Friday, November 11, 2011

X-FORCE #85 - Early January 1999


Possession

Credits: John Francis Moore (writer), Angel Unzueta (penciler), Bud LaRosa (inker), Marie Javins (colors), Comicraft’s Emerson Miranda (letters)


Summary: In Latveria, Skids and Locus are possessed by the witch Pandemonia, who forces them to take her to X-Force’s headquarters. When Cannonball, Moonstar, and Jesse Aaronson return home, they discover Pandemonia has possessed their teammates. They travel to the city and find a young sorceress named Jennifer Kale who’s willing to help. They return to battle Pandemonia and the possessed X-Force. With the help of Jennifer, and Moonstar’s strange new powers, Pandemonia is sent back to the Chaos Plane. Meanwhile, while investigating the Aguilar Institute, Domino discovers a shapeshifting child from Almost Reno, New Mexico.


Continuity Notes: Moonstar has been exhibiting odd, almost cosmic-level powers since her encounter with Arcadia in the previous issue.


Review: The Skids/Locus subplot is resolved, in a manner that a) leads into a new story, b) doesn’t take forever to answer the dangling questions, and c) actually makes sense. After the days of the Graydon Creed assassination, mysteriously molting Archangel, and wacky powers Jean Grey, this is a welcome relief. Moore’s quite gifted at spinning plates, bringing forgotten characters back into the mix, and tying everything together into a coherent story. I think he’s a little too obsessed with having the team only hang out with twenty-somethings, to the point that an MTV-friendly sorceress is recruited into the action (because the team doesn’t have Dr. Strange’s phone number), but that’s a minor complaint. The fill-in art is provided by Angel Unzueta, whose style resembles Carlos Pacheco’s early work. Not every page is great, but overall he does a nice job.

2 comments:

wwk5d said...

I didn't mind Jennifer Kale, it was nice of JFM to bring her out for this story, even if she should be a bit older than the main cast. I think Dr. Strange would have been a bit out of place. Of course, given the x-connection, they could have tried Amanda Sefton, but Jennifer Kale worked out fine.

ray swift said...

As soon as I figured this is another evil sorceress/evil-being mind controling the team kind of plot, I stopped reading. By now, I feel that this has been done too much, and it doesn't seem Moore has some astonishly creative take on this that seperate it from other stories (and I can't not compare this to Claremont's New Mutants story with the shadow king, which was much more elaborate). But the main question I asked myself in this issue: why not Selene? She already made an appearance in this book before. She has the same characteristic traits as Pandemonia, similiar enough powers. Why invente a brand new character?

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