Does it make sense to go with a splash page that not only doesn't feature the title characters, but they aren't even mentioned? Probably not. But the other options were one of Freedom Force trying to arrest Rusty and Skids (with Mystique cosplaying as Uncle Sam), or Joe Quesada drawing Wolfsbane and Feral as Ren & Stimpy. So, go with Walt Simonson drawing the Mutant Massacre in the biggest sewer I have ever seen.
I've never owned many issues of X-Factor. Probably because it never seemed like a cool X-book. You either have the Original 5 X-Men, and the only one of them I'd define as cool is the Beast, and that's mostly when he hangs out with the Avengers. When it's not them, it's the bunch that worked for the government, and anyone who's read Marvel Comics knows working for the Man isn't cool.
It isn't like the book has a great start. Far as I can tell, Marvel wanted more X-Books than just Uncanny X-Men and New Mutants, and someone got the bright idea to reunite the original team. Sure, Angel, Beast and Iceman were on the Defenders, but they can cancel that easily enough. More difficult were Cyclops and Jean Grey. Cyclops for being a husband and father, Jean for being dead after committing genocide.
Jim Shooter apparently decreed no bringing Jean back as a hero unless they could wipe the murder of the broccoli people off her ledger. So that's how we get the notion of Phoenix creating a facsimile of Jean, while Jean's slumbering in an energy cocoon at the bottom of a bay. As for Cyclops, Uncanny X-Men #201 made it pretty clear to everyone, including Maddy Pryor, that he wanted to keep being an X-Man, and his responsibilities as husband and father were of, probably not even secondary importance. He loses the fight against Storm for leadership of the X-Men one month, and the first issue of X-Factor came out the next month. It was 13 issues before he even bothered to go back and try and check on Maddy or little Nate.
How anyone on the X-Men listens to that deadbeat, I will never know. I mean, Gambit's an inveterate scumbag, but he's also not typically trying to give orders.
The actual initial idea for the book isn't terrible. Xavier's first students, feeling the X-Men are no longer following Xavier's ideals, what with letting Magneto hang around, decide it's up to them. I mean, it's presumptuous as hell, as I can picture Cyclops making some big speech that would make me roll my eyes right out of my head, but at least, "find and protect young mutants while helping them learn to control their powers", is a decent enough storytelling engine.
Of course, the way they go about it is fairly idiotic. They pose as a group of ordinary humans called the X-Terminators, who hunt down mutants. People hire them for this purpose, but they are constantly thwarted by those dastardly X-Factor mutants, always helping the targets escape. Granted that Angel's money is funding the whole thing (looked over by future pain-in-the ass Cameron Hodge), but you'd think their failure to actually capture or kill any of their targets would tend to make business dry up. But hell, people keep hiring Arcade to kill superheroes.
People in the Marvel Universe are stupid, is what I'm getting at.
But it also doesn't seem like a way to gain the trust of the people you're trying to help, showing up like you're going to kill them, only to then go, "Just kidding! We're here to help, but play along like my two friends in the blue jumpsuits are really trying to kill you!"
I think the whole thing got dropped shortly after Mutant Massacre, and once Louise Simonson started writing the book (with Walt Simonson drawing it some of them time), the team spent more time just fighting Apocalypse and his plans. Angel lost his wings, got the metal ones. Beast went back to being blue and furry. Future X-Forcer and NextWave alum Boom-Boom showed up. Jean and Scott took advantage of the Assassination of Maddy Pryor by the Coward X-Office to get custody of the baby. Probably some other shit I don't care about.
After a series of events like X-Tinction Agenda and *sigh* the Muir Island Saga, the series shifted to the government team, written by Peter David, with Joe Quesada and Larry Stroman as pencilers for the early stages. David wrote a team that was basically a mess psychologically, between Havok's paranoia, Polaris' self-confidence issues, Quicksilver's abrasive nature, etc,. It didn't seem like working for the government was helping any, what with the moral compromises you have to navigate when stuck following official policy.
I think this is the best regarded stretch for this volume, which is remarkable because David only wrote the book for about 20 issues, and a few of those were wasted on X-Cutioner's Song crossovers. But he established characterizations that stuck for a few members of the cast. "Pietro Maximoff Syndrome" gets a lot of play, but the notion that Strong Guy's party dude attitude is just an act is another. Though some writers handle them better than others. Matthew Rosenberg probably read some of PAD's stories with Jamie Madrox, but the conclusions he took from them are, I'll be kind and say "curious."
After that, the book went on for another 50 or so issues. Lobdell, Dematteis, DeZago, John Francis Moore, lots of writers over a 20 issue span before Howard Mackie takes over for the last 35 issues. The roster shifted as characters started dropping like flies. This is the stretch when Forge and Mystique were on the team. Not sure Forge being a headliner ever bodes well. Outside of Forge and Mystique's relationship being referenced in her ongoing series, I don't remember seeing anyone talk about this stretch of the book, not even in a "holy crap this was terrible," sense, which doesn't bode well.
4 comments:
I always thought it was off that the original five didn't make any attempt to disguise themselves as X-Factor. Surely they were recognised? But maybe the idea was that their actions while X-Men were secret, so no one made the connection when they went public in XF? I've never had a good grasp of how covert the X-Men are supposed to be.
*odd, although "off" works.
It's interesting how Marvel makes heroes who are awful people. Cyclops, Reed, Tony. Although I'm not sure it's at all deliberate with Cyclops and Reed.
The X-Men have to be at least sort of publicly known, since Claremont would have them get mentioned, usually as an outlaw team of mutants, in various news broadcasts. So people know of the X-Men, but most people probably don't distinguish between them and say, the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants. They're all just muties.
And it may be most people don't know who is on the X-Men, or the public figures protecting/abducting other mutants is the sort of thing a bunch of outlaws would do.
I feel like the shift in Reed, Tony, and Xavier is a pushback against the era they were made in, that "father/male authority figure knows best" thing. Cyclops, I think they're trying to make him more interesting, which, fair enough. A flattened and rotting cardboard box is more interesting than Scott Summers.
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