In a series that regularly kills team-members and has had the majority of its stories about the effects of death on people’s psyches, it makes sense that the longest extended arc so far is called, “Back from the Dead.”
The story ceners around pop singer Henrietta Hunter, who gets intentionally electrocuted (murdered) by a corrupt unit of a European government, and then returns to life by possessing a dead corpse at a morgue.
She’s the center of this tale. X-Force takes Henrietta under their protection because she’s a mutant who apparently has the power to basically be immortal.
She asks them to cream her legs.
She goes on talk shows, exposing the government officials who killed her, so the officials hire a new group to go after her: Euro Trash.
They’re also employed by Spike Freeman, just like X-Force!
When Mister Sensitive figures that out, he kills Spike.
And yes, Spike really is dead.
The whole story is basically X-Force and Euro-Trash fighting over Henrietta, but it builds to a battle against the leader of the European assassins, Mr. Code. In the big bad against Code, the villain creates a huge explosion that kills two members. First, Phat dies because he absorbs most of the blast.
Second, El Guapo–who already had his legs amputated earlier in the story, is impaled by his own skateboard while wearing a Charlie Brown t-shirt.
As always, Peter Milligan offers plenty of twist and turns and humor, and Mike Allred’s art is appropriately offbeat. They also introduce a bunch of really cool characters, but, like so many X-Force characters, they are never seen again. On the one hand, that’s disappointing. On the other, it’s very cool that Peter Milligan is so “not possessive” of all the amazing ideas he throws out, issue after issue.
Spider-Man guest stars for no real reason.