Cable assembles Psylocke, Fantomex and Marrow into a brand new X-Force in 2014 by Si Spurrier and Rock-He Kim. This team has always been the pro-active, clandestine fighting force taking the fight to the X-Men’s enemies – while keeping their questionable methods and acts a secret from their fellow mutants.
What’s the mission? Spurrier compares real world espionage with the current Marvel Universe in this Marvel.com interview.
“In our world—the real world?—there’s a shadow-game being played every day. Un-manned drones circle above distant cities; government-sanctioned programs spy on your emails and listen to your calls; super-secret aircraft fly unrecorded missions; oligarchs die in London of radioactive sushi-poisoning. All that crazy spy-vs-spy espionage stuff we dismiss as exaggerated “James Bond” nonsense? That’s happening out there every day.
In the Marvel Universe? The role is filled by superhumans. So here’s the central conceit:
Every nation in the Marvel Universe makes use of covert superhuman agents to pursue its secret agendas. And always has.
Some of them we know about: MI-13, the Secret Avengers. Most of them we’ll be meeting for the first time.
Just before the new X-FORCE begins, something happened. Something big we’re going to be finding out about little-by-little as we move forwards. We’re referring to it as “the Alexandria Incident.” What’s clear is that it’s changed the rules. It’s changed the way the world—and in particular its secret and oh-so-deadly intelligence communities—regard mutantkind. And it’s changed that way Cable sees his duty.
He’s realized that even though they have no homeland, no president, no capital city, no geo-graphical borders, and even though they spent a depressing amount of time fighting amongst themselves, the only way mutantkind is going to survive is if it starts behaving like a sovereign nation. As he puts it: it’s not just about saving the world any more. It’s about having a damn stake in it.
That means playing the shadow-game. Recruiting those best suited. Gathering tools, arming-up, destroying competitors, strengthening the mutant nation in secret.
Again, Cable says it better than I ever could: “Mutantkind needs a dirty tricks department. We’re it.”
The action begins in X-Force #1 in February.
Uncanny X-Force and Cable and X-Force and ending with the Vendetta crossover.
As for the members of those teams (Colossus, Domino, Forge, Spiral, Puck) stay tuned?
Here are more designs by artist Rock-He Kim:
By Editor