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Aug 24

All-New X-Factor vol 2 – “Change of Decay”

Posted on Sunday, August 24, 2014 by Paul in x-axis

Most of the stories we’ve looked at lately have been reasonably self-contained, even if lengthy.  All-New X-Factor operates rather differently.  Peter David works more in the soap opera style of team book that dominated the 80s and 90s, where the focus isn’t on having a single overall plot, so much as on getting a whole bunch of plates spinning, and then checking in on them from time to time.

And thus far, David has been largely devoting his time to getting the plates spinning.  Where volume 1 gathered the team, volume 2 spends most of its six issues on introducing Georgia Dakei and her family, as well as setting up a few plot points to be returned to in future, before finally unveiling the corporate X-Factor to the public in a press conference in issue #12.

Georgia’s arc is a complete story to a degree – it makes a natural break point for the collections, and the immediate problem get resolves – but it’s still meant to work mainly on the level of setting up the character for future use.  And so a lot turns on how much faith you have in the character panning out; depending on your answer to that, this is either a story that sets up plenty of future paths for exploration, or a bit of an unfocussed mess.

When Georgia is first introduced, she’s the daughter of novelist Scott Dakei, a rabid anti-mutant zealot who lives in a fortified bunker but whose novels are apparently completely inoffensive adventure fare.  In other words, he’s a transparently obvious stand-in for Orson Scott Card, and at first glance the story seems to be heading in the direction of discussing how far his opinions should be seen as contaminating his work.  Georgia is being kept in the compound and has posted a video to the internet suggesting that she’d like out, so the team decide to go get her, a decision which is strongly implied to be motivated more by their distaste for her father than by any particular feeling that her circumstances really call for their intervention.  Again, this seems like interesting stuff, but the story seems to meander off in another direction.

Georgia, it seems, doesn’t really want to escape at all – she wants to be allowed out, not to run away, which is a perfectly understandable distinction.  She also turns out to be a mutant, which leads to assorted confusion before the team’s corporate sponsor Harrison Snow shows up to have a quiet conversation with her father that leads to him handing her over, for reasons explicitly left mysterious.

From there, we rapidly discover that Georgia is actually adopted, and when the team track down her biological mother, this draws the attention of her biological father – a super villain calling himself Memento Mori, who tries to claim her as an heir-cum-henchman.  More squabbling again ensues before the mother returns, revealing that she’s a mystic who’s actually responsible for the father’s powers, and both parents then get blown up in an explosion.

This is… a bit all over the place.  It’s the sort of thing that could well end up being drawn together quite well in a couple of years time, but as of right now, it rambles.  In the short term, the major problem is that there are some major glitches in Georgia’s set-up which, even if they’re deliberate, make her a difficult character to get a handle on, and thus to care about.  The issue #7 cliffhanger is Georgia using her powers to nearly kill Cypher, and being completely blasé about it as if she’s either a sociopath or simply doesn’t appreciate what she’s done.  This thread is then dropped like a stone about five pages into issue #8, after which the emphasis shifts to Georgia having been kept in the dark about the nature of the outside world.  This doesn’t really work either – she has access to post videos to the internet but she can’t read the news?  And the videos she’s been posting didn’t betray her fundamentally warped understanding of the outside world?  But nor does it offer any explanation for Georgia’s odd behaviour in the cliffhanger, which is simply never mentioned again.

So we have five issues devoted to the introduction of a character who winds up as a cipher with no agency, and this is hardly the most promising of focal points.  Broadly, the theme here seems to be unpleasant father figures, with Georgia having two thoroughly unhelpful patriarchs to deal with, and a suggestion that Quicksilver in particular identifies with her because he sees parallels with his own relationship with Magneto.  Issue #12 follows this up by flipping his role from father to son, as he reconciles with Luna after publicly accepting responsibility from some old stories that he’d previously attempted to retcon away.  But none of this seems to add up to any very clear angle on the subject.

You may wonder, also, what any of this has to do with the “corporate super-team” theme.  That certainly hasn’t been forgotten about.  Harrison Snow gets plenty of space to play the role of the untrustworthy funder, and to develop an odd subplot about his marriage, a relationship which seems to be along the lines of The New Statesman.  And of course he does something vaguely ominous with Georgia’s father.  The corporate theme also gets paralleled with Memento Mori, whose operation is shown to be corporate literally to the point of absurdity (his henchmen aren’t costumed thugs, but regular-looking security guards on Segways).

This side of the book is more successful, which makes it a bit disappointing that it plays second fiddle to the Georgia plot in these issues.  Rightly recognising that everyone will assume that Serval is an evil corporation, because they always are these days, David is instead slowly building the tension around what it is that makes them evil.  The art – which is largely solid, but a bit choppy panel to panel – consistently shows Serval headquarters surrounded by weirdly coloured clouds.  But at the same time, Snow has hired a bunch of actual superheroes and given them reasonably free rein.  A possible reading of all this is that Snow doesn’t actually have an evil plan as such; he just has such a horrendously mis-firing moral compass that he doesn’t realise he’s the bad guy, or is outright in denial about the sort of person he is.  I rather hope that’s where we’re going, since it’s a more interesting route than “Serval wants to conquer the world”, and a more intriguing commentary on the internet giants on which Serval is obviously modelled.

As for the rest of the team… well, Quicksilver has multiple angles going on, Polaris has her “competent and in command – or is she?” deal, and Gambit gets drawn into the Snows’ marriage story.  I’m less convinced by the direction for Danger, Cypher and Warlock; we’re evidently doing a romance between the robots, but they’re both variations on “slightly at cross purposes with the world around them”, and I’m not convinced there’s space in the book for two characters like that.  And poor Cypher is already starting to run out of things to do.

So we have here a rather unfocussed six issues that don’t quite manage to pull together in the way that was presumably intended.  Nothing here necessarily causes problems for the book going forward, and with David clearly playing the long game, it’s entirely possible that we’ll look back on much of this in a couple of years time as patient set-up for a better story to come (though that still doesn’t explain why everyone forgets about Georgia’s fleeting lunacy in the issue #7 cliffhanger).  But at this stage, it’s not quite there.

 

Bring on the comments

  1. Michael says:

    For as much as I love Peter David’s writing, and his ability to take the castoffs and dregs of the mutant community and make them interesting, I’m really unsure about this run so far.

    Every time I think about dropping it, he gives us an issue like #12, where we see these glimmers of brilliance and character evolution and interaction, which convince me to stick around a bit longer.

    But as with his previous X-Factor runs (the government version and the Madrox version), it’s uneven and slow-burning. The art isn’t the best fit for the material–we really need someone who can properly convey characters like Danger and Warlock.

    We’ll see where this is going, but it’s sadly on my list of titles which may be dropped if it doesn’t even out soon.

  2. Chaos McKenzie says:

    I would have thought the expansion in Cypher’s powers would play more of a part in story with so many computer/alien elements.

  3. Tdubs says:

    I think this might be my favorite interpretation of Gambit I’ve read.

  4. Jamie says:

    George Takei? -_-

  5. halapeno says:

    Paul, you have Georgia’s surname spelled first as “Dakei” and then “Takei.” It’s not really Takei, is it? Georgia Takei? That seems very… Sulu.

  6. Team Zissou says:

    As sloppy as the plotting can be, for some reason this comic works for me as a package. The cover designs are so delightful and serve as pretty humorous teasers for what’s inside. The artwork definitely works for me as something that’s so fluid that it can’t even be contained within conventional lines. Even the bright colors and the frequent shipping of the book make it feel like a Saturday morning cartoon.

    I guess this niche that PAD has discovered of playing in the fringes of the X-Universe has really worked for me. The past 2 years of the previous incarnation got a little stale, but I still kept buying — almost out of habit. For me, the relaunch couldn’t have been better timed. As much as I want to see PAD write characters like Madrox and Rictor again, I’m much happier with him taking on new characters in his rehabilitation project. Danger, for example, serves as much better comic relief than I would have ever expected.

    Then again, there’s something about the way PAD writes characters like Madrox that I don’t want to see anyone else touch them — because I don’t think any other writer will invest as much. The first Madrox mini-series was a revelation in that regard. I’d always liked the character, but who knew his powers could be portrayed so creatively while his maturity was such an enjoyable mess?

  7. A Star Trek reference in a PAD book? No, surely not.

  8. Paul says:

    It’s Dakei – I’ll change it.

  9. halapeno says:

    “I think this might be my favorite interpretation of Gambit I’ve read”

    I’ve seen other readers make this comment. Doesn’t surprise me since this sort of thing is PAD’S forte. Though I haven’t read it myself, it strikes me as a better fit for Gambit. I didn’t care for him in the X-Men. I just never bought him as an idealist. Plus, given a choice between happy-go-lucky swashbuckler types, I’d rather have Nightcrawler.

  10. Niall says:

    On an issue to issue basis, I’m enjoying it.

    PAD is doing some strong work with some of the characters and there have been some really nice moments but the Georgia plotline doesn’t really seem worthwhile.

    Do we really need it?

  11. Jamie says:

    The problem with PAD is his books always lack direction. They’re just sorta of sitcommy episodes with slow-burn subplots that have no obvious endpoint in sight.

    The previous volume of X-Factor had this problem in spades. Ultimately it became embroiled in spiritual/supernatural themes about demons and devils and ghosts and werewolves and . . . who cares? Why is this happening in an X-Factor book?

  12. Omar Karindu says:

    The problem with PAD is his books always lack direction.

    This wasn’t always the case. His Hulk and Supergirl work had a sense of long-term planning and direction, which is why the latter wrapped up satisfyingly. (He was rather abruptly removed from the former, of course.)

    I’d go further and say that he usually has a good sense of where he wants to take the characters in ensemble books like X-Factor. The last volume did manage to tie up the character arcs convincingly enough, after all.

    But no, he doesn’t really seem to think in terms of a book’s central motif or overarching plotline the way he used to. His action/external conflict plots aren’t filled with holes or anything, but they’re usually just there to catalyze the character arcs and internal conflicts.

  13. Chris says:

    Why is Gambt naked?

    More crucially….. PAD likely stopped plotting the same way he did Hulk and Supergirl because he doesn’t want to risk what happened the first time with X-Factor and Incredible Hulk.

    One question and one speculation. To go.

  14. “Ze q’estion is…whay eihn’t YOU nekkid, hein?”

    //\Oo/\\

  15. halapeno says:

    I thought he left Hulk of his own volition. Was that not the case?

  16. Jamie says:

    Excuses, excuses.

    If he’s afraid a book will be canned midway through an ongoing plot or storyline, maybe he should write every story as if it would serve as the epitome for what the title is capable of, rather than all being discarded, uninteresting, meandering subplots.

  17. Omar Karindu says:

    I thought he left Hulk of his own volition. Was that not the case?

    No, ut wasn’t. The story seems to be that Marvel wanted the old-model “savage, childlike” Hulk that PAD had long since moved past. When he didn’t want to write that version, he was yanked from the book and Joe Casey was put on in his place. And then pretty much every writer until Paul Jenkins went with the Savage Hulk.

  18. Gareth says:

    It’s just a boring, bland, not-particularly-offensive-but-not-particularly-good comic. I really dont like the colouring. Everything seems so flat and lifeless. And Gambit is being written very well, but that’s because he’s being written as Jamie Madrox.

  19. Taibak says:

    So for those of you who’ve tried it, is the new X-Factor something you’d recommend to a fan of the previous series? Or, since I’m a trades buyer, should I just wait and see first?

  20. Chris says:

    how do you know I’m not?

  21. Chris says:

    Also Joe Casey essentially wrote the same kind of Hulk that Peter David did, only lower quality.

  22. wwk5d says:

    @Taibak

    So far, it’s not that bad, not as good as the previous X-factor, but still enjoyable. Assuming he focuses less on things like Georgia Dakei and her family, and more on the main characters…

  23. Lawrence says:

    Tempus is the Hope Summers of current X-men status quo. When time is ready to be fixed, she’ll have her big story and then float around until Peter David needs to round out his team for the newly relaunched Uncanny X-Factor.

  24. Lawrence says:

    Ugh. Wrong thread. This is what I get for posting at work!

  25. Robert says:

    I would probably read and enjoy the hell out of Uncanny X-Factor. I actually really like Tempus. She’s probably my favourite of the new recruits.

  26. Luis Dantas says:

    Seeing how Marvel’s current editorial style is inspired on the idea of a directed maelstrom that sucks all of the books to follow its course, it is hardly a surprise that PAD is not attempting to have an ultimate goal for this run. He might as well accept that such ways are no longer open for Marvel writers (even in the Ultimate books, apparently) and run with it.

    In essence, Marvel is now in constant Event mode, even when the books do not make a point of stating that explicitly.

    I will enthusiastically agree that this is by far the best use of Gambit I ever saw. That is such a low bar to set, but this is indeed a Gambit I do look forward to reading more of. Never happened before, and I don’t expect to say that again once PAD no longer is writing him.

    Come to think of it, Danger and Warlock are also interesting if underutilized. But the real star of this run so far is Quicksilver, particularly in the latest issue.

    I’m hoping for more of Georgia and Cypher, though. They’re awfully underutilized so far. Polaris has some interesting scenes but so far seems to be mostly on hold.

  27. bad johnny got out says:

    My favorite Gambit (previous to this) was where his Secondary Mutation™ was revealed to be “people love Gambit.”

    Perfect. Some people do have loads of charisma, for no discernable reason.

    I forget which unsung genius wrote that, but it was from some limited or short-running series back during the Bush administration.

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