X-Force may be gone for now, but its ghost lingers on for another four months.  Yes, it's a Shatterstar miniseries, plotted by Rob Liefeld and produced by some of his protégés. 

And not just any Shatterstar miniseries - it's a prequel to X-Force!  Watch and gasp as characters get very worked up about the story that was resolved last month!  Draw a sharp intake of breath as Shatterstar receives crucial exposition in this issue which was repeated again in X-Force #1!  Shudder at the prospect of reading about the Skornn again!

To be fair, in terms of basic technical competence, this is a step up from the recent X-Force miniseries.  Although Liefeld is credited as a plotter, the presence of vaguely-coherent six-panel pages and scenes set aside for crucial exposition to take place makes me suspect that that's "plot" in the sense of "storyline", not in the sense of "written directions for the artist."  Marat Mychaels may not be the best artist in the world, but at least his action sequences make a passable degree of sense on a first reading.  The scenery stays in the same place and everything!

But this story wasn't remotely interesting in the X-Force series, and since it's a Liefeld story (no matter how limited his involvement), there's every reason to assume that it won't make any sense when all's said and done.  The story also seems to miss the point of Shatterstar's original concept - impressive, considering that it was Liefeld's concept in the first place.  Shatterstar was always billed as an "MTV warrior", a deliberately flashy performer bred by Mojo for public entertainment.  That being the case, his grumblings about the Madripoor cage fights seem misplaced.  He might regret the poor quality of the opposition or the staging, but surely not the concept itself.

Honesty requires me to concede that it's notably better than X-Force.  Of course, that still leaves plenty of scope for it to be bad.

Rating: C-

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