This week's obligatory comic drowning in adverts is X-Factor #13.  Now, we have two whole months of this stuff, according to Marvel, and if I write about it at length every time, it's going to get terribly repetitive.  So I'm not going to do that.  I care about your reading experience.  A novel concept, which Marvel might care to give thought to.

"Re-X-aminations" is a sequel of sorts to 1993's X-Factor #87 ("X-aminations"), in which Doc Samson psychoanalysed each member of the team.  Here he does it again with the current roster.  Peter David has chosen to keep the formula where Samson's identity isn't revealed right to the end of the story.  Presumably that was just done for the structural parallels, since Samson's shown on the cover, and it wouldn't take much imagination to identify him anyway.

The original story is a minor classic, and it gives this issue a lot to live up to.  After all, the original has Quicksilver's wonderful explanation for why he's always so annoyed - he lives in a world composed exclusively of slow-moving queues.  There's nothing comparable to that here, although David does take the opportunity to clarify the characters of Layla and M in a reasonably intriguing way, as well as furthering Rahne's subplot.

On the letters page, David contributes an odd little spiel saying that he can't work out why people were critical of Layla when she made her debut in House of M.  This is an odd observation.  Quite aside from the fact that Layla was nothing more than a plot device on legs in that story, and signally failed to be interesting in any way whatsoever, David has given her new powers, a new demeanour, a new personality, and even jettisoned the brief glimpse of her real life in House of M #8 by dismissing it as a dream scene.  At the very least, it seems he looked at House of M and saw room for improvement.  And he really has improved her.  She's still essentially an enigma, but now she's an intriguing one, and stories like this continue the slow task of building her into a proper character.  David inherited a blank slate with Layla Miller, but he's written something interesting on her.

These psychoanalysis stories aren't as straightforward as you might think.  It would be very easy for them to topple over into tedious exposition where a character stands around patiently explaining their personality.  That sort of thing would be an egregious violation of the "Show, don't tell" principle of writing.  But Peter David knows better than that, and writes scenes where the real interest lies in what the characters choose to reveal, and the fact that the way they see themselves isn't necessarily right.

It's not an instant classic on the level of the original, but it's still a very good issue in its own right.  The adverts, of course, are a major problem - even flicking through the issue while writing this review is a downright aggravating experience - and I don't for a moment recommend that anyone even consider buying this issue in single format.  Wait for the trade.  Still, as an episodic collection of scenes, it suffers less than many stories - though it still suffers.

A good issue, which would probably have got an A- if it wasn't for the format problems.

Rating: B+

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