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

Saturnyne Continues Beating a Dead Horse in X-Force #14 [XH]

Published Thu, 26 Nov 2020 12:30:36 -0600

by Jude Terror

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Welcome to the Thanksgiving edition of X-ual Healing. To give thanks for getting to take an actual day off from writing about nonsense like comics and pro wrestling, I saved up two weeks' worth of X-Men recaps to publish on Thanksgiving while I'm gorging myself on Turkey, mashed potatoes, candied yams, and multiple versions of pie. That means there are six chapters of X of Swords recapped this week in X-Force #14, Hellions #6, Cable #6, X-Men #15, Excalibur #15, and X of Swords: Destruction #1. And take my word for it, my opinion on this beast of a crossover will change from one article to the next. In addition to that, there's Juggernaut #3.

But first:

Hey Bleedingcool, have been a follower since 2015, but what kind of reporting is this? Is this sarcasm, satire or just poor writing? Really hard to understand.

-A Twitter Follower complaining about a Fanboy Wrampage column

Why can't it be all of them at once?

Alright, enough yammering. It's recap time!

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. Still, thanks to a corporate merger, a line-wide relaunch, and Jonathan Hickman's giant ego, the X-Men can finally get back to doing what they do best: being objectively the best franchise in all of comics for lovers of soap opera drama.

[MULTINAV]

X-FORCE #14 XOS
SEP200546
(W) Ben Percy, Gerry Duggan (A) Joshua Cassara (CA) Dustin Weaver
Chivalry gives way to fury. A knight must kneel.
Rated T+
In Shops: Nov 18, 2020
SRP: $3.99

X-Force #14 Recap

Magik battles Pogg Ur Pogg in a battle again, this time with no weapons. He swallows her, but she bursts back out of his mouth with a much smaller, chubby little green guy. It turns out the alligator body was a "sword" (really a costume, but look, Marvel's gotta take some liberties here). She wins, putting the score at 5-3 Arakko.

Several more contests of varying degrees of silliness take place in a montage that leaves the score 12-5 Arakko. Then Saturyne tries to seduce Brian Braddock in the Crooker Market before he faces Redroot in a race… but though Braddock is faster, he's also attacked by The Fury, causing Redroot to win. 13-5 Arakko.

But it turns out he stepped on a crystal or something and so he must be put in a jar by Jim Jaspers as atonement. Saturnyne tells Braddock that he too caused a lot of damage, and the same fate awaits unless he gives her the D. A prose page shows a report on the events of the tournament to Mojo, who adds snarky comments, kinda like this column.

Magik loses a spelling bee. Wolverine loses a contest where he and The White Sword have to look into a mirror at the faces of the people they've killed without blinking because he starts crying. Gorgon loses a contest because he has sex with a rock. War wins a contest by murdering a kitten, which Brian Braddock refuses to do. 17-5 Arakko.

A prose page reminds us of the Blightswill drinking contest between Wolverine and Storm. Wolverine lost his healing factor from drinking it. Storm is about to have a contest with Death. They fight in Sevelith, surrounded by vampires as Saturnyne watches. Death takes off his helmet, but Storm stabs him in the gut. The vampires devour Death as the score is now 17-16.

Last week, I was amused by this crossover, taking a hard turn into blatant trolling. But this week, I'm pretty much over it. I stand by my assertion earlier in this crossover that its biggest problem is its length. Everything that's happened in this crossover so far could have been done in maybe three or four issues. Then people who sunk, what, sixty or seventy bucks (?) by this point into this crossover only for it to spend the last three issues just doing a bit would have a lot less reason to feel ripped off. If you want lame jokes, just read my columns for free.