X-Force finds themselves being pulled apart at the seams as team members are quitting left and right. In the meantime the remaining members are left to clean up what was supposed to be a quick mission for Deadpool as they go head to head with a trio of Omega Weapons. Elsewhere we see old foes of the team banding together as a new Brotherhood of Evil Mutants who just may be the most frightening iteration of the group yet.

How much further down can the X-Force fall, and will they ever get back up again?

——

Last month when the “Final Execution” arc began I was happy to see big developments for the series, but I didn’t feel like a whole lot of important stuff really happened in that issue. However, this second part to the story remedies that in spades. Of all the books I buy each month, especially from Marvel, this one seems to be the most dense in terms of story per issue. Not just that it takes me longer to read through while fully engrossed, but in the fact that Rick Remender really know how to balance everything that’s going on in his entire little universe through little vignettes that don’t leave a single character out of the mix. 

Much of the issue is focused again on Deadpool, Wolverine, and Nightcrawler taking on the Omegas. There’s plenty of crazy action in these sequences as the three Omegas that the team is up against display their interesting and original power sets. This culminates in Deadpool showing off his intelligence and insanity all in one fell swoop (which is really just a testament to how well Remender can handle the character). The other parts of the issue see Fantomex and Psylocke’s respective conflicts and some introductions to the members of the new Brotherhood of Evil Mutants and some hints as to just what their plans are within this story. The team consists of various villains who have plagued the team in the past of this series such as the Skinless Man from the Otherworld story and the Shadow King, plus the Age of Apocalypse version of blob, and then we have a couple of big enemies of Wolverine and former members of the Brotherhood in Mystique and Sabretooth. As someone having been reading Jason Aaron’s Wolverine and Wolverine and the X-Men series’ it seems like Remender is following along with what Aaron was doing with Sabretooth. 

The biggest and most interesting point we get in this issue is when members of the new Brotherhood start to make apparent what they’re working towards in this story. Not only does it seem that they want to tear the X-Force apart, but they want to expose them to the world as the black ops mutant team that isn’t afraid to kill when they need to. More interesting than this, though; they plan on taking Genesis, the Apocalypse clone we saw in the “Dark Angel Saga” who joined Wolverine’s school recently, and turning him into a new Apocalypse. That right there just made me really giddy when I read it, and really excited to see what’s in store for this series as we move forth. 

On the side of the art we have Phil Noto back for this issue after Mike McKone covered #25 last month. I praised Noto’s work on issue #24 so it’s really nice to see him on the interiors again. Put shorty, I think I prefer him to any artist we’ve had in this series’ rotation aside from Jerome Opena. 

Uncanny X-Force continues to trot along as one of the best titles Marvel is currently producing, and honestly you’d be wrong to deprive yourself of this incredible title. 

GO Rating: 4.5/5

[Intro image via]