You remember the “Killers.” teaser last week? Sam Humphries and Ron Garney would be taking over a book of a purple hue?
As suspected, the two are taking over on Uncanny X-Force from Rick Remender and his stunning cadre of artistic collaborators. As we’ve discussed with Humphries, he’s the latest comic book writer to crawl his way to the top of the heap from unknown to top tier Marvel writer. With The Ultimates and now Uncanny X-Force under his belt, it’s fair to say he’s arrived.
Remender brought together a team that did the dirty things none of the other superheroes talked about, and in doing so, created a big hit. Humphries spoke about his upcoming run to Comics Alliance, as well as who’s going to be on the team.
The group that we start off with right off the bat is Psylocke, Storm, Puck and Spiral, and we have a few more characters joining the group in the first few issues. In my mind, all those characters are wild cards. They’re all strong personalities, they’re all strong in terms of their powers, they’ve all got dark secrets and they’ve all got a rebellious streak. That to me is a really attractive part of the book, being able to balance all those character dynamics at once.
In regards to following Remender’s run, Humphries said the following.
X-Force has been one of my favorite books since before Marvel even knew my name. I’ve been loving the sh** out of Rick’s run, and Rick and I have known each other for years. He was very open, very generous with his notes and his thoughts about where to go, and his experiences writing the book. But the thing about Rick’s run, and I can say this because I know what happens, is that Rick nails the end of his run. Kills it. His whole run on Uncanny X-Force is a complete story, it has a beginning, a middle and an end. I love his run enough to respect that and acknowledge it, but I also love it enough to leave it alone.
Nobody wants to see me try and continue X-Force as a watered-down version of Rick Remender. Rick asked questions in the book and addressed them. There’s nothing left for me to continue, but it would not be an enjoyable experience for anyone involved, for the readers, for Rick, for me or for Marvel. No one would come out pleased. This spins directly out of the events of Rick’s run, but it takes the concept of X-Force, the mandate of the book and the characters down a new path with a new focus.
There you have it. You’ll see it in January 2013, alongside Cable and The X-Force, by Dennis Hopeless and Salvador LaRocca.
I wonder if Puck will get red eyes.
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Wow, that’s a lot of women on that team. Good for Marvel
Sadly this will be probably be on my drop list. Losing Remender, Alt. Nightcrawler, Wolverine and Deadpool is too much to keep me interested. I’ve never read Humphries is he worth giving a shot?
I’m reading Higher Earth from Boom Studies. Based on that, his take on X-Force is worth a look
Humprhies is very good, he will be a big name soon. I stumbled on to his stuff with Our Love is Real.
Aaaaaannnnnnnddddd dropped…
Storm? Puck?? Spiral???
PUCK??????
I honestly have no idea what to make of this.
Puck? Curiosity peaked….
I’m not familiar with spiral… but if you add X-23 and possibly vamp jubilee i’d pull this.
and for the love of god please un-kill fantomex already. He should be leading this team.
Spiral is a Long shot villain.
Six arms, swords, funny hat, likes to dance around and do magic, occasionally runs an interdimensional shop for turning people into super cyborgs.
Why wouldn’t you know that?
Wasn’t Spiral responcible for changing Psylocke from a purple-haired English woman into a purple-haired English woman in a purple-haired Japanese woman’s body?
Lol thanks @RobotZombie. sounds. er… interesting?
Couldn’t agree more about Fantomex.
WE WANT FANTOMEX BACK!!!!
So there’s going to be two X-Force books?
Yes.
I’m coming to realize I am a sucker for Marvel’s team books. If I could afford it I’d get them all. Except for Avengers Arena.
I don’t understand why Storm would be on this team. Jubilee would be a much better choice, if they wanted to have a female character. Blade would be a good choice as well, a very under-utilized character in my opinion. Blink would be interesting as well, if they wanted to bring an obscure character into focus (no pun intended), instead of whoever Spiral is.
Yeah, Storm in a team of killers does seem off.
Wait…Puck? That short hairy Canadian dude who doesn’t like pants? That guy? DROPPED!
You just described Wolverine too lol
I actually really like these characters (ah, the 80s), that said i’m dropping my Marvel books and just sampling what looks interesting off the racks.
PUCK RULES.
A lot to think about here. Will the story be worth a lineup that is only kind of interesting (to me anyway)? Any team book tends to have a fluid lineup, so how much does that matter? Will this book double ship? Will the other X-Force book that I am more interested in? Do I need to read weekly X-Force?
This is a bizarre line up. Puck is not a mutant. He doesn’t even have super powers. Why would he want to be on an X-Team? Spiral was last seen FIGHTING the X-Men in Fraction’s run on “Uncanny X-Men.” Storm is the last X-Man one would expect to see on an assassination squad. She has always been very moralistic.
Has Humphries ever read an X-Men comic before? Did anyone in editorial explain the concept to him?
Technically Deadpool isn’t a mutant and he’s on the team. As of late, he lost his healing factor, so he has no powers either. But everything else you said is pretty spot on. Its an odd line up.
This line up makes no sense.
Agreed.
Storm and Puck aren’t killers.
But he does look at porn quite a bit while supposedly working at X-Factor.
@MisterShaw: Yeah, isn’t it kind of refreshing to not immediately understand all the character relationships and potential plots from an announcement? I’m really intrigued to see how Sam brings this group together and exactly how “Killers” relates to it, because (to Pete Stanchek’s point) Storm had a pretty big problem with the first instance of X-Force as secret death squad.
In the rest of that ComicVine interview, Sam explains that he’s particularly a fan of the era when Storm led the X-Men, so I trust that Storm is in good hands.
For awhile when Storm led the X-Men she wore a black leather vest, had a mowhawk, and tried to kill Callisto. She’s also been a vampire…She can definitely be a bad ass. Spiral and Puck do seem strange though…
No interest in this.
I don’t like Garney. This might be a pass for me. Unless i hear GREAT things AND Garney’s art takes a quantum leap in quality.
Regardless of how good or bad the series ends up being, based on the comments here, Humphries did a very poor job of explaning what the series actually IS.
Good for Marvel! Putting non-mutants and women on a team means I HAVE to support your book!
Oh wait, no it doesn’t. I’m sure Humphries is a nice guy, but I was very disappointed with Ultimates when he transitioned into the writing chair there. And putting Storm (one of my favorite characters ever) on a team of “KILLERS” seems like an awful idea.
I’m very underwhelmed with Marvel NOW! overall. Most of the decisions seem baffling to me. Remender had turned the X-Force property around, but they replace it with two horrible-sounding titles: one of which features Cable and appears to be a return to the past, and the other one features Puck and Spiral. No way am I reading this.
I like Garney’s art, though. If Garney was illustrating a Psylocke solo book, I would very possibly buy that.
Apparently Bishop is going to be a villain in this book, and him vs Cable is the connective tissue between the two XF books.
Hrumph.
Reading these comments reminds me of the same comments I read before Remender penned issue one of uncanny x force. If this book is a success, I will be the guy who is laughing his head off when the bandwagon rolls by and you all are running for dear life to catch a ride.
Well said! The “Fearful Fanboy” stereotype is alive and well in a lot of these comments. I think this has a lot of “sleeper hit” potential. I hope the price rolls back to $2.99 to entice on-the-fence folks (like me, admittedly) to try it out.
what i like about marvel now so far is the new voices different creators and teams on books. thank god for dcbs bundle so i can try the books and see what i like.
With a membership like that, Marvel seems to be hedging their bets that this title will sell on the title alone.
…Unless it’s depowered Mohawk Storm, I’ll but anything with depowered Mohawk Storm. Hear that Marvel?
Ya Depowered Mohawk Storm is the friggin best. She beat Cyke for team leader in the late 80’s and she never would have wasted Prof X!
What’s up with the Puck hate??? He’s hilarious. It’s like Byrne flipping off Wolverine fans. “Oh you like short hairy Canadians, eh? Here ya go! *snicker*”.
This could be the most random team line up ever….and that’s saying something.
Yeah, I guess it’s the most random since the original Uncanny X-Force line-up of Deadpool, Fantomex, Angel, Psylocke & Wolverine. At first glance, it sounded like I would hate it, but it was awesome.
I’ll give this a shot. Glad to see Storm is getting some more “face time” in books.
What could possibly connect all these characters that wouldnt be totally conncoted simply to bring them to the same time and place. Oh well the Axel Alonso “power of number 1” will still get some people to buy it.
I’m gonna give this a shot for at least two or three issues. I’m a big fan of Garney, and I’m an even bigger fan of Storm. I’m also interested in seeing how this motley bunch comes together. Don’t know a thing about Humphries’ previous work, but he’s got me for a few issues.
I heard all these same complaints before the first Uncanny X-Force came out.
I heard all these same complaints before Bendis’ New Avengers came out.
I will give it a chance i can always drop it if i don’t like it. I heard the same comments on the current run and i almost missed out on perhaps one of the best Xmen books in a long time. And besides that i have been enjoying Humphries run on the ultimate’s, I think he will do just fine. Lets read a couple of issues before we make a hasty judgment.
Milk it, milk it to death!
I’m sufficiently curious to read on when Humphries takes over.
The team sounds really interesting, what with the character development Psylocke’s going through in the current run, and Ororo’s nature.
I look forward to seeing where this goes.
This sounds like an interesting roster. I love Storm, although seeing her on an assassination squad seems a little odd. Puck is awesome and Spiral is bad ass. Never really cared for Psylocke but she definitely works here. I pretty much read no x books except x-factor, but tie on sounds intriguing.
I’m not too sure if I’ll be buying this book on a monthly basis, but I’ll at least check out the first issue. I hate the “This line-up makes no sense!” arguments before 1st issues come out, but I’m remembering a scene from one of the Second Coming epilogues where Storm was more or less dressing down Wolverine for leading a squad of secret killers. I’m curious how/if Humphries is going to write Storm’s change of heart, since it would be pretty sloppy if he didn’t address it.
I don’t think you should be so sure she’s had a change of heart, since we really don’t know how this team relates to “killers” – I think this is a silly idea, but maybe it refers to something like “man-killers” since it’s a predominantly female team. Storm, Psylocke and Spiral are a covert ops group taking down evil Dudes, and Puck is the token male. I dunno.
No Deadpool, no interest.
Ugh… dropped
It seems I and almost everyone else on the site feel completely different about the upcoming X-Forces. This sounds so far up my alley it needs a shower, while Cable’s book makes me want to vomit. LONG LIVE PUCK