Sabretooth staying at X-Mansion has certainly become a focal point. Don’t get me wrong, I think having Xavier attempting to rehabilitate (without simply using his powers to brainwash) Sabretooth is a cool idea. There’s just an awful lot of him these days. And everybody wants to punch him in the face. (He kinda deserves that though.) This time, it’s the new, huge-and-monstrous Caliban.
Cable, it seems, has a high tolerance for allowing physical punishment. He doesn’t even chastise Caliban for beating the crap out of Sabretooth. In fact, he’s showing remarkable adaptability to being the leader of this re-cast team and even smiles a lot.
Cable has always been dark and serious and brooding, but this change—which came about by merging with Xavier and finally accepting his role as a leader in this new universe (new to him—being he is from the future)—is pretty believable and organic. There are definitely too many interconnections between the X-books, making it very hard to understand what’s going on unless you meticulously know which issues to read before others (and there’s no way to know that until you’ve read them!), but X-Force continues to be one of the best of the lot.
We also learn that Boom-Boom (they’re calling her “Boomer” but I hate that name) has been secretly trying to befriend Sabretooth, which will become important when the storyline ends in the pages of Uncanny. She’s been giving him bowls of milk, like a kitty cat. Isn’t that cute? Also, she’s trying to get with Sam.
Issue #45 was mostly a really good downtime issue, but in the last few pages a team goes out to investigate an issue and finds Mimic.
Mimic escapes and is at large at the end of the issue.
And across these issues are some brief check-ins: Siryn is still being held in an insane asylum, where she finds indications that the asylum is actually being run by Gamesmaster. Remember him? He was the guy who was always f(#ing with mutants a couple years ago. Wanting to escape, she sends an S.O.S. to Deadpool. That will be next issue’s story.