The good news: X-Force is apparently a miniseries after all.  It ends after issue #6.  Unfortunately, it's immediately replaced by X-Force: Shatterstar, a three-issue mini plotted by Liefeld and filled out by some of his regular collaborators.

Liefeld comics aren't even any fun to mock these days.  The problem isn't that they're dumb action books.  Wolverine #22 is a dumb action book, but it does it well.  It's got quality art, it's got pace and direction.  X-Force is just flagrantly inept garbage.  Wolverine fights people.  Other people fight people.  Fighty fighty fight.  There's no coherent plot to this miniseries at all, nor even the faintest, most elementary grasp of how to pace an issue.

Do stupid action books by all means.  Just do them competently, for god's sake.  I realise it's futile to point out these things when it comes to Rob Liefeld books, because nobody actually expects them to be any good.  But this is just so dreadful and content free that it operated on a level below criticism.  There is nothing here to criticise.  There is nothing here, period.

I genuinely feel slightly insulted by this comic.  It's basically a cynical exercise in cashing in on Liefeld's notoriety, and on X-Men completists.  And it's a particularly nasty and corrosive form of cynicism.  With a book like the current Sabretooth miniseries, for example, you have something which is utterly pointless, but at least achieves a certain level of competence and readability.  When you offer something like X-Force to the public, you're basically telling them that you think they're stupid.

Mark Millar recently claimed that Liefeld's comics have a natural appeal to kids, a theory he has apparently tested on children aged 7 to 14.  He may well be right, but you don't see many ten year old boys in comic shops these days.  And bluntly, there are a ton of artists out there capable of aping the dynamism of Liefeld's art while combining it with storytelling ability and an actual plot.

Mindbendingly abysmal.

Rating: D-

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