X-Factor #12

Written by Peter David

Art by Renato Arlem

Flashback Art by Roy Allen Martinez

Cover by Ryan Sook

 

A year through, three regular artists turned over, and a major crossover forced onto the book and Peter David has managed it all with aplomb and skill. He even talks in the letters page of wishing to keep the book’s storyline from being derailed by greedy pursuit of sales through Civil War crossovers. My opinion on his handling of that event was made quite clear in my last review (the short of it: I liked it).

 

X-Factor is formed with a former mutant on the team (Rictor), a little girl that is obviously a fragment of the Scarlet Witch’s consciousness (Layla), a leader who is revealed to NOT be a mutant but yet different, more ancient mutation of humanity (Jamie Madrox), and a side-character that is a former mutant but has gained powers from the same source as the Inhumans (Quicksilver). For an X-Book it certainly has a diverse quality to its cast that creates more depth and rich soil to be mined by David.

 

It has also maintained its noir/crime tones that it started with, something contrasts nicely with the superheroics. The point of the group’s forming was originally to solve the problem of the Decimation and reverse the event that de-powered all the mutants. To this end, we are told that both Tryp and Layla have been working to keep this from occurring. Tryp was intending simply to kill all the former mutants while Layla was obviously going for a more subtle approach by just directing X-Factor’s attention elsewhere.

 

Tryp is the head of a rival P.I. company called Singularity Investigations. He is also the same kind of alternate mutation as Jamie Madrox. Tryp has mutated into a creature that is able to travel to any point in his history thus creating the multiple Tryps that we know of. As far as Singularity Investigations goes, we can remove them from the equation because the ‘unpredictable’ dupe of Jamie’s blew both of the tangible and younger Tryps up, along with himself. This Jamie did so because he remembered that it was Tryp himself who killed his parents. The future Tryp is still alive yet he is like a ghost (not without powers however) and with his divination is able to be a force opposed to Layla.

 

Whatever took my loved Ryan Sook away from the book is to be only slightly mitigated by the work of Arlem. He keeps the style needed for the noir theme but he reuses drawings and panels (not just re-drawings for effect but literal ‘copy-paste’ techniques). Arlem may get bonus points for actually drawing a real gun for Tryp to use, it’s a Steyr-Aug in case you didn’t know (It’s in Counterstrike and mentioned by name in ‘Jackie Brown people). But I can’t abide seeing a picture of Layla, a bad one at that, being re-used for no other reason than laziness. Its because of the art that I’m giving it a seven rather than a higher grade like it should get.

 

The real power of the series has lain in its team interactions. As I said, the diverse cast and David’s immense writing skills allow the book to be deep with characterization and drama. This is a comic heads above its X-Book counterparts—the fantastical aspects of the story are only there to supplant and strength the character drama and theme of the book rather than being an end-in-itself. If only we could get a great artist to draw it regularly and we’d be set.

 

Rating - 7