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!

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.

Fear Itself: Uncanny X-Force #1 & Fear Itself: Wolverine #1

We've got some more Fear Itself comics to get through before I call it a day, this time two brand new 3-part mini-series, both starring Wolverine. I'll be interested to see how closely tied into the main Fear Itself comic these minis are. Without even reading them my guess would be they're BARELY connected to the main Fear story, and are just a way to get Wolvie's name out there. But who knows, maybe I'm wrong! Only one way to find out...

Fear Itself: Uncanny X-Force #1(of 3):

Summary: Okay, this issue gets started with two separate threats for X-Force to deal with. The first one is a crazy suicide bomber who screamed out the word “Purify!” before killing a bunch of people, the second is a quick Internet video showing what appeared to be a tied up, super-powered kid in what would seem to be a pretty dire situation. X-Force feels the two events are both connected to those crazy Purifiers, and decide to get some answers. To that end they sneak into the penthouse of a secret Purifier financier and kidnap him. With the rich bigot tied up, Wolvie threatens to let Psylocke loose in his mind unless he talks. Not wanting a dirty mutant mucking around in his brains, the bigot tells X-Force the name of the Purifier's leader, Jonathan Standish, as well as the most likely location of the kidnapped kid, an abandoned military base in Baltimore. X-Force rushes to the scene and tears through the Purifiers stationed there, but are unable to find the kid. Wolvie grabs one of the Purifiers and threatens to do him grievous bodily harm(what, he did!) unless the Purifier gave up the whereabouts of the kid. Unfortunately for Wolvie and company, this Purifier explains that his group didn't have the kid, and that Standish was leading a splinter group of the Purifiers... And what of Standish? After seeing the actions of the Serpent's Worthy on television, he has come to the conclusion that the Purifiers were wrong to only target mutants, since all superhumans were obviously wicked abominations. With that, he enters the room with the captured kid, turns on the camera, puts the gun to the kid's head and warns everybody to save themselves from the hell superhumans had made the Earth by taking their lives. With that, he pulls the trigger and ends this issue.

Thoughts: Okay, so there really wasn't a STRONG Fear Itself connection in this issue, but Rob Williams did use the Fear events to advance this story, which is a good thing. Sure, we didn't get X-Force vs any of the Serpent's Worthy, but at least the events in this issue occurred BECAUSE of the events of Fear Itself. As for this issue, it was good. I have to admit, I enjoyed it. You had crazy bigots, X-Force killing said bigots, and the head bigot acting like a loony religious fanatic! All in all, good stuff!

Score: 8 1/2 out of 10.Crazy religious fanatics... The bane of every mutant's existence.


Fear Itself: Wolverine #1(of 3):

Summary: After Wolverine deals with the Scarecrow in New York, Wolvie's girlfriend, Melita, heads over to shoot the breeze with him. While the two are talking, Steve Rogers calls Melita and asks to speak to Wolvie... Considering Wolvie has an Avengers card and presumably a phone of his own, that makes absolutely NO sense... Anyway, it seems some British terrorists from STRIKE stole a HAMMER helicarrier and were flying it to NYC. Needless to say, Steve wants Wolvie to deal with it. Wolvie gives Melita his Avengers access card and tells her to see what she could dig up on STRIKE and the stolen helicarrier at Avengers Tower, while he deals with the STRIKE goons. When the helicarrier arrives in New York, Wolvie hops off a building and cuts his way inside, while Melita heads to Avengers Tower to see what kind of information she could dig up on STRIKE. Melita discovers that the stolen helicarrier has chemical, biological and nuclear weapons on board, and Wolvie gets jumped and taken down by two of the STRIKE goons.

Thoughts: See, now THIS issue had nearly nothing to do with the main Fear Itself event, which annoys me... A lot. Terrorists steal a helicarrier and it's up to Wolvie to stop them. There's nothing about that premise that needs the Fear Itself stuff attached to it. That easily could have been used for any Wolvie mini-series at any time. So yeah, right off the bat this comic kind of irked me. Add a bunch of British terrorists from a defunct evil spy organization and one of Norman Osborn's helicarriers and you have the recipe for a comic I could care less about... Oh well. They all can't be winners.

Score: 5 1/2 out of 10.Eh, I only posted this picture because I liked the bad guy calling Wolvie, "THE Wolverine".