Back with the regular titles, X-Factor wraps up the X-Cell storyline with a great closing issue.

Unlike all the other X-books, who have (until recently) chosen to ignore it as much as possible, X-Factor has genuinely tried to follow through on the implications of M-Day.  The X-Cell are a great example of how to turn this idea to advantage - a group of ex-mutant villains who quite wrongly believe that the government must be to blame for their loss of their powers, and who have begun a terrorist campaign demanding something that the authorities don't even have the power to give.

All this ties in nicely with the ongoing storyline of Quicksilver presenting himself as a messiah to ex-mutants - a role which, as this story helpfully remind us, has the happy side effect of distracting the blame from his twin sister.

For reasons I've given many times before, I think M-Day was a bad idea, disastrously executed.  But it more books were dealing with it in the way X-Factor has, I might well have been convinced of the merits of the concept.  This makes perfect sense as the fall-out of the big event, and it's a well written superhero story in its own right, just as you would expect from Peter David. 

Khoi Pham's art is still a little bit rough for my tastes, but it gets the job done.  This is a model of what the post-M-Day X-books could and should have been like.

Rating: A-

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