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.

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 #21-#23: He Would Have Gotten Away With It, Too

X-Factor #21-#23 is a tight three-part story that finally pulls the trigger on the whole Cameron Hodge thing. Angel's will is read, and he has left all his money to X-Factor. Well, to a trust administered by Hodge. Bollocks. Hodge is not just misusing his position to undermine popular opinion of Mutants, but he's an actual black hat villain complete with a private exoskeleton-armor-wearing army.

It's bad. Trish Tilbit has managed to put some things together, but before the guys can blow the truth to her on camera, but Hodge triggers an immediate exosuit attack. Exosuit people also attack X-Factor HQ and abduct all the children. Bollocks.

A rescue attempt is eventually made, and is succesful (points to Boom-Boom who, returning from Fallen Angels, gets most of the way to liberating the kids herself). Hodge unconditionally hates mutants, has control of X-Factor, is responsible for driving Warren to suicide, was the man behind Rictor's capture and torture, and to cap it all, the Hodge they defeated was actually a Hodgebot. Bollocks bollocks.

Some minor continuity notes: Boom-Boom is 14, we are told; and Rusty gets a codename (bestowed by The Right). Rictor destroyed a city once. And in the background, the Fourth Horseman: Death, is prepared and declared ready by Apocalypse. Bollocks bollocks bollocks.

X-Factor #18-#19: No "I" in Horsemen

X-Factor #18 tries a sneaky retcon. It would have us believe that Scott and Jean never were romantically involved until the cute "I wanted to see your face, that's all" moment in Uncanny #132: the implication being that Scott and Jean had never been involved - it was only ever Scott and the Phoenix. This is clearly nonsense: they kissed on-panel in #98, which was so canon that Stan Lee and Jack Kirby actually were there in character to comment on it! And if you look back at the appropriate page of #132, Jean's immediately preceding speech calls him "Scott Summers, lover of Jean Grey". Not sure what they're trying there, other than complicating the Shag Chart.

Anyway, Scott has got very confused about the Jean/Phoenix/Madelyne/Jean thing, and frankly who can blame him. It's mostly Hodge's fault, though. Hodge, whose PR campaign - which is now pretty clearly an act of delibarate sabotage - is being treated as some kind of immutable natural order of things. The gang could try to fire him, or walk. Except for the fact that he's buggered off now he's been rumbled.

Meanwhile, Apocalypse is putting the finishing touches on his final Horseman: Death (the mutant formerly known as Angel), and sends the remaining three into action against the X-Terminators in #19 to learn the value of teamwork. This is now going very slowly and I'd like it just to get to the reveals already.

X-Factor #5-#6: Apocalypse, Finally

One of the many things X-Factor has brought back from the 1960s is the random sexist comments by characters portrayed as heroic. I didn't miss that in Claremont's work, I can tell you. Here, on page 3 of #5, it is Bobby, saying to Jean "the last thing any of us wants is for you to lose that shape, Jeanie! Va-va-va-voom!". Oh dear. Perhaps Claremont is an anomaly, and this is just how comics were usually written in the 1980s? They're even saying "Holy Hannah" again, I haven't seen that for a while, either.

Anyway. This arc's mission is the recovery of Michael Nowlan, who is a mutant with the power of enhancing other mutant powers. He's been taking drugs to suppress this, and has run away from the "Alliance of Evil", which consists of Tower (can manipulate his mass/size), Frenzy (invulnerability, strength) and two new characters: Stinger (who can discharge electricity) and Timeshadow (who has short range time travel). This Alliance reports to Apocalypse, and there's four of them, so I wonder if they were candidates for Horsemen (by all accounts Apocalypse was a last-minute replacement so this was not intended by the writers, but it's nonetheless an interesting coincidence).

They fail, and Michael is spirited away. This results in some introspection. This wouldn't have happened in the old days. I mentioned briefly before that the revived Jean is not a telepath. There seem to be two chief reasons for this. Firstly, a mobile telepath is way overpowered compared to the rest of the team - it's the same reason they rarely let Xavier be all three of walking, on the team, and telepathic. Secondly (as Teebore has pointed out in the comments for #1), if she were able to read people's minds, this whole plot with Scott and Madelyne wouldn't work, as Jean would know about it and insist on Scott doing right by Maddy, right? It's telling that the original Scott/Jean plot petered out more or less at the same time she got those powers in the first place. Scott has made that call to Maddy, by the way, and had no answer. He reckons she's left him. Which is completely ridiculous of him. He has left her. Jean reckons that Scott's in love with someone else... Phoenix. Actually, I can't see a good reason why she hasn't guessed there isn't another woman involved here?

Anyway, Michael knows X-Factor's secret, but was kindly keeping it. Apocalypse arrives fairly well-developed, being centuries old and wanting mutants to kill mutants so that the strongest will remain. Our final battle sees Michael kill himself rather than allow the Alliance and Apocalypse continued access to his power.

We don't know very much about Apocalypse, but he makes an instant impression in a way that immediately marks him out as an Important Villain. This (thanks Louise!) is X-Factor's first slam-dunk.