X-Men: The (fan fic) Series

XMTFFS Note: I don’t trust anything Mark Millar says… so taking this with a big ol’ grain of salt.

from MTV Splash Page

by Brett White

Get ready for the force to be reckoned with! X-MenFilms.com reports that Fox Studios has registered a very x-citing domain name: xforcemovie.com. Yeah. X-Force.

The site quotes an interview conducted by Comic Book Resources with Fox’s comic creative consultant Mark Millar, wherein Millar discusses the possibility of an X-Force movie.

“You have to remember that Fox grabbed the X-Men back in the ’90s because it was the biggest franchise in the world,” said Millar. “So X-Force or Cable or Deadpool — all these amazing characters are things we haven’t really gotten to yet. ‘X-Force’ #1 was the second biggest book of all time behind Jim Lee’s ‘X-Men’ #1, so there’s an immediate brand recognition to that stuff and a build in fanbase.”

For those not in the know, X-Force is title bestowed on a number of X-Men spin-off teams dedicated to preserving Xavier’s dream of mutant and human coexistence and/or protecting the mutant race by any means necessary. The idea originated from the minds of artist Rob Liefeld and writer Fabian Nicieza, as they were working on the “New Mutants” comic in the late ’80s and early ’90s. The duo reinvented the team as X-Force in 1991, with the young mutants under the guidance of the time-traveling half-machine military leader Cable.

In the past decade, X-Force has been used to describe two teams with varying degrees of ties to the original one; the first was a black ops squad created by Cyclops and led by Wolverine to take out threats, and the second was a tighter-knit team created behind Cyclops’ back to go on the same types of missions.

Full disclosure: I am a stupid big X-Force fan. The first 100 issues of the first volume are my absolute favorite run of issues of anything published in the ’90s. Cannonball, Boomer, Siryn and Warpath remain some of my favorite characters of all time, and I urge everyone to read the masterpiece that is “X-Force” vol. 1 #19. My personal favorite stretch of issues has to be issues #19-25 of volume 1, by Fabian Nicieza and artist Greg Capullo. They’re incredibly well done action stories with plenty of hilarious and touching character moments. It’s great.

Any talk of an X-Force movie has to include a mention of the constantly languishing Deadpool film. The character originally debuted in the final issues of “New Mutants” before becoming an “X-Force” foe in the series early issues. Deadpool then became a permanent member of the squad in the third ongoing series, “Uncanny X-Force.”

The large “X-Men: Days of Future Past” cast actually contains two prominent X-Force members. Adan Canto will portray Sunspot, and Booboo Stewart will bring Warpath to life. While it’s still too early to tell if  “Days of Future Past” will lead to an “X-Force” film, it’s definitely a possibility.