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 #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 #5 Review
Out of one murder attempt by a future member and into another as All-New X-Factor #5 picks up shortly after the end of the previous issue. This is my review of it.
This time around the story opens with Gambit waking up to find a woman in his room while he’s naked beneath the sheets. While this probably wouldn’t be uncommon for him, he didn’t invite Danger to bed last night so he’s confused as hell when he finds her there. She claims that his kiss reset some of her functions, but she needs more interaction to become whole. Better than nothing as an excuse to why kissing her worked I supposed.
It seems that Gambit isn’t the only one who woke with a pretty woman in his room. Harrison Snow, like all married but corrupt CEOs, is having an affair with Linda from his company. Their post-coitus talk is of a new player on the computer market that Harrison wants to buy out and he’s having a meeting with him later on. As he leaves out, he tells her to be out by the time his wife gets back from her business trip and then goes about his day with a swagger in his step.
Quicksilver and Polaris are already up, sharing breakfast and exchanging obscure trivia when Gambit tells them Danger is in his room. Polaris brings up the possibility that she wants him sexually, and Quicksilver sees nothing wrong with it. Then again, their sister married Vision and then magic’d up some kids so…
Anyway, Harrison pops by to tell them he wants them at the meeting and Quicksilver runs out to tell Havok, who somehow comes out acting like even more of a sell-out asshole than normal. He’s like one of those damn stalkers who have a PI following your every step. Quicksilver makes it back to Serval before they think he’s done in the bathroom, smooth as silk, only for Danger to sense his vitals and know he’s been running, but he gets out of it by lying. Same goes for Linda when Danger notes that she has Harrsion’s DNA on her in a way that only comes from being intimate with one another.
The meeting takes two turns, the first being the guy who Harrison planned to buy out turned to be The Magus, an enemy leader of an alien race. Danger discovers this by putting her hand through his chest, and Polaris gives its metallic butt a one-way trip out of the building. The second is when Warlock shows up defending his father, before the two of them split.
I’m sure they didn’t wake up planning to get into a brawl, but now that they were in it they were going to get some answers. And so, as the comic ends, Polaris suggests they pay a little visit to Doug Ramsey aka Cypher of the X-Men, aka the guy who can talk to anything and read any language.
A bit more crude humor-wise, but character development is always welcomed. I’ll give it a 4 out of 5.
Twilit Dreams Circle 