This is a decent follow-up to the events of Messiah Complex, as various mutants travel to the future to try to rescue or kill Hope. I hadn't read any of the earlier X-Force or Cable stories, so I had less attachment to many of the X Force characters. It makes for a good read, although not nearly enough changes by the end. ( )

I think I might actually have enjoyed this more than Messiah Complex. Whilst that crossover collection was fantastic, I didn' really enjoy the X-Factor segments that just seemed to stall the main story for no good reason. Bishop's childhood in the mutant camps has already been covered sufficiently. I found 'Messiah War' to be very 'unputdownable' though. Some of the artwork is stunning (beware of Ariel Ollivetti's continuity errors though ;) ) and there's a lot of material in this volume beyond just the relevent issues of Cable and X-Force too. If you enjoy a good ol' X-Men 'ravished future' romp with loads of action, you'll love this. ( )

Well, Messiah War is here, and I am not too thrilled with it. I think that the Cable title has been floundering and is too much of a one-trick pony. Basically, to condense the story into a few words, "Cable wants to save the girl, Bishop wants to kill the girl, and there's a lot of fighting crammed in the middle."

If you aren't familiar with X-Men history, both past and present, then this can become very confusing very fast. Apocalypse and Stryfe make appearances, Elixir is hysterical about being yanked out of battle and into the future (his friends are in mortal danger and he's afraid that he won't be able to save them), Angel battles with his darker side, and X-Force's X-23 runs into an old friend. If you haven't kept up with the X titles, or are new to them, little of this is likely to make sense, but that takes away from layers of the story.

The art is very hit or miss. There are some great artists to be found in these pages (Choi & Oback in particular), but there are some horrible ones too (mostly Larry Stroman - his "art" was absolutely hideous; the people don't even resemble people most of the time, but deformed potatoes with faces). And switching through different artists for each "chapter" is horribly disjointing; oftentimes, the characters don't even look similar to their previous selves, and I had to spend pages wondering just who was talking or fighting.

Basically, I was rather disappointed with how things went. There's a lot of fighting, but in the end, nothing's really accomplished. "Messiah War" may as well not have happened at all.

This book collects Cable #11-15, X-Force #14-16, the X-Force/Cable Messiah War one-shot, The Times & Life of Lucas Bishop #1-3, Future History: The Messiah War Sourcebook, and a few pages called Stryfe's Strike Files. ( )