headed to New York where his brain bomb would kill everybody within a 25 square mile radius, Psylocke breaks the fantasy and Fantomex proceeds to shoot the Purifier in the head, which gets a “HA!” from me. Now knowing where Standish was headed, Fantomex and Psylocke hop into EVA, collect the rest of X-Force and fly towards NYC. Standish is slowly flying into Manhattan, and is being pursued by two US Air Force fighter jets. After Standish fails to turn around, the jets launch missiles at Standish's airplane, which Wolvie orders Fantomex to intercept with EVA since he feared the missiles would detonate Standish's brain bomb. Fantomex unhappily does as asked and EVA gets knocked out, causing all of X-Force(except for Fantomex, who was still hooked up to EVA) to fall out of the ship. Archangel goes to catch Psylocke, but Wolvie instead instructs him to stop Standish's plane, telling Archangel that he'd cushion the fall for Psylocke with his own body... I'd think that should hurt Psylocke nearly as much as hitting a rooftop, but whatever. Pool, Wolvie and Psylocke smash down onto a rooftop, while Fantomex manages to land EVA in the streets of NY in one piece. As for Standish and his plane, Archangel lands on top and cuts the wings off, which causes the plane's body to slam down in the street right in front of St. Patrick's Cathedral. Standish emerges from his damaged plane and takes the sight of the Cathedral as a sign that he was doing the right thing before pulling out a gun. Archangel tells Standish it was all over, but ends up getting shot by Standish. Standish walks back in the plane and prepares to push the button to blow the brain bomb up, but has his hand chopped off by Deadpool. Standish falls to the ground and is surrounded by X-Force, at which time he tries to explain that he only wanted to save humanity from the evils of superhumans and their ilk. Wolvie tells Standish that the world would be better off without him and lops his head off, ending Standish and this mini-series.

Thoughts: Any time Wolverine chops the head off of a crazed religious zealot I'm a happy camper! This mini-series really didn't have much to do with the Fear Itself story(except in a roundabout sort of way), but it was still kind of enjoyable. It's the type of story that could have been released whenever as an inventory-type story and nobody would have realized it had anything to do with Fear Itself provided a few small things were altered. I guess that's how I'll remember this mini, as a good inventory tale.

Score: 6 1/2 out of 10.Off with his head!