Famed comic writer/artist Rob Liefeld has revealed how the X-Force comics got their name back in the early 1990s.
How did X-Force get its title?
While looking back on his career alongside Marc Silvestri for Marvel’s website, the artist recalled how he was “terribly jealous” of the “X” used in many X-Men and X-Men-adjacent comics, leading to X-Force receiving its title.
“We started discussions, I’d say, five issues in, because I really honestly, what all these guys had — that I was terribly jealous of — was an X in their title, okay,” Liefeld revealed. “X-Men, X-Factor, even Excalibur worked an X in there, right? … And Wolverine doesn’t need an X. He rises above all of it, so it goes without saying. But in all honesty, I wanted an X in the title and so we knocked around those names and we settled on X-Force.”
The X-Force team was created by Rob Liefeld and Fabian Nicieza and first appeared in 1991’s New Mutants #100 then received their own dedicated comic series later that year. The team has featured plenty of members in the years since its inception, including popular characters like Cable, Wolverine, Deadpool, Fantomex, and Domino. Outside of Liefeld, other writers to tackle the group include Rick Remender, Warren Ellis, and Gerry Duggan.
