X-FACTOR #37: A Matter of Honor

Kids, I'm gonna tell you the story of how your mother met the woman she was cloned from.

Originally Published February 1989

We begin with our old friends in X-Factor, although they're looking a little different from the last time we saw them...

In the time since they formed this little band of pretend-mutant-hunters, the O5 have been through it. Jean has had to face the truth about Scott's marriage and subsequent abandonment of said wife and child. Beast regained a more human appearance at the cost of his intelligence, only to get his smarts and his fur back. Iceman became the WWF Intercontinental Champion. And Angel tragically had his wings amputated following the events of the Mutant Massacre. Then he was betrayed by his friend and confidante Cameron Hodge, who as it turns out was a human supremacist looking to destroy the mutant race and carried personal animosity towards Warren. Then Warren fell in with Apocalypse, the millenniae-old Darwinist villain looking to remodel Angel into Death to round out his quartet of "Horsemen" by providing him with razor-sharp wings that come with a variety of new gimmicks and may or may not have a mind of their own. Then Warren turned on Apocalypse and rejoined his friends. Then after defeating Apocalypse, X-Factor started living in his ship and decided to end the charade of being mutant hunters and actually kind of became beloved by the public? And most recently, Warren/Angel/Death/Archangel sliced Cameron Hodge's head off after Hodge had made a deal with the demon N'astirh to help fund his group The Right as long as they provided N'astirh with mutant babies to sacrifice to open their portal to Limbo. Also, they got new costumes, thanks for noticing. 

Of late, the X-Factors have been battling the demonified infrastructure of New York, having been brought here after a search for Cyclops' infant son "Christopher." This brings them face to face with N'astirh, newly transformed into a slick, updated model thanks to the transmode virus letting him become a cutting edge cyber-demon.

I've definitely met some cyber-demons on Twitter

One of N'astirh's demon pals presents him with the baby -- Nathan Christopher Charles, named for his grandfathers, men of power, an infant of purity and the key to this whole grand scheme. As the heroes fly up to liberate the babe in arms, they are overwhelmed by the demon horde.

N'astirh pulls a disappearing act, saying he knows someone who wants the baby just as much as they do, and sure enough who should arrive?

The reunion is naturally very tense and she and Scott have words. First of all, he doesn't even know what his son's name is.

I'm sure it's all just a coincidence that Scott's childhood bully and Madelyne's father had the same name

She zaps him with a Goblin blast, then takes him to task for being a little too happy when she died.

All of the injustices inflicted upon Madelyne from the very start of her existence have caught up and made her this sick, twisted Goblin Queen bent on cruelty and revenge, like mid-80s Tina Turner gone bad.

What's love got to do with it?

Offended by Jean's attempts to telepathically read baby Christopher Nathan, Maddy takes aim, but is interrupted by a surprising figure:

When the Goblin Queen asks, "What the hell man, we're supposed to be on the same side??!" N'astirh insists he is looking out for Maddy, when it's clear from his thoughts that he's actually a little freaked out because this plan to use Madelyne has gone a little off the rails and he's scrambling to keep a lid on the whole scheme.

Ultimately, N'astirh manages to convince Madelyne to hold off on killing X-Factor, because the "other side of the mutant coin" (i.e X-Men) are coming, and won't it be more fun to kill them then? N'astirh needs to buy time to raise the Empire State Building a smidge higher to pull off his plan.

After playing a little hot potato with Nathan...

Madelyne continues to focus on Jean, who intuitively recognizes Maddy's demon pets as her parents.

Maddy continues to ramble about her origins, which comes off as nonsense to X-Factor' who were not present for the previous issue of Uncanny X-Men where all of this was revealed.

This is how I think my mom feels when she reads this blog.

At last, Maddie reveals her intentions: since she was created by Sinister to be a brood mare, and the resulting child is Scott's, whom she hates, she's going to do something for herself and kill the baby to help N'astirh.

Sorry, I mean destroy the baby -- there's kids in the audience after all

The team makes one last stand against the Goblin Queen, and it goes well!

For the Goblin Queen.

As the X-team gathers themselves in a smoldering crater and Madelyne announces her intentions to hold off and let the X-Men kill them, she appears in the guise of her harmless, regular plain jane self...

Confusing everyone, but not as confusing as...

Oh... it's on. To be continued!

Further Thoughts:

This issue is pretty much the Maddy show, as the long-awaited showdown occurs between the jilted and now empowered and revenge-minded Goblin Queen Madelyne and her estranged husband Cyclops and his new old flame Jean. In the intensity of feelings and the progression of plot, it doesn't disappoint. as I've pointed out already, Inferno is the convergence of a lot of different threads and this is a huge flash point, worked for all it's worth.

A horse-faced character drawn by Walt Simonson? It's more likely than you'd think

 

Early last year we covered the beginnings of X-Factor intended to reunite the original five X-Men in a new high-concept series that may have been intended to serve as a nostalgic palate-cleanse to the increasingly gritty, ever-changing Uncanny X-Men. From the get-go, it didn't quite work that way because in order to maneuver its characters into that direction, the book had to have them confront some of the grim realities of mutant life after the sunny sixties, as well as having them make some decisions that were either clueless (forming "X-Factor Investigations") or heartless (leaving Madelyne and the baby behind.)

As it played out, X-Factor wound up in the capable creative hands of writer and former Uncanny X-Men editor Louise Simonson -- who certainly had more of a professional link to X-Men scribe Claremont -- and her husband, superstar artist Walt Simonson. If the two groups of characters could not cross paths until now, then the creators could at least align on themes and objectives, and so X-Factor wound up arguably as dark as Uncanny as the characters struggle to keep their original dispositions in the face of a cruel world that keeps changing them and challenging them. The fact that Inferno is directly linked to -- among other things -- the contents of X-Factor #1 is oh so very appropriate and satisfying.

If Louise Simonson is not quite the same writer as Chris Claremont, she at least knows what to do to get drama and action out of her characters. Every issue of the Simonsons' X-Factor that I've read and covered (which mostly happened on my sadly nearly defunct Patreon) has been histrionic emotions expressed frantically amidst a whirlwind of unending action. If Uncanny is occasionally too cerebral and meditative, X-Factor is its flipside in being immediate and histrionic, even while long screeds and monologues appear amidst the chaos.

All of which suits Inferno -- which is that chaos in story form -- perfectly, as different factions vie for possession of the baby who is the key to all of this, coming in with different motives and perspectives. It's great.