X-Factor #18 came out a couple of weeks ago, when I forgot to pick it up.  Since it's a quiet week, we might as well take a look at it.

We're now into the X-Cell storyline, in which a group of ex-mutants decide to blame the government for the loss of their powers, and start a terrorist campaign to get them back.  Unfortunately, on this occasion, the government's actually innocent - but X-Factor can't really tell the Cell what really happened either.

David uses this as an opportunity to catch up on some mutants whose powers were incidental to their character, and who still make credible threats.  So Callisto is back, as is Fatale, of all people.  Naturally, he also throws in some characters whose powers were absolutely fundamental.

I'm increasingly convinced that M-Day was a disastrously bad idea, poorly executed.  It's eliminated most of the potential in the mutant concept by removing any legitimate parallels with real-world minorities.  It's destroyed the idea of mutants as the next stage in evolution.  It's eliminated the school, thereby trashing plenty of potential stories, and making the comics less like the movies - an own goal creatively and commercially.

And the upside is hard to identify.  The core X-Men titles waved their hands vaguely in the direction of the plot and then politely ignored it, in favour of getting on with their pet stories.  New X-Men used it as the springboard for a year of gratuitous slaughter, which they could have done anyway.  Until very recently with Mike Carey, and the set-up for the upcoming "Endangered Species" crossover, there's been no proper follow-up on this major plot development whatsoever.  To throw out an idea like that and then fail to run with it is simply bizarre.  The editors should never have allowed it.  They should either have imposed it on the writers, or vetoed the whole idea in the first place. 

This ridiculous halfway house has done nothing but damage the line.  I genuinely can't think of an upside.  Joe Quesada has argued that it's a great concept because it takes the X-Men back to the tiny number of mutants from the Silver Age, but on what planet is that a good idea?  X-Men was a relative failure in the 1960s.  If you want to recapture the golden age, you go back to Claremont and his ever-expanding family from the early 1980s.  That's the format.  The filmmakers realise that.  If there are really so many wonderful potential stories in this M-Day concept, why is nobody bloody telling them?

Amidst all this, X-Factor has taken the idea and at least tried to make it work.  The X-Cell are a good concept.  This is what Marvel needed to do if M-Day was ever going to work.  Relegating it to one relatively minor satellite book was a stupid decision; but at least that satellite book is managing to get something worthwhile out of the idea.  If everyone had followed through on the concept like Peter David has, I might think more kindly of it.

Where this book falls down slightly is Khoi Pham's art, which is hit and miss.  There are some very good, dynamic panels.  His action sequences have energy.  But there are also several bland pages, rather too many people with blank (or worse, random) expressions, and the occasional storytelling blunder - I have no idea where Marrow is, relative to the other characters, in the final scene.  Pham isn't a bad artist by any stretch of the imagination, but he doesn't have the subtlety of body language and acting to sell all of Peter David's dialogue.  As a result, it comes across as a little muted.

Still, this book is trying to make the best of what it's been given - and it's making a very fair job of it.

Rating: B+

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