Now that the autumn crossover season is just around the corner, all the monthly titles have been dutifully tying up their storylines and clearing their decks.  X-Factor is the latest book to do so, finishing up the four-part "Isolationist" storyline.

As I've pointed out before, until the last few months, X-Factor was notable for being the only ongoing series that was actually trying to do something with M-Day.  While other writers paid lip service to it, or hurled explosions at the page in an attempt to disguise the lack of a proper concept, or just decamped to space for a year, Peter David has at least tried to make something out of this malformed concept.

What can you do in a world where there are only a few hundred mutants left?  Well, you can have a character like Josef Huber, whose power is that he shares the powers of every other mutant alive on the planet.  Until recently, this was a terrible chore, but with M-Day, it's been dialled back to more manageable levels.  Unfortunately, Huber still finds it a terrible nuisance - particularly all the voices he can hear telepathically - and now he sees a golden opportunity to get rid of the remaining mutants altogether.

Now, this isn't the greatest concept in the world, but it is at least trying to do something with the post-Decimation status quo, which is more than anyone else has managed.  And Huber's plan to gather everyone together for a civil rights march, so that he can blow them all up, has a certain left-field appeal.

But there are problems with this story.  The difficulty lies mainly with Huber himself.  The more I think about this character, the less sense he makes.  We're apparently meant to sympathise with him, at least to some extent, in that he's genuinely suffering and it's apparently driven him a bit mad.  But on the other hand, he isn't a raving lunatic; he's perfectly capable of coming up with rational plans and carrying them out.

Yet Huber has got the powers of all the remaining mutants.  Among those mutants is Forge, who can invent anything.  Our attention is specifically drawn to the fact that Huber has got Forge's powers, at several points in the story.  And that rather begs the question: why doesn't he just build a device to shut down his powers?  In fact, if his main concern is the telepathic voices, why doesn't he just build a psi-scrambler to keep them out?  We've seen psi-blocking technology hundreds of times, so it must be within his abilities. 

Aren't these much simpler and more obvious solutions than trying to wipe out every remaining mutant on earth?  Did Huber seriously believe he was going to get all of them, even the wanted criminals, to show up at his rally? 

I'm not sure the story has a very good answer to any of these questions, other than to wave its hand and say "Yeah, yeah, but he's mad."  Which may be true, but isn't especially interesting.  A shame, because there are plenty of neat little details in the rest of the story.  David is doing great work with his cast - he's certainly fulfilled the promise he made at the outset to make people love Layla.  Pablo Raimondi's art is as impressive as ever, with some lovely scenes of Madrox in the snow.  But Huber himself doesn't really make sense, and that's a big lurking problem at the centre of the story.

Oh, yes, and there's also a back-up strip - part 15 of "Endangered Species."  With another two weeks to go, it's looking increasingly unlikely that anything will actually be achieved in this story, other than to hammer home the fact that the Beast is taking the Decimation issue very seriously.  Given how badly the immediate aftermath was botched, there's probably a legitimate need to restate the obvious in this case.  But it doesn't really seem to be leading anywhere.

Rating: B

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