{"id":5425,"date":"2020-07-29T23:16:36","date_gmt":"2020-07-29T22:16:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=5425"},"modified":"2020-07-29T23:16:36","modified_gmt":"2020-07-29T22:16:36","slug":"x-factor-1-annotations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=5425","title":{"rendered":"X-Factor #1 annotations"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

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

\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

X-FACTOR vol 4 #1<\/strong>
“Suite No. 1: Prelude: Aurora Moratorium”<\/strong>
by Leah Williams, David Baldeon & Israel Silva<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

X-FACTOR.<\/strong> This is the fifth X-Factor<\/em> series, and the others have no particular common thread. X-Factor<\/em> vol 1 ran from 1986 to 1998, and started off as a reunion of the original X-Men, before relaunching as a government-sponsored team with issue #71. X-Factor<\/em> vol 2 was a four-issue miniseries from 2002 about an FBI mutant civil rights task force. X-Factor <\/em>vol 3 ran from 2005 to 2013, and featured Jamie Madrox’s X-Factor Investigations detective agency – the obvious forerunner for this book. And All-New X-Factor<\/em> ran for 20 issues in 2014-15 with a corporate-sponsored team.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

COVER \/ PAGE 1.<\/strong> Symbolic image of the cast in front of a DNA Helix. For recognisability, they’re all in costume, though they don’t actually wear costumes in the story. (Eye-Boy never had a superhero costume, and is shown in his school uniform.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

PAGE 2.<\/strong> Tribute to Denny O’Neil.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGE 3.<\/strong> Northstar senses that Aurora has died.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Northstar<\/strong> is Jean-Paul Beaubier, a speedster best known as a founder member of the Canadian superhero team Alpha Flight. Aurora<\/strong> is Jeanne-Marie Beaubier, his twin sister, also a member of Alpha Flight. Originally they had powers that worked in synergy together, but that got changed later. At any rate, it potentially explains why Northstar might be aware of her death, if you don’t think “twins” is a good enough explanation on its own. Both are mutants, and Northstar has had a stint in the X-Men in the past, though he’s never really been central to the X-books for any extended period.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We’ve seen Northstar in a few cameos in the Krakoa era, but this is his first significant appearance since Age of X-Man: X-Tremists<\/em>, where he was a brainwashed member of the Age of X thought police. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Northstar’s heavy-handed and abrasive personality in this issue is pretty consistent with his traditional depiction. The man making the coffee is his husband Kyle Jinadu. I don’t think he’s appeared outside a cameo in quite some time, and this issue is no different. Kyle is not a mutant, and note that while Northstar has clearly been spending time on Krakoa, he has absolutely not left his family to be with the mutants. This is vaguely unKrakoan behaviour.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGES 4-5. <\/strong>Northstar tries to bully the Five.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Five<\/strong> are the five mutants who are collectively responsible for bringing mutants back from the dead (together with Professor X’s psychic backups, and DNA records strongly implied to come from Mr Sinister). We’ve been told before that they are treated semi-religiously on Krakoa, and this is a very clear example. The crowds down below seem to be treating this as a pilgrimage site. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Northstar is clearly very unimpressed with all this and sees it as deeply self-aggrandising for the Five to encourage it. They don’t really have a good answer to this – they dodge the criticism in favour of telling Northstar (quite fairly) that he’s not the only one waiting for a loved one to come back. They also raise the issue of the resurrection protocols that have been mentioned before. Supposedly, these are designed to make sure that copy characters don’t get created while the original is still around.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is well and good, but it begs an awkward question which the X-books have so far been dodging: if you can<\/em> restore someone from back-up while the original is still alive, and create a copy of them, then why is that clone any less of a copy when it’s done after death? On one view, the resurrection protocols are simply a way for the X-Men to avoid having to face those awkward questions too directly. On the other hand, the X-Men do consistently act as if they believe<\/em> that resurrected mutants are the same person, so perhaps they really do think that their process can somehow retrieve the soul from the afterlife, or something like that. At any rate, this has been a nagging issue throughout the Krakoan era, presumably on purpose. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Five are right to refuse to help Northstar, but they are <\/em>rather dismissive towards someone who believes his sister has just died – though Northstar, being Northstar, hasn’t exactly helped his case with his behaviour.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There seems to be a misdirected speech balloon in page 5 panel 3 – the character speaking in a Scottish (ish) accent is presumably meant to be Proteus, not Goldballs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGE 6.<\/strong> Northstar speaks to Sage.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

“First Beast, then Boom-Boom…”<\/strong> Sage is referring to her supporting roles in X-Force<\/em> and New Mutants<\/em> respectively.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Green Lagoon<\/strong> is the tiki bar from X-Force<\/em>. We saw its opening night in X-Force<\/em> #9 (I don’t recall Aurora being on panel, but there were a lot of people). This story happens less than a week later.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGE 7.<\/strong> Northstar arrives at the Green Lagoon.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It’s very quiet, so presumably it’s the middle of the day. The bartender is the Blob<\/strong>, who’s been seen in that role in X-Force<\/em> too. You’d think he wouldn’t be ideal for working in the narrow space behind a bar, but apparently you’d be wrong.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The woman at the bar is Polaris<\/strong> (Lorna Dane) who doesn’t normally dress like this. She’s been a member of most X-Factor line-ups dating back to the government-sponsored team. As mentioned later, she’s the biological daughter of Magneto (though their relationship isn’t that close) and there’s long been a sense that she ought to be more important to mutant politics than she actually is. Magneto will pick up on this later.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGE 8.<\/strong> Data page – a flyer for X-Factor Investigations. This is a bit confusing, because it suggests the group already exists. In fact, they’re going to be formed in the course of the story, and Eye-Boy creates the flyer on page 34. Why this wasn’t put at the end of the issue, I have no idea.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Krakoan text simply repeats the English.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGES 9-10.<\/strong> Credits and cast page. I’m not sure why the story title is “Aurora Moratorium” – a moratorium is a delay, rather than anything to do with death. Perhaps the idea is that Aurora is in some sense on hold pending her resurrection. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGES 11-12.<\/strong> Polaris selects her team.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Daken<\/strong> gets rejected by Lorna, but she seems to accept him when he shows up sober a bit later on. He’s the son of Wolverine, he had his own book for a bit, and he’s generally been a manipulative sociopath, though with some straying into more complex territory. We’ve seen him briefly on Krakoa, but this is the first time we’ve seen him at any length. His motivations for signing up for this team – in fact, actively angling to get on it – are unclear; there are no obvious signs in the issue of an ulterior motive but, well, it’s Daken. He claims later in the issue that he’s simply bored and looking for something to do, but that doesn’t seem terribly convincing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Prodigy<\/strong> was a member of the second New Mutants team (from the Grant Morrison era). His power is to permanently retain the skills of everyone around him, so basically he gets more and more omni-competent over time. He lost his powers on M-Day but continued to show up in various titles, since his accumulated knowledge remained. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Strangely, he’s shown here having just been resurrected. His last pre-Krakoa appearance was in Uncanny X-Men<\/em> vol 5 #17, when he cameoed as a mourner at Wolfsbane’s funeral. It’s possible that he deliberately got himself killed in the Crucible, seen in X-Men<\/em> #7, in order to qualify for resurrection and get his powers back. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Prestige<\/strong> has been a member of various X-Men and Excalibur line-ups since the 1980s. She appeared in several issues of the current Excalibur<\/em> run, and she was given the puppy in the epilogue to Excalibur<\/em> #8. It’s the sole survivor of the Warwolf race, who fought Excalibur a few times; it was entrusted to Rachel so that her psychic powers could keep it under control. She greeted the thing by cooing “Who is this amazing baby?!” at it, and seems to have decided that Amazing Baby<\/strong> is just going to be its name now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Eye-Boy<\/strong> has been a major character in trainee books like Wolverine & The X-Men<\/em> and the most recent version of Generation X<\/em>, and also had a prominent role in Age of X-Man: Apocalypse & The X-Tracts<\/em>. His multiple eyes let him sense all kinds of things, not just vision. I have no idea what he’s doing in this scene, because his powers have never involved sticking extra eyes onto objects. Despite his apparent geekiness, he’s an obviously useful character for X-Factor’s remit, both in terms of his powers and his broadly-sensible personality – though he’s likely to be overawed by some of these characters and ought to be completely out of his depth standing up to Daken or Northstar.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGES 13-15.<\/strong> Daken inveigles his way onto the team.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Daken insists that he’s reformed, which is of course what all villains are supposed to be able to assert on Krakoa. “Messy” is probably a fairer description of him. Daken uses his pheromone manipulation here to remind people that he can be subtle, but he does seem<\/em> to be using it constructively, to calm down a kid’s temper tantrum. Rachel appears to verify that the kid’s hate for his grandmother is genuine, and not something caused by Daken.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGES 16-19.<\/strong> The team investigate Aurora’s last hotel room.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Daken says he’s going to “interrogate” the desk clerk. In fact, he uses his pheromone powers to seduce the guy. But he does<\/em> seem to be using it in a genuine attempt to advance the investigation. Still, this sort of casual manipulation of people is very Daken, and note that he only uses his powers in this way when the others aren’t around. This is a much less innocuous thing than calming a brat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Everybody always forgets about my chrono-skimming…”<\/strong> Rachel has the power to manipulate time, which eventually became the explanation for how she travelled to the present from her home in a dystopian alternate future. These powers are very hazily defined, and I think strictly speaking the term “chrono-skimming” has been used in the past to cover stunts like swapping the minds of Kitty Prydes from two timelines. But Rachel has occasionally used her powers in this way before, to view events which have happened nearby in the past – see X-Men: Deadly Genesis<\/em> #2, for example.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Looks like we’ll be seeing a lot more of it in this series.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGES 20-22.<\/strong> The team retrieve Aurora’s body.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGES 23-25.<\/strong> Northstar delivers Aurora’s body to the Five.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Understandably, Northstar is more preoccupied with getting the resurrection procedure up and running than with hanging around to find out why she died. Note that it’s Daken who, uncharacteristically, is doing the sensible thing about having Aurora’s body properly dealt with, while Northstar yells at people and then stands in the background looking a bit chastened. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rachel and Hope both live in the Summers family home, hence their interaction here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGES 26-29.<\/strong> X-Factor present their findings to the Quiet Council and get officially appointed to the role.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The story seems to be simply that Aurora died due to brake-tampering from an anti-mutant activist, who got himself killed at the same time… but there’s probably more to it than that, given that we don’t really know what brought them together in the first place.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For some strange reason, Lorna declines leadership of the team and nominates Northstar, who has demonstrated precisely zero suitability for the role. Granted, he’s emotional about his sister, and he’d probably do better in another case… but still.Northstar is understandably baffled, but accepts the role – whether because he lacks the modesty to say no, or because he feels duty bound, or just because he wants to remain involved in the investigation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lorna insists later that she had her reasons for turning down the role (despite Magneto’s evident disappointment regarding the family name). She seems to imply that she’s in a “finding herself” mode at the moment. But even if she didn’t want the job herself, wouldn’t Rachel have been the natural choice? Is there some reason why she wants Jean-Paul to have the role? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The House of M<\/strong> is Magneto’s home, where Lorna is presumably now living.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGES 30-31.<\/strong> Lorna speaks to Krakoa and builds the Boneyard in her sleep.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Do you remember how we met?”<\/strong> Krakoa tried to eat her, in Giant-Size X-Men<\/em> #1.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGES 32-33.<\/strong> X-Factor move into the Boneyard.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Krakoan text on Prodigy’s T-shirt reads “CK”. Cute.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Note that if Lorna and Rachel are moving into this place, it also gets them a little more distance from Magneto and Cyclops respectively.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGES 34-35.<\/strong> Forge explains X-Factor’s systems.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Eye-Boy’s flyer is the one we saw earlier in the issue. Much of this scene simply spells out what was hinted at in there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGES 36-37.<\/strong> Data pages: the rules of resurrection. These are heavily<\/em> redacted, which is obviously very, very suspicious. Even part of X-Factor’s remit is redacted. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The section on the resurrection queue mentions an “augury incident.” This isn’t explained, but augury is the art of seeing the future. Is this something to do with Destiny, whose resurrection is being deliberately deferred to string Mystique along?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGES 38-39.<\/strong> Trailers. The Krakoan reads “NEXT: MOJOVERSE.” The Mojoverse is the home dimension of the insane, TV-obsessed Mojo; Rachel and the Warwolves both have connections to the place from the early days of Excalibur<\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition. X-FACTOR vol 4 #1“Suite No. 1: Prelude: Aurora Moratorium”by Leah Williams, David Baldeon & Israel Silva X-FACTOR. This is the fifth X-Factor series, and the others have no particular common thread. X-Factor vol 1 ran from 1986 to 1998, and started […]<\/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":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5425","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5425","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=5425"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5425\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5428,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5425\/revisions\/5428"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5425"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5425"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5425"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}