X-Force Annual #1

There are two stories within this book. The first focuses on Wolverine, Warpath, X-23, and Wolfsbane breaking into a Hydra base to extract one of the Hydra soldiers. Although, they were sent on the mission, you only see the others in one panel before Wolverine tells them to just wait in the plane. Wolverine assaults the base, finds the one Hydra soldier they were looking for, and make his way to an extraction point. There the team flies out to meet with Cyclops at a hospital. A sick girl is needing a bone marrow transplant and the most suitable donor is the Hydra soldier, her father. At that time, Hydra busts into the hospital and rescues their man, but not before he holds out his forearm to allow Wolverine to cut it off to give the girl the needed marrow. If he'd just waited a few minutes for them to extract a sample of his marrow, then he'd still have his left forearm. The hydra soldier was in a hurry, but between a spending a few minutes or having your forearm severed, I think the decision for any sane person would be to just wait a bit.
 
Overall, this story was stand alone and didn't impact anything in the Marvel universe. I didn't care much for it, since it was basically just Wolverine hacking and slashing through Hydra troops until the sappy ending. I think that unless the little mutant girl goes up to become the next big X-person, then this story is a throw-away that doesn't contribute to anything. I also feel that by letting Wolverine go around and slash his way through most of the story makes it feel a bit boring to me. It feels like the other X-Force members are just doing cameos and it's really just a Wolverine story until the end. 
 
The artwork, while good, confused me at first. In the first panels, Warpath and X-23 look like vampires. I think the line work is fine, but for me the coloring seems a bit off. After reading through it a bit, I realized that it was just the coloring that was a bit off and that they weren't white/gray pale skin vampires.
 
The second story stars Deadpool and Loa. Deadpool is dressed up in his X-men outfit (that he made himself) playing with some of Loa's action figures (Invisible Woman and Mr Fantastic). Hearing Loa scream, Deadpool rushes out into the hallway to find her wounded from the Necrosha invasion (see X-Necrosha book). Delgado, Crotez, and Mellencamp (Acolytes) are there and after a quick phone call to Cyclops, Deadpool is informed that he can't kill the intruders. After a bit of Deadpool wackiness, Loa kills one and then Deadpool uses her to kill a few more. He does follow Cyclops order to not kill anyone, but he just uses Loa to kill them.
 
This story was a bit better since it tied in with Necrosha and will probably be the only story with Deadpool dressed up as an X-Man outside of the Deadpool series. 
 
Out of the two stories, I felt that the Deadpool story was a bit more entertaining. However, if I had my preference, then I would have wished for one big X-Force story that tied into X-Necrosha or at least had an impact. Throwing in a Deadpool story (even if he is part of the X-Force extended family) seemed to be a space filler and didn't give me enough for my X-Force appetite. I believe that I would have been happier with one big X-Force story that had some impact on the marvel/X universe.
 
In the end, if you pass on this book, then you won't be missing anything.