X-FORCE #15 – October 1992

To The Pain

Credits: Fabian Nicieza (writer), Greg Capullo (pencils), Al Milgrom (inks), Chris Eliopoulos (letters), Joe Rosas (colors)

Summary

X-Force defeats Crule and receives a message from Gideon. If Cannonball promises not to interfere with the Externals, he will tell him where to find Sunspot. Cannonball agrees, and the team travels to New Mexico to rescue him. Meanwhile, the real Domino is freed during Cable’s fight with Deadpool. Cable and Domino chase Tolliver to his helicopter, and Cable makes her promise to leave him and find X-Force. Cable blows up the helicopter and teleports away.

Continuity Notes

Crule’s battle with X-Force doesn’t match up with the events of the last issue. Previously, Crule busted into their ship and grabbed Cannonball. In this issue, he busts into the ship, fights the team, and never comes close to Cannonball.

Crule wants to sever Cannonball’s “five branches” before he becomes a threat to all of the Externals. More vague gibberish that I don’t think was ever resolved.

Cable says that he’s faced Deadpool “too many times”, even though this is only the second time they’ve met (Deadpool introduces himself to Cable in his first New Mutants appearance). Apparently, Nicieza now wants to incorporate Deadpool into Cable and Domino’s shared backstory (Deadpool even calls Cable “Nate”).

Cable shoots laser blasts out of his fingers. That never caught on, did it? He is wearing gloves in the scene, so that gives you a No-Prize explanation. Cable also tells his computer to repair his face (which is still in the Terminator 2 look). The exact dialogue is “set synthskin repair mode – patchwork only.”

I Love the ‘90s

Warner Music has an ad selling a series of VHS tapes with ten music videos for $2.98 a month. The acts being advertised include Kyuss, Body Count, Pantera, Tori Amos, and Sonic Youth. Just a few months earlier, Marvel was running ads for a music service offering Paula Abdul, Warrant, Color Me Badd, and Enuff Z’Nuff albums. It’s really amazing how quickly pop culture can change.

Approved By The Comics Code Authority

Some of the phrases in that ad include “purring winsomely about crucifixion and violation,” “ecstasy-stained club attraction,” and “a fresh bong load…of musical salvation”.

Review

This issue is Greg Capullo’s debut as artist, and it was also one of my favorite comics during this era. I mostly liked it for the artwork, but I was also into the Cable/Deadpool fight, and I liked the way it concluded some of the subplots and set up events for a new direction. I was afraid that this issue wouldn’t hold up at all, but I was relieved to see that it’s pretty good. After languishing for several months, the title now feels like it’s going somewhere. With Cable and Domino gone, and now that Rictor and Sunspot have joined the team, the focus moves away from the mystery characters and goes back to more relatable characters.

Greg Capullo remains one of my favorite artists from this time. His work is stylized and exaggerated, but it remains nice to look at, and he understands the basics like pacing, acting, and storytelling. He started out with a kind of generic ’80s Marvel look before being influenced by the Image style. Bringing in that influence hurt some traditional artists, like Herb Trimpe and Alex Saviuk, but Capullo was usually able to pull it off very well.

He seemed to figure out what worked and didn’t work in that style and incorporated into what he was already doing. Years later, he would become the regular artist on Spawn, and develop a cartoonier look that moved even further away from his original influences. He left Spawn in the late ‘90s and hasn’t done a lot of comics work since. The last time I saw anything McFarlane published, it looked the artists were still drawing in the sort-of Capullo house style that was developed in the ‘90s. The last time I saw Capullo draw anything was that bizarre Spider-Man/Jay Leno back-up that ran in some of Marvel’s books. His style was so exaggerated that it was unrecognizable to me at that point. I still consider his X-Force run to be some of the best-looking comics of this era (even if there is some wacky anatomy in this issue), so I’m looking forward to reading these issues again.