X-Force #1 hits comic book shops this week.
In the aftermath of the Cable and X-Force vs. Uncanny X-Force crossover Vendetta – this is the now the one and only X-Force book.
Writer Si Spurrier (X-Men Legacy, Numbercruncher) and artist Rock He-Kim are the creative team chronicling the covert X-team’s adventures.
Rosters change but X-Force always is the pro-active, clandestine unit of the X-Men doing what X-Men can’t…sometimes taking out their enemies before they can attack mutants.
The new team will be Cable, Psylocke, Fantomex and the return of…Marrow?
“What I’ve taken from those early X-Force episodes is a take-no-prisoners attitude towards action,” writer Si Spurrier told USA Today. “But I like to think I’ve injected a little post-millennial sophistication, too.
“This isn’t a steroidal macho-fest: It’s a slick, nasty, oh-so-grim beast that’ll cut your throat and blow up your headquarters before you even know it’s there.”
The stripped down team investigates the deadly “Alexandria Incident” bringing them in contact with “superhuman secret agents” from across the globe. Spurrier calls the covert squad a metaphor for the surge in covert technology and multiple nations’ intelligence gathering agendas.
“Switch on the news and you’ve got unmanned drones violating international borders, governments listening in on their enemies — their allies and their own civilians alike, —unregistered aeronautical tech deployed in the field, defected oligarchs dying of radiation poisoning, whistle-blowers vilified and so on,” the writer says.
What is Cable’s mission? Spurrier continues his comparison of real world spying with the current Marvel Universe.
“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,” Spurrier told Marvel.com.
“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.”
As for the members of the previous X-Force teams (Colossus, Domino, Forge, Spiral, Puck) stay tuned.
Here are more designs by artist Rock-He Kim:
By Editor