A familiar superhero team, but not as you know them. Say hello to X-Force, number 99.
You can't go walking in the comic book world without stepping in an X-Men spinoff-shaped cowpat, but one spin-off in particular is worth your precious time: X-Force. Created by Rob Liefeld, who earned his graphic novel world fame on Marvel's New Mutants, X-Force is for people who grew up with X-Men but are looking for something tougher.
What you need to decide is which X-Force will be your favourite? The New Beginning, where a young group of mutants are groomed to be media starlets? Or maybe Angels and Demons, where the X-Men are given black commando uniforms and carry out black-ops style missions? There's a lot for you to choose from, and hard to decide which comes out on top.
Liefeld gave the X-Men universe big, sharp teeth and set it loose on the page. The themes that dominate the graphic novel are violence, retribution and cruelty, with blood splatters and forced-heroin injections everyday stuff. For the mature graphic novel reader, X-Force offers violence and destruction that is difficult to top, and throws in good characters to boot.
So, the characters. First off, the X-force team are not the X-Men (though later Wolverine leads the team). Liefeld started his saga with Boom Boom, Cable, Cannonball, Domino, Feral, Shatterstar and Warpath. A rag-tag bunch of well-drawn characters, this roster gave fan's heroes they could root for, as well as stories that drew you in.
This, couple with Liefeld's artwork, made X-Force a major success. So successful that it is currently the second highest-selling American comic ever. No mean feat, yet we also know that numbers don't mean everything. After all, one Saturday night X-Factor pulls in more viewers than the entire five series of The Wire. So what we have to ask ourselves is, does X-Force earn it's status as one of the top graphic novels? Well, just ask most of the people who have read it. They'll consider your question, and whisper, "yes".
Comic Books Magazine
