Posted in: Comics, Marvel Comics | Tagged: marvel, wolverine, x-force, x-men, X-ual Healing - The Weekly X-Men Recap Column

But What About Rufus? X-Force #5 [X-ual Healing 1-8-20]

Published Mon, 13 Jan 2020 15:00:00 -0600

by Jude Terror

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As Marvel does its best to return to pre-HoXPoX levels of market saturation, last week had five X-books for fans to choose from, so we hope you applied for one of those DC credit cards. In the event that you didn't get to read them all, however, no worries. Your favorite weekly X-Men recap column is here to tell you what happened in all of them. Once done, we'll choose the best one and name it the Wolverine's Weiner X-Pick of the Week.

Now: X-Force #5!

Sworn to sell comics for Marvel executives who feared and hated the fact that Fox owned their movie rights, The Uncanny X-Men suffered great indignities, but thanks to a corporate merger and a line-wide relaunch, the X-Men can finally get back to doing what they do best: being objectively the best franchise in all of comics.

X-FORCE #5 DX
NOV190821
(W) Ben Percy (A) Joshua Cassara (CA) Dustin Weaver
DEADLY CHOICES CARRY DARK CONSEQUENCES!
First, Domino and Forge have to pick up the pieces as the team faces a major setback! Then, Beast takes matters into his own hands when a piece of new technology threatens the safety of the nation.
Parental Advisory
In Shops: Jan 08, 2020
SRP: $3.99

What Happened in X-Force #5

Last issue, an X-Force team consisting of Domino, Wolverine, and Kid Omega responded to a call of an attack on a mutant tech company in California, but as Wolverine and Kid Omega were leaping through a Krakoan gate, the human attackers blew it up, cutting Wolverine in half and decapitating Kid Omega. No big deal, you know, the mutants can just bring them back. But the bigger problem is Domino is stuck on the other side of the gate. She vows to come and save Wolverine like he saved her, which is to say she'll take several weeks and allow them to flay half the skin off his body and use it to infiltrate Krakoa and "kill" Professor X. On that front, Beast and Sage aren't much help locating an alternate gate close enough to the facility, so she turns to Black Tom, who uses his ability to commune with all of Krakoa and even transport his presence through its biomechanical network (as explained in a prose page in this issue) to locate Gateway and enlist him to teleport Domino where she needs to go. Forge shows up in some sweet-ass armor to join Domino as she does her best to drag Wolverine's lower half along with her so she can connect it with his upper half.

Sure, Domino, plus two dicks are heavier than one. At the tech facility, the attackers are stealing Krakoan flower gizmos when one of them gets stabbed through the chest by the upper half of Wolverine, which flings itself at the remaining two. They empty their clips into him and that chills him out for now. But now Gateway, Domino, and Forge show up and start kicking ass, and then Forge squishes Wolverine's bloody two halves together. One of the attackers escapes to a helicopter waiting overhead, but Gateway blows it up. Things are going pretty well except that Domino is hellbent on killing every one of the attackers, even Beast begs her to leave at least one alive to be interrogated. She says it doesn't matter because they're just lab-grown assassins, but the one bad guy left insists he's a regular human and has nothing to do with the group that kidnapped Domino.

Later, Domino and Wolverine relax and watch the sunset while the Krakoan resurrection team makes another Quentin Quire. Meanwhile, Beast interrogates the one attacker who survived the carnage: Bill. Bill insists that there was no political motivation behind the attack and that they were just stealing from the mutant 1%ers for profit. Jean Grey says he's telling the truth, but she wants to know who the buyer is. It turns out it's the leader of the mysterious masked group that kidnapped Domino. A final prose page tells us that Beast has secretly reached out to a mercenary group called MERC to discuss hiring them for an undisclosed job.

Was it any good?

This issue was pretty great, filled with action and some pretty gruesome violence, but tempered by a sense of humor. It introduces an interesting perspective from Bill, who tells the mutants that they are targets because they're on top now, not just because of bigotry or political motivation. And look, I understand that Bill is a bad guy who tried to kill Wolverine and Kid Omega and all of that, but X-Force needs to let him slide. For Rufus's sake.