All-New X-Factor #20 (Final Issue) Review
The final issue of the series is here, and here’s my All New X-Factor #20 review!
Okay, the issue opens with the team on the ship. It’ll be a couple of weeks before Polaris recovers, but she asks Warlock to try and comfort Danger after her realizing she has no soul, so to speak. While he and Cypher made up with one another, with a parting hit to seal the deal., it’s still a bit bitter. Warlock meets with her and tells her that he has a soul, or something inside of him that he cannot explain with words. Instead he shares it with her, and I think robot sex ensues.
While that’s going on, Polaris is instead dealing with a message from Quicksilver. He’s leaving the team for the Avengers Unity division and taking his daughter with him. Personally, I blame Scarlet Witch and would love to be there when he has words with her, but he states he’ll be there if she needs him.
On Serval side of things, Snow has a meeting with Ty Stone of Alchemax and continues to be a sort of corporate sleaze ball who wants his assistant in on the meeting to provide eye candy. This brings him into contact with Miguel O’hara, aka Spider-Man 2099, who recognize one another. As soon as Stone and his assistant are out of the room, secrets come out.
Harrison Snow, or Harry as Miguel calls him, came from the future in a Time Dilation accident with Barry, the man from the last issue. Naturally, an accident sent them both back. Harrison explains that the handgun he used last issue was a device to send him back to the future, however, Miguel explains that time is wonky because of Age of Ultron and thus he just killed the man and his wife as readily as if he had incinerated them.
Harrison then reveals he plans to take down Alchemax using mutants. He plans on recruiting them all, and then the Avengers, and then all the heroes under Serval’s banner. Then he’s going to sic them on Alchemax and obliterate it in five years. It’s ballsy, and he believes that it will lead to a golden age for mankind.
Given how cutthroat Alchemax is in the future, I’m kinda with him. That being said, absolute power corrupts absolutely. Anyway, the team returns just as Miguel leaves and the comic ends its run.
Okay, review time.
Well, it wraps up the series fairly well given the circumstances. While there are some inconsistencies, we can honestly say that X-Factor was probably the best X-Men series out at present. It has better pacing that Uncanny X-Men, the team actually accomplished something unlike the Uncanny Avengers, and it held more worth than All-New X-Men and all the damn Wolverine comics.
I’m still not a fan of the art work though, so the issue and series gets a 4 out of 5. I’d read a sequel.
All New X-Factor #19 Review
Okay, we’re at the end of the battle between the team and the goddess of the underworld. Read my All-New X-Factor #19 review!
At Serval industries, Harrison is speaking with the man whose daughter he had his team go out to bring her corpse back. Whatever reason they were out there, they want out now and Harrison agrees, but he begs them to let his team do what they were asked.
The team, now facing a goddess within a mortal vessel, is given the choice to kneel or die. Polaris has them kneel, so that she could figure out what was going on, but Sunfire screws that up and nearly gets munched until she intervenes and asks why the goddess chose now. The goddess says that in five years there will be a peace accord, and for some reason it has to stop that so it will kill the inhabitants of the old city and borrowed Elena’s body for that. Then she wipes the floor with them and decides to be on her way.
They get right back up and start hitting back, but Lorna gets taken out by plastic bullets and the goddess decides to just eat their souls. Danger, lacking a soul, proceeds to tear the goddess apart until it runs back to the underworld. If there was any doubt about why you should have a robot on the team, there’s your rebuttal.
Later, Polaris is recovering and the body had been returned. They conclude that it was merely coincidence that the terrorist had plastic bullets, but are curious as to what the goddess meant about being out of time. While Polaris congratulates Danger, she admits that she can’t feel good about it since she doesn’t have a soul and doesn’t feel real.
With Harrison, the couple has finally laid their daughter to rest. They want out, after doing whatever they were there to do, and it seems like Harrison is willing to let them leave. But he promptly kills them both as the comic ends.
Okay, review time….
The battle with the goddess was honestly expected. They’re not going to kill of the team just yet, after all. However, the real meat of the story is what happened in the end. We always knew Harrison was so shady he could shield you from the sun in the summer, but we never thought he could go to outright murder.
Gets a 4 out of 5, the deducted point coming from the art work. While it may normally be like that, I still don’t like it.
All-New X-Factor #18 Review
The aftermath of Axis is felt in All-New X-Factor. Read on my recap and review of this issue!
Our comic begins with Harrison telling the team about how his goddaughter’s corpse was taken from a funeral procession and into a series of tunnels. He wants them to retrieve her body so it can be laid to rest. Everyone is in agreement to get to work, which both Gambit and Quicksilver find odd since they never agree with each other on anything.
Meanwhile, Cypher apparently had sex with Danger, somehow. Honestly, I question if this was really consensual, but either way he begs her not to tell Warlock. True enough, this violates a number of things in the Bro Code.
The team assembles with Sunfire there to apologize for attacking them. Now that Axis is over the nuclear football had been returned to the president, and Polaris invites Sunfire on the mission. Quicksilver protests and then decides to stay with Luna at the base if he’s coming along. Along the way, the news comes out about Danger and Cypher, leading to Warlock being more than a little mad.
After they land, they venture into the tunnel where they find hieroglyphs and two men try and shoot them. They are quickly subdued before telling them they took the girl’s body because they want to use her for some kind of ritual, having guarded over her family line for thousands of years. As the comic ends the team arrives to see that the girl has been turned into an Avatar of Ammit.
Okay, review time…
This issue starts what may be the last arc of the series. I find that animosity between Sunfire and Quicksilver, one-sided as is, is a bit weird. The fact that Danger also slept with Cypher showcases her lack of empathy, while Warlock has a more emotional response since Cypher is his closest friend. Also, I do question just how consensual it was since she came in during the middle of the night… or the logistics of how it was possible.
Anyway, it gets a 3 out of 5.
All New X-Factor #16 Review (AXIS Tie-In)
Okay, we’re following up on the events of AXIS on the Serval Team in All-New X-Factor #16 and here’s my review!
The comic opens with the Sentinels attacking Serval fruitlessly in order to retrieve the nuclear football. Harrison entertains the thought of letting them into the barrier to prevent them from being affected by the Hate Plague but they’re on orders so it wouldn’t help. Lorna does point out that they will try to get in some way though, which is proven when they go and kidnap his wife.
Meanwhile Pietro is feeling bored watching with his daughter when Lorna comes up and asks him about what Wanda said about him spying on them. But asking I mean she slaps him hard enough to knock the speedster down and he points out they have bigger issues but explains why he quit the Avengers. She took more offense to that second-stringer line than the whole spying thing, but any further discussion is cut off when the Sentinel with Harrison wife gives him a minute to drop the shield before he crushes her, to which she tells the robot she’s screwed because he won’t do it.
He doesn’t as he can’t let them get the nuclear football so the team acts to bring the robots and/or the dome down. Doug gets it down before Pietro saves her but he gets hit and then Warlock gets taken out. Danger takes offense to this and turns their Sentinels onto one another until Longshot and Sunfire arrive as the comic ends.
Okay, review time.
Uh… we see some developments in regards to the team, like Danger going off when they hurt Warlock and Lorna confronting Pietro, but there’s something missing I feel. Maybe because they’re dragging it out longer than World War Hate.
Meh, a 4 out of 5.
All-New X-Factor #10 Review
Well, after that fallout last issue I’m glad they’re addressing it a week later. So here’s my review of All New X-Factor 10!
The comic opens with Polaris dusting herself off along with her brother and Cypher. Somehow nobody, not even the middle-aged woman, was injured when Memento Mori basically dropped a house on them. Still, she calls Harrison Snow up and tells him to get the rest of their team over there so they can get to superheroing.
Georgina’s father proves himself to be a somewhat smart and reasonable villain in that he’s basically paid off her mother, after dropping a house on her and kidnapping her daughter, so she can buy a new house. He’s taken her to a mall and 5-star hotel he owns through legitimate means, which superheroes that care about collateral damage can’t simply run rampant through to get her back. Of course he picks up the idiot ball and becomes an asshole when he forces her to show him her power, which she uses to mummify his hand and escape.
Gambit, worried that Harrison learned about his little fling with his wife, is taken to the matter transporter room with Danger and Warlock. They join up with the rest and get to the mall just as the guards decide to tranquilize Georgina. Cypher and Warlock, who turns into a motorcycle, get her out of there just as Harrison learns from Linda about Gambit tapping his wife last night.
As the comic ends with them being teleported out while the rest of Memento Mori and his men close in, Gambit just so happens to get left behind and left to the villain’s mercy after talking trash.
Okay, review time…
Well, this issue was fun and informative. Although I have to say it’s kind of petty of Harrison to leave the man to die just because he inadvertently slept with his wife. He’s sleeping with Linda, so what’s the problem? You don’t throw away an asset like that…
Anyway, 5 out of 5.
All-New X-Factor #8 Review
Well, that was interesting last time. Now it’s time to see what’s going to happen to Doug after he was desiccated by the pie-loving young woman. This is my review of X-Factor #8.
The story picks up where it left off with Cypher a dried out husk of himself and the rest of the team stunned at how pie-girl is so disconnected from what she did it was like she didn’t know it was wrong. Danger breaks the tension by asking what sort of pie, which gets the ball rolling with Warlock ready to murder her as her father gets the door open with men and guns at the ready.
Polaris pretty much drags him inside, locks the rest out, and force him to admit he’s told his daughter a huge-ass lie. Turns out he’s kept her so locked out of the real world that she believes the majority of people in the world have powers and the few who didn’t worked with her father. Wow, I’m more amazed at the fact he managed to pull that sort of lie off for years than anything else.
Anyway , the police show up and they need her to fix Cypher, but like most mutants who didn’t get training she has very little idea on how to reverse her power but can try if she can get some water. Danger and Warlock clear a path while they make for the kitchen so she can try and reverse it while her father tells her he was just trying to protect her… to be fair, as far as bigots go he’s nowhere near the worst in having a mutant kid.
Rahne’s father straight-up beat and tried to kill her. Not saying its right, but it could have been worse.
In the kitchen she explains she normally drains moisture out of things, which she learned by killing her first kitten by accident, and her father started home-schooling her. She’s going to get as much moisture in her as she can and then put that into him the same way she took it out. Her father points out that it could possibly kill her and Gambit jacks him up and demands to know how could he rail against mutants knowing his daughter was one.
He states he didn’t know when she was born and that she was god’s punishment on him. Gambit points out that maybe the big man was trying to tell him something, but he reasons that maybe god was a dick and just wanted him to hate him as well. Mission accomplished there, but he doesn’t hate the girl since she’s his late wife’s legacy. Gambit must also be off his game, because he gets kicked off by Georgina’s dad and only his daughter telling him to let her try this and if it fails and she dies she’ll have a one-on-one talk with god about it gets him to settle down for a moment.
Once the moment passes Quicksilver takes him and sits him down elsewhere only for men with tracer bullets that would follow him to the ends of the earth to threaten opening fire on him. Never mind the fact that he could probably trap them in a steel box or knock their tracer mechanism out with a pipe or just hide behind a steel wall and let them shatter to pieces unless they’re made of adamantium. Fortunately Harrison Snow shows up out of nowhere to prevent even more ammo from being wasted and takes Scott to discuss this in private like they’re old friends. Quicksilver and the head bodyguard are just as confused as we are.
While Georgina succeeds in reviving Cypher, the police decide to try sniping them. Polaris hijacks their guns and gives them thirty seconds before she opens fire. Her father wouldn’t have given them even that, so they wisely decide to leave as Cypher offers to take Georgina to the JGS when Danger ruins the sales-pitch by pointing out they train to fight evil mutants, risk their lives, and die repeatedly.
She runs like any sane person would as Warlock basically confirm it. To be fair, Danger and Warlock aren’t lying. There are only a handful of X-Men who haven’t died and aren’t wallpaper yet. When her dad is in a meeting she uses her powers to bring the door crumbling down and we learn that he and Harrison Snow want her to go with him.
It’s damn heartbreaking as he tells her that he loved his daughter and when she became a mutant she was just some thing that replaced her. He can’t even face her as he says it while Snow is looking nonchalant about it. As the comic ends it’s made clear that Snow forced him to say it and he’s driven to near tears while alone….
Okay, review time.
Yeah… I’m starting to think Harrison might be evil. He’s taking the man’s daughter as a hostage (come on, even though they didn’t say it we all know that’s what it is). That being said, the fact that he knew where his team was and managed to get inside the locked-down building brings up questions.
Either way, he did bail them out of trouble that they had no business getting involved with. Like I said in my last review they broke a ton of laws that you can’t do when part of a corporate super-hero team and Harrison straight-up Mafia’d them out of trouble to probably save his own ass.
Other than that, I find myself somewhat sympathizing with the man. Don’t get me wrong, I hate bigots in Marvel and if he was a Purifier I would be rooting for someone to put him down. But he’s having his daughter taken away from him because of whatever dirt Snow has on him and the alternative would have somehow been worse. He gets some pity from me… only some, not a lot.
The fact that the comic could make me feel anything like that deserves a 4 out of 5 and only misses a perfect score because the artwork hurts my eyes.
Twilit Dreams Circle 