X-FACTOR #69: Clash Reunion

X-Factor joins the fray on Muir Island!

Originally Published August 1991 

X-Factor, who have been chilling in Colorado recently, has been summoned to Washington, D.C. at the behest of Special Assistant To The President Val Cooper, but before she can reveal their purpose, the team turns their attention to a gunshot heard nearby.

Jean, that is absolutely not how you transport a gunshot victim!

Seems that like much of the rest of the world, Washington is in a tizzy, grappling with this so-called Hatred Plague, causing people to lash out violently, enacting all their most base prejudices.

Ushering the team inside, they meet the man responsible for bringing them here today... and in general to begin with...

Yes! This required 7/8 of the page! 

That's right, it's Professor Charles Xavier, who had been off-world when X-Factor was formed and has only recently learned not only of this group's existence, but of Jean Grey's return from the grave -- which he is very sanguine about all things considered.

Back on Muir Island, Forge explains to the newly-liberated Wolverine and Rogue about his anti-Shadow King Patch, sure you to free you of your addiction to that sweet, sweet bloodlust in three weeks or less. It also comes in gun form, as seen here.

Here's a big panel to explain it all.

Wolverine, Rogue and Forge pool their knowledge to determine what they know about the Shadow King, but the main thing they know is that they don't know a lot. It seems that he may not even have a physical form given that Wolverine can't sense anyone on the island he doesn't already know really well.

Before they can discuss much further, Banshee swoops in at full volume. Luckily, a shot from the Anti-Shadow King Gun electromagnetic scrambling gun frees him up.

Once his head is cleared, Banshee helpfully explains everything he knows about the Shadow King, which turns out to be a lot. Somehow, when Polaris's powers got the ole switcheroo with her sister Zaladane, she became an amplifier for negative emotions, which the Shadow King is now using -- thanks to keeping Lorna prisoner in a nexus between the physical and astral planes -- to create a psionic feedback that spreads around the world that he can feed on.

Does it make sense? Fuck no. Is it what we're going with? Fuck yes.

Meanwhilst, in a specially-designed psychic-proof submarine, Xavier runs down the plan with the X-Men X-Factor, along with a few government agents, Val Cooper, and somewhat randomly, average FBI inspector Jacob Reisz, who has weaseled his way into this assignment.

Nothing suspicious about this guy

The plan is for X-Factor to go on the island, their presence masked by Jean's telepathic abilities, so that they can discover who the Shadow King's host is, and who the Nexus is, and "sever" his connection to both (possibly with murder? Must investigate later.) Xavier suspects that the King might even be using his son, David, aka Legion.

Of course, what they don't know is that the Shadow King is closer than they think...

Yes, as we no doubt recall, the real Jacob Reisz was killed weeks ago, and the Shadow King has been using his powers to keep him animated and wear him like a suit. It's Weekend at SKernie's!

As the Professor and his original students prepare to part ways, Xavier offers some condolences on the loss of Scott's child. Nathan isn't dead, though, simply misplaced: he was sent to the future in a recent issue of X-Factor in sort of a time-travelling boarding school situation. 

Mysterious though the circumstances are, however, Scott has a funny feeling he'll see li'l Nathan again, just hopefully not after too much time has gone by and the kid has grown into a grizzled old man or something.

X-Factor arrives on the island, and in a nice big panel that definitely warrants occupying 5/8 of the page, Archangel meets some of the mutants and people under the Shadow King's control.

I see Betsy, and Jamie, and Remy, and Jubilation, and...

The heroes have a pretty good time neutralizing their mind-controlled foes...

But there are a few key players they've missed, namely...

Sienkiewicz Mode Activated!

That's right, it's Xavier's neglected son Legion, here's be all wacky and mess things up! Let's hope things are going better back on the submarine...

Oh no! Even though the Shadow King said he was interested in drawing out his torture of Xavier to in his own words "savor" it, I guess he decided to just start throttling him right here and now.

And of course, Val Cooper won't be any help because as we all know she's a mind slave of the Shadow King. How are we gonna get out of this one??!

What??! It turns out the previously-thought-dead Mystique has been impersonating Val all along! And the Shadow King didn't catch on previously because... well you see... there's a lot of really good explanations if you...  ₒₕ 𝓌ₕₐₜ 𝒹ₒₑₛ ᵢₜ ₘₐₜₜₑᵣ ₜₕᵢₛ ᵢₛ ₐₗₗ ⱼᵤₛₜ ₐ ᵦᵤₙ𝒸ₕ ₒ𝒻 ₛᵢₗₗᵧ ₙₒₙₛₑₙₛₑ ₐₙᵧ𝓌ₐᵧ...

Sorry, where were we?

Well, with Reisz killded, Legion bugs out, which allows the X-Factorers to proceed to the Nexus, where they find Lorna trapped in a big energy thingy.

They are told, however, by an arriving Forge and his crew, that if they remove Polaris from the nexus it will kill her because... well... it uh... ₛₑᵣᵢₒᵤₛₗᵧ ᵢₘ ⱼᵤₛₜ ₐᵦₒᵤₜ 𝒹ₒₙₑ ᵥᵥᵢₜₕ ₜₕᵢₛ...

Unfortunately, they're out of time to work out a solution because the S-King has found a new host... and you'll never believe who he chose... the ultra-powerful and highly unstable mutant known as Legion!

And he makes the island go boom!

Further Thoughts:

It would be nice if there were more ceremony to the reunion of Charles Xavier and his original five students in the same place at one time for the first time since, actually, 1970, but the story actively acknowledges that so it's not a problem. I appreciate that the issue overall is generally brisk, but it clearly doesn't have much energy or thought to rise above technobabble. Unfortunately also lost is any kind of subtlety or long-term thinking to the Shadow King's plans and means, so much like Cameron Hodge before him he's become a cackling psychopath because it's easier to end the story that way. So be it. Over in Uncanny X-Men, the writer of that book had spent literal years setting up all of the pins to arrange for this story, but now we're in a big damn hurry to get them knocked down ASAP.

It's pretty careless and brash and is a big signal of things to come.

Also falling by the wayside is an emphasis on the nature of Xavier and Legion's relationship. Legion is a character who was set up in New Mutants several years earlier, but we haven't really seen much of him in Uncanny so if you didn't happen to be reading New Mutants in 1984, you may not know his deal, nor that Charles Xavier is his father. and unfortunately the book kind of skims over that, which if you don't get the context, may make the stakes of this issue all seem very random.

I can't say for sure whether this would or wouldn't happen with "another writer" at the helm -- over in Uncanny, longtime writer Chris Claremont also seemed to have abdicated the dictum that "every issue could be someone's first" by not hammering home who and what Legion is and just having him wander through the story as needed, unexplained. So this is a widespread deal.

Yeah, this is a little slapdash, but to critique the final product is almost a little unfair to the men credited with creating it. It was a bizarre set of circumstances and merely getting it complete and comprehensible represents a job well done, let alone as reasonably enjoyable as it was. 

But here's the facts, cats and kittens: it looks like Whilce Portacio (and Jim Lee) are the artists of the 90's, gorgeous art that is maybe not so concerned with telling a story in a fulsome and engaging way. It also looks like Fabian Nicieza is one of the writers of the 90's, able to provide zippy action and lighthearted banter and write forward from the past, without getting too bogged down in burdensome lore. We are looking at, after a fashion, the future of comics taking shape. Live it, learn it, etc.