Review by Ian Keogh

Over the past four volumes X-Force has a series where the artist keeps changing, but that in itself now changes with Robert Gill drawing this entire volume, which is welcome. His first work was seen in Vol. 4, and he again defines the characters, the mood and the locations, although be warned, he’s not shy of graphic depictions of atrocities. Of course, with the resurrection process, dead X-Men are no longer an easy manipulative cliffhanger, but seeing one with their head split in half and their brain scooped out is the equivalent. It’s cheap and gratuitous gore.

Benjamin Percy shows readers what’s responsible a fair while before X-Force learn the same details, and in some ways it’s a conflation of several older threats wrapped up in a new vision of artificial intelligence. It’s certainly an existential threat, but as with so much about Percy’s X-Force, it never actually convinces as such, although to Percy’s credit he’s learned from past mistakes and doesn’t drag this on too long. There’s also a fair jolt as it ends.

Moving onward, two new team members manifest, one of them Deadpool. He’s problematical as within the enclosed world of his own title his personal brand of insanity works perfectly well, but introducing him into a group with more serious objectives always drags them down into that world. Percy has the answer for that, though, making Deadpool’s appearance brief, although eventually pivotal, and it’s the other new arrival Omega Red who’s the most interesting. As he’s never been interesting before except as a danger, this is a real achievement. Percy has him as conflicted, perhaps wanting some form a redemption, to start anew, but coming wired with instincts preventing that.

Like every other of the X-Men family of titles X-Force is shoehorned into a crossover with the Eternals and the Avengers, but Percy keeps it at a distance, using the presence of a Celestial to prompt Kraven the Hunter to invade Krakoa. It might seem a mismatch, but that’s avoided by much stalking accompanied by Kraven’s overblown thoughts about himself and initially only one on one encounters. Unless you take Kraven’s pompous self-aggrandisement seriously it’s bleakly funny in places.

Beyond the opening story, which is okay, this has been the best of Percy’s X-Force run to date, so let’s hope for more of the same in Vol. 6.