Uncanny X-Force #9 Spoilers

Spoilers: Namor inquires Dr. Nemesis about a request that was made by Magneto, to which he gets dismissed. Nemesis meets Magneto and asks him if he's certain of what he wants, and gives him all the information he wanted. Meanwhile, X-Force returns from their last mission, stating that the Shadow King is due to return once again. They also console Angel about his actions in said mission. Upon arriving at Carvern X, X-Force meets Magneto who had defeated Deathlok. Warren asks him how he found about them, to which Magneto replies "Remember to whom you are speaking". Anyway, Magneto gives them the information about a former Nazi he wants to be killed. Wolverine dismisses the rest of X-Force and decides to proceed with the mission by himself. Logan travels to Rio de Janeiro and finds the man he's seeking. Now an elderly man, he has lived a good life, tried to forget the past but he was certain that his past would eventually catch up with him. After this little speech, Logan murders the old man...

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Uncanny X-Force #9 Preview

Uncanny X-Force #9
Written by: Rick Remender
Pencils by: Billy Tan
Cover by: Esad Ribic

The Story: Magneto uncovers the existence of X-Force and the only way he'll keep the team's secret is if they assassinate a mysterious figure from his past! Who is so important that Magneto would employ such methodology? Why can't he do the deed himself? The answer is buried in a terrible secret from the ashes of World War II. No man can outrun his past forever...

In Stores: May 4, 2011

        

New Mutants #24 Spoilers

Spoilers: Cannonball asks the Force Warriors if it's too late to reform the TK walls, Lady Braddock tells him it's too late as enemy forces have arrived. Cannonball tells her and the Force Warriors they're on the battlefield, he leads them all with everything they have as they all know it's the end of their world anyway. Legion meanwhile deals with realizing one of his twisted personalities posing as Moira is responsible for recreating their world. Moira throws the box containing the universe into a burning fireplace, before it hits the flames Kitty appears through the wall to catch it just in time. As Kitty attempts to escape Moira tells her that she created this world and that it is pointless to try and stop her as she can recreate or destroy anything with her mind. Magneto and Xavier appear and protect Kitty from Moira's attacks. On the battlefield Cannonball is brutally wounded and he has Legacy take his powers/memories. Elsewhere Moira attempts to convince Legion that the 616 memories are lies planted by Xavier. Legion doesn't believe Moira and he embraces her as he does he tricks her and absorbs her back into his psyche where she screams and pleads to live. Legion flies out to the battlefield and quickly makes all the enemies disappear. Now that Legion has Moira reabsorbed he is able to warp reality back to it's true self. The ruins of Fortress X are transformed back into Utopia and everyone appears as they normally would. The X-Men all struggle to deal with the rush of their lives and memories coming back to them while still dealing with their Age of X memories. Chamber appears in his original appearance (before he was transformed by M-Day) and he says it isn't right. Revenent tells him that they are pieces that don't fit in that reality and that there are others who don't as well. Frenzy sees Cyclops and immediately embraces and kisses him in front of Emma Frost. Emma Frost assumes there is an explanation for their embrace and quickly dismisses Frenzy. We see Psylocke and Angel reunite while Storm and Namor appear to be somewhat awkward of each other. Xavier finds Blindfold alone and asks what she's doing, she says she's mourning the dead of Age of X. Xavier tells her they weren't real, but Blindfold compares them to real people saying God wanted us to live so we live, the same was said for the people Moira created. Finally we see Legion alone, holding the remains of Fortress X in the palm in his hand, Legion can hear Moira telling him if he ever wants this world to return it can and that it will be better next time. Legion makes a fist and as he opens his hand Fortress X is gone.

New Mutants #24 Preview

New Mutants #24
Written by: Mike Carey
Pencils by: Steve Kurth
Cover by: Mico Suayan

The Story: “Age of X” Conclusion! This is it. As the psychic barricades protecting Fortress X crumble and the human militias flock to exterminate all the mutants within, mutantkind makes its last stand…against the anti-mutant forces who would see them wiped out, but also against the one responsible for their plight in the first place. And when the dust settles? No one will be left unscathed.

In Stores: April 27, 2011

        

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Uncanny X-Force #8 Spoilers

Spoilers: Deadpool snoops around a military base because Betsy had said there were weird physic emanations coming from it. Meanwhile at Cavern-X, Betsy and Warren are having another psychic therapy, where Betsy ends up trapping the "Archangel" persona in one of Warren's first moments of rage. X-Force then decides to head to the military base because they have lost contact with Deadpool. Psylocke tells the others there is a powerful telepath working in that base, and asks them to guard her while she's out to find who is it: she then sees The Shadow King on the astral plane. The Shadow King finds a crack in Betsy's psy shields and starts filling her head with images of her brothers telling her how shocked they are that she's a killer and that their father would be disappointed. Shadow Kings manages to break Psylocke down, but ultimately she escapes. While all of that was happening in the Astral Plane, the Shadow King had taken control over Angel, Wolverine and Deadpool. Fantomex was left alone to protect Betsy's body by misdirecting them. The mind-controlled Archangel tries to launch the missiles at Utopia. Psylocke tries to stop him, but she gets locked out of the missiles launch room, where only Warren and one other mind-controlled employee were. The Shadow King finds the Archangel persona trapped inside Warren's mind, and ends up freeing him. Archangel takes full control of Warren, and cuts Shadow King's in half, to Betsy's surprise. Warren then snaps out of it, and kills the employee who was about to launch the missiles. Warren just kills him, without any mercy. Wolverine says he hadn't any other option, even thought it's clear for the reader that he had another option...

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Rob Williams Leads the Uncanny X-Force Team Into "Fear Itself"

Newsarama: X-Force is joining Marvel’s massive Fear Itself conflict this coming July with a three-issue Fear Itself: Uncanny X-Force miniseries, written by the increasingly busy Rob Williams (Skaar: King of the Savage Land, Daken: Dark Wolverine and the upcoming The Iron Age and Ghost Rider, just to name a few) and illustrated by Simone Bianchi, who most recently worked on Thor: For Asgard.

In Fear Itself: Uncanny X-Force, the team faces off against a particularly extreme branch of the Purifiers — the anti-mutant group first seen in 1982’s revered X-Men tale God Loves, Man Kills — and are forced to ask some heavy questions about their own existence. Newsarama talked with Williams via email to find out more.

Newsarama: Rob, the work Rick Remender, Jerome Opeña, Esad Ribic and Rafael Albuquerque have been doing on the ongoing Uncanny X-Force series has definitely made it one of the most buzzed-about Marvel titles in the past six months. Essentially, you're the first writer to be running with these concepts other than Remender since the series started — what kind of responsibility is that?

Rob Williams: An intimidating one. It's not just the fact that X-Force has been a big hit, it's the quality of work that Rick Remender and his artists have been producing in the book. I genuinely think Uncanny X-Force is one of the best books on the market at the moment. It's really admirable how Rick paces the book with a ton of ideas, a high action pace and some great, intimate character moments. Also, the whole moral conundrum setup of a “Kill Crew” offers so many storytelling opportunities. And the end of the book's initial arc certainly didn't shirk that. It's a great comic. So, obviously, that's a lot for us to live up to. I'm aware of that. The standard's very high. It's a little scary.

Nrama: I think a big part of the appeal of Uncanny X-Force is the different dynamics between the five main characters — it's small enough of a team that everyone gets worthwhile moments, and it looks like the lineup will remain constant for a while. What appeals to you about this team?

Williams: It's a great cast. And yes, I agree that the fact that there's five very strong characters there means that nothing is getting dilated. Everyone gets their screentime. I love writing Deadpool. I've done it a few times now and that's a comic voice that comes very easily to me. He really adds something to what could easily be a po-faced navel-gazing exercise. What I found when I was writing the miniseries was how much I enjoyed writing Fantomex. These characters are fun, which the concept of a kill crew really needs as a balance. They lift the book. But Wolverine, Psylocke and Archangel are great characters in their own right. And visually, somehow they really click together. It's a great looking team.

Nrama: You've got a good amount of experience writing Deadpool and Wolverine, but you haven’t really gotten a chance to write Archangel, Psylocke or Fantomex before. Were you eager to tackle those characters?

Williams: I was. You're always a little nervous coming to characters who are new to you. Trying to get inside their head. I've read Angel and Psylocke forever so I figure I had a fairly decent idea about them and where they're coming from. Fantomex is an esoteric character to write. Rick gets his unusual speech patterns, that bonkersness that Grant Morrison originally gave him. I like his inherent sarcastic tone. I enjoy writing sarcastic characters. I can't imagine why. (That may be sarcasm.)

Nrama: In any tie-in to an event series like Fear Itself, there are comics that relate very closely to the main story, and ones that deal with the fallout and larger impact of the main book's events — often taking the story in some unexpected directions. This one sounds like the latter. Is that an accurate assessment?

Williams: Kind of. It's a thematic exploration of the ideas behind Fear Itself. It seems to the people of Earth, from the actions of the main Fear Itself storyline, that this may well be the end of the world. That type of climate can lead people to extreme actions. We concentrate on a rogue cell of Purifiers who believe that the superhumans have brought about the actions of the Book of Revelations. That the devil will soon come and take the souls of everyone unless they can send their souls to Heaven first. So off on a major random killing spree they go. And this desperate action is born of fear, of course, even if they won't admit that to themselves.

The idea was to ask, "What is a superhuman kill crew afraid of?" And X-Force will find themselves considering that maybe the Purifiers, as askew as they are, have a point. Maybe the superhumans, and their lapsing moral centre, are responsible for bring about the end of the world. Should superheroes be in a kill crew in the first place?

Nrama: It seems that when writing protagonists that are willing to kill, the challenge is always to present opponents that are loathsome enough that the audience feels that death is what they deserve. Is that what you're looking to do with this group of Purifiers? (It certainly sounds like they're engaging in some upsetting behavior.)

And since it looks like Fear Itself will include some crises of confidence in Thor and Steve Rogers, can we expect Fear Itself to raise some doubt within the Uncanny X-Force team about the way they handle things? (They already had some disagreements over Fantomex's actions in the end of the first arc, after all.)

Williams: I don't think readers will have any doubt from our storyline that The Purifiers deserve X-Force's line in brutal justice. But the question of whether or not X-Force should exist in the first place is central to our storyline. There's a good writing edict that goes: It's not enough to put the protagonist's life on the line. You have to put their soul on the line too. That's at the heart of this story.

Nrama: Simone Bianchi's interior work at Marvel has been limited to rather high-profile projects, like Astonishing X-Men with Warren Ellis and Jeph Loeb's run on Wolverine. How excited are you to be working with him on this series?

Williams: Hugely excited. You just have to take a look at Simone's cover for #1 to see what he brings to a project. Absolutely stunning visuals. When I asked on the phone who was drawing this and they told me it was Simone it felt like the whole nature of the project lifted. This is going to be a great looking story with some killer action sequences. I can't wait for people to see it.