X-perience the X-Factor

For whatever reason, X-Factor never performed as well as the other X titles. X-Factor showcased a lot of talent in its day and even had the distinction of being the only (to my knowledge) title on which husband and wife, Louise and Walt Simonson, worked as a team.

Part of the problem back then is that X-Factor was comprised of the original X-Men and Uncanny X-Men was the hottest title on the planet (regardless of the universe in which it resided). Claremont did not write X-Factor and I'm sure everything X-related had to go through him (well, his editors). Similar to the whole late-night talk shows guest list situation, it was something of a power struggle; Uncanny was sure to get the better storylines, villains, and so on. I don't know that this happened that way, but that is how it's done, so I figure it's a safe assumption. Whether or not this was to blame, X-Factor never came into its own. It came close under the Simonsons' reign, but still fell just short - but not for lack of trying.

A major part of the Mutant Massacre mega-crossover, they "killed" Angel and turned him into Arcangel to stay in-step with the dark vigilantism of all the other comics superheroes of the late 1980s and 1990s. They collected some mutant "members" (the mutants they "rescued") who dressed like Indiesin models and had their own misadventures (am I the only one who remembers Boom Boom?). Nothing really worked.

The entire premise of X-Factor was stale to start with: The original X-Men working as a sort of private investigation and police force, hunting down mutants and teaching them how to use their powers. Obviously, they were doing what Professor X had done for them... before they died. Yes, pretty much all of the members of X-Factor, all of whom were the original X-Men, were either (at that point in continuity, in one of the universes) dead or assumed dead and no one knew they weren't. Except that X-Factor was all over the news, plastered on the sides of city buses, rounding the talk show circuit... I mean, if you had eyes or ears in the late 1980's Marvel Universe, you had heard about X-Factor.

Yet no one figured it out. Hell, no one even questioned it!

Like Clark Kent's magical glasses, a bunch of dead people with powers similar to the original X-Men were on the news, discussing the threat mutantkind posed to humanity, and how you needed to call them so they could hunt the mutants down and put them somewhere they could do no harm. And though everyone was against the Mutant Registration Act and all the people who supported it, yaddayadda, none of them bothered to investigate X-Factor. I mean, here's a team of mutants, talking about hunting down other mutants and imprisoning them (as far as anyone else knew), and none of the teams who actively campaign against such even brought-up their name!

Finally, in Uncanny X-Men 215, Wolvie picked-up Jean Grey's scent. Mind you, X-Factor was all over the Morlocks' tunnels during the Mutant Massacre and all over the news, condemning the actions of the killers, etc. - you know, like 20' to either side of them, but the X-Men never even thought to wonder about them...

Worst of all, when the X-Men finally did learn who X-Factor was, it was like, "Feh." I mean, the X-Men basically shrugged collectively and that was the end of it! Marvel was keeping them all separate so they could run more of those mega-mutant crossover events (every summer for 4-5 years) without having to deal with niggling details like continuity or previous history.

Now Peter David's writing the title - easily one of the better writers in Comicdom - and the same problems seem to be hounding it. The truth is that the characters are just plain, old-fashioned boring. The whole thing is too familiar, to boot; X-Factor is interchangeable with at least 2340297894 other comic book teams and they have never established themselves as anything different.

Marvel says #45 is the jumping-on issue. As a recovered X-fanboy, I'd like to see the title do well - heck, I'd love for it to do well, so I'd have something decent to read! - but I'm just not sure X-Factor will ever take off.

X-Factor #45 is on stands today.

© C Harris Lynn, 2009