X-Force #50 brings Percy’s run to a screeching HALT!

X-Force #50
Marvel Comics
Written by Ben Percy
Art by Robert Gill
Colors by Guru EFX
Letters by Joe Caramagna
Cover by Daniel Acuña
28 pages for $3.99
Solict: THE FINAL BATTLE AGAINST BEAST IN THE LANDMARK X-FORCE #50! X-FORCE confronts BEAST with their secret weapon. A final reckoning. Not a dry eye in the house. TARGET: BEAST finale!

Matt’s Review: If you think that solicit went quickly, wait until you read the story. That’s not a complaint mind you (my thoughts and prayers to everyone that read The Resurrection of Magneto). It just shocked me that Marvel could resist making a 50th issue GIANT-SIZED and charge at least $6. Instead, Percy and Gill give readers a quick and tidy (maybe a little TOO tidy) wrap-up of the current Krakoan era of this team. More importantly, they solve a long-running problem for the character of Hank McCoy’s Beast.

The Beast has been evil for too many years now. I can’t think of anything else to call it but “evil.” We even had a darker version of the Beast from the alternate Age of Apocalypse timeline (very creatively named “Dark Beast”) that may have been LESS evil than the Hank McCoy that’s been running the X-Force mutant murder squad for the last…god…it feels like 10 years…

Again, this isn’t a complaint, and I’m thrilled to have the “Stars and Garters” bouncing Beast back, but it sure felt like they cleaned this mess up too fast. I wasn’t up-to-date on Wonder Man’s status but his extreme pacifism seems to be a problem for a hero helping in this Orchis-driven crisis. 

I do love that this version of the Beast (a version resurrected from before he went dark…well…not Dark Beast dark, but you get it) would go find his best friend from his Avengers days to help, and that this Hank would try to save the current Evil Beast. And they even sell the redemption of the Not-That-Dark Beast, but BOOM, SPLASH, done-and-done. Then we get a one-page wrap-up and an editor’s note that basically says “sorry folks, we’re done here faster than we thought we would be.”

Gill’s art is solid when he actually gets to draw something, but a lot of the panels look unfinished or rushed with characters with no faces or blurry action. The visual storytelling is good and I liked the flow of the fight scenes with the two Beasts, Wolverine, and the rest of X-Force taking down a Stark Sentinel, but this was an obvious rush job and the art suffers for it at times. 

Percy’s X-Force lost me at times but as a whole, his run was solid and he wasn’t the writer that started Beast down this evil path. This 50th issue doesn’t feel like a proper send off for his X-Force run. Nothing bothers me more than the business of comics getting in the way of the storytelling, and you can feel the new editorial staff saying “thanks for your service but we’re done here” to this creative team right on the page. If nothing else, the Beast is back, so mark that a win in my book. 

Rating: SKIM IT

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