X-Force #1 is out 11/6/2019. — **X-Force #1** is out 11/6/2019.

By Zack Quaintance — I knew when they got Benjamin Percy to write X-Force that this comic would be the dark heart of the new X-Books. Now that X-Force #1 has arrived, I’ve seen just how dark things in this series are about to get. See, Percy’s time in comics is maybe not an accurate reflection of his writerly interest, with the bulk of his work in the medium coming on the DC title, Green Arrow.

Green Arrow, which is a personal favorite character of mine, does not lend itself well to uses of horror or dark adventure storytelling elements, rooted as it is in the largely political adventures of a Robin Hood type taking on matters of greed and corporate malfeasance with a bow and arrow. Percy’s prose writing, however, gives us a glimpse into where his true storytelling interests lie. If you’re not familiar, I’ll say in brief that his work involves everything from a werewolf allegory for terrorist attacks to Lewis and Clark but what if they were making their trip after the apocalypse. It’s chilling stuff, often interspersed with literary uses of scarring and violence.

And now it has come for the X-Men, and I for one am glad. Not that I actively want to see harm come to Marvel’s merry mutants, but as this comic flat-out notes — there will always be a predator. This is true in nature and it’s certainly true in comics. To sustain long-form serialized storytelling, a plot needs a credible threat to its heroes. While I’ve enjoyed the other new X-Men comics quite a bit (before this week, we were three titles into the six-title Dawn of X X-Men relaunch), they’ve felt just a bit more tangential than this one.

The main X-Men book, which is being written by new X-Mastermind Jonathan Hickman himself, seems aimed at giving us an anthology series in which we can see what all of our favorite characters are up to within the new status quo that was created this summer. Marauders, meanwhile, has Kitty Pryde and a band of mutants sailing around the world to collect any mutants that are being prevented from joining the new mutant utopia on Krakoa, while Excalibur seems to be a tangential trip off the island and through magic/nostalgia.

X-Force, however, seems to be the comic in which the new war will be fought (there was always going to be a new war). So, that’s where we’re at with this series — it just might be the most essentially of the Dawn of X titles, at least behind X-Men anyway. As far as the quality of this individual issue, it is very good. The aforementioned Percy is a powerful prose writer who first made a new in literary fiction. His work has long intermingled poetic flourishes with horrifying plot points and imagery, and this comic is no different.

The artwork from the team of Joshua Cassara with colorist Dean White is well-suited for this story, really emphasizing the moments in this story of greatest drama and violence. If I have a complaint, it’s that I struggled to differentiate some of the characters at times, especially the antagonists (although given what was happening within the plot, this was perhaps intentional). Really though, from the moment I started this comic, I couldn’t put it down, so tense and immersed was I with the stakes on the page, and that’s one of the highest compliments I can pay to superhero adventure comics.

Overall: Darkness is creeping into the Dawn of X, and X-Force is going to be the book where we find out how the crew on Krakoa deals with it. If this first issue is any indication, it’s going to be a hell of a ride. 9.6/10

X-Force #1
Writer: Benjamin Percy
Artist: Joshua Cassara
Colorist: Dean White
Letterer: Joe Caramagna
Publisher: Marvel Comics
Price: $4.99

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Zack Quaintance is a tech reporter by day and freelance writer by night/weekend. He Tweets compulsively about storytelling and comics as Comics Bookcase.