X-Factor #56-#59: Archangel vs Ravens

X-Factor #56-#58 reminds me why I started reading the X-Men.

Archangel is still suffering the mental ill-effects from being poisoned by actually, I don't remember, but never mind that. He's a one-man vigilante squad who makes Batman look like a toddler with dimples and a cute hat. This results in an awed but not entirely positive attitude from local press. The comic asks some serious questions like: to what extent do Archangel's fellow mutants have a special responsibility to clean up, or to stop him, and about the ethics of press coverage.

This is all played out in the background of a tightly-plotted Archangel plot: he is is targetted by a new villain group known as the Ravens (introduced before but I seem to have skipped that issue, oops). These are a kind of vampiristic circle - Crimson sets up one of their number to be killed by Archangel, which leaves an opening to bring him in. Given how bad a run of it Archangel has had lately, the danger is palpable, and that he escapes, and is even released from the effects of the poison, is a happy moment indeed. Like many of us, Warren might never be properly right, but he's healing, and that's important.

X-Factor #32-34: Hodge Podge

X-Factor #32 is essentially a throwaway. Against a backdrop of mutant registration being implemented, the kids protest about the idea they will be sent to summer school; and X-Factor are attacked by a bunch of random aliens pretending to be the Avengers for no readily apparent reason. I accuse it of being a fill-in.

#33 sees things progress. The Alliance of Evil break out of jail to prove the point that mutant registration is, regardless of whether or not it is a good idea, effectively unimplementable.

I think I've put my finger on what my colleague SpaceSquid calls the Kelly problem. The problem is: mutants as presented in the Marvel universe really are dangerous. Terrifyingly so. Yes, there are plenty of harmless ones, and many mean well, but, to repurpose a phrase from elsewhere, intent is not magic. If we just look at the kids in X-Factor: Rusty almost burned a woman to death accidentally; Boom-Boom is ridiculously irresponsible and it's a miracle she hasn't killed anyone yet; and Rictor destroyed a whole city when he first manifested! No wonder people are scared.

The Registration Acts aren't just based out of prejudice, but out of a legitimate concern for the welfare of humans, and a worry about excess power in hands of people who might not be trustworthy. But any challenge to this order of things is held by those who have that power to be in contravention of their natural rights.

In other words, this is a metaphor for gun control. Mixed in with the other political stuff has been a pro-second amendment tone bubbling away there, for years now. And it's one that us Britishers are probably not going to be sympthetic towards. Kelly, Gyrich and Cooper have been using pro-gun control arguments - perfectly sensible ones in my view - that the books have been failing to deconstruct properly because they are simply taking the NRA party line - a massive defensiveness of the status quo, regardless of how much sense that makes. They do not engage in self-examination. Of course the Kelly-Gyrich-Cooper's program is nonsense, too: but that's because it's a strawman. Xavier could have gone to them at any point with a proposal to meet their legitimate concerns. He chose not to.

Anyway. Other things. X-Factor #3 regressed Beast to his 1960s form, you'll remember. Recent issues of X-Factor have taken him back even further, to before X-Men #3, when he was a dumb brute. Both of these things are reversed here, as we reach the classical form of Hank McCoy: smart and blue and furry. Both these things are an essential part of his character now, and one can't have the brain without the beast (and anyway, they're out now so it doesn't matter so much). Or, to put it another way: having Hank McCoy not be blue is stupid.

Our restored Beast signs the Registration Form, under protest, under his birth name (the series here tacitly admitting that he's been out since he was in the Avengers, at least). Cyclops, Marvel Girl and Iceman fill in the forms, but use only their mutant names. Rusty Collins, who's still wanted, refuses, but agrees to hand himself in to the Navy to stand trial. The rest of the kids are too young to register (making somewhat of a mockery of the entire rationale for the system, but there you go).

Issue #34 concentrates on Warren's quest to find Candy Southern, who has been kidnapped by Cameron Hodge. The Warren/Cameron confrontation has been long-awaited, but I don't think it gets the weight it deserved. Candy ends up dead, which is a shame. She deserved better than just being fridged, she'd barely appeared in the series since she dumped Warren, and she was entirely in the right on that occasion.

Fall of X-Factor (#24-#26)

X-Factor #24-#26 is the Big Apocalypse Plot (following immediately from the Big Hodge Plot... things are really making moves here!) The Fourth Horseman, Death (the mutant formerly known as Warren Worthington) is unveiled, and Apocalypse sends all Four Horseman to attack New York City. It doesn't matter if they get defeated, just as long as they kill the weak. To this end he's also delighted by the Marauders, the Right, and so on. There is a big fight. Warren is shocked out of his brainwashing when he thinks he's killed Bobby (really an ice-decoy); they also win possession of Apocalypse's Ship. But Apocalypse takes Caliban, apparently to the a replacement Death. The Ship lands directly on the old X-Factor HQ, squashing it, which is I think is supposed to be symbolic or something. Warren explains the plot - he'd not committed suicide, it was all a setup by Hodge. Which may or not be a lie.

The gang (recognised as the X-Terminators) go on the tellybox to take credit for saving the city from the Horsemen, and out themselves as X-Factor. They evade arrest to help with clean-up and search-and-rescue (apparently having been shamed by Rictor/Rusty/Skids), which gets them enough PR points that when they do later surrender themselves to arrest the NYPD aren't interested. Tilbit secures an interview with Hank (much delayed), and a productive partnership begins. Neat. In fact, there's a ticker-tape parade that the X-Men have always dreamed of! Where's that other shoe...?

Now that this Hodge and X-Factor nonsense has been dealt with, it's as if a dam has burst within Scott, and he's able to explain what the hell happened with Maddy, from his point of view. The marriage, he says, was a mistake. He fell out of love pretty quickly, but stayed with her because he didn't think anything better was on the table once Jean had died. This was not Claremont's intent at the time, I'm sure, but it fits with my reading of Cyclops's otherwise inexplicable actions during this time. He and Jean kiss. But hidden in the background are the events in Dallas the same night: Maddy is going to be on the news the next time Scott watches it. No happy endings.

X-Factor #15: Clipped Wings

X-Factor #15 is the one where Warren appears to commit suicide (see below). Unless you are a particularly inattentive reader you wouldn't buy for a second this would be permanent, but nevertheless it is a clear message that things have changed, that things can change. Something that the series has been doing repeatedly since Simonson came on board, but never clearer now.

But that's not the main point of the issue, not really. Instead, it's about our Scott again. He's in Anchorage, identifying his wife's body, and making wild presumptions that his son (who still hasn't got a name, so we're just gonna keep calling him Baby X) is dead too. He calls home! He ended up with one dead body in Alaska because someone he was close to needed him and he wasn't there. Does he want to make it a second? He races back. Too late. Warren's dead. Scott, you suck.

Businessman, superhero, mutant and socialiate.

Warren Worthington III, who has died at the age of 25, was born into wealth as son of Warren Worthington II, the CEO and majority-owner of Worthington Industries. But it was as the superhero and member of the X-Men the "Avenging Angel" (later "The Angel") that he became known to the public. Worthington was one of the first mutants to "come out", while attending UCLA, where he joined the superhero team The Champions. Worthington's parents died relatively young, and perhaps exemplifying the principle that wealth does not survive the third generation, he had little interest in management of his companies; instead being content to flit as his attention was attracted, while leaving most of the day-to-day supervision to his fiancee Candice Southern.

Worthington recently was embroiled in controversy when non-family shareholders in Worthington Industries discovered that he had been financing the mutant troubleshooting agency X-Factor with company money, and was facing possible criminal charges of fraud. According to Worthington's close friend and co-worker at X-Factor, Cameron Hodge, this, combined with the amputation of his wings after severe injuries, may have pushed him over the edge, although according to the local authorities no note has been found and mechanical error has not yet been ruled out.

Warren Worthington III was 25 and has no surviving relatives.

X-Factor #14: Crushed Dreams

X-Factor #14 sees Cyclops fight that Sentinel.

He's been arrested by the Anchorage Police Department, for smashing his house up, which he rationalises by saying he didn't want the person who stole it from him to get the benefit of it, rather than the truth which was his hallucinations. Which are continuing: he sees Professor X, who is Not Impressed with Scott.

Our Sentinel (well, Master Mold) is insane, as Sentinels often are, and it has sadly noticed that all humans are mutants, and has added them to its list of things to exterminate. It's also concerned with The Twelve, or The Strong, something which has come from Lang's influence. Scott is one of these, and therefore belongs particularly dead. According to the caption, this group constitutes "Twelve Mutants who will lead... around whom the others will gather. Lang discovered them. Master Mold will destroy them." Who are they? Well, a panel on page 2 gives a clue: some faces, which we can make out as Cyclops, Apocalypse, Punk Storm, Jean Grey (or at least someone who looks like her - this issue notes that Jean and Maddie are indistinguishable to third parties in photographs), and Franklin Richards, along with a number of unidentifiable silhouettes. This is going to be one of the slowest-burning plot arcs that X-Men has ever had.

Cyclops rescues the cop from the Sentinel, and in reward is let go. But they've got some bad news for him about a dead redhead.

Scott's self-mythologisation (that he left Alaska to lead X-Factor) has reached the point where even the students at X-Factor believe it. Boom-Boom, Rusty and Skids sit around and chat about the love lives of the X-Men, while watching the adult team deal with matters.

Angel is still refusing amputation, and may be investigated for fraud (so, foolishly, he used Worthington Enterprises money rather than his own personal money for bankrolling X-Factor?). Trish Tilbit doorsteps him in his own hospital room, and mentions a "court order". Jean just shoos her out rather than ask "what court order?", which is a shame because it's to declare him incompetent. At whose instigation, I wonder? We are told he has no living relatives (his father was killed in the Siegel story in Kazar #2-#3 and Marvel Tales #30 which I have not covered due to expense; but his mother survived that. Byrne kills her off in The Hidden Years, I see. Hodge, then, perhaps? I never trusted that guy.

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.

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.

X-Men #132-#134: rule 1. do not leave Wolverine for dead

X-Men #132 is the first since #94 to feature Angel. We and the X-Men find him at his aerie, in New Mexico, along with Candy Southern, who now apparently knows everything (Warren did out himself as a mutant in Champions, which may have caused that - although surely that makes the X-Men pretty trackable to anyone who's looked at his CV).

Cyclops outlines the recent events to him: i.e. that the Hellfire Club has gone after them. Warren, who is a member of the club, assures that them he is not the leak. Rather uncommonly for comics they raise the possibility that Frost's Hellfire Club might not be the same as the publicly acknowledged one that they are about to go after, but decide to investigate anyway. They wrangle invites to an event at the club through Warren.

This proves to be an enormous mistake as it provides the perfect opportunity for Wyngarde to transform Jean into the Black Queen, and attack the X-Men. Given her documented instability (and having finally admitted to Scott about the timeslips), it seems silly to place her in danger of further mental control. Although she's able to eventually able to break the conditioning, with help from the X-Men (particularly Wolverine, who the Hellfire Club had inadvisably left for dead), she has now become corrupted into a darker, and quite angry, Phoenix.

We discover that Sebastian Shaw is a mutant too, with motion-absorption powers. There's a chap named Donald Pierce, who is a cyborg. And a Harry Leland, in the Inner Circle too, who can affect mass. And Jason Wyngarde was Mastermind, all along! Still no reason to think that "Jason Wyngarde" is anything other than a pseudonym, though. I'd say it might be explicitly an in-story allusion to the actor Peter Wyngarde (Mastermind is of course picking his own face), except for the the other names.

Champions #1-#3: Whatever happened to the X-Men?

Scott's stayed with the X-Men. Jean is lurking around as a member of the supporting cast. Hank is in the Avengers. What's happened to Warren and Bobby?

Marvel launched a new series, called Champions in 1975. It opens with Warren and Bobby at UCLA. They're wandering around, talking about how they miss the super-hero action, when suddenly and for no obvious reason a portal opens up in front of them, and harpies come out of it demanding the return of Venus. In the ensuing fight, Warren makes the decision to go public with his identity as Angel.

Meanwhile, at campus that day also are Natasha Romanoff (Black Widow), Victoria Starr (Venus), Johnny Blaze (Ghost Rider), and the incredible Hercules. There's a lot going on here, but it's mostly different sorts of punching. Eventually our six characters get together, and Venus admits who she really is. And then Pluto turns up, seeking to force our Olympians to wed Ares and Hippolyta. The story feels completely forced. There's no organic growth of the the team - they all happen to be in a particular location when the attacks happen, and then they end up deciding to team up. This is intentional mimickry of Avengers #1, but it doesn't really work here. Isabella's original plan was Angel and Iceman with new character Black Goliath, and that could have worked better. As it is Angel and Iceman are very under-served, especially in this Olympian first arc.

We are to suppose here that Venus here is the actual goddess Venus/Aphrodite. However, her history is more than a little complicated. Briefly: there was a Timely Comics character called Venus, who took the identity of Vicky Starr, and starred in her own "Venus" comics, and would later be retconned as being part of the Agents of Atlas (set during the Atlas era). This, then, would appear to be an incorporation of the Timely character into modern Marvel continuity, no different from bringing in Namor or Red Raven.

Eventually this one is revealed to be not the real Venus, but a siren. There is a "real" Aprodite/Venus who pops up in Parker and Pak's stuff, and is angry at the Timely Venus for stealing her name. But in this storyline, there's no question that this Venus is real: plenty of other Olympians meet her and would surely have called her out. So, why has she adopted the "Victoria Starr" identity which her impostor used?