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X-Factor continues a string of
self-contained stories, which is very unfashionable in this
day and age. Equally unfashionably, it's taking an
interest in continuity.
Only a couple of years ago, most Marvel
writers would have simply ignored the fact that Siryn's
father had been killed in another comic, and would have
taken pride in doing so. Peter David, in contrast,
knows how these things work, and so he knuckles down to do
the obligatory issue where Siryn reacts to Banshee's death
in X-Men: Deadly Genesis.
So as the title would suggest, this is a
story based around two conversations. One advances the
main plot (marginally), as Jamie Madrox meets his opposite
number at rival firm Singularity Investigations. The
other sees Cyclops drop by to break the bad news to Siryn.
David likes to deal with this sort of
situation by going in an unexpected direction. The
twist here is that Siryn simply refuses to believe that Sean
is dead because she's seen it all before. I'd probably
be more keen on this if I hadn't seen Peter David do the
same riff before, back in the 1990s when Nick Fury was
killed. (He had the other Howling Commandos show up at
Fury's funeral and treat it as a joke until Wolverine
verified the body as indisputably, genuinely,
incontrovertibly that of Nick Fury. Obviously, this
caused some difficulties a couple of years down the line
when they brought back Nick Fury. But I digress.)
It's a funny idea, if rather self-aware,
and played here in a more melancholy way. But still,
he's done it before, and that niggles with me.
The other half of the story, with Jamie
Madrox and the Tryps, works nicely enough. The book is
doing a slow burn on the tension between X-Factor and
Singularity, since they're obviously the villains, but
X-Factor can't actually identify quite why. Granted,
seven issues in we could probably afford to have made a
little more progress, but next issue is a Civil War
crossover, so it's probably not the best time to pull the
trigger on any major plot developments.
Ariel Olivetti provides this month's art.
He's not exactly the obvious noir artist that some of the
earlier contributors have been, but he's subdued enough here
for colourist Jose Villarrubia to achieve the desired mood.
He does some good work with this issue's token action
sequence, and there's some nice acting from Siryn.
It's good work, overall.
I can understand why some people are
starting to get impatient with this book - up to a point, so
am I. But it's a book full of good scenes, so I'm not
complaining too much.
Rating: B+
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