THE CREATORS: Writer Peter Milligan and artist Mike Allred.

THE FILL-IN ARTIST COUNT: Three.

WHAT HAPPENED IN 2002: The "Nuff Said" story (because it was running late); Edie takes Guy to visit her parents; X-Force go into space for the mission where Edie gets killed; the team renames itself X-Statix; the Arnie storyline; and the beginning of "Moons of Venus."

While the shock value of the 2001 relaunch is now long behind us, X-Force - or X-Statix, if you prefer - remains one of the high spots of the line.

Now that things have settled down, it's clear that Peter Milligan and Mike Allred aren't simply doing a pastiche of superhero comics.  Of course, the book retains its tongue-in-cheek awareness of its genre conventions.  The "Who dies?" issue, which deliberately drew out the answer to an absurd degree, is a classic example of that.  X-Statix realises that any superhero book needs to have some sense of its own ridiculousness, and is happy to play along.

But the impressive thing about this book is that for all its self-parody, it nonetheless works at face value as well.  The deliberately soapy character arcs are character arcs nonetheless, and the death of Edie was genuinely affecting.  An interesting subplot has been dropping hints that somebody, probably Doop, is manipulating the team to make them squabble, so as to generate drama and make them more entertaining to the public.

Not so coinidentally, the series also thrives on dramatic conflict, giving this entire storyline metatextual overtones.  The conflicts are real, but the series is simultaneously working within the genre conventions and exploring their limits.  It's not a book for people who hate superhero comics, as some initially thought (and boy, were they disappointed when the reality dawned).  It's actually very affectionate about them, in its slightly perverse way.

Mike Allred's retro-tinged art perfectly complements the books themes, giving us a comic that looks as "comic booky" as possible while going so far along that line as to continuously flag up the fact that it's a story.

Meanwhile, Milligan continues to drop great ideas into the book, such as the absurd rival team O-Force, winners of a superhero equivalent of American Idol.  He seems to have a constant stream of bizarre characters such as Venus Dee Milo and Dead Girl, to boot.  Milligan can be a very variable writer - his back catalogue includes wonderful books like Shade the Changing Man, but has some pretty mediocre work on it as well.  This series is showing him at his best.

The continued hints of something sinister going on in the background, the great characters, the satirical elements, the playing with genre conventions...  I love it.  For me, the best thing in the line.

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