304: Kyle & Yost's X-Force V3 Retrospective
- 8 hours ago
- 10 min read
Introduction
This is not your daddy's X-Force. If your daddy is Rob Leifeld or Fabian Nicieza, that is. Craig Kyle and Christopher Yost go dark. Very dark. This is what Kyle and Yost had to say in a CBR article (all quotes in this retrospective come from CBR interviews:) "I don't care how many dimensions they have, if the characters aren't believable, then I won't buy the story." Comic books are often not "believeable," they are fantastical by design. However we are brought into a world where Wolverine, Warpath, X-23, Wolfsbane, Domino, Elixir, Archangel, and Vanisher comprise the new X-Force.
Major Themes
Survival at the Cost of Your Soul
This whole run is built on the idea that the X-Men have reached a point where survival is no longer clean or noble. Cyclops creates X-Force because the old way is not working, but the book never lets that decision feel heroic for very long. Every mission asks whether saving mutantkind is worth turning its defenders into killers, liars, and traumatized wrecks. That moral rot is basically the engine of the series.
Resurrection, legacy, and the refusal of the past to stay buried
This run is obsessed with old ghosts, literally and figuratively. Bastion revives anti-mutant killers, Selene builds an entire event out of bringing the dead back, and characters like Eli Bard, Stryfe, Apocalypse, and the Marauders all make the book feel haunted by the worst parts of X-history. Even outside the literal resurrections, the series keeps asking whether the X-Men are ever really free of their past failures, enemies, and bad decisions. Most of the time, the answer is no.
Trauma as a permanent condition
A lot of X-books treat suffering like something characters endure and then move on from once the plot needs them to. Kyle and Yost absolutely do not do that here. Rahne, Laura, Warren, James, and even Logan all carry damage from mission to mission, and the run keeps circling back to the idea that violence does not just solve problems, it reshapes people. By the time you get to Necrosha and Second Coming, the team is not just tired, they are emotionally shredded, and that accumulated pain is part of what gives the whole run its identity.
Breaking Down the Arcs
Cyclops responds to the post Messiah Complex world by secretly authorizing Wolverine to build a black ops X-Force, sending Logan, X-23, Wolfsbane, and Warpath after the Purifiers before they can strike again. What starts as a revenge mission spirals into something much worse when Bastion takes control, revives a roster of classic anti-mutant killers, and pushes Rahne and Warren into especially brutal territory. By the end of the arc, the team has already crossed lines the X-Men traditionally avoid, and Kyle and Yost make it clear that this version of X-Force is going to live in a much darker moral space than the main books.
X-Force Volume 3 # 7-10 : Old Ghosts
Old Ghosts is the arc where the series proves it is not just running on shock value and blood. You still get plenty of violence, Marauders nonsense, and Bastion’s larger game creeping along in the background, but this stretch also starts digging into what this life is doing to the team, especially Rahne and James. Warpath getting pulled into the Demon Bear and Ghost Rider weirdness sounds like the kind of thing that should not work, yet somehow it totally does and makes the book feel even more unhinged in a good way. More than anything, this is where X-Force starts feeling less like a reaction to Messiah Complex and more like its own full-blown monster.
X-Force Volume 3 # 11: The Origin of Eli Bard
This is basically the kind of one-shot backstory issue that should feel like a speed bump, but instead it does a really nice job making Eli Bard feel like more than just another creepy bastard hanging around Bastion and Selene. Kyle and Yost dig all the way back to Roman times and show that Eli has always been a pathetic, power hungry loser who mistakes devotion for worth, which honestly makes him a much better villain. The issue leans hard into the gross, gothic side of X-Force and sets up just how far Selene’s people are willing to go to make her godhood play happen. More than anything, it takes a guy who could have just been background wallpaper and gives him enough twisted history to actually matter.
Suicide Leper is where the book gets especially nasty, because the Leper Queen’s whole strategy is not just killing mutants, it is turning mutants into walking PR disasters. Kyle and Yost lean hard into the ugliness of that idea, with Beautiful Dreamer and Fever Pitch being used as living weapons so anti-mutant hysteria can keep snowballing. At the same time, Cyclops is making colder and colder calls, to the point that sending X-Force into the future takes priority over saving kidnapped kids, which tells you exactly where everyone’s head is at by this point. It is a grim little bridge arc, but it works because it makes the world feel meaner and shows how badly the situation is spiraling before Messiah War really kicks the door in.
X-Force # 14 - 16: Messiah War
Messiah War is basically this era of X-Force going full apocalyptic road trip and somehow getting even more miserable once time travel gets involved. The future is a complete hellscape, Bishop is so far gone that “tragic zealot” barely covers it anymore, and then the story casually throws Stryfe, Apocalypse, Deadpool, and a barely hanging on Archangel into the blender for good measure. What I like about it is that it actually earns the word war, because this is not just Cable running from Bishop anymore, it is every lunatic in the timeline trying to get their hands on Hope for their own version of salvation or control. By the end, nobody really wins, everybody gets mangled, and the arc does a nice job reminding you that in X-Force, survival and victory are very much not the same thing.
"The bottom line in this story to us is that it's the end of the world and the end of your species and you've got a knife-- deal with it!"
X-Force V3 # 17 - 20: Not Forgotten
Not Forgotten feels like the series coming back from the big crossover and immediately reminding you that Laura’s life is still a complete nightmare. She gets her revenge on the Leper Queen, but the book does not let that feel cathartic for more than five seconds before S.H.I.E.L.D., H.A.M.M.E.R., Kimura, and all the other horrors of her existence come crashing back in. At the same time, Kyle and Yost are seeding Necrosha stuff through Eli Bard, Selene, and the resurrection angle, so the whole arc has this ugly “things are somehow about to get worse again” energy hanging over it. More than anything, it is a strong Laura showcase because it strips everything down to trauma, endurance, and survival, which is pretty much where this run knows she hits hardest.
Necrosha is the kind of event that sounds like it should be total chaos and nonsense, and to be fair, it absolutely is, but Kyle, Yost, and Wells make it a really fun kind of chaos. Selene basically decides that regular supervillainy is beneath her and goes full death goddess, using Eli Bard, the techno organic virus, and Genosha’s graveyard status to build an army of resurrected mutants and old enemies. What makes it work is that the crossover still finds room for personal stuff, whether that is Warpath dealing with Risque, Doug coming back in the creepiest possible way, or the New Mutants getting stuck sorting through all the emotional baggage of their dead friends punching them in the face. More than anything, Necrosha feels like the natural endpoint of this whole era of X-Force, where every bad decision, every old ghost, and every resurrection story gets dragged back onto the table at once.
X-Force # 24 - 25: Give Up Your Dead
Give Up Your Dead is basically the cleanup arc where the X-books stop pretending Necrosha was just a gross zombie event and deal with the fact that it left a ton of emotional wreckage behind. On the Legacy side, Proteus hijacking Blindfold’s body and turning Muir Island into a nightmare gives Mike Carey a nice excuse to throw together a weird team lineup and let Magneto be both useful and deeply uncomfortable at the same time. On the X-Force side, Kyle and Yost keep things appropriately nasty by making the fall of Selene feel less like a big heroic triumph and more like one final miserable job that nobody is walking away from clean. More than anything, it works as that exhausted comedown chapter where the villains are finally put down, but the book makes sure you still feel every bruise the crossover left behind.
Second Coming is one of those rare X-Men crossovers that actually feels as big as it is supposed to feel. Hope and Cable finally make it back, Bastion immediately turns the whole thing into a war zone, and the event does a great job balancing giant action spectacle with the fact that basically everyone on Utopia is stressed, grieving, or one bad decision away from completely losing it. Nightcrawler’s death is the moment that really gives the whole thing its soul, because it stops being just another “save the future messiah” story and turns into something genuinely painful. More than anything, this is the arc where all the ugly choices of the Kyle and Yost era finally come due, and the payoff works because the story lets the victories feel heroic while still making sure they cost the X-Men something real.
Characters
"When we started assembling the final roster of X-Force, we knew we had a team that was going to face threats that would be better suited for the Avengers or a fully fleshed out X-Men team, where everyone has a power that you can use in various different ways," Kyle explained. "But these guys have limited abilities and in many ways they overlap, so they just don't have the wide breath of powers that would help you succeed in these extraordinary challenges. We like the guys that are unprepared because then, when it gets bad, they're really up the creek. So yes, the problems X-Force is facing here continue to expand beyond their comfort zone or their ability to manage. This is a desperate time for our heroes."
Wolverine
There is a lot to say about Wolverine. First, all past attempts at leadership have either been avoided or failed. Claremont even goes out of his way to have Wolverine declare 14 year old Kitty Pryde as team leader at a time when all the typical leaders weren't around because he didn't want it. Well, technically he's just executing Cyclop's orders, but still very much the leader.
I also consider this to be the series where Wolverine officially become a stone cold killer. Don't get me wrong, he always has been, but I feel like he's also a reluctant killer or had some regret. Not in this series. Dude's just a murderer. I feel like there's more to him and they are misusing him in this way.
Domino
Unlike a character like Wolfsbane, Domino definitely belongs on this roster, and not just because she was a mainstay in the original squad. She's a mercenary. Cold. And I was down with her and Wolverine shacking up. I feel like she has more leadership chops than what was put on display here.
Vanisher
Let's just say that putting Vanisher here was a choice. He looks ridiculous. This version does not seem to jive at all with other incarnations, like in Fallen Angels. And they way they pressed him into service by giving him cancer was just cruel.
Archangel
If I would've written this overview at the outset, I would've said "Who the hell thinks Warren Worthington belongs on this team!?" But you know what, I'm down. His whole tortured Archangel personality really fit the bill. He seemed like a natural part of this team. Well done.
Elixir
He seemed random. Like, why is he here? Did the team need a healer that bad? Did Yost/Kyle think he looked cool? Did editorial push for him to stay relavent so they shoehorned him in? You might think that they put him in to continue his troubled relationship with Rahne from New X-Men V2, but no they barely played into that. At least they often reminded us that he doesn't belong on the battlefield.
Wolfsbane
While Wolfsbane can get a bit feral, and has been more adult lately, she never really seemed like she belonged. In fact, she was phased out of the main storyline almost immediately. I am dying to know if the writers were forced to use her but kept her sidelined, or if they wanted to use her and then quickly changed their mind. Regardless, her stories are secondary at best.
Warpath
They definited "edged him up," in this series, but I'm here for it. He was portrayed in New Mutants as a man with a gentle soul, but he's been on this trajectory for quite some time. I would be ok with seeing more of him in future lineups.
X-23
Great choice, obviously. We know she's a cold hearted killer. She's Wolverine's daughter-ish. Her scenes were great. The only thing I didn't like was that New X-Men V2 was started to have her become less robotic and more human and this reverted her back.
Cable
"One of the fun things about working on "Messiah War" is the chance to write Cable, a character they find especially compelling. "Cable has been this lone warrior and he took on this burden by himself," Yost explained. "Much like X-Force, he's going to do what it takes to get things done but at the same time his experience of this thing has totally changed. It's because of how long he's been with the baby. He's still this tough, old warrior but now he's raised this little girl and everything has changed for him. It's not this vague thing of, 'Save this baby-Save mutantkind.' To him it's, 'This is my daughter. So I think it's a pretty refreshing take for Cable."Naturally, Cable's adopted daughter will be another very important character in "Messiah War." "She's about 8-9 years old now so she's making some decisions that are going to affect everything," Yost teased. "Yeah, and it's a real surprise to X-Force, obviously," added Kyle. "They're coming there to get Cable and the baby and when they get there, they find a little girl. Everything gets more complicated now because you've got this little person in front of you to contend with. And that speaks to the bond Cable has built with this child."The clashing thoughts and ideologies of X-Force, Cable, and his daughter are big parts of "Messiah War," but Yost and Kyle and their collaborator Duane Swierczynski have included at least one adversary to test their characters' mettle. "Bishop is definitely in there and who's to say who else might show up?"