X-Factor #17: I regret to inform you that Warren Worthington is Death

X-Factor #17 has Angel's funeral. Very sad, etc. Slightly spoiled by the fact that he's not really dead, he's Death. We'll come back to that later.

But first, there's an evil mutant threatening to earthquake San Francisco. Much to Jean's umbrage, the chap, named Rictor, is taking the good name of the X-Terminators to do it with. You remember the X-Terminators: the fake "evil mutants" that X-Factor sometimes pretend to be. She's worried about their reputation being besmirched, is she? In fairness, they probably have better reputations than X-Factor itself at this point. Except by page 17, the group is called "The Right" by Bobby. So Hodge lied (he certainly appears to have set the whole thing up, down to using cheap reverse psychology to make them go), and the radio that they'd been listening to on the way set them right.

So, they (as X-Terminators) fly over to the left coast to sort things out. Joining the four of them is Caliban, now with a costume. I am greatly pleased by this. It's about time they started treating him as an equal. And it's a completely practical decision too: they have to find a mutant quickly, he's the mutant tracker. This works out well, and they are able to find Rictor in no time, and rescue him (turns out he was just being used). This is not going to plan, not for Hodge.

So, is "Rictor" in this issue just a misspelling or what? Because if I were making up a codename for an earthquake-themed mutant which was pronounced /ˈrɪktər/, it wouldn't be spelled like that. It's especially funny given that we'll find out later down the line that his real name actually is "Richter". I'm not sure whether to hail it as an example of nominative determinism (my favourite recent example being the head judge in England and Wales, Lord Chief Justice Lord Judge), or whether to decry it as the Worst. Codename. Ever.