YMMV / X-Force (1991)

• Audience-Alienating Era: Jeph Loeb's run features X-Force suddenly abandoning their hard-line independent stance, moving back to the Xavier Mansion and effectively becoming the X-Men's junior squad. Cable regresses back to being a controlling uncommunicative jackass; Cannonball is "promoted" to the X-Men, where he was characterised as the naive neophyte; Shatterstar's backstory is screwed up with a subplot about the mystery of his true identity, which was resolved so confusingly that even Marvel editorial couldn't make sense of it (if the series' letters columns were any indication). John Francis Moore's run contains several not-so-subtle jabs at how dumb a lot of the creative decisions from this period were.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Clarice Ferguson/Blink. Blink gained quite a fan following after a fairly short-lived existence in their mainstream storylines. She (or rather, her Alternate Continuity counterpart) got an upgraded role in the Age of Apocalypse storyline. She was so popular that she survived the destruction of that universe and became a main character in the Exiles spinoff (though it took five years).
• Harsher in Hindsight: The attack on the World Trade Center, in which one of the towers is destroyed. This is from issues published in 1991, two years before the first World Trade Center bombing and ten years before both towers were destroyed in the 9/11 attacks.
• Ho Yay: Rictor and Shatterstar. Events in other series, post-X-Force, eventually made them a canonical couple.
• Iron Woobie: Neena Thurman/Domino Despite her husband being dead since before her introduction, she is frequently a case of, "Angst? What Angst??"
• Narm Charm: The original Rob Liefeld run is widely remembered as a quintessential example of the over-the-top excess of '90s Marvel: wall-to-wall guns and explosions, a cast of characters who all look like bodybuilders or supermodels, and an utterly bonkers plot that dabbles in everything from clones to time-travel (with a few immortal mutant demigods thrown in for good measure). But as ridiculous as it might be, the series embraces its cheesiness so proudly that it can actually be pretty endearing, and many X-Men fans still remember it fondly.
• Rescued from the Scrappy Heap: Cable was at one point almost a poster boy for the excesses of '90s comics. He has since been turned into a much more well-rounded character, a Determinator fighting an endless war against an immortal, nearly invincible enemy.
• The Scrappy: Feral. It's honestly hard to imagine why her teammates keep her around.

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