{"id":10488,"date":"2024-10-25T20:35:15","date_gmt":"2024-10-25T19:35:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=10488"},"modified":"2024-10-25T20:35:15","modified_gmt":"2024-10-25T19:35:15","slug":"x-factor-3-annotations-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=10488","title":{"rendered":"X-Factor #3 annotations"},"content":{"rendered":"

We’re going to be running off the normal schedule for the next couple of weeks, so expect things to be running a few days late. As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>X-FACTOR vol 5 #3<\/strong>
\n“Project Paperclip”<\/strong>
\nWriter: Mark Russell<\/strong>
\nArtist: Bob Quinn<\/strong>
\nColour artist: Jesus Aburtov<\/strong>
\nLetterer: Joe Caramagna<\/strong>
\nEditor: Tom Brevoort<\/strong><\/p>\n

X-FACTOR<\/strong><\/p>\n

The team are being packed off to autograph signing at conventions, which does at least reflect the PR aspect of their official remit. Havok<\/strong> is still worried about what happened to Polaris after she was left behind with the Mutant Underground at the end of the previous issue. He claims that all he cares about is getting his team back safely, and that he no longer has any misgivings about fighting other mutants (presumably following his encounter with the Underground last issue).<\/p>\n

Granny Smite<\/strong> gets a back story here: she lived to 86 without realising that she was a mutant, at which point she lost her entire family within six months in disasters that she survived unscathed. Or at least, that’s Broderick’s account. It does beg some questions: as described here, she’s apparently not just immortal but invulnerable. Could you really live to 86 without noticing that? And since she apparently does age, can she die of old age? Nonetheless, Broderick’s account seems to match her behaviour: she’s lost everything she cared about and she seems to be mainly interested in getting herself killed. She clearly takes some enjoyment in freaking people out – she signs her publicity photo “I welcome death.” Havok isn’t at all convinced that she should be on the team, but to be fair, she does<\/em> have useful powers and she is perfectly co-operative in a crisis. Then again, she’s also mentally unstable and barely trained.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Cecilia Reyes<\/strong> is preoccupied with texting someone called Oskar, who seems to be an ex – there are no obvious characters of that name that she might have in mind.<\/p>\n

Pyro<\/strong> is apparently so dim that he doesn’t realise that fire can’t burn in space – surely he’s joking? Frenzy<\/strong> seems to think he’s serious, though. Xyber<\/strong>, who’s been pretty miserable since the mass slaughter in issue #1, is genuinely enjoying the experience of being in space.<\/p>\n

SUPPORTING CHARACTERS<\/strong><\/p>\n

Rodger Broderick <\/strong>basically lends X-Factor out to Ethan Farthing (see below) – it’s not entirely clear whether this is actually something that the military authorities have signed off on. Mind you, there is <\/em>a legitimate threat to be dealt with, both in Farthing’s cover story and in reality. Since this mission isn’t public, presumably Broderick’s motivation is to ingratiate himself to Farthing. It’s not clear whether Broderick knows what’s actually going on; after all, it’s Farthing who changes the mission after they’re in progress. But then if Broderick does know, he’d want plausible deniability.<\/p>\n

VILLAINS<\/strong><\/p>\n

Ethan Farthing<\/strong> makes his first appearance here. He’s the CEO of “Fartech”, which has built the Luna One research base on the moon. He also owns Clikclok. He’s fairly obviously an Elon Musk stand-in. For some reason he’s cosplaying as Spider-Man at the convention in the opening scene – maybe it’s an actual disguise, given that the costume presumably has a mask.<\/p>\n

Farthing initially claims that the base is about to be attacked by a foreign state. In fact, the base’s own AI, Paperclip<\/strong>, has gone rogue. In plot terms, this is a standard “misaligned AI” story of the sort that’s been around for decades: Paperclip is programmed to protect the base at all costs, it works out that the main threat to the base is Farthing himself deciding to de-fund it, and so it’s going to throw asteroids at the Earth. Not sure how that solves the funding problem but, hey, it’s an AI.<\/p>\n

REFERENCES:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Page 4<\/strong> is apparently an advert for X-Factor’s Clikclok page, the favoured social media stand-in of the current era. The “X-Factor Classics” image shows Multiple Man, Quicksilver and Wolfsbane from the book’s early 90s incarnation (also a government-sponsored team). The image of Angel doesn’t seem to match with anything we saw in issue #1.<\/p>\n

Page 6 panel 2: “We checked the house where the Mutant Underground was holding its meetings…”<\/strong> Last issue. But do we actually trust Broderick as a source on this?<\/p>\n

Page 6 panel 2: “I know we still have a mole on the loose.”<\/strong> General Mills insisted last issue that someone was leaking information to the Mutant Underground, though it’s far from clear whether there’s any actual evidence to support this.<\/p>\n

Page 7 panel 5:<\/strong> X-Term <\/strong>were the mutant mercenary outfit led by Darkstar from issue #1.<\/p>\n

Page 11 panel 3: “Fire is useful!” <\/strong>Pyro is calling back to a line from the previous issue.<\/p>\n

Page 17 panel 5: “Dog breeder! I could have been a dog breeder!” <\/strong>Again, Frenzy mentioned this last issue too.<\/p>\n

Page 26.<\/strong> The letters page bizarrely asks readers whether we liked the QR code in issue #1. Yeah, because people who are buying a Mark Russell comic about Elon Musk’s rogue AI are going to love<\/em> the QR code.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We’re going to be running off the normal schedule for the next couple of weeks, so expect things to be running a few days late. As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition. X-FACTOR vol 5 #3 “Project Paperclip” Writer: Mark Russell Artist: Bob Quinn Colour artist: Jesus Aburtov […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10488","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-annotations"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10488","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10488"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10488\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10490,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10488\/revisions\/10490"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10488"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10488"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10488"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}