All-New X-Factor #13 Review
What has come about due to Pietro’s admission of guilt last issue? Read this review of All-New X-Factor #13 to find out.
The comic opens with Harrison Snow more than a little displeased about what came out last issue at the press-conference. He wants Polaris to fire Quicksilver to save face, but she tells him if Quicksilver goes the team goes. It shows that, as messed up as the Magus family is, they do have strong family bonds. Unable to lose the entire team, Snow lets it go as long as they don’t hide anything else important, which prompts Gambit to say he runs the Thieves’ Guild, Doug is obsessed he might turn evil, Polaris may have been responsible for killing her mother, and Warlock might turns nuts. They leave out afterwards and Gambit reassures her she was a decent leader before kissing her and getting slapped, but to be fair he said he had it coming….somehow.
Luna, in the meantime, hangs out with Georgina in the middle of brooding when she suddenly decides to come with them on their visit to a historical site. Warlock tries hanging out with Danger and once the topic of sex between them comes up, somehow, he bolts. I’m as confused as Doug was, wasn’t that what he was going for?
Quicksilver is with his daughter and Georgina, who he notices is off and calls Luna out for using her powers on her. Luna says she wanted to help her because she was depressed and is actually happy he talks to her like a father since things with her mother are off since she left her last boyfriend, Ronan. It’s about here that another Inhuman, Gorgon, has come chasing after Luna since she ran away without telling anyone and proceeds to try and kill Quicksilver.
Georgina tries to make him go away, but he tries to stomp her and Quicksilver gets her and Luna out of there before laying on the hurt. He doesn’t do well since a thousand hits from him don’t pack enough punch. Polaris shows up and does much better with cannonballs until Quicksilver tries to say it’s his fight and gets hit from behind.
Luna’s mother, Crystal, shows up to end things here and take her daughter back. Despite her clearly being upset with him, he does apologize that things between her and her last boyfriend didn’t work out. She lets Luna stay with him until she returns as the comic ends.
Okay, review time…
I found this issue sweet in we see family bonds, with sparse moments of comedy. It was okay for a filler issue to me and touching. So I’ll give it a 4 out of 5.
All-New X-Factor #12 Review
It’s time for Serval to announce the All-New X-Factor to the world. What will go amiss? Read my review of issue #12 and find out!
It starts with Havok meeting with his spy, Quicksilver, in a downtown bar. After his report, Havok tells him to come back to the Avengers, but he feels Polaris still needs him. Havok tries to pull rank, but Quicksilver up and quits the Avengers because he didn’t want to be another power-set like the sell-out that Havok was. This alone earned my respect for Quicksilver.
We then skip to Danger questioning why she has to wear a uniform, before she encounters Warlock. He tells her she looks nice and she notes he changed his speech pattern, despite it being hard for him, because he thought it would impress her. He got a kiss on the cheek for it, so good for him.
With Gambit, he goes to confront Harrison Snow about being left to die. The man is so damn smooth with pretending that being with his wife didn’t bother him that Gambit is confused. If it weren’t for the evil eyes at the end you might even believe him.
Things aren’t as smooth for Doug, who is trying to comfort Georgina after losing all her parents and home because of him, technically. He offers her the chance to slap him if it would make her feel better, which she does so hard it hurts her hand, but it doesn’t make her feel better in the slightest. She then apologies and thanks him for everything he’s done regardless before he leaves for the press conference.
Cut to the conference, where Quicksilver asks a final time if the PR lady, Linda, wants to do this because it’s waving a flag for villains to come and attack them. She points out it has happened a few times now and they were fine. The press conference is derailed when Fatale calls Quicksilver out on his actions in Son of M, which he owns up to live and on camera, before leaving for his room.
There, hours later, when he expected Captain America or someone to come and take him in, his daughter Luna shows up. Now, because of Son of M and that Quicksilver claimed that a Skrull did it in preparation for Secret Invasion, she was ashamed of him and told him she would love him because he was her father, but she would never forgive him and would always be ashamed of him. Since she was watching the press conference and saw him admit the truth, she forgives him and they hug as the comic ends.
Okay, review time.
This was not an action piece, but I loved it all the same as it served as development for Quicksilver. He owned up to a mistake (granted most of the other Inhumans are too busy with the Inhumanity event to bother him about it now) and earned his daughter’s respect again after years later our time and like one in theirs. He’ll probably get arrested, but I like him more than I did before this series and when he was working with the sell-out.
5 out of 5.
All-New X-Factor #7 Review
This lackluster issue didn’t really do much for me, but I’ve already reviewed the last six issues so I may as well continue.
The story begins with the daughter of an anti-mutant bigot whining because she’s not allowed to leave home. I can understand that. Then daddy comes in to see her web-show and decides it’s time for them to go and his guard shoots the web-camera because he doesn’t know how to turn it off. He’s clearly not the brightest tool in the shed.
Meanwhile, at Serval, Snow is trying to have his side-chick, Linda, calm down after being confronted by his wife about their nightly trysts. He tells her that his wife is bluffing (I doubt it) and then meets with Lorna to ask about why they didn’t off the Magus. At the same time Danger is reading a book written by the bigot from before, Scott Drake, and Pietro is offended. They argue about politics of it when the book is a spy-thriller when it just so happens that Doug found that web-show of his daughter. Since Pietro has daddy issues and she clearly has some too, he decides to do something about it.
When they bring up the topic Lorna correctly points out that kidnapping is what they’re planning and that might not look so good for a super-hero team that’s corporate. It’s made apparent that they don’t really care and they manage to convince her to join in the kidnapping plan as Pietro gets called in to report to Havok.
He runs in and tells him about the Magus, and Havok asks why he didn’t take him down as well. Like Lorna, he states running a corporation isn’t evil…at first anyway. If the Magus is here illegally I’m sure they can contact SWORD. That or those superheroes who appeared in Scarlet Spider since the Midwest is severely lacking.
Then he ditches him to go flying with the others, while Gambit admits that while he’s focusing on the small scale of someone who needs help rather than the grand scale of things, if she wasn’t the daughter of a bigot he wouldn’t care. At least he’s honest.
They land and go knocking on his door and get warned to leave in five seconds or they’d get gunned down. That goes about as well as expected since the moment they open up the doors the corpses are revealed to be hard-light constructs while Pietro knocks them out. They meet up with Georgia, who it turns out is a fangirl.
They try to tell her they’re here to save her, she thinks she’s fine and wants to stay. Doug tries to tell her she should come with them and doesn’t let go when she tells him to. Apparently she’s a mutant or something and has the same power set as Wither because he ends up getting mummified and she acts all cool about it as the comic ends…
Okay, review time…
Let’s be real here, they were kidnapping her. Don’t get me wrong, rescuing abused children from their homes is always a good thing in comics…well, most times. But X-factor is supposed to be a superhero team, a corporate one nonetheless, but heroes. This was blatant kidnapping of the same vein of the Avengers in AvsX with Hope.
As much as I hate anti-mutant bigots, and may the Purifiers burn in hellfire, he hasn’t broken any laws. You kind of have to agree they stormed private property, assaulted his men, and then tried kidnapping his daughter. I expect this from villains. The fact that the girl was a mutant only came up after they broke in to take her.
It’s clear he’s keeping her locked away because as a bigot he can’t have his daughter being a mutant coming out. Doesn’t help that he probably pissed of f the X-Men by being a bigot, since they usually deal with mutants who need help. His options were limited and swallowing humble pie is never easy, but consider that I’ve seen worse fathers I have to say he’s not exactly doing anything wrong.
Now, until the next issue makes some things clear, I have to say X-Factor were in the wrong. Either way, the issue gets a 3 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.
All-New X-Factor #4 Review
Its comic book day today and thus it’s also time for my reviews, with the first of the day being All-New X-Factor #4.
The comic picks up where we last left off, with Danger being freed and subsequently deciding to go the usual evil robot route of killing everyone present after she’s dealt with her captor. Gambit tries to reason with her, but she claims she doesn’t know who he is and blasts him with a rocket punch before looking to find Nil gone. He’s fleeing the scene, passing by Jean-Luc as the building explodes and leaves the guy to the mercy of the angry robot.
Gambit intervenes to save Jean-Luc, while Quicksilver saves him. Danger then catches up to Nil, with it being revealed he took her memory from her and offers to give them back. She decides to go without them as long as she gets to kill him, but Quicksilver once again intervenes to save the guy and Danger decides to take off the kid gloves by generating Hard-Light holograms to trick Quicksilver into running off of a cliff.
Lorna stops their fall by levitating them and gives Danger one opportunity to surrender, which she refuses. The mistress of magnetism then tears her apart, causing an argument with Gambit since she and he have a difference of opinion on the robot that was trying to kill them. That ends when Danger turns out to have inhabited their plane, which is something that Gambit should have remembered she could do earlier, and opens fire on them.
While Lorna stops the plane, Gambit faces off against a construct of her and tries to reason with her again on the belief that there is still a part of her that remembers their bond. That’s tested when Danger blows apart the escape ship Nil was boarding, subdues Lorna by distracting her with an image of her father rocking his new solo series outfit, and Gambit arrives to stop her from killing the 150 year old technomancer by following Disney’s mandate and kissing her.
It worked, of course. Danger calmed down and they gave her memories back to her. Then the comic ended with Gambit asking her to join X-Factor since she had nowhere to go, much to Lorna’s displeasure.
Okay, review time.
I can’t lie. I didn’t really like how the comic issue was resolved. In the first place, the “Kissing cures amnesia’” thing is really played out. They could have done a better job with it. Then again, this was basically an excuse plot so that they could add her to the roster and at least it ended quickly.
Secondly, Danger kept putting off killing them to get to Nil when it would have been in her best interest to simply kill them and go about her way. That’s poorly done, unless they justify it by her programming hindering her from doing so or at least show that she had fragments of memories whenever it came up. If the villains aren’t going to actually kill off the characters, or make a solid attempt, then they shouldn’t say so.
In the end, I can only give this an average score of 3 out of 5.
All New X-Factor #3 Review
The latest entry in the newest iteration of the X-Factor series is out now and I’m here to review it, no strings attached and my personal opinions abound. So, let’s get straight into it.
The story opens with Havok, brother of Cyclops and figurehead of the failure of a team that is the Avengers Unity squad, playing pool in a bar and getting briefed on Serval and the X-Factor team by his man on the inside. Yeah, no one is really surprised that it’s Quicksilver, what with Gambit pegging him from the moment he walked into Serval., but let’s talk about Havok. Now, if there is one person I dislike more than Wolverine and Captain America whenever they show up in an X-Men book, it’s this sellout right here.
First off, he left Polaris at her wedding for the nurse he was psychically dating while in a coma with the help of her mutant son. Second off, wasn’t he flirting to high-heaven with Wasp in Uncanny Avengers? They have a child together and are married in the upcoming arc, which I know will be retconned soon enough since Cap got disfigured by acid and Marvel can’t have that, but still. Now he claims he wants Quicksilver looking out for her because she’s his girlfriend and she’s nuts, and he uses these exact terms in the same page.
Quicksilver wisely points out that she has no reason to trust him well enough to serve as a mole and she tried to shoot him, but she was drunk and their whole family has issues like…well, every major character in these books. Wolverine kills his kids, the Summers brothers are currently on the opposite sides of the law and don’t get me started on their extended families, do I need to cover anymore? For that reason Havok’s claim that she’ll trust him because they’re blood rings hollow as hell. They wrap it up with Havok also being a deadbeat and Quicksilver saying everyone hates him, which he tends to bring on himself and I think Finesse likes him as a mentor.
We then skip to Serval, aka Google, and learn that Harrison Snow had implanted a nanotech camera in Polaris’ eye while she was sleeping so he sees what she sees. Yes, he violates her privacy like it was a Tuesday for him, but he’s big business. It was probably in her contract under the terms no one reads. Anyway, he learns at that moment they’ve been hacked from the PR head and decides to give his new team a call.
Two members of the team, Polaris and Gambit, are in his new room in the building and playing with his cats that Mystique gave him when Iceman decided to freeze the world over after corralling his ex-girlfriends into a snow cave for their safety, his ice clones claim, in Astonishing X-Men…including Polaris. Anyway, one cat scratches her and she flips out and gets ready to deal with it violently until Gambit snaps her out of it. Okay, maybe she isn’t a paragon of good mental health but I refuse to say Havok was right.
Snow pops up then and takes them down to their server room, where the guy running the place reveals they are being hacked and he knows the location for their team to go deal with it. Gambit notes he’s screwed as the place is the headquarters of his Thieves’ Guild even though it doesn’t pop up on the map. So he and Polaris suit up as Quicksilver arrives (with Gambit correctly claiming he was updating the Avengers about them) and take their shiny new jet out for a spin after it beams them up.
Meanwhile Snow goes to confront last arc’s villain of the week, Hoffman, and recruits him after illegally detaining him. He still has his mutant powers, but his DNA reads human, so naturally the megacorp wants him to work for them. Hoffman signs up when he learns they get benefits, which A.I.M doesn’t I suppose. Must be because they keep getting blown up or attacked…
As the team arrives on location, Gambit come clean that he knows who’s responsible despite the fact that he’s not involved in this one. One of his members is Nil, a technomancer. He uses magic to control computers and such…really, magic for that? Anyway, Nil confesses he was only able to get into Serval by using a new medium for his powers.
It’s Danger, who helped spring Cyclops from prison and hates being locked up and controlled more than anything. So naturally when Polaris springs her she’s too pissed to think about anything but killing everything. Cue fight next issue before she joins the team.
Okay, so while it isn’t an action-based issue it does move the plot along and reveals several key things while introducing a new team member. We learn that Serval is basically any big corporation in Marvel like Roxxon or Alchemax or Oscorp and we learn Quicksilver is a spy, but no real shocker there until his sister finds out and tries to kill him again.
So I’m giving it a 4 out of 5 because the art work still isn’t doing it for me and calling it a review.
All New X-Factor #1-2 Review
Okay, I feel that I need to expand my horizons beyond the big names of Cyclops, Emma Frost, and Wolverine (not a fan of the guy lately). So I’ve decided, after reading the first two chapters of the fourth iteration of X-Factor going under the “Original” name of All-New X-Factor, to start reviewing this series. This review in particular will encompass Issues# 1 -2, which features Gambit, Polaris, and Quicksilver undergoing their first outing as part of the new X-Factor, which is now a corporate superhero team.
So let’s get to it with Issue #1, which opens with two scientists, the one named Hoffman being the important one, giving themselves pats on the back for a good and hard day’s work of torturing some mutant in the name of science. This is the Marvel Universe so that’s expected, but Hoffman seems even more douche-baggish with the sincere way he smiles as he says it’s for the greater good and then goes to get an espresso from Starbucks. That tells you two things, the first of which is that this is normal behavior that he does daily and the second is that he honestly believes what he says. But more on him later as the scene changes to Gambit.
Being one of the premiere thieves of the Marvel Universe, he’s taking to his role to liberate a statue locked into place with a mystic spell after navigating a bunch of laser alarms while hanging from the ceiling. It’s once he gets it that he finds that Wolverine is there and that the owner knew he had tried robbing him since he tripped an alarm made by Tony Stark, which must’ve hurt his ego as much as Logan talking down to him like a child and revealing he knows Gambit is running the Thieves’ Guild. Now, despite his condescending tone Wolverine has a point in that it poses no immediate threat and he is stealing…which is wrong I suppose.
But, if you’ve read Cable and the X-Force, Colossus and Domino successfully did the same with a Hell-hole device that was inside of a secure bank lock-box after releasing demonic hordes. Why these apocalyptic things are even left in one piece escapes me, but I’m with Gambit in that it would be better if the thing disappeared. After all, if some ancient sorcerer comes from three thousand years in the past and knows the spell to activate it, they’re screwed. And since this is the Marvel Universe that will probably happen in a later arc.
After getting dressed down by Wolverine, Gambit goes to a bar to unwind. Said unwinding involves beating the hell out of a bunch of guys saying New Orleans had Hurricane Katrina coming a few years back. We don’t blame him for the ass-kicking in that case, but before he can get another drink Polaris comes up to him and tells him to get a coffee to sober up so they can talk business. When he explains that Wolverine told him to go straight and narrow if he wants to stay at the school and remain a member of the X-Men (which I will point out has nothing to do with one another given the sheer amount of crap they get into illegal or otherwise) she asks him to take a trip with her to Virginia.
While on the private jet she explains she’s working with Serval Industries, a rising company that specializes in electronics and such. There’s a minor incident when someone launches a missile at the jet, but Polaris is the Mistress of Magnetism for a reason and it goes boom with a snap of her fingers. She then explains that Serval is basically Marvel’s version of Google and they have enemies, but since they help people she’s working for them as a member of their new corporate team, X-Factor, the name for which was bought from the previous owner Jamie Madrox (Multiple Man) by Harrison Snow, the CEO of Serval, at Linda Kwan’s insistence as their PR person.
Now, this guy is smooth as silk but gives you that greasy feeling that Gambit picks up on and asks flat out if he’s evil. He laughs, not really denying it, but he wants Gambit on the team because Polaris recommended him. He then reveals Quicksilver, Polaris’ half-brother, wanted to join to look after her upon learning they got Polaris out of jail after she tried to shoot him and trashed a bar while drunk. Yeah, that doesn’t go over well.
We can clearly see that Quicksilver isn’t the most wanted person around by Polaris or Gambit, with one claiming he’s spying on them for the Avengers, which he denies (although the preview for issue #3 says otherwise) and the other thinking he’s evil, which he denies again. But ultimately Polaris decides to give him a chance. And it’s just in time as Harrison sends them on their first mission to deal with Hoffman, who it turns out is a biologist who has been employed by some A.I.M looking dudes and he wants them to go and do what they do best when it comes to heroes and shady organizations.
So they put on some snazzy outfits and go in destroying stuff to rescue the kidnapped victims. Gambit doesn’t really buy the timing and the excuse Harrison gave him for having them do this, but he’s done worse for less and gives it a go. The team arrives just as Hoffman is about to vivisect Fatale and he is ecstatic at more mutants arriving since they would be more test subjects.
So ends Issue #1.
Going straight into Issue #2, it picks up with Hoffman going to field test his research against the intruding mutants and unlocks a doorway to two mutants who are locked up in giant pods and clearly dislike the man, what with the torture and all. It then skips to our heroes being split apart and Polaris deciding to just trash the place in a fit of rage until she ends up where Fatale is. Gambit somehow escapes the standard Fall-into-Furnace trap with a well-placed charged card only to find himself at gun point. Quicksilver shows up about then and takes their guns away, but the chumps prove to be smarter than the average mooks as they have wrist mounted spares built into their bracelets. It doesn’t help as Quicksilver dodges the bullets and Gambit puts them down with another charged card.
On the subject of Polaris, she’s with Fatale who reveals Quicksilver gave her and the other two who were captured their powers back after M-Day but turned them into living bombs. The only reason they didn’t blow up was because they were frozen in time in another dimension and then pulled out of it by Hoffman, who siphoned off the excess energy. We then cut to Hoffman following up on that and getting ready to use that energy for himself to turn into an energy monster.
Cue the boss fight where Hoffman claims the mutants didn’t know the potential of their abilities or how to manipulate them and then claims that it was because of this that they let the world treat them like dirt and he can do it so much better than they can. Yet, for all that bragging, Gambit and Quicksilver put him down with an charged card inside his ear in less than five pages without a scratch. Pathetic.
Naturally the mutants he tortured want to finish him after he goes night-night, but they turn their hatred towards Quicksilver and make it clear they will get even for what he did to him one day. But that’s a story for another day as the comic ends.
Okay, review time.
Now art-wise I’ve seen better and it’s just not my style how the artist has drawn the series, but it’s still good enough for me to understand what’s going on. Plot-wise, it’s a good opening and doesn’t take forever like some other series that will remain nameless. On the minor characters, Hoffman is an affably evil douche who you find charming and want to throttle at the same time, Harrison is clearly shady but he’s big business so that comes with the territory, and it’s pretty clear Fatale, Abyss, and Reaper have a bone to pick with Quicksilver and will show up later as antagonists. The major characters interact with one another in an interesting manner, with Gambit and Polaris being rather close while no one really likes Quicksilver, but they do work well enough for a first mission with no real hiccups.
So I give both issues a 4 out of 5, as it is interesting but the artwork leaves a lot to be desired.
Twilit Dreams Circle 