The best mainstream Marvel book, bar none.

This series refutes so many rules of thumb that comic readers have developed over the last decade. A team book with Wolverine, Deadpool, Fantomex, and other “extreme” characters? Yeah, it’s actually not a cash-grab but instead the most thoughtful X-book out there. A storyline about returning to the Age of Apocalypse? Yeah, it’s actually not a gimmicky ’90s nostalgia fest but instead the most engrossing adventure saga I’ve read in some time. No Esad Ribic or Jerome Opena? Yeah, that’s actually not a problem because Mark Brooks does just fine and seems very well suited for these issues.

And Remender gives us not one but two big-time kisses in this comic. I can’t remember the last time I saw a kiss in a comic that seemed all that momentous, but we get TWO of them in this comic. And that’s actually ROMANCE in an action-adventure story that doesn’t seem forced! All the things you’d think could be negatives or contrivances are handled so well that you find yourself indulging in the material and loving it. All the alternative versions of X-characters? Remender uses them to great effect. Just a few lines of dialogue, and he has you ruminating over how all the different characters feel about each other, seeing their loved ones back alive again, etc.

Uncanny X-Force continues to beat the odds and deliver 22 pages of non-decompressed storytelling that seems both forward-thinking and backward-compatible. It’s the perfect Marvel mutant comic. It proves that everything you think might be a contrivance or a gimmick actually has a kernel of awesomeness to it, which Remender & co. can bring out in depth.

And though this issue features the latest in a long tradition of Psylocke ass-shots on the cover . . . still, even that’s kind of okay, because it’s not gratuitous and because Fantomex is kissing her and this is probably the most awesome, meaningful cover that Fantomex has ever been on.