If you had told me last year that Rick Remender’s Uncanny X-Force would soon rival the best X-Men comics ever produced, I admit, I’d have been skeptical. Prior to his arrival on the series, Remender’s work hadn’t really clicked with me. Although it was clear from the first issue that his X-Force run was going to be good, it wasn’t until issue #4, released in January this year, that people started to realise we were reading something very special indeed.

Uncanny X-Force’s year is defined, of course, by the 8-issue Dark Angel Saga. Named (in what seemed like hubris) for the Dark Phoenix Saga, it follows Angel’s descent into madness as his Apocalypse-created “Archangel” persona claws its way to the surface of his psyche. When he finally tips into world-ending megalomania, it falls to X-Force to stop him. Which they do (of course) – but not without great cost.

The story of love torn apart by power out of control may seem similar to the Dark Phoenix Saga, but even if that’s true the results are every bit as affecting and epic as the original. We have witnessed defining moments for the likes of Psylocke, Fantomex and Angel, and at the same time, we’ve been reminded of how great superhero comics can be. When I reviewed the finale of the storyline at CBR, I said the following:

Although it says “X-Force” on the cover, this is clearly Psylocke and Angel’s story. It’s love and death, as transcendent and epic as it can be. When the final blow is struck, the moment is heartbreaking, beautiful and euphoric in the way all the best death scenes are. And then it’s unexpectedly heartbreaking all over again. The final page? Nothing short of a technical masterpiece in its own right. Artist and writer in perfect unison.

There’s no part of this issue that can be called half-hearted or unsuccessful. Even praising its dialogue, its visuals, its plotting, comes across as an inadequate deconstruction. While these elements are all superb in their own right, it’s a comic that’s vastly more than the sum of its parts. When you put it down, you won’t be remembering how great Deathlok’s lines were, or the plot twist Fantomex unveils, or even how well Opena and Ribic drew every page. You’ll come away from it feeling emotionally bruised, with a hole only the next part of the story can fill.

In many ways, it’s tempting to end a review like this by claiming that the story is so good, it has transcended its genre, as if superhero comics can’t really work this well without being something else. But what are superhero comics for, if not this? They’re modern myths, playing out classical themes on a grander stage than our own world allows. Characters living, loving , and dying for our entertainment, showing us truths about our own lives.

There was one further point I didn’t find room for, though, and that’s how part of Uncanny X-Force’s success is due to the dialogue it had with its fans. It managed to be fan-servicing without compromising on its content. The Dark Angel Saga didn’t just tell a self-contained story; it was built on old ones. Remender weaved those continuty threads (the Age of Apocalypse, the Horsemen, Archangel’s various transformations, Weapon Plus…) in ways that supported and expanded the narrative, rather than limiting it.

The truth is that in superhero comics, readers want to see a little of something familiar. Something that respects the stories that came before, and ties this new one to them. After all, if we weren’t nostalgists, we probably wouldn’t be reading superhero comics at all. Perhaps this is why the San Francisco era of X-Men had such a hard time generating excitement – it’s too different, too new, too detached from everything prior to it. Remender found a way to tell a new story, supported by the framework that was already in place. And that, alongside everything else, was what made Uncanny X-Force one of the best comics of the year.

It’s rare the ending of a comic can surprise you like this. I think it’s been long enough that I can reveal the shocker that concludes this one: Castle takes on Daken, one-on-one, and… loses. Pretty badly. By which I mean, he gets sliced up into little bits.

I’ve been known to complain about the artifice of mortality that characters have in their own book before, so seeingthat subverted in such a blatant way is the very definition of refreshing for jaded, cynical bastards like me. Especially in the case of The Punisher, whose fights against superheroes often seem to involve a lot of contrivances anyway, given that he’s just a fairly old guy with a lot of guns.

Admittedly, when the next Punisher arc is called “Frankencastle” (presumably, he is rebuilt and re-animated by Dr. Frankencastle) it’s easy to see how they’re going to reverse the events of this issue, but that doesn’t change the fact that when you’re reading a Marvel comic, you don’t expect the heroic lead to die at the end of it. I know it’s grisly to admit, but there was a certain satisfaction in seeing the Punisher’s fight against superhumans way out of his league finally taken to the logical extreme.

There’s far more to the issue, of course – not least John Romita’s art. Romita himself spends so much time drawing Spider-Man that it’s easy to forget just how fantastic his work is, and the gritty, urban setting of the Punisher highlights completely different parts of his work, recalling the rooftop battles of his work on Man Without Fear (Klaus Janson’s inks no doubt helping that feeling along.)

There’s certainly an intesity to the way Remender writes the Punisher – events in the character’s solo title have no doubt added to the desperation he’s displaying in this story. Remender’s fights are always well-choreographed, and with Romita helping him along, the issue becomes one of the better “List” one-shots.

As Andy Diggle moves on to Daredevil, there’s a definite sense that his Thunderbolts run died before it really had a chance to live. This issue is a fill-in by Rick Remender which kills time before Jeff Parker takes over, and truth be told, it’s not a particularly promising vote of confidence for the series.

For a start, almost nothing of Diggle’s previous, climactic issue is referenced. Scourge’s identity is kept covered, even though it was shown at the end of the last issue. The Black Widow, unveilled by Osborn in the same scene, is nowhere to be found. The original team that Diggle had worked heavily into re-introducing his run are completely absent. Indeed, since it focuses more on Iron First and Luke Cage than the Thunderbolts, this fill-in feels like it should’ve been a one-shot that came out 6 months ago or as part of a different series entirely. As a Thunderbolts fan, it’s not what I want to read.

It might be more forgiveable if it was better – Remender has done great work on some of his other books, but his attempt at writing the Thunderbolts feels watered-down and generic – the personality that Diggle injected into the characters is missing, making them seem like generic supervillain thugs – which would be fine, were it not their name on the cover. Luke Cage and Iron Fist get some good moments, but characters like the Ghost, Mr. X and Headsman who came into their own under Diggle’s pen are almost unidentifiable here.

Artistically, the book also seems sub-standard. The rotating art teams on Thundebolts over the last few years  have established an almost universally gritty, harsh look to the series, but Asrar’s work is much more traditionally superheroic, and it places the book almost at odds with its concept. Maybe this was an intentional move, given that the issue stars two superheroes, but it has the secondary effect of turning its dark, twisted regular cast members into the C-list campy villains they’d be if they turned up in a Spider-Man book. About the only material that works involves Ant-Man, and that’s because he never really fitted into the book’s new direction anyway.

Seeing the writer change so frequently on a book as fragile as Thunderbolts is always a worry for someone with my fondness for it. In truth, there’s no way of knowing if Parker’s run will be an overall improvement or not – but it’ll be hard to get much more disappointing than this.