X-Force #85 Review X-Force #85
"Possession"

In this issue we discover what happened to Skids and Locus after running into that weird lady(pretty neat how quickly they are dealing with this). The story starts with Skids trying to break out of a dungeon. Locus is lying on the floor scared and Skids tries to convince her to help. When Locus does, nothing happens. Then Pandemonia, who is kind of like a demoness, shows up. She marks her sigil on Skids forhead, and this let's her control her. In San Francisco, Meltdown is in her room thinking of Skids and feeling bad that they aren't working to hard to find her because of their limited resources. She calls Sally's roomate to see if she's heard from her an gets a negative reply. Tabitha hears funny noises from downstairs and goes to check it out. Sunspot, Siryn, and Warpath are lying there not moving. Meltdown thinks it's a joke, but soon finds that it isn't. Then she sees Skids, who apoligizes to her saying it's not her fault. Locus teleports in behind Meltdown and knocks her out. Then Pandemonia shows up, and takes the team so they can make her strong. Sam and Dani are running on the shore of the beach and talking about various things including how Dani's psi powers are doing and what happened with Arcadia. They meet Jesse at the car, and he tells them that the hacker he was meeting to look for his brother was useless. He's his usual rude self, and totaly pisses Sam off by mentioning his sick mother. When they get back to the warehouse the find it transformed by Pandemonia's magic. Pandemonia wants to posses them as well and goes after Dani. She finds that because of Dani's time as a Valkyrie she can't posses her and sicks the rest of X-Force on Dani, Cannonball, and Jesse. They don't want to hurt their teammates so Cannonball opts for a strategic retreat and blasts Dani and Jesse out of there. After they get away they go in search of someone with magical powers to help them defeat Pandemonia without hurting their friends. They go into one of those stores that specialize in the occult, but they discover that they're fakes. Outside a man called Benchley approaches them and says he can help them. He gives them the address to the home of a girl named Jennifer Kale, whom they find floating in the living room. She asks them to describe the creature and they do, with Jesse describing the mark she placed on their teammates forheads. She finds Pandemonia in her Demonic reference book, and tells them that she can help them defeat them because Pandemonia is still weak from her return to our world. So now Jennifer, Cannonball, Moonstar, and Jesse show up ans start attacking. Suddenly Dani starts to glow like she did in Kentucky. Cannonball distracts Pandemonia and with her magic Jennifer reveals Pandemonia's true form, therefore freeing the rest of X-Force. Pandemonia strikes Jennifer with her power, and Skids tries to shield her. Dani releases a concetrated blast of ethereal energy at Pandemonia, buying Jennifer some time and surprising her teammates. Jennifer sends Pandemonia back to the chaos plane and Cannonball keeps her from taking Locus with her to free herself later. Meltdown asks Skids if she's ok, and Sally says it's Dani that they should be worrying about. Dani is still glowing. Meanwhile Domino is in LA, talking to Dr. Leonard about the Aguilar Institute. He shows her a little girl from Almost Rene, New Mexico who can apparently change form. He says that she is part of a larger test group in that same town. I enjoyed this story and loved the character of Jennifer. I also like the way we are seeing the effects of Arcadia on Dani right away instead of them dragging it out. It's also good to hear more developments from the little town of Almost Reno. When X-Force left that town, the had helped one little girl learn to take care of herself, but so much went unresolved. Hopefully we will learn more soon. Now for the art. I'll look at it a little more objectively this time. Some of the panels show the characters at strange angles so they look a little funny. There's one where Dani bends to dodge and attack and her back is at a really weird angle. Still the art is pretty consistent, and although it has flaws, it is enjoyable to look at. Another error I noticed in the book is when Meltdown is looking at a picture of her Skids and Sam. In the panel next to it she is thinking: "Even though Locus could have zapped Tab anywhere..." Obviously she is not talking about herself and it should say either Sally or Skids. Still, despite it's errors it was an action packed story that is dealing with plot threads and shows team relationships quite nicely. I found it well worth two dollars.

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