The name X-Force suggests a clean break, but Kings of Pain gives the new group a less comfortable beginning. A change of name cannot settle how these people should treat an enem…

The name X-Force suggests a clean break, but Kings of Pain gives the new group a less comfortable beginning. A change of name cannot settle how these people should treat an enemy, what they owe someone in danger, or how far their leader’s authority should reach. Those questions have to be answered in company. This is the seven-person lineup of Cable, Cannonball, Boom-Boom, Warpath, Shatterstar, Feral and Domino. The reading boundary is the four lead stories: New Mutants Annual #7, New Warriors Annual #1, X-Men Annual #15 and X-Factor Annual #6. Siryn belongs to the Muir Island group in this snapshot. Sunspot is not on this roster. The crossover brings X-Force into an investigation alongside the New Warriors and eventually a crisis involving Proteus. Putting another young team beside Cable’s recruits is a useful choice. It prevents their methods from seeming inevitable just because everyone in the room wears the same insignia. There are other ways of handling uncertainty, other people to question an instruction. Within X-Force, the contrast is just as important. Experience does not give every member the same judgment, and sharing a battle does not guarantee agreement afterward. The team can function without having arrived at a common moral position. That makes its early identity something still being argued over. These posts stay with that problem rather than treating the annuals as a checklist of future developments. Each member contributes a different kind of competence or difficulty. Taken together, they make a group whose most interesting question is still open: when being effective and being right pull in different directions, who gets to decide what comes next?