X-Factor volume 8: Overtime


By Peter David, Valentine De Landro, Andrew Hennessey, Pat Davidson & various (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-0-7851-3837-2

Since its debut in 1982, X-Factor has been a splendidly effective umbrella title for many uniquely off-kilter iterations of Marvel’s mutant phenomena. Undoubtedly the most impressive and enduring assemblage was created by writer Peter David in 2006; mixing starkly violent suspense with cool detective mystery, laugh-out-loud comedy and fantastic Fights ‘n’ Tights action – and even slyly addressing social issues in a regular riot of superbly adult Costumed Drama.

The premise saw Jamie Madrox, the Multiple Man – veteran of a formerly government-sponsored (and controlled) team – appropriating the name for his own specialist metahuman private detective agency: X-Factor Investigations.

Setting up shop in the wake of “The Decimation”, which had reduced the world’s mutant population to a couple of hundred empowered individuals and millions of distressingly humanised (ex) Homo Superior, he and a perpetually fluctuating team set out to discover why and how it had happened…

What Happened Was: crossover event House of M saw reality overwritten when mutant Avenger Scarlet Witch had a mental breakdown, changing history and reality so that mutantkind out-competed base-line humans, driving “sapiens” to the brink of extinction.

It took every hero on Earth, a huge helping of luck and a strange little girl named Layla Miller to correct that situation, but in the aftermath, the abhorred inheritor species had been winnowed to less than 200 super-powered souls …

Madrox later expanded his brief to specialise in strange cases and metahuman mysteries, but spent an awful lot of unprofitable time dealing with the machinations of insidious menaces like the Karma Project and scheming immortal Damian Tryp…

This temporally-twisted tome collects X-Factor volume 3 #46-50 and X-Factor Special: Layla Miller (September 2009-December 2009), wrapping up a few long-running plot threads whilst answering some pertinent questions about the team’s most enigmatic member.

Madrox and Co. had relocated to scenic Detroit to avoid interference from old boss and Office of National Emergency bureaucrat Valerie Cooper but she and her Federal flunkies had pursued, and continued with attempts to put the team under government control.

Following the tragic loss of Madrox and TheresaRourke Cassidy‘s (AKA Siryn) baby, the multiple man went off the deep end and on a monolithic bender which might have ended in his suicide or murder, if not for somehow fully-grown Layla Miller who suddenly popped up to drag him into a furious future where humans and mutants were engaged in a vicious struggle for survival dubbed The Summers Rebellion.

The detective had been summoned by the formidable Ruby Summers and her elderly but still scary dad Cyclops to find out why key members of their mutant army kept winking out of existence, but for Madrox it just felt like being abused and exploited by a different bunch of supposed friends…

Abandoned in the present, Theresa took charge at X-Factor Investigations, assigning de-powered Julio Richter (AKA Rictor) and astoundingly attractive Longshot as bodyguards for frightened former-mutant Lenore Wilkinson who was having problems with a stalker.

However, as Guido “Strong Guy” Carosella, super-woman Monet St. Croix – AKA “M”Armando “Darwin” Muñoz and Shatterstar are subsequently called in to help protect the perpetually endangered Lenore, a new menace surfaces.

Psychic assassin Cortex is capable of dominating and warping even the most determined minds and before long the teammates are battling each other to the death even as, eighty years up-time, the nature of physical existence is failing and the embattled mutants are forced to consult a big brain to save everything else before they can save their species.

With few choices available Layla takes Madrox and Ruby to aged, senile Victor Von Doom who already knows quite a lot about their recurring reality problems, whilst in the past crafty, craven Cortex overextends himself trying to simultaneously mentally manipulate Shatterstar and Monet into killing their comrades.

Despite his diminished condition Doom knows the cause of the disappearances and tantalises his visitors with possible solutions to the a time-crisis, even as elsewhere, Future America’s Presidential Special Advisor Dr. Anthony Falcone ponders the expense of sending Cortex back to eradicate the ancestors of current Summers Rebellion mutants.

Somehow that simple covert task has morphed into pre-emptively dealing with X-Factor and the inexplicably pivotal Madrox…

Falcone’s ill timed and ill-advised intervention distracts his technologically-augmented chronal killer just as he is completing the mission, giving Shatterstar an opportunity to shrug off Cortex’s mind-lock and save the day…

Scripted throughout by David and illustrated by Valentine De Landro & Pat Davidson, the adventure continues with ‘X-It Strategies’ as the President loses confidence in Falcone’s plan to end America’s Mutant problem and tries to remove his now-unnecessary stooge.

The anti-mutant fanatic has been long-prepared for such a move and activates a contingency plan, taking personal control of the nation’s vast army of Sentinels, whilst in The Now Cortex regains the advantage, using his psychic slave Monet to press his attack.

In the future Doom discloses how he built the device used to alter history and gave it to Falcone, also letting slip that he has had a decades-long relationship with Layla, but the revelation is quickly sidelined when a trio of Omeganoid Sentinels blast in…

Cortex/M’s assault founders in old Detroit when Siryn arrives, but the spirited resistance falters when Sentinels materialise and – as per their programming – attack all the mutants in front of them…

In the future Madrox is experiencing relief and horror in equal amounts. They have just been saved by Ruby’s boyfriend Trevor Fitzroy whose portal-power has sent the trio of murderous mechanoids who knows where. Until this moment the Multiple Man only knew the charmingly cocky teen as a malevolent and rapacious – adult – evil mutant vampire who tried to destroy the X-Men numerous times…

Whilst Falcone uses battalions of Sentinel to secure his own ascension, in the past three that he no longer controls are blasting every mutant in sight. Unable to complete his mission in the growing chaos, Cortex is jumped by the miraculously lucky Longshot and their battle gives Monet the chance to forever throw off his technoid infection and influence…

Enraged beyond endurance she smashes into the killer and discovers he’s Madrox in a hoodie…

With the fabric of time unravelling ‘The Cortex Equation’ reveals a few secrets as the old enemy behind so many of Jamie’s problems is shown to be the power behind Falcone even as demented old Doom has a surprising confrontation with Cyclops.

In the present Siryn and Monet are still battling the apparently unbeatable Cortex who is exposed as one of Jamie’s “dupes”.

Madrox’s duplicates are autonomous facsimiles of him. Often displaying one particular aspect of his emotional makeup they can live their own lives for years until he touches them and they are reabsorbed – whether he or they want to. Being self-aware, some abscond, never wanting to come back and “die”. This one went to the future and fell into the hand of a truly evil genius…

Beaten but seemingly unkillable, Cortex teleports away from the furious women and goes after original target Lenore, but is interrupted by Darwin and the late arriving Guido, Rictor and Shatterstar who have just experienced a most elucidating (and sophisticatedly hilarious) road trip which encompassed angry priests, love-sick suicides, and some frank revelations about gender – and species – orientations.

After such a journey, they’re in the mood for some palate-cleansing violence…

Eighty years from then in Philadelphia, Falcone’s Sentinel brigade is ravaging the population – mutant and otherwise. When the Summers’ Army counterattack they are greeted as heroes by humanity.

However, even decrepit and out of his mind Doom is still Doom, and he betrays the alliance, plucking Cortex back to the future, overriding his command systems and ordering him to “kill all the mutants”…

X-Factor #50 (with additional art by Craig Yeung) spectacularly wraps up everything as Falcone and his sinister sponsor track Cortex and despatch Sentinels to wipe out the despised Homo Superior. They might not have time, though, as Doom’s new puppet is wreaking havoc amongst the mutant warriors.

First to die is Fitzroy, and the situation worsens when Doom takes control of Cyclops too…

Cortex meanwhile is stalking the apparently ineffectual Layla, but she takes off when Jamie appears for a final confrontation with his rogue appendage…

Distraught Ruby pleads with Layla to use her real power, and after much deliberation – and to save the time line – she finally acquiesces.

Although everyone thinks she’s some kind of prescient or precog, Miller’s actual mutant power is to raise the dead. It doesn’t matter much when she reanimates cats or butterflies, since nobody really notices when they come back without soul or conscience, but when someone like Fitzroy is resurrected as a being of selfish evil all humanity might suffer…

At that moment the Sentinels arrive and terrifyingly merge into one colossal unit designed to carry out Falcone’s long-planned mutant extinction. With everybody dying Fitzroy fatally drains Cortex and uses the stolen energies to open a portal sending the amalgamated Armageddon-Sentinel to where it can do the most harm…

In the shell-shocked aftermath Madrox and Layla use Doom’s time machine to rejoin X-Factor in the present, sensibly leaving the future to fend for itself.

A little later she tracks down her younger self and reveals just how the enigmatic young lady learned how to “know stuff”, starting the cycle again, for the first time…

Although intricate, action-packed, beguiling, cathartic and immensely enjoyable, X-Factor: Overtime is utterly impenetrable on its own and if you read it (and you really should) make sure it’s in conjunction with its immediate predecessor X-Factor: Time and a Half.

This supremely entertaining Fights ‘n’ Tights delight also includes the chillingly effective X-Factor Special: Layla Miller, which covers the beginning of the Summers Rebellion in that turbulent tomorrow, where a mute girl named Layla escapes from a mutant “Containment Centre” to link up with fugitive Homo Superior and begin the toppling of an oppressive totalitarian American in the powerfully evocative ‘Stuff Happens’ by David, De Landro, Andrew Hennessy & Davidson.

Augmented by a covers-&-variants gallery by David Yardin, Nathan Fairbairn, Paolo Raimondi, Brian Reber and Boo Cook, this volume is complex, compelling, compulsive and supremely funny in a way most adult comics just aren’t. X-Factor is a splendid example of mature Costume Dramas for everyone who needs wit to underpin their superhero soap opera shenanigans.
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