I feel weird repeating it, since it’s so obvious to everyone by now (I literally have a feature called Can’t Cross Over about how comic books deal with their stories being interrupted by crossovers), but one of the biggest problems with crossovers is how they interrupt the ongoing stories in a series. In other words, when you suddenly become part of a chapter crossover (meaning that each book in the crossover tells a chapter of the story) then, for a month, you’re no longer “Book A,” but rather, “Crossover B, Part 7.”

However, Geoffrey Thorne took that challenged and cleverly said, “Okay, I’ll do your crossover, but guess what, I’m just going to tell TWO stories in this issue!” and so Thorne successfully split the series into two plots, one starring Sage that served as the X-Manhunt crossover, and another one starring the rest of X-Force dealing with the cliffhanger from the previous issue, and I think this serves as a nice guideline for future series running into a problem like this one (and let’s face it, there ARE going to be other books that run into a problem like this one).

X-Force #9 is from writer Geoffrey Thorne, artists Marcus To and Erick Arciniega, and letterer Joe Caramagna, and it ties into Sage’s history with Professor X, as well as X-Force’s battle with the villainous La Diabla (and her newest ally, a blast from Marvel’s past).

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How did X-Force tie into X-Manhunt?

As I have noted in an old Abandoned an’ Forsaked, Chris Claremont began to redeem Tessa (Sebastian Shaw’s personal assistant) over the years by revealing that she was secretly a spy working for Xavier within the Hellfire Club and that, in fact, Xavier and Tessa’s relationship had gone back to the mission where Xavier had lost the use of his legs, back when Tessa was just a girl. She became one of his first X-Men, just not a member of the main team, and instead his secret spy. This led to Tessa becoming the superhero known as Sage.

Really, when you boil X-Manhunt down to its bones, the concept of the series is that Charles Xacier has had SO much of an impact on so many mutants that it is very difficult to expect many of these mutants to actually want to send him back to prison, and Sage is perhaps the most notable examples of this, as while Storm also stepped up to help Xavier, she did so while not knowing that Xavier was infected with a mutant tumor that was devastating regular people in the areas surrounding Xavier, but in Sage’s case, she owes such a debt of gratitude to Xavier that it really doesn’t even factor into her thinking. If Xavier needs help, she’s helping him.

In this case, the help ties in with the last Krakoan egg that we saw earlier in the storyline, which Xavier uses here to resurrect Lilandra, his Shi’ar wife. I never liked the idea of killing off Lilandra, so I’m cool with bringing her back to life. It then sets up the finale quite nicely in X-Manhunt Omega #1 (which I shared an exclusive preview of the other day).

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What did the rest of X-Force do in the issue?

Meanwhile, though, Thorne splits the rest of the issue into the continuation of the fight that was begun at the end of the previous issue, where X-Force’s “Big Bad,” La Diabla, attacks the group with first a mind-controlled Colossus (I’m not totally positive it IS Colossus, but whatever, let’s just say for the sake of simplicity that is a mind-controlled Colossus) and then, at the end of last issue, Thorne went into Marvel’s deep past to bring in the Brute That Walks, a scientist who was transformed into a monster in the pre-Fantastic Four Marvel Monsters era of stories. He had actually previously been brought back for a fairly recent X-Men storyline (well, during Brian Michael Bendis’ run, so about a decade ago, but that’s still relatively recent, all things considered), but now the scientist as back, and the Brute is a lot for X-Force to deal with.

Marcus To and Erick Arciniega get to really cut loose on these action sequences, with some dynamic pages, and most importantly, some clever depictions of the various characters’ powers in action (everyone on the team gets a chance to show off their stuff in cool ways, and that also includes La Diabla). I really love how much Thorne is using the entirety of the Marvel Universe (like Diablo’s clear influence on La Diabla), the Marvel Monsters bit, and also, I forgot to note that the Mad Thinker tied into Sage’s plot (as did the little-used John Wraith, who gets one of those classic Marvel, “Oh, was he dead when we last saw him? Well, obviously he came back, okay?” returns). It’s really fun to see how someone as clever as Thorne knows how to use the whole breadth of the Marvel Universe to its best effect, the idea is to use all the cool stuff, but don’t treat it like it’s a necessity for anyone to KNOW all this stuff. You don’t need to know that the Brute That Walks is an old character, he works in the book as just some guy Diabla turned into a monster if that’s all you know. Heck, you don’t even really need to know who the Mad Thinker is, just that he’s a super-smart supervillain.

This is a fun book, and the cliffhanger sets up a nice tie-in with the concept of the series (Forge is trying to fix faults, but La Diabla WANTS the faults, and she sees HERself as the true solution).

Source: Marvel