X-Force

Before I ever started collecting Comics I grew to love the characters based off the Marvel Universe Series II collectible cards. In many ways I thought these were the coolest things in the world as they were close to what I enjoyed about Football cards but with much more interesting clothes. On the cards you could see a quick view of what they looked like and when flipped over a short biography detailing an origin or maybe there weakness and at the very bottom a Did You Know? type section. In-between you would see a mug shot of your character and a read out of their power levels on I think a 10 point scale. Being a completionist even as a child I happened to go through a comic store with my much older cousin Bobby when I saw a copy of X-Force #1 with one of those coveted cards inside. While looking at each of the comics and the different cards I noticed there were a few different ones and having seen it I jumped at the chance to buy 5 of the same comic with the different cards. Come to think about it this is probably where I began my love for variants. Anyways after pulling each of the cards and placing them in the baseball card binder slots I began to read my first X-Force or even New Mutant title ever. What came next was what has held me ever since to my love of comics. Written and drawn by Rob Liefeld following his run with New Mutants and eventually taken over by Capullo and Nicieza and a few others. This was the start of the Black Ops team that would eventually bring me back to comics after a 10 year hiatus from collecting. Cable being one of my favorites and many of the New Mutants having grown on me this has quickly become the one constant series that I pick up. From this series through to the Uncanny X-Force to even Cable And the X-Force this continues to always find itself in my pull-list.