WARNING: The following contains spoilers for X-Force #3, by Benjamin Percy, Joshua Cassara, Guru-eFX, VC’s Joe Caramagna and Tom Muller, on sale now.
The Court of Owls has proved to be one of Batman's most consistent and threatening enemies in recent decades. The shadowy group of Gotham power players has been a terrific addition to the franchise. Now, it seems Marvel is getting its own, even more, threatening version of the organization.
The global cabal known as Xeon is introduced in X-Force #3, by Benjamin Percy and Joshua Cassara.
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XEON
Like the Court of Owls, the group appears to be a secretive force capable of controlling the world from behind the scenes. They apparently have government ties, and what little is seen of the group suggests a wildly varied collection of global figures. Men and women of various nationalities appear behind the masks, with many apparently have access to capitals across the globe. Their goal is to cause chaos within the world, targeting mutants. But they're not just focused on eliminating mutants or preventing their rise in the societal structure.
According to their apparent leader, Xeon intend to experiment on the ones they can capture and use their powers for themselves. The Weapon X program was but one such location around the world that did such work, and every country apparently had an organization that attempted similar augmentations. Despite Charles Xavier and the X-Men disrupting their financial flow, all the heroes have done is cause those forces to come together to try and bring down the mutants who'd attempted to dismantle the power structures they'd abused for years.
THE ALLIANCE
Just having the Weapon X program as a presence hanging over the X-Men for years was bad enough. The experiments they've done on mutants have been horrifying, killing countless innocents. They've also been directly responsible for the creation of people like Wolverine and Sabertooth, who even at their best are still effortless killing machines. The revelation that they've been spread all out around the world suggests things will only get worse before they get better, especially now that humans have found ways to graft mutant gifts like Domino's luck-based powers onto themselves. Coming together, these groups may be able to find a couple of new powers that can come from some of the other countries around the world.
All of this comes together to make the secret organization more fearsome than anything the Court of Owls ever became. Like the Owls, they've developed a way to make their own army of superpowered soldiers. But while the Talons are fearsome, they don't compare to special ops forces who can have luck powers grafted onto them. It remains to be seen what other kinds of powers Xeon could have access to, but there's one that's likely to appear. With the remnants of Weapon X suggested to be present as a part of Xeon, there's a chance the same could be said for Department H. It's entirely possible that the kind of healing factor that makes Wolverine so unstoppable could be experimented on again, as it was with Deadpool. That might end up being the human counter to the X-Men's ability to recreate any lost team member.
X-Force #3 is available now.