Final Execution
“Final Execution”
Uncanny X-Force #31-35 (2012-2013)
Written by Rick Remender
Art by Phil Noto
Most fiction writers have a theme they work through in a majority of their work, and for Rick Remender it’s unbreakable cycles of violence. Remender’s run on Uncanny X-Force, which I would say is the best X-Men story to ever be published as a spin-off title, is a meditation on how violence only begets more violence, and that the notion of “redemptive violence” is just a rationalization. This is a very subversive but totally appropriate story to tell in the context of X-Force, the X-title that was conceived as a hyper-violent “proactive” form of super-team and had fully transformed into a clandestine “black ops” kill squad in the Craig Kyle/Chris Yost run just prior to Remender’s tenure. Kyle and Yost also wrestled with their characters facing trauma and moral rot in their stories, but it was still pretty clear that the primary point of their X-Force was “wow, these baddies are SO BAD, they DESERVE to die.” Their run was conceived during the George W. Bush administration and it’s very much an artefact of that era and the “War on Terrror.”
Remender began his Uncanny X-Force with a despicable act of “proactive” violence – Fantomex murdering a child clone of Apocalypse in cold blood – and every story that came after that initial arc came out of unexpected consequences of that action. The entire run, which concluded in the extended “Final Execution” arc, is a critique of the very concept of X-Force. The core characters – Wolverine, Psylocke, Archangel, Fantomex, and Deadpool – are all poisoned by their cruelty and unjustifiable killing, and two of them die as a result of their actions. Remender’s cast are all characters who have had their bodies transformed against their will to become weapons for someone else’s use, and in the case of Fantomex, he was born and raised in an artificial environment to be a killer. They all want to act of their free will after having that taken away from them at some point, but can’t extricate “living weapon” from their identities. It’s “if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail,” but these people have adamantium claws, psychic knives, razor wings, and a LOT of guns.
Psylocke is at the center of most of Remender’s stories because she’s the character with the most moral conflict over what they’re doing and the greatest self-delusion about what she has become. She’s the reader surrogate in some ways – initially on the side of X-Force but increasingly aware that they’ve been kidding themselves all along. At the start of the second phase of “Final Execution,” which is illustrated by the subtle but rather stylish Phil Noto, Psylocke has lost both of her love interests – she was forced to kill Archangel when he was corrupted by Apocalypse’s cult, and Fantomex was executed by the sadistic Skinless Man shortly after he and Psylocke finally consummated their lust/hate dynamic after she’d hit rock bottom emotionally. She’s a broken person, but she knows why. She just wants to get out of the cycle.
Psylocke’s relationship with Archangel was established in the early ‘90s by Fabian Nicieza in X-Men. It was an inspired match – they’re both from posh backgrounds, but had experienced similar physical transformations against their will. They had similar angst, but also shared a hedonistic streak. Remender’s pairing of Psylocke and Fantomex is similarly brilliant, but for darker reasons. Shortly after the two hook up, Psylocke cruelly dismisses Fantomex by telling him that he is a “living contrivance, a product… a hall of mirrors with no end” and that “there is no YOU to have feelings for.” She’s not wrong about this, but it’s also apparent that she recognizes this because she sees herself in him, or perhaps more accurately, what she fears she has become after the trauma of having her mind and body tampered with so many times over. Fantomex wants Psylocke because she is who he wants to be, and Psylocke lusts for Fantomex because he’s given in entirely to the absurdity and brutality of his nature.
“Final Execution” is necessarily bleak in the resolution of its primary character arcs. There is some minor joy in Deadpool embracing his best impulses and serving as a demented sort of father figure to the second child Apocalypse, but Wolverine’s storyline ends with an act so horrible it shatters his illusions about trying to be a father figure/role model to the youngest generation of mutants. He knows he’s nothing but a hypocrite, and he’s doomed to live in a constant cycle of violence that will always result in the deaths of people he loves. Wolverine and Deadpool can’t change – the market demands nonstop bloodshed from the both of them, and so the reader is complicit in this terrible loop of misery and destruction. The readership has an endless desire for redemptive violence, and Remender is at least doing his best to show them that it’s a false premise. He’s been doing the same story with different characters in Deadly Class for the past few years, and you can tell he only gets more weary and cynical about this as he goes along.
Uncanny X-Force does end with a “happy ending” of sorts in its epilogue. Fantomex returns to life, but as three clones – he originally had three separate brains, but an error in the cloning made a body for each clone. The darkest aspects of his persona ended up in one body, and his kindest aspects were isolated in a female version of himself. In the end, the primary Fantomex takes Psylocke to meet his “mother,” a fictional construct who raised him in “The World,” the articificial reality where he was created. Psylocke questions the reality of the situation, and Fantomex essentially just shrugs it off. Does it matter? Can they just be happy, even if it’s fake? After all the chaos and pain and death, the only reasonable thing either of them can do in the end is embrace a happy fantasy. Sometimes the only escape is delusion and oblivion.