X-Factor #65-#68: The End is Nigh

X-Factor #65-#68 is a postscript to an era. All the X-Men reunited as One Big Team after the X-Tinction Agenda saga, but the titles are proving resistant to actually doing anything with this yet. While the X-Men proper are in Uncanny dealing with the Xavier situation, the remaining five original mutants remain in New York, having one last adventure as X-Factor.

X-Factor - this iteration of it anyway - had to end like this. The original premise was the five of them reunited again to fight mutant problems in New York City. Along the way they lost their original shtick of being fake mutant hunters and in its place acquired a fuck-off massive spaceship in the city.

Now that the X-Men are gathering again, now that the construction crews in Westchester are readying their pencils and inks, we have no place for Ship. Fortunately Ship came with its own kill switch. It came by way of Apocalypse, and X-Factor have never satisfactorily understood it. It is this vulnerable to a large storyline involving him. But it has to be a big story - perhaps his biggest - if we are to have such a big status quo change as a result. The way it sort of manages that is by throwing crossovers at the page. First Avengers (briefly) and then, more substantially, the Inhumans.

Ah, the Inhumans. Again, a major part of the Marvel cosmogony that we are only talking about as we get to the 1990s. If they have crossed over with the X-Men before it had been in other pages. Our exposition on them comes courtesy of Beast, who would have worked with them before (perhaps fought them) during his time on the Avengers. Beast's time on the Avengers has been somewhat of an ignored point as far as this series goes - but then, X-Factor has always been a contradiction. A team of renegade outlaws funded by a well-connected millionaire, and staffed by said millionaire, a respected former member of the most important superhero team, an accountant, and a woman who had been brought back from the dead by the collective efforts of not just the Avengers and the Fantastic Four. They've had their losses - Angel in particular, but this is a team of winners who have been befallen by circumstances, not the bunch of misfits that X-Men wants to be.

The Inhumans are what the X-Men tend towards. Whereas Cyclops acts like the king of the mutants (with Jean his Red Queen), the Inhumans are explicitly led by their monarch, Black Bolt or, to give him his full name, Blackagar Boltagon (that never gets old). Like the mutants the Inhumans are humans plus: in the case of the mutants this arises spontaneously (or so we think). For the Inhumans it is a combination of long-ago genetic manipulation by the Kree, combined with activation by the terrigen mist. There are other differences. The Inhumans are a race, a distinct group, as opposed to the distributed minority that the mutants form. The Inhumans have a royal family formed by blood, whereas the X-Men are the ultimate in found family.

In this story, the X-Men are trying to make a transition to blood family. This is in the form of Baby X, Nathan Christopher, the son son of Cyclops (in truth) and Marvel Girl (in spirit if not in literal truth). If he is raised to adulthood without major trauma they have succeeded. But also at that point the X-Men is if not over them certainly then this generation of characters are no longer usable in the same way. This is something the X-books are still not ready to do, even in 2014, although they are perhaps the closest of all of Marvel's line to allowing it.

Scott's eventual assumption of the role he had pretended to take in the X-Terminators is many years down the line, but we can see the seed of it here, as Baby X, who had been terminally infected by Apocalypse, is taken into the future to survive. Coming to it over twenty years later, we know he'll become Cable, and he'll raise another child in the future in turn, who will return as a messiah. None of this is planned yet (well, perhaps Cable=Baby X), but the story is very forward-looking. The last dialogue spoken in #68 (other than by the Watcher), is by Scott, to Charlotte Jones:

You're wrong, sergeant. It hurts. It always will. More than I could put words to. But the dream that bound us all together - X-Factor and before us the X-Men - was based on hope.

(their emphasis) Hope is coming.

New Mutants #98-#100: No New Mutants

For all that I waffle about comics, I don’t talk about comic art much, which is a habit I am trying to break.  So, let's talk about the art of this final arc of New Mutants.  As I have been reading more of this era I am starting to appreciate what artists like Jim Lee and Rob Liefeld (who is the guilty party for New Mutants #98-#100) were trying to do.

Before you start up the flamethrowers, let me clarify.  Yes, they did not have the anatomy and often ended up drawing ridiculous contorted poses, but the generation of artists before that were not trying those poses at all.  They are doing stuff with perspective and angles and dynamism and action and composition and people coming at you from the weird directions and sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t, but whatever happens it’s always new and different.  If we treat panels as shots in a film, they are an exciting wave of cinematographers.  (And that’s precisely how they were treating the panels.)  They were very raw but I can see why people got so into them.  They (well, most of them) got better at it, too, and them and the next wave, of people who have refined their techniques are responsible for lots of great comics art today.

What else do we have here?  Well, the cover for New Mutants #98 promises us three new characters!  Excite! These are a rather more heavily built Spider-Man lookalike called Deadpool, someone with a domino pattern on her face called... Domino.  And some chap called Gideon, who, with a name like that, is clearly going to be a major player in the future.

Deadpool has been sent by a Mr. Tolliver to assassinate Cable (who I will note he addresses as Nathan - I don't know whether that is a new thing or not though, due to not having been bothered to read the intermediate issues of New Mutants).  Deadpool is immediately a mercenary with a mouth on him, something that I think it's worth pointing out was a novelty at a time given the prevalence of the taciturn grim villain/anti-hero.  The fight is truncated by the arrival of Domino, an old friend of Cable, who has the pouches to prove it.  They send Deadpool back to Tolliver by mail.

Domino sticks around to help Cable recruit: the team has lost Warlock and Wolsfbane due to the recent crossover.  All previous New Mutants (Rusty, Skids, Xi'an, Amara, and Dani) are ruled out due to alignment or in some cases their faint hint of rubbishness.  While he's off headhunting John Proudstar from the Mass Acad, other students are evaporating (not literally - it's good to clarify that in a superhero comic), as Rictor goes off back to Genosha and Sunspot inherits his father's business, due to Gideon's machinations. (Gideon, by the way, turns out to be an old family friend of the da Costas.)  He just lets them fuck off, which annoys some of his team but not enough for them to fuck off too.

#100 introduces another couple of characters: Feral, an escaped Morlock who I am forever confusing with Wolfsbane, and Shatterstar from the Mojoverse.  Cable and the New Mutants protect these folks from their respective enemies and accepts their assistance in return for same.  At the end we get a few pages of cutaway to Stryfe, leader of the Mutant Liberation Front, who is on the last page dramatically revealed (I presume, it's oddly structured otherwise) to look quite a lot like Cable,  What a mystery!

Although clearly these issues are going to be important, they're also quite shit,  The plot is paper-thin, the characterisation subtle (in the sense, barely there, rather than that it's clever), and coming back to this series after a few issues doesn't make me worry about having missed anything good.  The end of the New Mutants is effectively arbitrary: it's already been X-Force for a while, but it's at this issue - apparently for no other reason than that they've finally got to issue #100, that they make a symbolic break, by leaving the basement of the mansion, and taking on the new name.

Incidentally Cannonball and Boom Boom clearly have a quick one in the woods between pages 33 and 34.  And by that I don't mean a pint.

New Mutants #86-#89: Cable

New Mutants #86 starts the run by a new, up-and-coming artist, Rob Liefeld (he'd done fill-ins and annuals for the X-Office before). Simonson is scripting him, at first.

There's no immediate stage of Liefield writing Simonson's plots: the book is changed from day one. If we look back at New Mutants so far, it can be divided into three main eras. Firstly, there is the period from #1 to #34, which is the original format of the New Mutants having wacky adventures while attending a school run by Professor X. From #35 Xavier went into space and was replaced by Magneto. The New Mutants then engage in increasingly outlandish adventures which they handle with aplomb, marred only by the killing of Doug and the loss of Magik, while evading the tyrannical Headmaster Magneto. This era ends when they decide to quit the school and join up with X-Factor (#75).

However, the problem that was present with the setup during the Magneto era is still present with the ship and X-Factor. They've had adventures while X-Factor were out on missions, and have got trapped in parallel dimensions. One team can't very well mentor the other when they both want to be off doing their own adventures. Eventually, the franchise will figure out how to do this reasonably acceptably, by swelling the student numbers and having the adult team as peripheral characters who can't give the juvies their full attention (i.e. copying the format of Buffy back). But for now, this is stagnant. It's the third attempt at this, and despite changing location this time, it still doesn't work.

Enter Cable. He turns up out of the blue, with a big but not yet ludicrous gun, looking to defeat Stryfe and the Mutant Liberation Front (who are violently protesting against the capture of Rusty and Skids by Freedom Force.) By issue #89 he's graduated to using weapons he can probably only carry because of his telekinesis. But it's not all just ridiculously stupid violence. There's also ridiculously stupid character scenes, as well (mind, the page or two where Rahne is looking at her mementoes are great). Oh dear. Cable's introduction and adoption as the team's mentor here is just so clumsy and rushed. Sigh.

I think my attempt at Reading All The X-Men ends here. Although there was no way I was going to read all the 1990s material, I'd hoped to get as far as X-Force proper. I can't. It's April now, and I'd started to draft the entries for this era in January, and I stopped. In part this was due to poor health, but there was also a component of not wanting to have to write about Rob Liefield pissing on the corpse of New Mutants. So, we'll concentrate on Uncanny, X-Factor and Excalibur only from now on...

X-Factor #40: Nanny

They've just had Madelyne Pryor's second funeral in X-Factor #40. We get a touching scene of life and rebirth and suchforth. And then we get this:

"You know, since his mother was a genetic duplicate of our daughter, he really is our grandchild"

- actual dialogue from this comic

Jean's parents are concerned about Sara's children, of course (they don't know that they prioritised rescuing baby Christopher over them). Post-Inferno there are other children to distribute back to their parents (you'd think this would come before the funeral, but eh). Jean and Christopher's relationship is confusing, but she has memories from Phoenix and the Madelyne now, and feels some level of maternal responsibility towards him.

Nanny and Orphan-Maker attack! Nanny is given a nonsensical origin story which makes her a mutant turned into a cyborg by The Right. X-Factor best them in combat, find Joey and Galen hidden in a wall cavity, and bring them back home to their grandparents. Aww, isn't that nice? And to tie it off with a bow, Rusty gets a stay!

Hang on, did we get an issue of X-Men where a bunch of happy things happened? That can't be right...

X-Factor #1: Putting the Band Back Together

It's 1986. It has been over a decade since anyone except Chris Claremont wrote an X-Men comic. This changes now, with X-Factor #1, which is a curious mix of the regressive and the new. This is a street-level book, and the first real opportunity to see what happens when other writers play with Claremont's ideas. In this case the writer is Bob Layton, alongside Jackson Guice on pencils.

As we saw last post, it's been revealed that what emerged from Jamaica Bay in X-Men #101, and died on the moon in #138 was not in fact Jean Grey, but a copy. Reed Richards has put her back in contact with Warren (Angel). Scott (Cyclops) isn't in the X-Men any more - he's just retired, in Alaska, with his wife (Madelyne Pryor) and his newborn child (as yet unnamed). He gets a phone call from Warren telling him that Jean is alive and he should come... and he walks out on wife, just like that.

The terrifying thing about this is not that it's an arbitrary editorially-mandated act that we're supposed to pretend is acceptable, as is generally contended, but that it's completely in character for Scott, and is treated as a despicable thing right there in the issue. Scott and Madelyne's story was simply not leading towards a happy ending, and I do not buy for a moment Claremont's line. More seriously, we need to consider the lead teams. There was the opportunity for some of this to have not been written - little Nathan was only born just last month - Claremont by his own account found they were going to be using Jean for X-Factor when he was doing the plot for #198. Given how long X-Men/Alpha Flight was (it was several months pencilling no doubt), I can believe that the baby had been planned for a while, but they could have changed the dialogue, no? Is the baby basically just brinkmanship - Claremont making a last throw of the dice to make Cyclops unusable in X-Factor, and them doing it anyway?

So, the three of them are together in a room. Scott has regressed to his state, 20 years ago, of being unable to tell Jean important information about who he loves. Nobody else has told her the news, either, even though who one is married to is a matter of public record. Sigh. Jean appears to have acquired a personality from somewhere while she was in the cocoon, at least. She's taken a good hard look at the state of the world (Xavier gone, Magneto working with the X-Men, and mutants more hated than ever) and wants to do something. She suggests forming a new team.

Two weeks later, and Hank is failing to get hired due to employment discrimination (it's not that the dean is prejudiced against mutants himself, you understand, it's just that he's concerned about what people might think!) Bobby has got a job as an accountant (is this where we find that out? Maybe his accountancy course was a long-running subplot in Defenders) Both of them are happy to accept the opportunity of work with Angel's new corporation, X-Factor. But first, they have to find Scott, who has skipped out on the people he skipped out on his wife to be with. Bit of a pattern there.

He's found soon enough, overlooking Jamaica Bay (I suppose he must have been there the whole two weeks?). So, the original five, together again at last! Cameron Hodge, Angel's old roommate, and now a PR person, outlines the business plan to them.

They will set up as "X-Factor" (named for the "X-Factor mutation", a term coined here and which justifies the name, but also is an example of the more details-oriented approach to the actual mechanics of mutation that Layton Guice will bring in this short run), a sort of mutant Ghostbusters, using their civilian identities. This will give them leads on new mutants facing problems, who they will then rescue and train. They retain the option of using their costumes and powers if necessary, but will keep that separate from X-Factor.

The plan has one glaring flaw which ought to make it impossible: Angel is out. He doesn't have a secret identity to hide behind. He can't pretend to be Warren Worthington III, backer and employee of X-Factor one the one hand and Angel, mutant renegade on the other. I can only assume that Layton and the others overlooked this, as it doesn't make the slightest bit of sense otherwise. The fact that the X-Factor costumes look awfully like the X-Men costumes (they have the same X-in-a-circle design) is a minor problem in comparison. One nice touch here is that in their X-Factor guise, the others also wear sunglasses, even indoors, making Scott stick out less like a sore thumb. The outfits also include great big backpacks, which Warren apparently uses to hide his wings in.

So, anyway, first call comes in, and it's about a chap named Rusty Collins, a young US Navy recruit, who has manifested uncontrollable fire powers. They rescue him, and take him back to New York for training (managing to extort $42,000 out of Chief Fisher in the process.) That's all right, then. Except that the place they'd rescued him from was prison, where he was legitimately being held after an incident where he had given severe burns to a local prostitute (Emma La Porte). Sure, he says it was an accident, but that's for a court to decide. So X-Factor have transported a fugitive across state lines. They really haven't thought this through, have they?

So, that's X-Factor for you. Everything back, as it was - Jean's been rolled back before the #30s even, as she's missing her telepathy. Beast still looks weird, mind. I can't imagine that this #1 would have been accessible to anyone who hadn't read X-Men before. The rot of giving fans what they say they want set in here.

Uncanny X-Men #201: Baby X

Uncanny X-Men #201 features a long-brewing fight, that will decide the future of the X-Men. Yes, that's right, Scott and Madelyne are finally going to have it out.

They had a very quick romance (they met in #168 and were married in #173!), and I've never been entirely convinced by Scott's part in this, as I've been pointing out along the way. Not so long ago he was seriously considering going to space with the Starjammers, leaving her on Earth. In this issue, Scott (and the rest of the X-Men) arrive back at the mansion following the trips to Asgard and Paris, to find that Madelyne has given birth. On her own, at Westchester. (I dunno if that works - surely Sharon and Tom were there? Perhaps they've gone back to Muir Island). Madelyne complains that Scott never phoned her from Paris, even though other X-Men did. Little does she know that the man has an almost pathological aversion to telephones, even worse than mine.

There is also the small issue of leadership, which is even more crucial now that Magneto has effectively usurped control of the New Mutants. Storm was made leader by Xavier when Cyclops left. After she lost her powers and went to Africa, Xavier made Nightcrawler field leader. Cyclops now wants back in (despite his wife's position on the matter), and Storm has got back from Africa and reckons she can do it. Neither of these candidates are ideal, but there's no obvious third option: Nightcrawler has no interest in the role - he thinks he didn't go a great job. Wolverine - who we will remember was tapped by Hudson to head up Alpha Flight - still sees himself as a follower. Wolverine reckoned Kitty would be a good leader in the future, but she's still only 15 (we think). Colossus, nope. Banshee is retired. Phoenix is dead. Rogue, even if she were up to it, would be too divisive.

This is the first team they've had a leadership dispute, and rather than having elections, or something, they have a duel. Well, that's how they settle things in the Morlocks, anyway. Admittedly here, the rules aren't "to the death". This is quite short, at 5 pages. Storm wins. Scott goes home with Maddy (assuming she'll take him). And so a new chapter is about to begin, which will last for all of a month.

X-Men & Alpha Flight: A Bit More Complicated Than That

X-Men/Alpha Flight is a two-part limited series by Claremont, with Paul Smith returning briefly. It is about unintended consequences, and wears its influence proudly on its sleeve: a character talks about the book The Lathe of Heaven by Ursula K. Le Guin.

In that book, a man, George Orr, has "effective" dreams, which can change the world. To begin with, little things happen. He imagines the wall decoration of his psyschiatrist, Haber, is different, and it becomes so. Haber becoms aware of the power, and directs Orr on a series of dreams to eliminate the world's problems. These wishes are seemingly fulfilled by a Literal Genie. He eradicates racism by everyone becoming a monocultural grey; overpopulation by a plague; and causes peace on Earth by an alien invasion. The original timeline is thought to have had a nuclear war. Better George Orr than that, though.

X-Men/Alpha Flight covers similar ground. A geological research expedition has chartered a plane, piloted by our Madelyne Pryor and her husband Scott Summers. It falls into a situation set up by Loki, who is trying to curry with Those Who Sit Above In Shadow, which are some kind of metagods. Loki has set up a sweet fountain from which the unpowered people get powers (Maddy becomes a healer named Anodyne; Cornucopia can provide for their material needs and so on). Anodyne fixes various Alpha Flighters and X-Men of their problems - Rogue and Scott gain control over their abilities, Aurora becomes more stable, and Wolverine becomes a man. (Happily, this does not seem to include whatever is troubling Northstar - that's society's problem, not his.)

They are initially quite taken by the idea of fixing all the world's ills through powers (partly direct - but also the notion of forcing everyone to have powers will remove their prejudice), and don't wholly reject it when part of the price - the death of magic - is made clear to them, despite the chance it will lead to the passing of Michael and Elizabeth Twoyoungmen (Shaman and Talisman). But they've obviously not been keeping up on their Alan Moore, otherwise they'd have remembered that art is magic. Faced with a world without creativity, they don't see that there's much of a choice, and spurn the "gift", enraging Loki, and causing him to vow his revenge upon the X-Men.

I did this series now as this is when the Chronology Project reckons it happens, but in fact, it was published a bit later. This is unfortunately timed, as Scott will go from learning the news about the pregnancy (in December 1985) to abandoning his wife and child for his dead girlfriend two months later (in February 1986). Still, despite the oncoming tragedy, there are good moments for Scott in this with Rachel, who is still slowly coming to terms with being in the wrong past. She doesn't quite acknowledge Scott is her father, but it seems he knows it anyway. Let's see how long they milk that one for.