Cable and X-Force #7 Review

Marvel needs to start publishing more crappy X-Men comics so I don't feel obligated to read everything. Even Cable and X-Force has managed to win me over. This series initially started out as one of the big disappointments of the Marvel NOW! lineup, but after wrapping up the first story arc and abandoning the pointless nonlinear structure, Dennis Hopeless has found solid footing with this new X-Force squad. The team dynamic is really starting to shine as issue #7 unfolds.

Half the fun in this issue is seeing Hopeless break the team up into pairs and playing one mutant off the other. The fact that the adjective "fun" can even be applied to an X-Force book is always a good sign. Hopeless offers up some genuine humor in the scenes involving Doctor Nemesis and Forge as the former convinces the latter to go for a quick joyride in orbit. It's also nice to see a slightly more genuine side to Nemesis' personality beneath all the caustic sarcasm. Boom-Boom also provides a few chuckles in the issue, though at times the humor is dampened by the creepy factor of her being a scantily clad captive of a six-armed alien. It doesn't help that one line of dialogue implies the alien is considering molesting her.

Boom-Boom is also a troublesome factor when it comes to the visuals. While Salvador Larroca's eerie, tech-infused style is generally a great fit for the book, for some reason his facial work really falls apart when it comes to Tabitha. She rarely looks the same in any two panels, and some of her facial expressions are so strange and unnatural as to become distracting. On the plus side, Larroca's flair for action really benefits this issue in a number of scenes, from Domino's prison break to the Cable/Cyclops team-up to an underwater showdown.

The more deep emotional material comes in the interaction between Colossus and Domino. Hopeless has managed to build up a solid relationship and rapport between the two characters in a short time, and it's already paying off. More than any other character right now, Colossus seems to be the emotional center of the book. Sadly, the Cable/Cyclops pairing didn't have as much emotional resonance as I was hoping. Hopeless writes some nice father/son dialogue, but ultimately Cyclops' presence just felt unnecessary and poorly timed.

Jesse is a writer for various IGN channels. Allow him to lend a machete to your intellectual thicket by following @jschedeen on Twitter, or Kicksplode on MyIGN.

Source : ign[dot]com