Marvel's X-Force Brings Back Classic X-Men Villains

Marvel's X-Men reboot continues with X-Force #1 this week, which details how the world truly reacts to Charles Xavier establishing the mutant nation of Krakoa, and buying mutantkind's sovereignty from humanity with world-changing gifts only mutants can provide. As we learned by the end of "House of X," not every human nation agrees to recognize Krakoa, and in X-Force, we meet a new coalition of anti-mutant human supremacists, and see them launch a brutal and exacting plan to bring Krakoa toppling down. In order to achieve that goal, this new human coalition taps a classic team of X-Men villains to invade Krakoa: The Reavers!

Warning: SPOILERS for X-Force #1 Follow!

The Reavers date back to the late '80s X-Men comics. They're a team of cybernetically-enhanced criminals who have been run by several different leaders, most notably the X-Men cybernetic villains Donald Pierce and/or Lady Deathstrike. In modern X-Men comics (like the "Messiah Complex" story arc), the Reavers are re-introduced as an elite cyber-commando unit, pooled from human supremacist groups like The Purifiers.

The X-Force version of the Reavers are more like an elite special ops unit employed by this new mysterious human supremacy coalition. The team enters a commercial airliner in South Korea, using gas to put the entire plane to sleep in mid-flight. The four Reavers onboard then perform a high-stakes HALO drop, sky diving into Krakoa's air space faster than the island's mutant warden (Black Tom) can counter. The Reavers come to Krakoa to do no less than cause a massacre, during a big celebration of Krakoa's freedoms by the mutant populace. The Reavers cause the chaos and bloodshed they wanted, but their real mission goal is a much more tactical strike: taking out Charles Xavier himself. Despite the X-Men's best efforts to stop the assassination, the Reavers are ultimately successful, and gun Xavier down.

The Reavers haven't been seen since the "Hunt for Wolverine" story arc, when they attempted to secure Wolverine's Adamantium-laced body. The real question in all this is not how this highly-skilled iteration of the Reavers came together, but rather what master do they now serve. The opening scene of X-Force shows that this new human supremacy group all wear masks to conceal their identities, so we don't yet know who is included at that roundtable. History would dictate that perhaps Donald Pierce is the ringleader who is in charge of the group's meeting in the scene, but we'll need to see more to confirm that.

X-Force #1 is now on sale.