X-Factor: Fall of the Mutants

I was surprised by how much I enjoyed the first volume of Essential X-Factor. It was full of the personal drama and character turmoil that made Claremont’s X-Men a compulsively readable series. However, after finishing the X-Factor segment of Fall of the Mutants, I’m decidedly disappointed with the direction of the series. There are some glimmers of hope, but right now, it’s at a very weak place.

For X-Men, Fall of the Mutants was the glorious climax of Claremont’s run, a reaffirmation of the series’ central themes and a perfect finale to the story Claremont had started telling way back in X-Men #94. It was full of really emotional moments and incredible tension, some of the best writing of his entire run. However, over in X-Factor we’ve got essentially one long, near impossible to follow action sequence tracing X-Factor’s battle against Apocalypse and their former friend Warren, now reborn as Apocalypse’s Angel of Death.

The key to Claremont’s X-Men, and its stylistic children like Joss Whedon’s Buffy, was the use of action sequences to play out emotional drama. The characters’ lives are rarely threatened in a serious way, so we need to have emotional stakes to the drama. The rebirth of Angel was an attempt to do this, but it just doesn’t play in any meaningful way. One issue is the black and white reprints, which diminish the drama of his blue transition.

However, a bigger issue is the fact that the Angel we see here has virtually no connection with the Angel from earlier in the series. He doesn’t attack the characters on an emotional level, like Dark Phoenix, he is just a villain who happens to be the guy they used to know. At the end, they manage to turn Warren back to good, but it’s done in such an easy way, there’s no emotional price. Claremont knew you need to put the characters through hell to make their victories mean anything, here we get a bunch of action scenes, then X-Factor gets a ticker tape parade. It’s not earned, and as such, it feels false.

The major problem with the series is that of the core cast, only Scott and Jean are interesting character. Beast and Iceman remain essentially blank, and Beast’s declining intelligence plot is just forced drama. It never feels real. The kids are more entertaining than that bunch, but they’re absent for the entire crossover. The whole thing is essentially a real time action sequence spread out over three issues, with no breather. It’s in those moments between the battle that you get to know the characters, when you see the people on the edge, facing death, but committed to each other. That’s what I remember from the X-Men side of Fall of the Mutants, the characters coming to terms with the fact that they are going to have to sacrifice themselves. That was the emotional part, the battle itself was almost an anticlimax.

The strength of early X-Factor was in the exploration of Scott’s conflicted feelings about Jean’s return, using the awful writing of the first few issues as a jumping off point for exploring Scott’s character. That stuff worked great, as did the material with the kids. But, most of the adult team remains frustratingly unengaging, and screentime with Beast and Iceman feels wasted.

Another issue is Walt Simonson’s art. It’s not necessarily bad, but it just doesn’t feel suited for black and white reproduction. The clear lines of a Byrne or Kirby look great in this format, but the muddle of Simonson’s art can make it difficult to distinguish between characters and determine emotion. The writing doesn’t help, with a lot of off panel dialogue and awkward panel structures.

But, the end of Fall of the Mutants does point the way to something better, Inferno. Scott sets off to find Maddy, and Jean must once again deal with her conflicted feelings about her return. Inferno was a crazy, over the top and brilliant crossover that essentially ended the golden era of the X-Men by clearing the major lingering plotlines away. It looks like Inferno picks up at the end of this book, so I could be due for a reread shortly.

X-Factor: More Lies! More Guilt! More Betrayal! (#9-16)

After a very shaky start, X-Factor settles into a really nice groove in this run of issues, capturing much of the interpersonal and interspecies angst that made 80s X-Men into such a successful and beloved series. The book may be the Scott and Jean show, but that’s fine because they’re some of the most interesting characters in the X-Verse, and certainly have enough issues to carry a book.

The review title comes from the next issue teaser in issue 15, and it's as good a summary of these issues as anyone could come up with. I love the fact that they're promoting an action comic with the promise of more guilt. Only in the X-Men...

Issues 9-11 tie in with the Mutant Massacre, which also crosses over into Thor and Power Pack. I think the X-Men side of the crossover has more urgency. There, you get a greater sense of the damage done by the Marauders to the Morlock world, and you also get a heavier personal impact for the team. Of course, some of the impact here might be numbed by the fact that I’d already read the issues, back when I was passing through the X-Men run, so moments like Angel getting nailed to the wall didn’t have the impact they did on the first read.

I do like the line blurring ironies of having the team battling Freedom Force. By working with the US government, Freedom Force is trying to rehabilitate the reputation of mutants, show that they can work within the system. X-Factor is actually contributing to prejudice by fostering anti-mutant feeling, yet they also claim to be secretly helping mutants. It’s hard to sympathize with the X-Factor crew when they fight Freedom Force, since Mystique and her team are playing by the rules and doing good. It is only the old grudges carrying over, but they are now in a world that’s more complex than a simple good/bad dichotomy.

My favorite Freedom Force moment is when Rogue and Mystique fight together before she goes off to sacrifice herself during Fall of the Mutants, I always have a lot of sympathy for villains trying to go good, and not so much for what X-Facotr is doing here. Throughout the book, all the characters in X-Factor are struggling to return to the world they lived in when they were X-Men. They can’t deal with the fact that their former adversaries are now fighting for good, and Scott is trying to move back to a more naïve emotional place with Jean, forget about the troubled relationship he had with Maddie. They’re all living a fantasy, and that fantasy comes crashing down as the series moves forward.

A sequence that’s still striking in the end of issue 11, where the police gun down some Morlocks. It’s powerful because it’s played for realism. This is a crossover without easy resolution, it’s an awful event that will echo for a long time on.

The thing I really enjoyed about these issues is that we didn’t have any of the goofy villains who populated the first few issues of the book. Instead the focus is on interpersonal conflict between the team. There’s two major issues facing the team, one is Warren’s injury, the other is Scott and Jean’s relationship.

Warren has defined himself by his mutant identity, and the thought of losing that which makes him unique is too much to bear. The arc is well done, given enough issues that we can understand his descent into depression. I’d imagine his ‘death’ was more powerful when it originally happened, I know he’ll come back as a horsemen of Apocalypse, so I get no emotional charge from his loss. It’s not like the hints aren’t already there, but there’s a difference between thinking he might eventually return and knowing that he’ll back in a few issues for Fall of the Mutants.

The reason that the X-Factor book exists was to get Scott and Jean back together. At this point, Hank and Bobby don’t have much of a personality, and rarely get interesting material to work with. They’re just there to fill out the team, the core of the book is the troubles that Scott and Jean are facing.

I really liked Scott’s surreal journey to Alaska. Constantly hallucinating, he walks the border of sanity while searching for Madelyne. I like that he’s finally forced to deal with the consequences of walking out on his family. In some respects, I still feel like it’s not enough, but he suffers a lot of pain here, and I guess there’s only so much one man can go through.

This incarnation of Master Mold has a lot in common with the Sentinels that Morrison would use, feeding on whatever technology is available to rebuild themselves. It’s a great idea, and better than the original giant purple robot concept. Scott’s battle with him has the feel of a Shinya Tsukamoto film, a messy blend of mechanical and organic, emotion and blankness. It’s pretty epic, and ends with an appropriate lack of real resolution. Scott returns to New York and finds that his friend has killed himself in the interim. The man has gone through a lot, likely Louise Simonson recognizing the need to punish him for his actions in the first issue. The message, be responsible and don’t lie to your wife or all around you will die.

The stuff with the younger X-Factor team plays well as a lighter counterpoint to the heavy drama of the adults. This dynamic is a rare time when we see the X-Men actually teaching, another precursor to Morrison’s run. The final issue of the book, where Rusty and the young crew take Masque to the hospital, barely features the old X-Factor and still works, a testament to the character building of the younger team.

On the whole, I thoroughly enjoyed these final few issues. I love the universe and the characters, and this stuff is a prime era in their development. I’ll be on hiatus for a bit, reading The Invisibles, but after that I’ll return for Essential X-Factor Volume 2.

X-Factor 1-8

After reading the first few issues of Essential X-Factor, I was none too happy, but having gone deeper into the book, I'm starting to get into it. At issue eight, I'm on the cusp of the Mutant Massacre, the first in a run of three absoultely incredible X-Men crossovers. But, until issue eight, the book has very little to do with the actual X-Men, how did it do in making its own world?

I'll still contend that X-Factor 1 is one of the most nonsensical openings for a comic that I've read. The goal of the book was clearly to reasssemble the original X-Men, logic be damned. So, we wind up with Scott, the hero of the book, leaving his wife to kick things off. That's not a particularly heroic start. I covered that in the previous post, but even after that, there's more odd stuff. Scott is basically absolved from guilt in the following issue when he tries to call Maddy and finds out that she has gone missing.

Now, he certainly still suffers from guilt, but as readers, we can't really blame him for sticking around with Jean and the crew, he doesn't know where his wife is. Of course, he could always fly back to Alaska and investigate his house. He got on a plane minutes after hearing Jean was alive, but when he finds out that Madelyne is MIA, he just angsts about it. I suppose he feels that she doesn't want him, but it's an odd turn of events nonetheless. It would have been more powerful to have Scott go up there, find the house abandoned and maybe find a forged note from her. At this point, I believe she had been attacked by Sinister's Marauders and was lying in a coma somewhere in San Francisco, so it would have been a good chance to show more of Sinister's manipulations.

I think the major change that happens over the course of these issues is in the perspective of the writer, the major change coming when Louise Simonson takes over the book. In the first few issues, I got the impression we're supposed to support Scott's choice to leave his wife, and the major issue is how he will tell Jean about his marriage, presumably leading to them getting back together. As the issues go on, we get into more angsty territory, Jean knows something is awry, no one else wants to say anything, and the naivete she had early on gradually shifts into anger and discontent. By the end of issue eight, the book is filled with angst, and that's pretty much what X-Men is about.

But, first let's track back and consider more of the early issues. There's a ridiculous storyline involving a mutant named Tower, a chance to do goofy switching between the X-Factor and X-Terminator outfits. One of the things I liked about X-Men was the lack of secret identities, and having this charade doesn't really work. The point of X-Men is that they are forced into this role through their genetic mutations, not because they wanted to be heroes. They are fighting for their people, for their lives. In the best eras of the Claremont run, the team was on the run, not fighting bad guys, just struggling to survive.

Here, the X-Factor front gives them a different set of issues, and once we get past the stage where they unequivocally follow Hodge, it's actually pretty interesting. By working for X-Factor, they're actually helping mutants, but they're creating a culture of hate. I don't know if there's a direct real life equivalent, but it has relevance for minority struggles, the need to make sacrifices to get aid from the establishment. As time passes, they recognize the flaws in the strategy and I'd imagine the Mutant Massacre will put an end to the X-Factor front once and for all.

The early issues do have some notable developments. One is the de-furring of Beast. This is symptomatic of the book's tendency towards conservatism, they want to recreate the original status quo, and a human Beast is part of that. Obviously it didn't stick, though I'm not sure how Beast gets furred again. It seems like whenever the X writers don't have a plot they decide to either turn a character blue or make them regular again. This blue-ing trend will crop up again later in the book's run.

The first four issues or so just aren't very good. The dialogue is apalling and the character motivations make little sense. But, then things get more interesting. The issue with the heroin addict who had to use heroin to stop his power presented an interesting conundrum, and admirably refused to give an easy solution. He stuck with the heroin because it was the only option for him, even though it ended up killing him.

This storyline led us to the introduction of Apocalypse. We get some hints of his actual nature, but it's pretty vague. He's not the menace he would one day become, and his design looks pretty bad 80s. I'd still contend that X-Men is best when it sticks to a more realistic universe, but Apocalypse had some good moments, despite the inauspicious start.

One of the ongoing threads I've liked is the development of Artie and Rusty. Artie's mutated giant head and huge eyes make him an instantly sympathetic character, and you can't help but feel for him when he's running out to help Rusty wearing clothes that are much too big for him. Rusty is a classic angsty teen, but he works in the book, his presence always making the older X-Men aware of their own insensitivity and self absorption. Jean and Scott seem to alternate when it comes to taking out their issues on Rusty. It was good to see Rusty get a companion his own age when Skids shows up.

I'd only seen these ancillary X-Factor characters in their crossover appearances, and didn't think much of them. They didn't catch on big with the mainstream, but Rusty has some good stuff here and I'll be curious to see this younger branch of the Factor develop.

Issue eight is the best so far. This is the first real crossover with the events of X-Men, specifically the Central Park fight from issue 208. So, we get Freedom Force appearing here, in a twisty battle, with the good bad mutants of Freedom Force doing battle with the bad good mutants of X-Factor, but who's actually doing better work for mutantkind?

Concurrently, we get the Jean/Scott angst coming to a head. She won't forgive him for lying to her and that makes things awkward for the whole team. Having personal problems converge with the major evil threats is what makes X-Men great, and this looks like a good example. Everything is in chaos as we had into the big crossover.

The writing still isn't as good as Claremont, but this was such a fantastic time in X-Men history, it's good to relive it through a different lens by reading this book. Popular opinion holds that the Dark Phoenix saga was the height of the Claremont run, but that's just not true. For me, there were two highlights, one was the Paul Smith era, which featured acutely powerful depictions of personal emotional trauma. The other was the run from roughly 205 to Fall of the Mutants, the era that has come to define the X-Men. This is when mutant/human conflict became the thematic center of the book, and the X-Men truly became outlaws, fighting for a world that hates and fears them.

I'm not sure what happens to X-Facotr at the same time, but I suppose I'll find out shortly. It's so good to be back in this universe, I love the characters, particularly at this point in their history. The X-Men universe is a vast mythology and I navigated much of it when I read the parent title, but X-Factor holds it own threads of the overall narrative and it's interesting to discover them firsthand.

I'm planning on picking up the second Essential X-Factor to read after I finish this, and I saw that Marvel put out TPBs of Claremont's New Mutants and Excalibur runs. After I finish that, I'm going to grab those and continue my journey through X-Men history. I suppose it's a journey that won't be done until I've read everything in the universe from Claremont's start to Claremont's end.

X-Factor and the Catastrophic Rebirth of Jean Grey

During my eight month readthrough Chris Claremont's original X-Men run, I bought Essential X-Factor. Now, I'd read some of the early X-Factor issues, and knew they weren't very good, but having so much new X-material at such a low price was too sweet an offer to resist. I didn't actually start reading the book until a couple of days ago, and it lives down to my expectations. Rarely have so many quality stories been rendered completely nonsensical in the service of setting up a book. Let us delve deeper.

The book begins with two issues that give us the retcon that allowed Jean Grey to return to life. Retconning is always tricky territory, for every William the bloody awful poet, a retcon that fit perfectly with what came before and brought a lot more depth to the character, you're going to get five nonsensical, story killing developments. Bringing Jean back was a bad idea from the start, the power of the Dark Phoenix, the reason it stands out so much in comic book history, was largely the ending, where a hero had to face up to the consequences of her actions, not just forget about them and do something new next month.

So, the retcon was destined to fail from the start, bringing Jean back, no matter what Marvel's party line would tell you, does numb a lot of the power of the original story. The primary theme of the Phoenix storyline is that power corrupts, infused with this cosmic spirit, Jean gradually loses touch with humanity and responsibility, she indulges in all her personal fantasies, with Jason Wyngarde, and then proceeds to treat the universe like a toy. Given such power, we see that anyone could give in to these impulses and become a monster. So, the Phoenix force is a neutral power, it takes its emotion from Jean. When that emotion is love, as in the initial crystal universe saving storyline, it can be a powerful force for good.

When she becomes corrupted however, the Phoenix force becomes too dangerous to exist. Jean herself is caught between the pleasure she gets from enacting her new power and the morality she held before. Her personality has been warped, but part of the original her is still in there, and she gains control for long enough to aim the laser at herself and die on the moon.

The retcon alters things so that the real Jean was locked in a cocoon under the ocean while the Phoenix moved around in an exact duplicate of her body. Now, they claim that the Phoenix was pure evil, but some of Jean's goodness fought through and caused the entity to destroy itself. This just makes no sense, why would the Phoenix fuse the M'Kraan Crystal and save the world if its nature was evil? And, it utterly invalidates the original story's point about the corruption of power, replacing it with the maudlin idea that Jean's goodness somehow shown through and forced the Phoenix to kill itself.

One of the problems with this ressurection of Jean is that she's not a particularly interesting character on her own. Like Scott, she has no edge, she's just someone who wants to do good. This is boring, Scott's most interesting time under Claremont was when he was getting into the relationship with Maddy Pryor. He knows he only likes her because she looks like Jean, but that doesn't stop him from going forward with the relationship. So, Scott at least has a little edge, Jean now returns to a boring, pre-developed state.

The major problem with X-Factor is that the original X-Men were generally boring characters. Claremont made X-Men the success it was, and he did so with his people, not these five. So, we've got a bunch of rather boring superheroes lumped onto a team with an absoultely ridiculous premise. The idea of them as undercover mutant hunters seems like it would only feed into prejudice, by making mutants seem devious and secretive. Now, I believe later in the series, they acknowledge that it was all a scheme by Cameron Hodge to undermine them, but at the time, it was clearly meant to be seen as a good thing. It is weird to see Cameron Hodge here, with a human body, not a giant spider thing.

The Jean rebirth was pretty poorly handled, but I think the greater crime of X-Factor #1 is what it does to Scott and Maddy's relationship. What happens here is that Scott finds out Jean is alive, promptly leaves his wife and son without any explanation and apparently has no plans to return to them, instead returning to superheroics. Now, there are some hints that Scott is uneasy about what he's doing to Madelyn, but the fact that he leaves his wife in that manner is pretty much unforgivable.

The book tries to makes us believe that it makes more sense for him to lead this team because he can do more good than he can as a husband, but that just doesn't click. He could be a superhero, and still have his wife and child with him, the real reason he goes to New York and joins the team is because he's still in love with Jean. There's something a bit creepy about Scott, who's been through so much, trying to restart a relationship with Jean, who's living in such a different world than him. I know the passage of time is screwy in the comics world, but emotionally, Scott has grown so much, beyond the sort of childish love that he and Jean once had. He may be able to have a relationship with her in the future, but it's wrong to try to be with her right out of the cocoon.

If you're positioning Scott as the hero of the book, it's a critical mistake to make him such a bastard right from the start. Now, I always have been a huge fan of Madelyn, her story is so sad, she'll always be second best to Jean in Scott's eyes. One of the best moments in Claremont's entire run is during Fall of the Mutants, right before Maddy is going to sacrifice herself to save the world, she tells Scott she still loves him. She took all the awfulness that was heaped on her, and still was ready to let herself die in service of a cause. What happened to her afterwards, in Inferno, was all justification to get Scott and Jean together without guilt.

Reading X-Factor, and the two other issues, made me appreciate just how far ahead of everyone else Claremont was. His emphasis on character growth and continual evolution was unlike anyone else, and a stark contrast to the conservatism inherent in the premise of X-Factor. His run on X-Men is one of the great achievements in serial storytelling, no matter how much Marvel screws with it through retcons like this.