{"id":10600,"date":"2024-12-12T17:16:08","date_gmt":"2024-12-12T17:16:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=10600"},"modified":"2024-12-12T17:16:08","modified_gmt":"2024-12-12T17:16:08","slug":"x-factor-5-annotations-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=10600","title":{"rendered":"X-Factor #5 annotations"},"content":{"rendered":"

As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>X-FACTOR vol 5 #5<\/strong>
\n“Prisoners of the Fun Room”<\/strong>
\nWriter: Mark Russell<\/strong>
\nArtist: Bob Quinn<\/strong>
\nColour artist: Jesus Aburtov<\/strong>
\nLetterer: Joe Caramagna<\/strong>
\nEditor: Darren Shan<\/strong><\/p>\n

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

Despite their underwhelming performance so far in the series, Havok, Pyro<\/strong> and Frenzy<\/strong> all draw the line at being asked to support the new Mutant Surveillaince Act (supposedly prompted by X-Term). They also object to having their phones searched in an attempt to find the X-Term informant, though to be honest, given their jobs, it seems pretty remarkable that this is only coming up now.<\/p>\n

At any rate, Pyro is so annoyed at this treatment that he unilaterally declares that the team are going to walk out, and threatens to fight the military. Havok tries to calm the situation, but moments later X-Term attack anyway.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Frenzy also turns out to have leaked the team’s location, presumably because she doesn’t trust these people either.<\/p>\n

Wintergeist<\/strong> appears as a member of the team again; he and Cecilia Reyes<\/strong> have been joyously reconciled after the previous issue. Unfortunately for him, Wintergeist is summarily killed by X-Term for betraying them by throwing him out of a helicopter. This seems an odd way of trying to kill a teleporter, but he’s barely conscious at the time, and we do see a body.<\/p>\n

Granny Smite<\/strong> and Xyber<\/strong> don’t come to Nevermor with the rest of the team, apparently because they’ve already been checked out and confirmed not to be the X-Term mole that General Mills has been worrying about. For plot purposes, that also serves to insulate them from what looks to be X-Factor either breaking with the government or coming very close to it – and also means that the version of X-Factor in this issue is heavily skewed to the more experienced and competent X-characters, not that it does them that much good.<\/p>\n

SUPPORTING CAST:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Rodger Broderick<\/strong> shows up for a briefing in this issue, but General Mills <\/strong>gets more of the spotlight for once. It turns out she wasn’t lying about the X-Term mole, but she’s also not as competent as she thinks she is, since her entire operation has failed to spot a rudimentary security flaw. She does at least acknowledge that she’s at fault here.<\/p>\n

Mills wants X-Factor to support a “Mutant Surveillance Act”, supposedly prompted by X-Term and intended to monitor extremist groups.<\/p>\n

Polaris<\/strong> is tipped off by Frenzy about X-Factor’s whereabouts, and shows up to rescue them from X-Term. Bruin <\/strong>from issue #2 is with her. When we last saw them, they were being held back by the Mutant Ungerground militia, but there’s no sign of those guys here. Polaris mentions having saved Bruin’s life. She’s also unsure about forgiving Havok’s lapse of judgment in going anywhere near this version of X-Factor.<\/p>\n

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

Darkstar<\/strong> continues to serve as the leader of X-Term<\/strong>, despite being traditionally a hero. She puts out an announcement that the group will retaliate for the attack on their base in issue #1, which is covered in the news as a threat to the public (not unreasonably).<\/p>\n

In fact, though X-Term just want to raid the secret US military base Nevermor and rescue McCloud<\/strong>. McCloud is the mutant we saw living in government custody in issue #1, seemingly quite happily. He turns out to have been the X-Term mole, having been in touch with them by email via the smart fridge in his room. McCloud seems genuinely surprised to be rescued. He seems to have a body made of knock-out gas which only dissipates when he’s asleep, meaning that he has to take sleeping pills to deliberately knock people out.<\/p>\n

Wintergeist suspects that McCloud’s rescue is actually an excuse to kill him in revenge for his betrayal, and he might well be right.<\/p>\n

Most of the X-Term members are generic uniformed soldiers, though one gets named as Phantasm<\/strong>; he seems to invisible or at least translucent, and able to phase through walls (though his clothes are left behind).<\/p>\n

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

Page 4 panel 2: “Your imperialist attack on Kunashir Island”.<\/strong> Issue #1.<\/p>\n

Page 4 panel 2: Fartech <\/strong>is the company responsible for the moon base in issue #3, and Paperclip<\/strong> was their AI system from that issue. It went rather badly wrong.<\/p>\n

Page 9 panel 5: “I got the world’s greatest face tattoo removed for you lot!” <\/strong>Pyro’s skull tattoo was removed between issues #3-4.<\/p>\n

Page 15: “The door marked Top Secret.”<\/strong> Previously seen in issue #1.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition. X-FACTOR vol 5 #5 “Prisoners of the Fun Room” Writer: Mark Russell Artist: Bob Quinn Colour artist: Jesus Aburtov Letterer: Joe Caramagna Editor: Darren Shan X-FACTOR: Despite their underwhelming performance so far in the series, Havok, Pyro and Frenzy all draw […]<\/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,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10600","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-annotations"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10600","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=10600"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10600\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10603,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10600\/revisions\/10603"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10600"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10600"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10600"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}