Broken Frontier

X-Factor is one of the best written yet lowest selling X-titles. This week brings about a new direction and return to an old numbering system. Is this enough to get fans to join in?

What makes a good writer? Depends on who you ask. For me, Jason Aaron coming up with laser claws and bullets that cause cancer—all the while writing the best crime drama in any medium in a completely different series—makes him a good writer. I think Geoff Johns is a good writer for his respect for continuity and writing the best last page cliffhangers in comics.

Peter David isn’t as flashy as Aaron and might not have as encyclopedic knowledge of continuity as Johns, but he is as good, if not better, than those other two. He doesn’t get tapped to write the blockbuster crossovers or signed up to take on the flagship titles. But he writes tight, character driven work month in and month out in Marvel’s X-Factor.

David’s first tenure on X-Factor was back during its first incarnation. Back in 1991, he was called in to do an overhaul of the title, taking it from the story of the original, reunited X-men to that of a government sponsored mutant group filled with second-tier characters.  The result was a great run where David redefined characters such as Madrox, Quicksilver,Wolfsbane and Havok for years to come.

Madrox provided the entry point for David’s return to X-Factor. A 2004 miniseries starring the character that could create copies of himself acted as a “pilot” of sorts for the current series. David made Madrox a private detective dealing with what in effect was a multiple personality disorder. Each duplicate travelled the world, had different life experiences, and came back changed. It became such that Madrox didn’t know what he was going to get when he split—a manic depressive copy or a brutally aggressive copy or something completely unexpected.

The miniseries was a noir detective look at Marvel’s mutant universe. This noir feel carried over to the new X-Factor series, as Madrox opened up a detective agency in a part of New York called “Mutant Town.” He hired on a bunch of second-tier mutant characters to help him in the agency. His clients were the mutants who lived in that area of town. 

Again, David’s gift for characterization came shining through. He wasn’t given much to work with (the flashiest character from the start was Monet, a cast member from the defunct Generation X series), but he really made the most of them. Case in point is Layla Miller. She was a plot contrivance from the House of M miniseries. She was basically a throwaway. In David’s hands, she became one of the most interesting characters.

The strong characters, and how they related to one another, lead to interesting stories. Often, the subplots were much more interesting than the main storyline. The status quo of the book was a strong one, as it survived numerous upheavals in the mutant universe with nary missing a beat.

But as good as the stories were, the sales weren’t what you’d expect from a book with an “X” in the title. The series consistently listed in the lower half of the Diamond 100, not horrible but not what you’d expect from a mutant book. It got to such a point that the recent skip month caused fans to wonder if the book was cancelled after issue #50.

It wasn’t, but it wasn’t going to be the same as before. The month off was to add an air of importance to the renumbering of the series and the introduction of the title’s 200th issue (if you add up all the issues with the name X-Factor, this week’s issue would be 200). And the number isn’t the only thing that’s changed.
 
The book will have a new status quo. It will still be about a detective agency, but now it won’t just be investigating mutants. It appears that the entire Marvel universe could potentially be its clientele.

The change certainly opens up the book for more story ideas. The first arc deals with a missing Invisible Woman and the team being hired by her son Franklin to find her. But will it be enough to bring in new readers? One of the reasons the book was so good was due to the interaction of the team to each other based on the years of issues their relationships have built up in. But that doesn’t lend itself to a good jumping on point regardless of the new direction.

X-Factor is one of the best books on the stands, and it deserves a bigger audience. Hopefully, this event will give it the boost it needs.