By Peter David, Valentine De Landro, Marco Santucci & various (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-0-7851-3836-5
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. Perhaps the most impressive and enduring was created by writer Peter David in 2006; mixing starkly violent suspense with cool detective mystery, laugh-out-loud comedy, fantastic Fights ‘n’ Tights action and even slyly addressing social issues in a regular riot of superbly adult Costumed Drama.
The abiding premise saw Jamie Madrox, the Multiple Man and veteran of the 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 his perpetually fluctuating team began by trying to discover why and how it had happened…
What We Already Knew: 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, droving “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 …
This temporally-twisted tome collects X-Factor volume 3 #39-45 (April-October 2009) and opens with the long awaited birth of Jamie and Theresa “Siryn†Cassidy‘s child: the result of a drunken debauch both barely recall and are deeply ashamed of…
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 in a tense confrontation with the mum-to-be and former mutant Julio Richter (AKA Rictor) shots had been fired.
Cooper was wounded but Theresa trumped that by going into labour…
Scripted throughout by David, the adventure continues with ‘Multiple Birth’ – illustrated by Valentine De Landro & Craig Yeung – as Jaime joins still-a-mutant Theresa in the hospital just in time for her contractions to trigger her shattering sonic scream…
Following a difficult birth via C-section, everything seems under control and Madrox takes time to visit Cooper, fitfully recuperating after being shot by her own guards. He’s almost forgiven her for threatening to impound the baby when it was born…
Heading back to Theresa and his new son Sean Madrox is utterly unaware of what horror and tragedy are… until he picks up his boy and is helpless to prevent the infant from being reabsorbed into his body.
The baby is gone: never more than the progeny of one of his body duplicates.
Shocked, reeling and feeling like he’s eaten his baby, Jamie barely registers the beating the hysterical Theresa delivers before collapsing…
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 they want to be or not.
Being self-aware, some abscond, never wanting to come back and “dieâ€.
Such a one became priest John Maddox and ‘Slings and Arrows’ (inked by Pat Davidson) opens with him acting as a negotiator in a tense convenience store hostage situation. Unfortunately, one of the captives is a bearded, bedraggled and utterly broken Jaime Madrox who defuses the scenario in a most unlikely manner before stalking the priest home to the wife and kids. In a terse and despondent conversation the Multiple Man ponders how a shallow facsimile can excel at everything his progenitor sucks at before telling Maddox of how another “Dupe†and little Layla Miller disappeared into a hostile future… and only the copy ever returned.
He knows all it about only because when he reabsorbed the clone, he took on all its memories… as well as the disturbing “M†eye-brand that denotes being a mutant in that sorry tomorrow…
Madrox’s real reason for the confessional confrontation comes with a warning that Maddox’s kids might not be all they seem. After wearily incapacitating the priest who mastered living better than he, Jamie puts a gun to his own tired, tortured head…
He is only saved by a nun walking in and telling him he’s not going to die.
She might be a grown woman now, but Layla Miller still “knows stuffâ€: after all, isn’t it her mutant power?
The time-bending madness resumes in ‘Back and There Again’ (De Landro, Marco Santucci, Davidson) as the happy reunion stalls when Jamie realises she’s just a projection asking him to rejoin him the future. Reluctantly he agrees, completely missing the gun-toting goon creeping up on him…
Elsewhere, brittle Theresa takes over at X-Factor Investigations, taking on a stalking case for frightened ex-mutant Lenore Wilkinson. She’s convinced someone is trying to kill her and delighted that de-powered “Rictor†and especially the astoundingly attractive Longshot are going to be watching over her…
Back at the church the thug has opened fire on Jamie, but when the detective turns the table on his would-be killer the assassin ends himself whilst uttering the word “cortexâ€â€¦
Next thing Jamie knows, it’s the future and a colossal Sentinel is trying to kill both him and Layla…
In the now and all at sea, Guido “Strong Guy†Carosella, super-woman Monet St. Croix – AKA “M†– and new recruit Armando Muñoz or Darwin are enjoying themselves chasing down operatives of the Karma Project; a gang of science renegades who captured and experimented on the ever-evolving latter mutant.
Back in the future though there’s no fun to be found when Jamie meets Ruby Summers and finds himself neck-deep in another war against Homo Superior…
De Landro, Santucci, Davidson, Patrick Piazzalunga & Yeung all pitch in to illustrate #42 as Lenore makes a move on the naive and credulous Longshot whilst Guido and Rictor go looking for Jamie but find John Maddox instead…
Eighty years later the object of their search is coming to terms with the new normal as Ruby and Layla explain what “The Summers Rebellion†is and how he can help them not lose it, even as more death-laden Sentinels scream into the attack…
In old Detroit Val Cooper finally gets her meeting with Theresa as future mutants Hecat’e and Daemon overcome the artificial assassins attacking Jamie, whilst the real trans-time menace is making his move against Longshot and Lenore…
‘Timely Events’ finds Darwin stumbling into a hit on Lenore, helping save the victim from being killed by her own mind-controlled mother, whilst in the future Madrox is reunited with elderly mutant legend Scott Summers.
Somehow the doom-drenched Cyclops has survived every grim trial and tribulation, fathered generations of kids and is even now still fighting for his embattled species. Things don’t look so rosy in the past however as Guido and Rictor are stonewalled in their search for Jamie, and increasingly strange events are occurring around Darwin, Longshot and Lenore…
Madrox knows nothing about any of it: he’s helplessly falling for and sucking face with the aggravatingly annoying Layla in a world that makes less and less sense every minute. For a start the always dismissive Scott trusts him to be a detective and discover how and why people are disappearing and rematerialising with no memory of the act, whilst simultaneously blaming the temporally shanghaied Jamie for making the future the way it is…
In a Detroit hospital the guys have called in Monet to scan the mind of Lenore’s comatose mum but the procedure goes terribly wrong when M herself is taken over. Attacking Longshot and Darwin she utters the name “Cortexâ€â€¦
Back at the church Rictor and Guido are similarly inconvenienced when team mate Shatterstar tries to kill them, incoherently mumbling the same word…
‘Dirty, Sexy Monet’ opens in the future where Jamie and Layla’s relationship deepens and the detective suggests a possible solution Cyclops doesn’t want to hear, whereas in the then-and-now M apparently regains her senses and loses her morals.
As the future mutants reluctantly follow Madrox’s advice and consult a super-genius, in the past M is back to normal-ish but incomprehensibly choosing to dress like a tart as she sensibly transfers the embattled XF guys and terrified Lenore to a safe house. Once there, however, she plies the client with booze until she conks out before making a flagrant pass at wide-eyed innocent Darwin…
Only when Monet strips off to reveal a body totally infected by technoid mechanisms does he realise that Cortex never really lost control of her…
This emphatically, wonderfully bewildering collection concludes with a bang as – in the world that’s coming – Madrox, Layla and Ruby consult the aged and senile Victor Von Doom about their recurring reality problems, whilst in the past crafty, craven Cortex overextends himself simultaneously mentally manipulating Shatterstar and Monet to kill their comrades.
As Dr. Doom tantalises with possible solutions to the time-based crisis brewing, Future America’s President ponders the cost of sending Cortex back to pre-emptively deal with X-Factor and foolishly intervenes before the chronal killer can complete his mission, giving Shatterstar an opportunity to shrug off the mind-control and prove his loyalty to his team mates in a most unconventional, if not shocking, manner…
To Be Continued…
Complex, compelling, compulsive and always maturely hilarious in a way most adult comics just aren’t, X-Factor is a splendid example of Fights ‘n’ Tights fantasy for everyone who needs wit to underpin their superhero soap opera shenanigans, and this volume also includes a cover gallery by Mike McKone, David Yardin & & Nathan Fairbairn and a selection of Shatterstar design sketches by Valentine De Landro.
© 2009 Marvel Characters, Inc. All Rights Reserved.