Your favorite mutant just blew up in X-Factor #1

A new mutant arms race sweeps the globe. International governments are building their own mutant armies. But only America’s X-Factor has the most powerful, most patriotic, most marketable mutant heroes to stem the tide and make the world safe for democracy. Who will die? Who will fall in love? Who will be the first to sell out? Like, comment and subscribe to find out in X-Factor #1, written by Mark Russell, drawn by Bob Quinn, colored by Jesus Aburtov and lettered by Joe Caramagna.

Dan Grote: Austin, I just want to start by offering my condolences. This comic was the most action Rusty “Firefist” Collins has seen in damn near 30 years (excepting that one movie), and it’s already over.

Austin Gorton: Movie? What movie? I remember a movie with some kid who made fire named Rusty, but that wasn’t MY Firefist! 

Anyways, thanks, Dan. Sadly, it’s about par for the course for us Rusty fan(s). I did appreciate that Bob Quinn drew him with casual pants as part of his superhero costume, just like during his brief stint with the New Mutants. But since mutant resurrection is off the table now and we all know that, prior to the Krakoa era, comic book characters never, ever returned once they were killed on page, this means that Rusty and his fellow cannon fodder in this issue will never, ever be seen again. Thankfully, Rusty and the rest all died in service of setting up an exciting and creatively rich new series that is sure to pay dividends for years to come, right? 

Right?

Mark spots the X

Dan: Now, the reason I came down from my perch (bird joke!) to review this comic is that I am a Mark Russell mark. Austin, had you read much Russell prior to this?

Austin: Admittedly, I have not. I hung out with him once for the old Saved by the Bell podcast I co-hosted (he guested for the episode where Belding inappropriately uses his authority as a principle to make Zack date his teen niece) and read (and enjoyed!) his book God is Disappointed in You with cartoonist Shannon Wheeler (and keep meaning to go back to its follow-up, Apocrypha Now). But for whatever reason, I haven’t read a ton of his comic book stuff.

I am, however, an X-Factor mark, and that’s why *I’m* here.  

Dan: Oh, I also love X-Factor. They’re the team with jobs: Fake mutant hunters! Government stooges! Private investigators! Corporate troubleshooters! Krakoan medical examiners! Government stooges again! They’ve had more jobs than Barbie. Not to mention two of their current members look like Ken dolls.

But back to Russell. To a certain extent, you know what you’re going to get in a Mark Russell comic. He’s going to hold a mirror up to society. He’s going to explore how the flaws of capitalism seed its downfall but the people at the top escape consequences. He’s going to give you damaged protagonists doing their best to keep their head above water and people you can laugh at and feel sorry for in equal measure. And they’re all going to be doomed. 

It’s very much my shit, but the question is how Russell’s peanut butter blends with the X-Men’s chocolate. Marvel chose Russell for an X-Factor revival no doubt because they wanted “a Peter David-type” — someone who could do funny while also doing action and pathos, to grab those lapsed readers who remember the old days of Val Cooper yelling at Strong Guy and Multiple Man for their shenanigans. And while Quinn is a very different artist from Larry Stroman, he knows how to draw characters in search of a laugh. The million-dollar question is, of course, were they successful?

Austin: Not … really. 

Ironically, Quinn seems more adept at the action components and characterization than the gags throughout the issue. His action choreography gets a bit muddled during the big fight scene, but the sequence where Angel chucks Xyber out of the X-jet and then catches him is the sort of straightforward fist-pumping action you need to set up the contrast for when the mission blows up in their faces later. And Quinn has a knack for facial expressions, which is important in a book like this. But I wouldn’t say there’s anything visually funny on the level of, say, the semi-famous mayonnaise jar gag in the first issue of the David/Stroman X-Factor. 

Dan: I love the mayo jar gag. 

Russell’s voice is strong and tends to override any established character voice in most cases. It’s why DC gave him his own world to play in in Superman: The Space Age and Batman: Dark Age rather than the main line (again, one assumes), and why his best stuff is his indie comics (Second Coming, Billionaire Island) and the Big Two comics where folks can come in with no expectations and be blown away (The Flintstones, The Snagglepuss Chronicles).

Austin: I don’t know how much say Russell had in choosing his cast (Gail Simone’s editorial in the back of Uncanny X-Men #1 suggests she had carte blanche in choosing her cast for that book, but even if that’s 100% true we don’t know if that was the case for all these creators), but I wouldn’t be surprised if the reason Angel is the lead here has something to do with that. Of all the O5, Angel is the character with the least-distinct voice (at least when he’s not Archangel), which means that if Russell’s voice does take over, it’s less noticeable (Ditto with Havok, who, aside from a bit of “affable doofus” vibes of late, has a pretty nondescript voice). It’s definitely something to watch, especially if this book continues to be a sort of “Mutant Suicide Squad” where new members are cycled into the cast on the reg. 

Dan: And if that’s the MO and this cast doesn’t settle and congeal after the first couple issues, we’re likely going to be scratching our heads at how some of these mutants are being written given their histories. Por ejemplo, Feral never played well with others and only ever worked on murder squads. Frenzy was a mutant supremacist, even if writers have softened her edges over the years and made her more heroic. Cecilia Reyes never liked being a mutant in the public eye. And the villain of the issue, Darkstar, a relic of the 1980s era of glasnost where you could have more sympathetic Soviet characters, is suddenly Brigitte Nielsen in Rocky IV. Did any of these characters not come off like wrong-sounding Muppets to you?

Austin: I refuse to believe that former member of the Mutant Liberation Front Feral has never detonated plastic explosives before this. Or would feel compelled to join this team in the first place. Or be put off by boos. Which is to say, you’re spot on, Dan. For the most part, outside of Angel and maybe Havok, this feels like a cast picked at random. It’s not so much that Russell’s voice is overriding the characterization of established characters so much as the plot itself is.

Dan: It’s a rough swerve, going from an era where every mutant mattered to HAHA RUSTY BLEW UP AGAIN, STUPID RUSTY. And the thing is, Russell is more than capable of making you care about the losers before they lose. It’s the entire plot of Traveling to Mars. This comic didn’t care to do that. Maybe because it didn’t have the room, but still.

I do expect Xyber to continue to survive, because he is clearly there to be the young POV character we can track becoming disillusioned and eventually yell at Angel. And then never be seen again after the book ends and Russell leaves to make Second Coming 4: Jesus Strikes Back.

Blowed up real good

Dan: So much of the Krakoan era was about making sub-A-list mutants into Really Useful Engines: Goldballs, bringer of life! Exodus, chronicler of the deeds of the mutant messiah! Doug Ramsey, voice of the entire island and gentle lover of woman, robot and verdant biomass alike!

Now, even with 14 X-books rolling out over the next few months, we face a mass mutant unemployment crisis. True, some still get to be X-Men (X-Men, Uncanny X-Men). Some get to go back to school (NYX). But what about all the rest? The ones we shared beers with in the Green Lagoon and fist pumped when we saw them jump into the mouth of Amenth behind Scott and Jean during X of Swords and teared up just a little when we saw them emerge from an egg in Arbor Magna?

Well, apparently, this is the book where we get to watch them die tragicomically in service of a nation that very much tried to kill them just last week. In that regard, this book is less X-Factor, more X-Statix. Austin, how are we feeling about that?

Austin: Well, here’s my hot take: I’ve never been a big fan of X-Statix, and I like it even less here, when it’s being done with characters that have an established history and is not being drawn by Mike Allred. I swear, I’m not saying this just because Rusty Collins got axed in this book, but every character is somebody’s favorite and has stories to tell, and if you’re going to cynically kill off characters to make a point or say something, you’d better be saying something important or making your point in an engaging, exciting way, and this is doing neither. 

Dan: Alas, poor Cameo, we hardly knew ye. For all we know, you were Morph from X-Men ‘97.

The lead of this book is Angel, which right away is a red flag because that is no one’s favorite member of the O5. That said, in a Russell comic, you need a white, male richo with an Achilles’ heel who learns a lesson, so who else could it possibly be?

That said, it remains weird how much shine Warren has been getting lately given of all the O5 he got the least on Krakoa. He got a one-off Ann Nocenti story in Giant-Size X-Men in May and he got to yell dramatically at -[A]- like old times in last month’s Heir of Apocalypse. But given both of those very recent stories, which, if they were better stories would have given Angel an arc (See what I did there?), how did we suddenly get to a place where Warren can’t transform into his blue-and-purple Hulk anymore?

I mean, I know the answer is, “Keep reading, and all will be revealed,” but sometimes a time-skip trope is just a time-skip trope, y’know? It just makes those other stories look like the directionless filler they were, if they weren’t setting up characters for their next stories.

Austin: There’s also something to be said for time-skip fatigue (and new status quo fatigue). Every one of these series is dealing with a time skip and needs to set up a new status quo for the book right off the bat, with little in the way of a common backdrop to unify them. And we’re not even halfway through the launches yet.

Dan: So many solo series. So. Many. Solo series.

Toxic X’s

Dan: Now, if you want real X-Factor nostalgia, let’s check in on the most regressive aspect of this comic — Alex and Polaris (their chosen names) are back together and having really awkward conversations about mutant politics. Yikes on bikes, we’re coming dangerously close to a reprise of the “M-word” speech from Uncanny Avengers. Austin, how did you feel about seeing these two back together?

Austin: *sigh*

Look, these two have history together (romantically, and within the context of X-Factor). So including them here makes sense. And, to Russell’s credit, it seems like we’re meant to be on Polaris’ side of their political/sociological debate. I don’t think we’re meant to read Havok’s insistence on using his human name and playing along with the “system” in order to take it down from the inside as a good thing. By that point in the issue, Broderick is already well-established as a shifty guy with questionable motives who talks about controlling the IP of wars. So Havok wanting to throw in with that guy, however well-intentioned, is positioned as a net negative (and is perhaps also meant to serve as a proxy for why someone like Angel is going along with it as well). 

But the whole thing feels clumsy, and dated, and regressive, for the characters as well as the X-Men narrative on the whole (See also: the panel of a mutant and a human both yelling at X-Factor to go back to Krakoa. Both sides want the same thing but don’t realize it; isn’t that wild, y’all?!?). Plus, next issue’s cover has Polaris in full “Daughter of Magneto!” mode, so I dunno, maybe I’m still giving this too much credit. 

Dan: Polaris’ Krakoa arc treated her mental illness with such care, it’d be a shame to see her written back to being (Connor voice) Ca-RAAAA-zy, especially in service of Havok’s stupidity. But in a mutants-as-cannon-fodder book — and with Tommy the Hat’s heavy hand knocking mutants off the board from above — I’m not too confident we’re about to get the next great Polaris story.

Also, no slight to Alex Paknadel, another writer I trust, but I don’t have Marvel Unlimited and don’t intend to pay for it, and so it bothers me that I need to pay to read yet another comic hiding somewhere on the internet to find out how Alex and Polaris got back together and Alex isn’t a zombie anymore nor with Madelyne Pryor. Don’t do that to me, Marvel.

X-traneous Thoughts

• Of the five mutants on the Greg Land cover, two are on the original (to this comic) X-Factor lineup and the other three don’t join until the end, to replace the other mutants who died.
• Rodger Broderick is like many a Russell character, a smiling richo soon to get a heaping helping of aspirational petard-hoisting.
• I find his shock of black hair eminently distracting. 
• General Mills? Really? I mean I know the guy wrote a comic about a legally distinct character from Count Chocula (the Marquis de Cocoa), but if that were any more on the nose it would be blackheads.
• I want to know more about the mutant McCloud who stars in the X-Factor propaganda videos and reads Weather Magazine in his spare time. I also want to know why, with that name, he doesn’t wear opaque glasses, a plaid jacket and a T-shirt with a lightning bolt on it.
• McCloud is clearly the breakout star of this book. He’s the one they should be doing an Infinite comic about. 
• My headcanon is that the interviewer on the red carpet is Wesley Fillmore from AOL Blast in that one I Think You Should Leave sketch. This is why no one watches AOL Blast.
• Havok is starting to feel like that Simpsons bit about Homer getting dumber with each passing season.
• I get this is very much a me (Austin) thing, but I hate when parodies/satires use brand names that are meant to be legally distinct from the real thing but also clearly the real thing (e.g. here, the social media platform of note is “ClikClok” ie “TikTok”). Are we supposed to assume the MU has BOTH TikTok and ClikClok? Just make up a new fake social media site. Or use the real name of one. 
• I am begging this comic not to introduce a British X-Factor equivalent led by a certain hot-knife wielding mutant. Leave my son alone.
• If it does, he can hang out with Rusty.
• NO HE CAN’T, THERE’S NO WAITING ROOM ANYMORE, AUSTIN.

Buy X-Factor #1 here. (Disclaimer: As an Amazon Associate, ComicsXF may earn from qualifying purchases.)

Dan Grote

Dan Grote is the editor-in-chief of ComicsXF, having won the site by ritual combat. By day, he’s a newspaper editor, and by night, he’s … also an editor. He co-hosts The ComicsXF Interview Podcast with Matt Lazorwitz. He lives in New Jersey with his wife, two kids and two miniature dachshunds, and his third, fictional son, Peter Winston Wisdom.

Austin Gorton

Austin Gorton also reviews older issues of X-Men at the Real Gentlemen of Leisure website, co-hosts the A Very Special episode podcast, and likes Star Wars. He lives outside Minneapolis, where sometimes, it is not cold. Follow him on Twitter @AustinGorton