Best of the Decade: 2011 // Best of the Year

Welcome back to You Don’t Read Comics Best of the Decade! Our daily retrospective of the best comics this decade had to offer in celebration for the new year. Please refer to our post highlighting the criteria used to determine each year’s entry. We hope you enjoy today’s piece and encourage you to come back tomorrow. 

Is it ethical to kill someone if it will save other lives? Movies and television shows are often happy to paint this choice as an easy one--no question, if it saves lives, kill the person who’s going to commit the murder (or murders).

What if you had to kill a child—an otherwise-innocent child—to stop them from becoming a monster? Everyone says they would go back in time and kill Hitler, but would they really kill him as a child? Would you kill your lover if you found out they would become someone like Hitler? Would you kill your brother? Your own child?

Uncanny X-Force #1, cover by Esad Ribic

And if you did, could you live with the consequences of your actions? Could you live with yourself? 

These are some pretty heavy questions for an X-Men comic.

Nevertheless, Rick Remender and his co-creators, including such titans of the medium as pencilers Jerome Opeña, Esad Ribic, Rafael Albuquerque, Billy Tan, Mark Brooks, Robbi Rodriguez and Phil Noto, and colorist  Dean White, confront deep ethical questions about preemptive murder, weighing the life of one against the many, and more.

Prior to Remender and team coming onto the title, X-Force had just recently been rebranded and reborn as Wolverine’s personal kill-squad, then under the secret direction of Cyclops. While the previous run on the title touched on some moral and ethical questions about killing, it didn’t scratch the surface compared to Remender’s Uncanny X-Force.

From Uncanny X-Force #4 by Rick Remender, Jerome Opeña, and Dean White

Assembling a barely-held-together crew of seriously-broken ticking timebombs, Wolverine, now backed by Warren Worthington’s money rather than Cyclops’ approval and support, has hardly even gotten the team together before Deadpool, sent by Worthington on a secret mission, stumbles upon a plot to resurrect Apocalypse, the First Mutant and Darwanist-gone-overboard. Logan, alongside Warren (in his dark Archangel alter-ego), psionic ninja Psylocke, and Weapon-Plus-assassin-turned-cliché-French-thief Fantomex, follow, and after facing the “Last Horseman” left to resurrect and defend their lord in case of his obliteration, find that the new Apocalypse is only a boy, no threat to anyone. The team agrees that they cannot murder this child...except Fantomex, who shoots him in the face.

This choice, made only four issues into the run, causes unfathomable ripples of destruction for its cast and their world. Worse, each new catastrophe brings its own new ethical dilemmas with their own ramifications that cascade forward into further chaos. These outcomes tear the team down, in some cases permanently, while others are left irrevocably changed by the events. The stakes are simultaneously as big as entire realities and as personal as the bonds of family, of love. These characters bleed, and that blood is felt on the page.Of course, don’t think that this is some kind of dreary affair. It’s quite the opposite. This is one of the biggest, most bombastic books of the year it was released, and likely wouldn’t have been in contention for the best book of 2011 if it wasn’t. From drag-out battles with inventive and terrifying new Horseman, to an invading army of time-traveling Deathlok’d Avengers, and a return to the fan-favorite Age of Apocalypse timeline, Uncanny X-Force doesn’t hold back with big, superhero storytelling that would please any genre fan.

Plus, it’s wildly funny (screw you, Snyder-cut Zombies), with everyone in the book tossing sharp one-liners out on nearly a panel-by-panel basis, proving unequivocally that pathos and wisecracks go hand-in-hand. This book has Deadpool in the cast, for G-d’s sake! And not just any Deadpool either; Remender brings a depth to the character few other writers have achieved, while still keeping him just as irreverent and mouthy as ever. (Plus, the X-Force color scheme costume is sweet.)

From Uncanny X-Force #18 by Rick Remender, Jerome Opeña, and Dean White

Uncanny X-Force absolutely operates effectively on a basic Marvel Comics-level, delivering everything a fan would want, but it digs deeper, asking hard questions not just of the reader, but of the characters through the choices they face. This elevates the title above some of the other excellent comics of 2011 for the YDRC team, and is why we think, looking back, that it was the best comic of that year.

Honorable mentions:

Ultimate Spider-Man

Underwater Welder

Hark! A Vagrant

Batman