Remender and the Uncanny X-force Run

One person for an entire series spanning from the start to the end of the series is a run right? Maybe between series like Aaron’s Wolverine arc. An artist run is what I want to talk about because I’ve been finishing and starting them and I’ve been wondering what a run is in comics, how writers (and artists) approach them and just how much of this is praying over and over that you get the time you need to tell the story. Remender got a chance with Uncanny X-force.

I finished Uncanny X-force last night by Rick Remender and a great number of fantastic artists, and only 2 teams that didn’t really work for me. Remender got to not only write all 35 (plus .1) issues by himself. No real crossovers. No fill in writers. The only tie in it got pulled into was Regenesis and that actually worked with the story. The Fear Itself miniseries ended up being written by someone else and was infinitely ignorable.

Remender seemed to get full access to his characters, minus Wolverine, but nobody ever went missing. The only outside change was Deadpool’s loss of his healing factor and that was even a minute thing.

And so I was wondering how Remender got that ability. He’s worked long enough for Marvel and even worked before with Image on his own work. He’s sold he can sell a book and before that he had his penciling all sorts of work. It is pretty fascinating and amazing.

And in it he tackled the ideas of revenge, premature justice, justice in general, heroism and drive in a mature and intelligent manner. There were some issues within the series but it had a lot of fun and aside from a section with the Captain Britain’s group and Otherworld stuff, always one of my least favorite bits, he kept up his energy, though that may be a benefit from being able to read through everything continuously.

How much was planned ahead? If sales had gotten the book cancelled would his last issue be them just giving up? If sales had failed early on, would that be the end of Apocalypse. He brought everything around and then left his characters in Jason Aaron’s hands, most likely with a lot of help from Marvel editorial, and it worked.

So is that all a run is – you come in with ideas and hope you can do as many as possible. Are you supposed to have an exit strategy no matter what. Jeff Parker’s Exiles run, may it rest in peace, had to drop it’s guns on the ground early and reveal its plans in a saddening way because it could have been more (speaking of, what a contradiction with Parker’s Exiles and Sabretooth’s reappearance in Age of Apocalypse, end nerd anger moment).

Right now Fraction’s having fun though his work feels limited, Jason Aaron’s been building an epic Wolverine story for a few years now, Hickman has some massive Marvel machine in the works and it is only at Marvel that you seem to get this opportunity. DC deleted a bunch of canon and their two longest runs ended, Snyder I get the feeling will pass onto his own work sooner once DC’s mandates get to him and it is all just interesting and strange how we use the time and the people and stories we get. Best use them to say something interesting and to have fun.

Luke Herr

Luke is a writer and an aspiring professional comic writer who is also the editor in chief of Nerdcenaries. He currently is working on a graphic novel called Prison Spaceship.