X-Force #116
☆ Be the first to review + Add to your collection — Join freeX-Force #116 marks one of the sharpest creative pivots in X-Men franchise history: writer Peter Milligan and artist Mike Allred completely discarded 115 issues of continuity and replaced the existing team with an entirely new cast of publicity-hungry mutant celebrities, a satirical premise that had no precedent in mainstream Marvel superhero comics. The issue carries an additional landmark distinction — it was the first Marvel superhero title to be published without a Comics Code Authority seal since The Amazing Spider-Man #96–98 in 1971, because the CCA rejected the issue over its depictions of violence and implied sexual content; rather than alter Milligan and Allred's work, Marvel refused to comply and ultimately stopped submitting books to the CCA altogether, effectively ending the Code's hold over the publisher. The story's opening-issue massacre of most of its own cast — an audacious structural move that killed Zeitgeist, Battering Ram, Gin Genie, La Nuit, and Plazm before the final page — announced that the creative team would use mortality as a recurring satirical tool throughout the run. The run's commentary on fame culture, reality television, and the commodification of superhero identity earned mainstream press coverage and launched a cult-status body of work that continued through the X-Statix title.
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We Buy Collections ▸History
In 2001, newly appointed Marvel editor-in-chief Joe Quesada was revamping the X-Men line, and former Vertigo editor Axel Alonso brought in writer Peter Milligan — known for post-modernist Vertigo work like Shade, the Changing Man and Human Target — and Madman cartoonist Mike Allred to take over X-Force, with the condition that they were free to do whatever they wanted. Allred, who typically collaborates with his wife and colorist Laura Allred, immediately began designing wholly original characters from scratch; Alonso later described the series as 'a hostile takeover of the X-Men paradigm.' The book launched without the Comics Code seal after the CCA rejected it, and Marvel's decision not to seek revisions set the publisher on a path to developing its own internal content-rating system.
Trivia · 7 facts
- First appearance of the team later known as X-Statix, here operating under the X-Force name — including U-Go Girl (Edie Sawyer), the Anarchist (Tike Alicar), Doop, Battering Ram, Gin Genie, La Nuit, Plazm, Sluk, Coach, and Zeitgeist (Axel Cluney).
- Zeitgeist (Axel Cluney) debuts and dies in the same issue, killed in the 'Boyz R Us Massacre' — a mission to rescue a pop boy band that Zeitgeist and Coach had secretly engineered as a roster-clearing exercise, though Zeitgeist was caught in the crossfire he arranged.
- Only three characters survive the massacre: U-Go Girl, the Anarchist, and Doop, who serves as the team's video documentarian.
- First Marvel superhero title published without a Comics Code Authority seal since The Amazing Spider-Man #96–98 (1971); the CCA rejected the issue over violence and implied sexual content, and Marvel responded by ceasing all CCA submissions and creating its own age-rating system.
- The issue exists in two cover variants: a Direct Edition and a Newsstand Edition.
- Reprinted in X-Force: New Beginnings (October 2001), the X-Statix Omnibus hardcover (Marvel, 2011), and X-Statix: The Complete Collection Vol. 1 (Marvel, 2019).
- Zeitgeist's acid-vomit power and his #116 debut were directly referenced in the film Deadpool 2 (2018), where the character — portrayed by Bill Skarsgård — has '116' tattooed on his shoulder.
Cast · 8 characters
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Reprints
Reprinted in X-Force #[1] (2001), X-Statix Omnibus #[nn] (2011), X-Statix: The Complete Collection #1 (2019)
Key issues in X-Force
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