Issue(s): X-Force #29, X-Force #30
Cover Date: Dec 93 - Jan 94
Title: "Toy soldiers" / "Something worth fighting for"
Credits:
Fabian Nicieza - Writer
Matt Broome / Antonio Daniel - Penciler
Bud LaRosa / Kevin Conrade, Jon Holdredge, & Jason Gorder - Inker
Lisa Patrick - Assistant Editor
Bob Harras - Editor

Review/plot:
These issues are largely about Shatterstar and Adam X the X-Treme getting caught in one of Arcade's Murder Worlds. And when all those words are together in the same sentence, you can be sure that i'm not very happy.

Arcade has lost some of his baby fat.

Shatterstar is initially captured alone. Arcade kidnaps a random family and says that he'll kill them if Shatterstar doesn't participate. And it's actually a really boring Murder World. Shatterstar just has to fight a bunch of Mojo's Dog Soldiers.

The mother of the kidnapped family looks more like a bored supermodel who is being ironic.

The Mojo troops aren't even robots. They're actual soldiers from Mojoworld. Arcade was hired by Major Domo. Here's how that reveal is depicted.

Man, imagine having to work with an artist who won't put a major reveal on the page, so you have to script it in. That must suck. I mean, it sucks for us, too. But i imagine if you're writing a Murder World plot, you come up with all sorts of tricks and traps and ask the artist to draw them, and it must be pretty crappy when there's a guest artist and you get back a story where Shatterstar fights some soldiers in an empty room and the artist has spent all his time sexing up a random civilian mom.

Things get more (dare i say it?) extreme when Adam X is thrown into the mix and regular artist Antonio Daniel is back.

Ok, it's still not much of a Murder World (unless those speed lines indicate that they're fighting on a giant spinning platform or something). But we do get a kind of death trap when we find out why Adam X has been made to fight Shatterstar. Arcade is holding another prisoner. I think her name is Fetishstar.

Actually, that is apparently Shatterstar's wife. On Mojoworld, people are put into forced marriages based on their genetics. It turns out that Shatterstar and "Windsong" have never actually met, and that helps Shatterstar realize that this is just a hologram.

Here's something a little more Murder World-y.

Anyway, they fight their way out of the maze, but Arcade escapes. We learn that "Mr. Milbury" hired him to target Adam X. As Michael notes in the comments, that's an alias used by Mr. Sinister. I still think it was really the Hypno-Hustler, who is jealous that he only got to appear once as a 1970s era fad character but this x-treme grunge guy gets to keep showing up.

We do check in with the rest of the cast. Cannonball and Boom Boom get ready to go on a trip back to Cannonball's home in Kentucky. Warpath continues to try to help Siryn deal with her alcoholism...

...and they decide to go back to her home in Ireland. We see that Black Tom and the Juggernaut have moved back in to the family castle.

Tempo hangs around the X-Force base for a while but eventually decides not to join the team. And Cable calls in Domino (the real one this time) to help him manage X-Force.

Dom, i don't know who taught you to drive, but you are going to hurt your spine sitting like that.

Quality Rating: D

Historical Significance Rating: 1

Chronological Placement Considerations: Cannonball says they've been searching for Sunspot for the last 3 weeks.

References:

• Justifying his vacation, Cannonball says that since his last break, they formed X-Force (X-Force #1), he died and came back to life (X-Force #6-10), Cable died (X-Force #18), the team got arrested (circa X-Force #19), Cable came back and they fought Magneto (X-Force #25), and Illyana died (Uncanny X-Men #303).
  
• We found out that Domino was being impersonated in X-Force #11.

Crossover: N/A

Continuity Insert? N

My Reprint: N/A

This 10th generation Liefeld art makes my eyes bleed.

Marvel was trying to get its books back on schedule at the time- issue 29 came out only two weeks after issue 28. That's why Matt Broome had to do a (possibly rushed) fill-in. A supermodel mom is the price of keeping comics on schedule. :)
Fnord, we do learn who hired Arcade to kill Adam X. Arcade says tell Mr. Milbury that we have to return his fee. Milbury is the alias Mr. Sinister used in X-Men 23 and X-Men 27. Nicieza was being a bit subtle.

Thanks Michael. I flagged the "Milbury" name when annotating X-Men #27 since it sounded familiar, but haven't gotten to reviewing that issue yet (and may very well have missed this anyway).