X-Factor #12: Shake it Baby

X-Factor #12 comes right after the Mutant Massacre, and several plot elements are immediately picked up.

Firstly, Warren. He was hospitalised (it turns out money can overcome prejudice - who knew?), but his wings are in a bad way, and the doctors say they'll have to come off. The sheer weirdness of his anatomy is alluded to (they consult bird specialists), but not wholly developed. Think about it for a bit. Warren has six limbs: two legs, two arms, and two wings. How does that even work? He must have structures in his back that don't exist or have analogies in any living vertebrate. It's a miracle this sort of congenital abnormality has left him functional, but until this point, it's always been just something we're supposed to accept as part of the premise, but this, along with the mention of the "X-Factor" (which will later be identified as the "X-Gene") demonstrate a new attitude, which wants to look at the premise a bit more as science fiction. In fact, Angel is physically impossible: even if things as heavy as him can fly, his wingspan simply isn't large enough. Hollow bones only take you so far. So, either we ignore that, or we assume his mutation comes along with access to some wacky physics (like the way Wolverine violates the laws of thermodynamics.) Anyway, Warren would rather die than lose his wings, and so he prepares his will.

Next, there are still Morlock refugees at the X-Factor headquarters: Ape, Caliban, Dreamer, Erg (who is rather excellently cooking the toast with his eyelaser thing), Skids and Tar Baby. Skids has an MC Hammer power, and is having difficulty eating (but somehow manages to put on clothes? I suppose it's not the first instance of powers working weirdly with clothes... maybe clothes are made of a fundamentally different type of matter in the Marvel universe.) We're told it's getting busy at the HQ, which is odd because the building seems large from the outside. Maybe they lease out space?

A further plot is people phoning home, so you can tell Claremont isn't writing this. Jean and Scott watch the tellybox news and see that the relatives of a mutant have been firebombed; and Jean's sister, Sara, is on as a talking head, supporting mutants. Sara Grey had, by the way, been pitched by Claremont as a possible fifth member for X-Factor. Anyway, that gets Jean very worried about Sara's safety. But she hasn't contacted her family since she came back alive. Awkward. Scott, who had an epiphany in the Massacre that abandoning his wife and child was a really shitty thing to do, has meanwhile called Madelyne, finally, but there has been no answer. He's so self-absorbed that he reaches the conclusion that "Maddie's left [him]". No, mate. You left her.

Jean and Scott go visit Sara's house, and find it empty. There's a threatening message on the phone, the place explodes, crap. Well, at least Sara got out safely? Apparently, though, this is then basically dropped, and not followed up again until seven years from now, in X-Men #36! I'm hoping that she's at least mentioned in future issues - we'll see. This poses an obvious question regarding Maddie's safety, even to those of us who haven't been reading Uncanny, and Scott resolves to go up to Alaska to check on her himself (I don't know why he doesn't start by asking the local police to do a wellness check.)

What is ostensibly our A-plot is Boom Boom, who is a street urchin first seen in the Secret Wars II series. She has the power to create so-called "time bombs" which can detonate and do some damage; and she's fallen under the wing of the Vanisher (crikey, it's been ages since we saw him!), but is unhappy at the cut he is demanding from her thievery, so has reported him to X-Factor. She is eventually recruited for X-Factor, which might just be the quickest regret that Hank and Bobby (for it is they) have ever had.

Finally, in Cleveland, Ohio, Apocalypse recruits his second horseman: a young mutant named Autumn Rolfson, who has the unfortunate and surely completely useless in combat power of turning food to dust. Famine, then.