Man-Slaughter Leads A Floral Arms Race In X-Force #21

In a perfect world, X-Force wouldn’t be necessary. But in this world, a succulent can KILL. X-Force, Man-Thing and everyone’s favorite War Criminal, Hank McCoy are ready to plant their roots in a new investigation in X-Force #21 by Benjamin Percy, Joshua Cassara, Robert Gil, and Guru-eFX, and VC’s Joe Caramanga.

Kenneth Laster: The Gala is over and now we can get back to what X-Force does best…PLANTS!

Ari Bard: Now Kenneth, don’t you mean plants and war crimes? [insert sitcom laugh track] X-Force, by which I mean Beast with a little bit of complicit silence from Sage, has really made a mess of the gala now that people are getting infected with some plan-based virus that almost certainly stems from Terra Verde

Check Your Ears For Moss

Wolverine fights a Man-Thing in X-Force #21 — X-Force #21 | Marvel | Cassara, eFX

Kenneth: Another day, another threat for the mutant nation and here we have the two pronged peril of a nuclear waste spill and a spreading infection of mind controlling flora in attempts to subvert Krakoa’s power. What were your thoughts on the premise of this threat Ari?

Ari: Honestly, the nuclear waste spill really just seemed like an excuse to get X-Force on the scene right around when the infected plant creature appeared. Percy has clearly proven to have his favorites but knows he has to make room for some of the other characters, so this is what happens. I’m still waiting on some character beats for Domino since X-Force #8 or so. The key to a great team book is balance, and Percy seems to be losing his while juggling all these narrative threads on his unicycle.

The mind controlling flora went in a fairly interesting direction though! I have a lot of feelings about the conversation between Sage and Beast, as there’s a lot of underlying subtext there as Beast is practically oozing condescension and Sage is rightfully pissed off about her decision to keep quiet about all of this, or at the very least, Beast deciding to keep digging a bigger hole.

Kenneth: I just want Sage to bully Beast. Also I think after reading so many of these I’ve picked out a nugget of Percy’s pacing that kind of bugs me. He really front loads the start of an issue/arc with a lot of set up of what type of situation this is. We get four pages of vignettes on this new strain of floral threat and while it’s pretty well told, it feels like it could have been much less. I feel like there’s often a “here’s the threat montage” that’s very interesting but often at the expense of getting to the end of an issue and going “wait that’s it?” and then the next issue jumps forward a few story beats. I can see this totally being a me problem and it’s not offensive or anything, but it’s definitely a pattern that rubs up against my pacing needs. Besides we don’t get enough time to spend with the special guest star this issue…

Man-Thing, You Make My Heart Sing

Wolverine battles Man-Slaughter in X-Force #21 — X-Force #21 | Marvel | Gil, eFX

Ari: Now Kenneth, wouldn’t you say these plant monsters look kind of familiar? And didn’t Percy have a one shot that came out over a year ago about a particularly vegetal friend/science experiment? This could only mean one thing…

Kenneth: Curse you Percy for giving us homework (googling “Ben Percy Man Thing”). Honestly I know less about Man-Thing than I do about Swamp Thing and all I know about Swamp Thing is his name used to be Alec Holland and from what I can gather Man-Thing’s current status quo is having a twilight zone portal in his body and also this isn’t Man-Thing? Apparently this is Manslaughter? This may be why this thread really didn’t grab me too much. As a former DC-head I am more used to a casual appearance by Swamp Thing in literally every title where all you need to know is that he’s big, green, and pretty chill. Just on the Weapon Plus tease alone, there’s already so much pre-requisite baggage I kind of need to know to get any substance or hook out of this. As much as I like writers bringing things from other works in, and it works from Wolverine to X-Force in Percy’s case, I feel like a lot of this issue went in one ear and out the other surrounding this plot.

Ari: I definitely understand that, Kenneth. I think what’s important here is that people are turning into plant monsters all at once and the root origin of these things stems from Man-Thing. Now thats a little different than Man-Slaughter who originated in the Weapon Plus program and who X-Force hunted down in the Pacific Northwest. Basically, Krakoan technology, Terra Verdean monsters, and Man-Thing monsters are all smart plants of different kinds. I think we just have to pay attention to who controls what, and speaking of that….

Plant Warz

Weapon Plus shows the scope of their chaos in X-Force #21 — X-Force #21 | Marvel | Gil, eFX

Kenneth: Lot’s of plant based weaponry out there since Krakoa popped up. While I assumed it was just an excuse for Joshua Cassara, Guru-eFX and co to get weird–we might be in a floral arms race!

Ari: Why not both? I do admire the creative team here for zagging towards biotech when everyone else wants to zig towards AI. I did not expect Percy to pull the concept of multiple discovery out of his hat, but it’s awesome to see the idea that multiple competing entities are making leaps forward on the same sort of strain of mind-control botany at the same time. Dr. Cecilia Reyes’s data page was very informative on that front. Not only that, but here we have a huge connection! XENO, the Russian Folk, is behind one of the strains. That is a huge way of connecting two very separate threads. Is this why Colossus is acting so strangely…? Probably not, but it makes for some neat speculation nonetheless.

Kenneth: Exactly! Any hint at Percy tying all of these threads together is a win in my book so multiple discovery and that data page gave me a glimmer of hope. And flora as a distinct strain of human bio-evolution has been an interesting visual and thematic distinction that this book has had from a lot of the other books following this path. While I sometimes have trouble distinguishing each threat in this book from each other, it’s a good distinction from say the U-Men in Children of the Atom and any other pro human evolution group. I will say, I am honestly a little shocked the Peacock man is still around. After twenty one issues it really feels like we haven’t had a really significant confrontation with him or any look at his motivations (other than anti-mutant bigotry). It feels odd to continue sticking with such a specific character with a striking design as a “big bad” in this book and have honestly so little to go off of with him. The Peacock Man definitely feels victim to your earlier point of Percy juggling way too many threads.

AB: That’s definitely the problem Percy is having here. He’s spreading himself a little too thin and it’s the character depth that pays the price. Core team members like Quentin Quire are relegated to short spotlight arcs, villains aren’t given a ton of motivations, and those who shine are limited to Percy’s favorites.