{"id":10878,"date":"2025-03-13T22:45:35","date_gmt":"2025-03-13T22:45:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=10878"},"modified":"2025-03-13T22:45:35","modified_gmt":"2025-03-13T22:45:35","slug":"x-factor-8-annotations-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=10878","title":{"rendered":"X-Factor #8 annotations"},"content":{"rendered":"

As always, this post contains spoilers and page numbers…
\n<\/em><\/p>\n

Well, I was going to go with the page numbers in Kindle, but for some reason Kindle is absolutely insistent now that comics start on page 2, which is the cover. So hell, let’s go with the story pages.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>X-FACTOR vol 5 #8<\/strong>
\n“X-Manhunt, part 5: The Summers of Days Past”<\/strong>
\nWriter: Mark Russell<\/strong>
\nArtist: Bob Quinn<\/strong>
\nColour Artist: Jesus Aburtov<\/strong>
\nLetterer: Joe Caramagna<\/strong>
\nEditor: Darren Shan<\/strong><\/p>\n

In legacy numbering, this is issue #300 – not that the various books called X-Factor<\/em> have a great deal in common. For the anniversary, we get a larger legacy number on the front cover, and a cover gallery at the end of the issue. Exciting!<\/p>\n

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

Angel.<\/strong> He seems to have no problem at all with opposing the X-Men on behalf of the US government and returning Professor X to Graymalkin, despite the X-Men protesting that it’s a “mutant-hating death-trap”. (As mentioned at the end of the last chapter, the X-Men agreed with Storm that Professor X should at least go to a less inhumane prison.) It’s odd behaviour, but to be honest, none of the remaining team seem to have any particular problem with carrying out this mission. Even so, the team’s performance is predictably dismal – the only members to manage any meaningful offence at all are Angel himself and, of all people, ForgetMeNot.<\/p>\n

While he was in hospital after issue #1, Angel had “elective procedures” carried out to restore his Archangel powers. This whole thread is a bit odd: he lost that power off panel somewhere between Heir of Apocalypse<\/em>\u00a0<\/em>and X-Factor<\/em> #1 in what appears to have been a continuity error, and certainly wasn’t explained. The new Archangel also has metal cloaws on his hands and feet (which look like they might be glove-like contraptions) and carries a sword. He also has a weird new move where he folds his metal wings around himself into a sort of buzzsaw.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Pyro.<\/strong> He describes Angel as “our begrudgingly followed leader”, but seems genuinely keen to defend his team against the X-Men.<\/p>\n

Xyber.<\/strong> Still petrified of actually fighting – he protests that “I’m just an intern” and gets taken down with a single punch. Admittedly, a single punch from Juggernaut, but a single punch.<\/p>\n

Granny Smite.<\/strong> Seems dispirited to realise that her powers don’t actually matter if nobody is trying to use lethal force against her. We’ve covered this before but: her origin story only really makes sense if she’s also invulnerable to injury, since otherwise she’d be a mangled pile of non-dead broken bones. Mind you, the basic point remains valid: her powers are purely defensive, and she’s about as much threat to the X-Men as any other elderly woman that they might be minded to gently restrain. Let’s be generous and assume she’s play acting, because she can’t possibly<\/em> have given this as little thought as the scene suggests.<\/p>\n

ForgetMeNot\u00a0<\/strong>actually manages to push Magik through one of her own portals, presumably because she forgets that he’s there as soon as she looks away.<\/p>\n

Cecilia Reyes <\/strong>is there too, but doesn’t do anything.<\/p>\n

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

Havok.<\/strong> Having quit the team after issue #5, he’s rented a flat (which has no furniture yet) and he’s trying to reconcile with Polaris. He thinks he only joined because he wanted to belong to something, and he’s come round to thinking that all that ultimately matters is the people who he’s close to – whom he’s alienated by joining this version of X-Factor. This, of course, is basically the core theme that Russell laid out in his essay in issue #1.<\/p>\n

No doubt because he’s preoccupied with all this, Havok is easily persuaded to help Frenzy – who actually wants<\/em> him, and claims to have been sent by Polaris. He knows this seems unlikely but seems to be persuaded easily enough.<\/p>\n

Naturally enough, he’s upset at finding himself fighting his own brother over Professor X – he was cradling a childhood photo of them together at the start of the issue – but ultimately he thinks Cyclops is making the same mistake by turning his back on Professor X. This seems to be his “finding something to fight for” moment.<\/p>\n

Frenzy.<\/strong> Despite what she tells Alex at the start of the issue, she’s actually been enlisted by Professor X to rescue him. She has no idea of why he’s chosen her, but the list of people he knows in the area who aren’t actively hostile to him is clearly a short one. It’s notable that Professor X turns to her before Havok, but we don’t know whether that was an actual choice. The narrator suggests that Frenzy is going along with this basically because it’s a thing that turned up and she’s willing to have hope – which, by implication, is why she seems to be in a mentally better state than Havok.<\/p>\n

Polaris.<\/strong> Alex tries to phone her and gets her voicemail message.<\/p>\n

VILLAIN<\/strong><\/p>\n

Well, there’s a guy with a stun baton at the end, who abducts Professor X in order to take him to the X-Force<\/em> chapter.<\/p>\n

GUEST STARS<\/strong><\/p>\n

Professor X.<\/strong> Spends most of the issue unconscious. For some reason, he’s trying to show everyone a secret store where he’s kept the last Krakoan resurrection egg, with someone unspecified inside it. Quite what this has to do with the Xandra plotline is unclear, but to be fair, he gets cut off before he has a chance to explain further. He gives Scott a quick speech about Hope, but given his behaviour in NYX<\/em> he might just be trying to play on Scott’s emotions.<\/p>\n

Generously, the X-Men have given him back the Cerebro helmet that they took off him in the previous chapter in order to defeat him.<\/p>\n

The X-Men:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Cyclops <\/strong>gets emotional while fighting Havok to get to Professor X. He starts off claiming that Professor X is dangerous because of his “leaking” telepathy, but quickly shifts to talking about how Professor X destroyed his life, then yells at Havok for turning his back on them all and asks him “Why can’t you just stay gone?” Possibly he’s being affected by Professor X’s telepathy at close range here, but that would contradict the previous chapter, which claimed that the X-Men were inoculated. So it’s probably just a sore spot for him.<\/p>\n

Professor X believes that Scott has “given up on hope”, which isn’t an unfair description of his current approach to the X-Men; it’s Scott’s rational response to giving up hope of actually making things better.<\/p>\n

The<\/strong> Beast <\/strong>serves as spokesman for the team in Cyclops’ absence, and gets to pick the obvious holes in the X-Factor characters. Psylocke, Magik, Juggernaut, Temper<\/strong> and\u00a0Kid Omega<\/strong> are also there for the fight scene.<\/p>\n

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

Credits page: The title, “The Summers of Days Past”, is obviously a play on the Summers family name and “Days of Futures Past”.<\/p>\n

Page 2: Havok betrayed Polaris for X-Factor (at least in his view) in issue #2.<\/p>\n

Page 4 panel 1: “I thought you were dead.” Angel was injured in X-Factor’s disastrous first mission in issue #1.<\/p>\n

Page 12 panel 1: The photograph shows the X-Men as they stood at cancellation in 1970, which is when Havok and Polaris are generally taken to have joined the team.<\/p>\n

Page 14 panel 2: Cyclops “had my head frozen by Storm” in Storm<\/em> #6.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As always, this post contains spoilers and page numbers… Well, I was going to go with the page numbers in Kindle, but for some reason Kindle is absolutely insistent now that comics start on page 2, which is the cover. So hell, let’s go with the story pages. X-FACTOR vol 5 #8 “X-Manhunt, part 5: […]<\/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-10878","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-annotations"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10878","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=10878"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10878\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10882,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10878\/revisions\/10882"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10878"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10878"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10878"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}