A-FORCE #1

Capsule Review

A super-team limited to Marvel’s female heroes? OK, I like it. The team’s charter may seem arbitrary, but in a Marvel Universe with three X-Men teams, three Avengers teams, two Inhumans teams, and no (!) Fantastic Four, basing your team on having two “X” chromosomes makes as much sense as anything else. Presumably there is an Avengers connection, given that stylistic “A” in the logo, but no mention is made of it in this book — maybe it was better explained in the Secret Wars series that birthed this series. No matter, I still like it. The roster page tells me that Medusa, She-Hulk, Singularity, Captain Marvel, Nico Minoru, and Dazzler are all on this team, although only about half of them appear in this issue, which sees the child-like cosmic being Singularity coming into our world, fully possessing the memory of working with these women in her old world, while the others have no memory of her at all. Her abrupt manifestation is detected by Captain Marvel, on the bridge of the “Alpha Flight Space Station” (hmm … maybe that’s what the A is for?), and while there is some confusion about whether this new character might be a threat, the ladies solve things with reason, rather than punching each other’s lights out. Now, in the Silver Age, Marvel’s heroes never missed the chance to drop the gloves and pound the crap out of one another, usually on the slimmest of justifications and in total disregard for their past histories. These ladies are different, and I think I like that. I think I like a lot of things about this book, especially the a two-page spread that uses Singularity’s memories both to set the scene and to define the characteristics of each hero — Nico: love; She-Hulk: bravery, strength, fairness; Dazzler: humor and free-thinking; Captain Marvel: team player; Medusa: leadership and sacrifice. Those sure sound like heroes to me! I’ll stick around to see what writer G. Willow Wilson and artist Jorge Molina do with this cast.

Approachability For New Readers

I had to guess at way too many fundamental things for a first issue, but that’s been the case in most of these Marvel re-launches. So it goes.

Read #2?

Absolutely.

Sales Rank

(#12 January)

Read more capsule reviews of Marvel’s All-New All-Different rolling reboot.