X-Force #3 (1991)

X-Force #3 (October, 1991)
“Battlecry”
Plot/Art – Rob Liefeld
Writer – Fabian Nicieza
Letters – Chris Eliopoulos
Colors – Joe Rosas
Editor – Bob Harras
Chief – Tom DeFalco
Cover Price: $1.00


Happy Friday, everybody… boy, has it been a week!


This week, the wife and I spent… what felt like many days worth of hours shopping for a new car.  Oof.  Not something I enjoy, nor am I very good at.  I’m quick to “fall in love” with a car… and, also… I have this odd sympathy for salespeople who work solely on commission… especially when they’re nice.


A nice salesperson could quote me $1,200 a month for 72-months on a car worth 15k… and I’d think they were being honest with me.  On the other hand, a jerk salesperson can quote me something $5 more than what I’d told them was my best offer… and I’ll tear their head off, and threaten to do worse.


That’s why the wife handles all’a that.  I just get to sit there and look either peaceful or menacing… whichever the situation calls for, I guess… while she makes the deal.


The problem this week was… we only dealt with some very nice people.  I’m not good at “walking away” from a deal… where the wife has just amazing levels of restraint, and a calmness that would give an angel a bit of pause.


I dunno how she can do it, but the entire negotiation process is like a sport to her.  Me?  Every time the salesperson leaves us alone for 20-30 minutes to “talk with their manager”, my blood begins to boil just a little bit.  The other day, we were left to sit in this dude’s office no less than ten times, while he “worked hard for us”, chipping away at his manager… and we still walked out without a car!  He got a bit snippy at the end, as though we were wasting his time… even though, we were the only customers in the joint for the entire five hours we were there.  Guess we kept him from some valuable Facebookin’ or something.


Had to tell him I didn’t appreciate his tone… and that I felt it best that I left the room so I wouldn’t have to hear more of it… which kinda freaked him out.  I felt kinda bad… but, by this point I was exhausted.


Anyhoo, long story… well, still long… but not as long as it could be, we wound up buying a new ride… and, it’s a beaut.  Looking forward to keeping it for ten years… just so I don’t have to darken a dealership’s door for a decade or more.


Wow, been awhile since I’ve written a pre-ramble!  Whoo… that felt good.  And now… X-Force!


—

It’s now Day Three of the standoff at the World Trade Center, and we open with Siryn, in probably one of the more iconic Liefeldian poses we’re going to see here.  Oh, who are we kidding… they all are.  Here, she’s got a very wide gap betwixt her legs… and it looks like, rather than having a full head of hair, she instead has a mane.  And… maybe we spoke too soon, in just turning the page Siryn somehow looks even more Liefeldian.  Her hair… almost appears sentient… it’s almost as though Rob messed up on her face a few times, and rather than erasing his mistake, he just drew hair over it.

Anyhoo, Siryn gets pummeled by Juggernaut… yet keeps coming back for more punishment.  Finally, she’s shot in the gut by her Uncle, Black Tom Cassidy.  The sound effect here is, well… unique: SHEECHAKT.

Terry recovers, but has second thoughts about hopping back in the fray.  Lucky for her, the cavalry is just about to arrive!  An X-Force air-craft floats overhead… inside, we see Cable and Domino… the former is wearing some insanely strange armor.  Like, this armor looks like it’s been equipped with insect-mandibles or something, it’s very strange… and, thankfully, not something we see Cable wearing very often… if ever again!

Meanwhile, inside one of the Twin Towers, Sunspot and friggin’ Gideon are looking on at everything that’s going on… with Bobby getting a bit frustrated that they haven’t been able to make their move just yet.  Black Tom and Juggernaut enter the scene looking… uh, quite a bit off-register.  Cain is at least two-times as wide as he is tall.  Worth noting, he refers to Gideon as “pansy-boy”!  I wanna say, Gideon might have some awful taste in hairstyles… but his fashion game ain’t half bad!  I could see this untucked red vest over a button up shirt actually looking pretty good in the real world!

Back outside, Siryn enters the X-Force Scout Ship… and she is greeted by Cable and the Florets!  Cable suggests they work together if she’s in the mood to “kick the crud” out of something.

They hover for a bit more to devise a gameplan… which amounts to sending their biggest guy hurtling toward the biggest other guy in the book.  And so, Warpath hops out the Scout… and plummets into Juggernaut.  It’s awesome that they get the opportunity to exchange pleasantries amid the freefall!  James konks into Cain… sending them both tumbling off the top of the tower!

Then, X-Force leaps from the Scout Ship headed for Black Tom’s guards!  This definitely feels like overkill… and we soon find out that it is.  The human guards are absolutely no match for the muties.

Back inside, Black Tom… uh, stretches?  It looks like he’s really getting refreshed here, it’s like he’d just gotten out of bed.  Actually, though, he’s just flourishing amid some pontification.  Finally, Gideon’s had enough of whatever Tom has to say… and he and Bobby rush ‘im!

Gideon winds up getting blasted by Black Tom’s boom-stick, and Bobby just winds up getting his butt handed to him!  Black Tom isn’t the fella to mess with!  We almost wonder why he even bothers calling in the Juggernaut… ol’ Cain is nothing more than a liability!

Anyhoo, Tom doesn’t get long to celebrate his victory… as, Cable barges in and shoots Tom in the side!  Almost seems unsportsmanly, dunnit?  Should we mention again just how pants-on-head ridiculous Cable’s armor looks?!

Back outside, Proudstar and Juggernaut continue punching one another.  We can see that Cain is holding a detonator… we might assume he’s been holding it the entire time, which… if so, I gotta say, he’s got some awesome muscle and impulse control.  He just took a header off the World Trade Center, and didn’t crush the thing!

Look at that weird edit on the remote device… looks almost like someone just pasted a triangle over the art. Wonder what they might’ve been trying to cover up here?

The big guys continue to beat one another about the head and shoulders, when who should appear but… the Amazing Spider-Man!  Yes, Spidey swings through the scene, and rather than get between a proverbial “rock and a hard place”, decides to head topside in order to check in on the hostage situation.

But then… BOOM!  There’s an explosion in the Twin Towers!  To be continued… in the pages of Spider-Man #16?!

—


Well, that’s an oddly prescient final page… which might give ya a bit of pause.  It’s, honestly, probably the only thing even worth discussing about this entire issue… as it’s more or less just a twenty-some page fight scene.  I mean, that’s exactly what it is.  Flip through this sucker and count how many pages are occupied by great big panels of heroes and villains lunging toward one another (or the reader).  There are quite a few of ’em!


I think, if this issue had a legacy (which, I mean… it’s X-Force #3, ain’t nobody reflecting fondly on this stuff)… it would have to be that explosion in the last page.  Two years after this issue came out, there would be a bombing at the World Trade Center… and a decade later, the buildings wouldn’t even be standing anymore.  This is the sort of thing that I feel like Marvel might want to edit out of “current year” reprints of this story… though, I cannot say with any confidence or certainty that they have.  I suppose I wouldn’t be surprised either way.


Other than that… sadly there just isn’t all that much to say about this issue.  Sure, I could spend the next six paragraphs talking about low-hanging fruit like pouches, feet, and teeth… but, I’ll leave that for the true comics scholars of the internet.  This was an ehh issue, nothing to fall in love with… though, not a whole lot to get mad at either… unless you’re the sort of person who might get mad that Marvel published a story where the World Trade Center gets attacked ten-years before 9/11… and, trust me… there are people like that.


Overall, a skippable story in a vacuum… but, if you’re reading the first handful of issues of X-Force, you probably won’t regret the four-and-a-half minutes you devote to issue #3.


—


Letters Page:

—


Coolometer!