X-FORCE #91 - June 1999

Fallout

Credits: John Francis Moore (writer), Tommy Lee Edwards (penciler), Al Williamson (inker), Marie Javins (colors), Richard Starkings & Comicraft (letters)

Summary: Unable to speak, Siryn wanders San Francisco. After briefly considering suicide, she buys a liquor bottle and contemplates drinking again. Eventually, she visits an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting instead. Banshee arrives to check on Siryn and spends a futile night with X-Force searching the city. She returns hours later, says goodbye to Proudstar, and leaves behind a resignation letter.

Continuity Notes:

· Banshee knows Domino as “Beatrice.” They apparently met when she was very young in Madripoor.

· Fearful that their friendship is in jeopardy, Meltdown breaks up with Sunspot while they’re searching for Siryn.

· Sunspot is soon detained by INS agents who say he’s in the country illegally.

· Detective Napoleon Sanders, the police officer that’s been trailing Domino since issue #73 catches up with her in San Francisco. To their mutual shock, she begins to glow and disappears.

· Siryn claims she almost gave away two years of sobriety, which would place X-Force #31 two years ago in continuity. I’ll once again point out that these specific time references are peculiar when you consider how adamant Marvel is that some of their characters should not age at all.

I Love the '90s: A calendar shows Siryn’s birthday as some point in the late ‘70s. This issue also establishes her age as twenty-one, which means she would have to be born in the ‘90s today.

Review: Siryn is given an issue-long goodbye, which is appropriate considering her long history with the book. Because Marvel still had some faith in the “every issue is someone’s first” mantra, there’s a plethora of flashbacks in this issue establishing not only Siryn’s backstory, but Banshee’s as well. Moore works it into the story smoothly, using the old continuity to establish Siryn’s motivation for drinking and setting up the significance of her decision to leave the team. For anyone not engrossed with Siryn’s dilemma, Moore’s also thrown in a decent amount of subplots to keep the title’s momentum going. I’m sure the INS agents Sunspot encounters are frauds, but it’s amusing to see a writer finally address the legalities that the foreign X-members never seem to face while staying in America.

Periodically, you need one of these cast changes to keep things interesting, and while Siryn isn’t a character I would choose to dismiss, I can see where Moore’s coming from. With the addition of Domino and Jesse Aaronson, the book is packed with characters, so someone probably should be leaving. Cannonball is widely viewed by the audience and the characters as the true leader of the team, which makes Siryn’s role slightly superfluous. This also opens the door for Moonstar to make a play for team leadership, since she’s been groomed for the role going back to the early days of New Mutants. Proudstar’s response to her departure also opens up avenues for new stories.

Fill-in art for the issue comes from Tommy Lee Edwards, who’s about as far away from Jim Cheung as you can get. His style fits the brooding story, even if some of his faces are extremely off-model (his rendition of Meltdown resembles a blonde James Woods). My favorite panel is the flashback to Siryn meeting X-Force for the first time, since Edwards has chosen to draw them in the Mignola-style.