THE CREATORS: Peter David writing, and Dennis Calero starting off on art, to be followed by Renato Arlem.  There's a Pablo Raimondi issue at the end too, plus some flashbacks by Ray Allen Martinez, and... say, does this book actually have a regular artist?

WHAT HAPPENED IN 2006: A madman kidnaps Siryn; Layla Miller's back story is filled out; a peripheral Civil War tie-in takes place; the Singularity Investigations storyline pays off; a reprise of the classic psychologist issue from the previous run; and what seems to be a shift back to a lighter tone.

X-Factor takes the prize for the year's overall best ongoing X-book - although if we're being fair, it had a relatively clear run, because a lot of books changed creative team halfway through the year with an accompanying shift in quality, and others were stuck running months of fill-ins.

Even in a stronger year, X-Factor would still have been way up there as a top title.  It often seems as though new X-books are added to the schedule simply because somebody thinks they might sell, with the details being worked out later.  X-Factor, launched on the back of last year's excellent Madrox miniseries, has a very clear idea of what it wants to do.  They're the street level X-team, working as a detective agency and appearing in vaguely noirish stories.

Actually, over the last couple of issues, there seems to be a drift away from the noir theme, and a move back to Peter David's more traditional superhero team book style, with snappy dialogue and a lighter tone.  That's not necessarily a bad thing; the noir set-up worked for the Madrox mini and for the opening storyline, but it's slightly out of key when the book is doing stories about time travel and mutant soap opera.  I'm quite happy to see the book shift its tone and run with the sort of stories that work for the characters.

It's not a perfect book; I'm still uncomfortable about the handling of the mentally ill character in issue #5, and the art is sometimes rather stiff.  Also, the various artists all seem to have struggled hugely with Wolfsbane, which is surprising, considering that she's been around since 1983 and doesn't appear to have posed any major difficulties before now.

But overall, the quality of the writing, the strength of the characters, and the remarkable rehabilition of walking plot device Layla Miller outweigh those flaws.  It's also the one X-book that properly got to grips with the Decimation concept instead of politely ignoring it and hoping it went away.  If the X-office editors are going to do that sort of story, they really need to make sure they're followed up properly.  Decimation wasn't, and X-Factor deserves some credit for being the only book to really get mileage from the idea.

This is a book that knows what it's doing, and does it well.

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