Just look at this artwork!! I think I felt something akin to vertigo inducing dragonfear as I gazed at this. Ship leaning over and shooting its tentacles all over the city. It’s quite imposing! Now that’s what artwork is supposed to do! Illicit an emotional response! Maybe I should go back and see how this looked in its original print. Maybe this restoration is doing the artwork way more favors than I realize. Because it looks absolutely stunning and I have no idea how I wasn’t into this as a kid.
Oh yeah there’s a pretty engaging story going on here too. Apocalypse is attacking X-Factor, and he’s corrupting Ship’s sentient intelligence in order to distract our heroes in order to kidnap Cyclops’s kid. Once again I gotta ask. Why doesn’t he just walk in there at take the kid. Literally none of these tools could stop him. Why does he have to use such a complicated plan. (X-Factor #66 – May 1991)
I need to be honest about something. When I was a kid, I didn’t like Whilce Portacio’s artwork. It was … I dunno … too detailed, or something. Too much like Jim Lee’s but not enough like Jim Lee’s at the exact same time. Don’t ask me. A few issues into his work on these X-Men comics as an adult, I feel completely different. I find it extremely easy on the eyes. I don’t know what’s changed, other than my tastes, but it certainly triggers a significantly different reaction than I had back then. Even so, I can kind of see where my younger self is coming from. I don’t agree with him, but yeah, there’s something weird going on here that I can’t quite put my finger on. Take this cover for instance. Jean, Bobby, and Warren all look like the same mannequin wearing different wigs and outfits. And what is that in the background? Is it Apocalypse? Is it Ship? Is it Kermit the Frog after contracting the transmode virus? Is it another tree zombie?? I dunno. It doesn’t really look like any of those things. See that’s the kind of thing I would have gotten hung up on as a kid. And as we all know, I never get hung up on anything anymore. (X-Factor #66 – May 1991)
Apocalypse’s new goons, who brandish such Liefeldian designations as … Barrage,andFoxbat,andHarddrive, attack the X-Factor base, and during Jean’s astral confrontation with … Psynapse, this happens.
It seems Jean is finally regaining some of her telepathic abilities, and all it took was for someone to go into her head and start noodling around in there. Has she been without these powers ever since she was resurrected? Dang that was 65 issues ago! I can’t even remember what the explanation was for her losing these powers in the first place, but it hasn’t had much of an impact on her character. All of that energy and power just kind of got redirected into bending over backwards to facilitate having a relationship with Cyclops. That’s basically all she’s been doing for 65 issues. And it’s been …exhausting. Anyway, we’ll have to wait until next issue to observe the repercussions of this development.
These goons don’t seem like a match for the X-Men, but if all Apocalypse is trying to do is get his ship back, that seems like a more plausible goal. I don’t remember ship being included in the story after this point, so its days may be numbered. Or I have a bad memory. (X-Factor #65 – Apr 1991)
I appreciate these little callbacks to the X-Men’s origins, even if they are facilitated by Cyclops being super neurotic. Little scenes like this serve to not only memorialize the losses the X-Men have suffered over the years, but they also validate the history of the X-Men’s oldest stories which gives the whole series a sense of authenticity and realism. And honestly, after almost 30 years of comics, only three X-Men have been killed? That’s not bad! That’s better than Walmart, isn’t it? How many people have died on the job at Walmart? Never mind I don’t want to know. Hey speaking of authenticity, what is this shit!
SoLex Luthor made the Danger Roomand X-Factor’s coffee machine??? It wasn’t even Jim Lee this time! Stop drawing this shit in the panels you sexy new hot shot artists! (X-Factor #65 – Apr 1991)
I don’t know why I feel compelled to keep tabs on the relationships of these X-Factor characters. Maybe it’s because they all seem super awkward and I’m curious to see how they end, which will probably be silently whenever the writers change and the new writers won’t be bothered to acknowledge them. Or maybe it’s because I secretly yearn to be this happy and by hyper-focusing on them I can both live through them vicariously while ridiculing them in order to make myself feel safe and superior. Nah that can’t be it.
Oh my god someone needs to barf all over those frumpy overalls! I hope his ice sled crashes into a rusty saw blade factory and they all get tetanus! (X-Factor #65 – Apr 1991)
Here we meet a new rogues gallery of X-Factor antagonists. I wonder how long these dorks are going to last. I’ve never heard of them up before, and I can’t remember any of these characters having a role after this. Where did they even come from?
Well shit are these Apocalypse’s new horsemen? What happened to his old horsemen? Last we saw they were all drinking Sierra Mist and toasting to their failures. There’s like seven of these guys so I guess they can’t be horsemen. They are just a bunch of nobodies that Apocalypse hired to attack X-Factor because he’s butthurt about his spaceship betraying him. Why doesn’t he just go beat up the X-Men himself?? Why is he always hiring these nobodies to do things for him?? He’s like the most powerful mutant in existence but he has to get Hardriveto do his fighting for him?? Like he could literally just walk into the ship, punch every member of X-Factor once, pick up the ship, and carry it back into space all by himself. Why are all of his plans so elaborate! Just go do it! (X-Factor #65 – Apr 1991)
The only reason I’m sticking with these last couple of X-Factor comics is because it will be over soon. The team is about to change completely and Peter David is about start writing. Like I did when I stopped reading Excalibur, I’m going to try to re-focus on the most important X-Men comics in an effort to speed up my reading. And X-Factor is my least favorite X-Men series anyway. It’s had its moments, but for the most part it’s seemed like the less essential and less interesting, tag-along X-Men book. While they’ll always hold a special place in my heart, the original X-Men have always been the least interesting X-Men, and aside from Archangel, who the writers basically changed into an edgelord, nothing has been done in this series to make these characters any more interesting. Sometimes I wonder if it’s even possible to do a super engaging story with the original X-Men. They are all so bland and self-obsessed. I guess it’s not like Wolverine isn’t self-obsessed, but he’s also a complete maniac which is more fun. I dunno. I do like reading about these characters, but I do it with the same hate-watch mentality that I employ when watching old episodes of Full House. I guess we’ll see what the MCU does with these characters. (X-Factor #65 – Apr 1991)
There’s one more backup story in X-Factor Annual #6 that I want to comment on. It’s about Mystique who is apparently not dead, but seems to be taking some time off to mourn the death of her partner Destiny. This is a very good story, and I recommend reading it. We see Mystique reminiscing about her relationship with Destiny as she prepares to spread her ashes at a specific time and place of Destiny’s choosing, and the candid flashbacks we’re shown depict some heartbreaking interactions between the two as they struggle with the fact that Mystique is basically immortal, and Destiny isn’t. But … and I’m going to spoil this for you, because it’s precious, it all leads up to the exact moment that Destiny directed Mystique to spread her ashes, and this happens.
This was almost worth suffering through the Kings of Pain crossover. (X-Factor Annual #6 – 1991)
Whew, this rando backup annual story got off to a real bang in the last issue. In what I can only classify as, “an adult, R-rated experience,” we saw Freedom Force get uncharacteristically slaughtered by a mysterious group of villains of various Mid-Eastern origins. And when I say uncharacteristically slaughtered, I mean uncharacteristic for Freedom Force as a group of characters, and uncharacteristic for a fucking a comic book from the 1990s that was sold to children. Super Sabre got decapitated!! Crimson Commando got dismembered!! Avalanche got impaled and Pyro got fucking incinerated by his own flames!! And they showed all of it in graphic detail! Who the heck are these villains!!
Ooof I don’t know what I was expecting from an American writer in the early 1990s attempting to depict an alliance of super villains from the Middle East during the height of the first Iraq war, but I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. I’d rather just get distracted with how poorly this follows the events of the previous chapter where we clearly saw Pyro and Avalanche get murdered but they seem mostly ok now.
No way! I refuse to believe that a character who is so intimately familiar with serenity is actually fostering a torture soul. That’s bullshit, comic! I was worried that this comic was going to gloss over the extreme brutality of the last issue, because where in the fuck did that come from anyway, but then it kicks back up again. When faced with the possibility of their target being recaptured by their enemies, the Blob and Pyro flat out murder this poor physicist who they were supposed to rescue, in order to prevent him from falling back into enemy hands.
And then, holy shit look a this … and keep in mind that Crimson Commando already got his arm chopped of, which they’ve been keeping subtly concealed in this comic.
I think they blew his legs off!! And half his god damned face!! I don’t know who came up with this story, and I don’t, quite frankly, care for the stereotypes, but give me more of this insane violence!! It comes out of nowhere!! Most of the other back up stories in the annuals from this year are about Artie and Leech having a crush on their teacher! How is this going to end! (X-Men Annual #15 – 1991)
Scott’s plan to let the Proteus problem fix itself by convincing Proteus to commit suicide works, and suprise, suprise, one of the only voices of dissent is Scott’s abandoned bastard kid Cable. Proteus’s own mothers don’t even give a shit, although based on that disembodied head there maybe we’re supposed to assume that the Shadow King is still influencing Moira. I don’t fucking know, but what I do know is that Piecemeal is fucking dead, and I’m pretty god damn sure he had no intention of committing suicide at the start of this story. He seemed like he was wanting to be relieved of the pain that was being inflicted on him throughout this entire train wreck of a crossover. And guys . . . guys … get this. Want to know who the “Kings of Pain” end up being? It’s one of those Rob Liefeld characters whose name you will never remember, and Toad.
Toad! Toad was the chessmaster! Fucking Mortimer Toynbee himself! This guy!This rube! I don’t fucking believe it. I’m starting to remember why I quit reading X-Men for a couple of decades there after Claremont left. (X-Factor Annual #6 – 1991)
Not even one person, not a single one of you Scott Summers sympathizers out there, should be surprised that Cyclops’s solution to this epsilon level threat, this minor inconvenience, this wayward soul who’s just trying to figure things out and isn’t really hurting anyone, is for Proteus to go fuck himself. Literally, in Scott’s mind, everything in his life would just be easier if anyone that’s causing him even the slightest inconvenience would just fuck off and die. Like, he could have got divorced. He could have provided some closure and financial support to his wife and child which could have prevented her from transforming into a Goblin Queen. He could have been honest and just admitted he was a dickhead who would rather be with his ex-girlfriend, but also, granted, it was a lot easier when Madelyne just died. That’s why it seemed like he was pretending to be upset when it happened. How many times is this man going to ritualistically exhibit this sort of toxic behavior before everyone realizes what a dickhead he is!! The only redeeming thing about this scene is when everyone else is debating whether to go through with Cyclops’s asshole plan, Feral refers to Shatterstar as … “Shattybuns.”
Scotland blew up in the last issue when Proteus was resurrected, and out of the all the superheroes on Earth, they send in X-Factor to investigate. Not the Avengers, not local superhero team Excalibur, not even the People’s Protectorate (who in the fuck are the People’s Protectorate??). No, we send in X-Factor, a the bunch of entitled, elitist, New York snobs who I’m sure would rather be at some expensive restaurant pretentiously talking about how much better they are than everyone else. I’m sure they’re going to take their time and find a real compassionate solution to this humanitarian issue. (Yeah right). Anyway, as they get closer to Edinburgh, we find that Proteus has transformed the entire geographic area into something that looks like a computer program, and the rest of this comic basically looks like it takes place in Tron. Which is not nearly as awesome as it sounds.
Unfortunately, this really isn’t the bloodthirsty,sociopathic Proteus that the X-Men tangled with all those years ago. He’s not turning everyone inside out and melting the skin of helpless bystanders and plucking everyone’s eyeballs out of their heads. If the original Proteus was a horror movie, this one isn’t even PG-13. He’s just very conveniently hanging out and holding everyone prisoner in his computer jail, and it’s not long before all the superheroes find each other and are conveniently given enough time to hatch a plan.
Well why are you just sitting around! What have you been doing! What a bunch of complete boners. I can’t wait to see what these assholes come up with. (X-Factor Annual #6 – 1991)
This is the last issue of the Kings of Pain crossover, and for the finale we get a real coup de grace of a cover. A pile of dead X-Factor characters lying in Piecemeal’s bloated energy crotch. You know what, ever since this crossover started I’ve had no idea what the title was referring to. Who are the Kings of Pain? Is it Piecemeal’s abusive mother, Harness? Is it the government agents attempting to resurrect Proteus? Is it the shadowy chess-masters who I haven’t even posted about because all of their scenes are super boring? No, it’s this. It’s a bunch of dead superheroes swimming in Piecemeal’s crotch. This is the Kings of Pain. (X-Factor Annual #6 – 1991)
This … is an amazing plan. In order to stop Harness from using Piecemeal to continue to syphon mystical energy out of the air, Moira has Multiple Man make a bunch of copies of himself to hold Piecemeal down with sumo holds and then she runs out there with those little paddles and she tries to drain his energy. As you can imagine, this doesn’t work.
Honestly! That’s like trying putting out a house fire with a spray bottle of Windex! Isn’t Moira supposed to be a scientific genius? This was the best plan she could come up with?? Honestly. Then, when Warpath punches Harness in the face and knocks her helmet off revealing she’s a woman, she INSTANTLY goes from being a verbally and physically abusive thug to a caring mother.
And then this leads to Proteus being reborn because Piecemeal had been consuming the energy that got spread out all over the world when the X-Men defeated Proteus way back in Uncanny X-Men #128. All of this mealy-mouthed storytelling just leaves me with tedious questions. Like, why was this mother torturing her kid?? And why did she seem to be enjoying it so much?? And do you seriously think we forgot about that because it just happened in the last god damned issue!! (X-Men Annual #15 – 1991)
Geez look at how draw right up everyone’s buttholes in these comics (including Nova). Anyway, once everyone gets together on Muir Island and stops fighting, we get a recap on the old Proteus story from Uncanny X-Men #125-128 which is good for people like me because I read those comics like five years ago and I completely forget how all that went down.
Imagine if you were reading all these comics when they were published and it had been like 12 years since you read that story! Who could possibly remember! Reagan came and went in that time!! Nine seasons of the Facts of Life had concluded!! No one was the same after that! (X-Men Annual #15 – 1991)
I look at these panels and I think, only in the comics. Look at that poor guy! At what point does an energy parasite have a cardiac event? He’s getting so bloated, his skin is starting to boil like Roughouse when he got leprosy (I didn’t actually cover that comic for my blog, I quit reading Wolverine at issue #10 and I don’t remember the exact reason why Roughouse looked like that, but I’m pretty sure it was leprosy). As I was reading this I was thinking, man this guy is probably going to barf soon and that actually happens at the end of this comic but instead of cheerios and gatorade he barfs out Proteus. It’s pretty cool. (X-Men Annual #15 – 1991)
So the New Mutants (actually I guess it’s X-Force now even though the X-Force comic hasn’t started yet) and the New Warriors travel to Muir Island to investigate the power nexuses they’ve been detecting, and of course there’s no welcoming reception here because everyone on the island is possessed by the Shadow King who’s still forcing them to dress sexily (and has been for like a year and a half at this point). That makes sense, and I’m thinking, ok how is this going to play out?? How are our heroes going to interact with a whole bunch of corrupted X-Men side characters? And they even acknowledge this state of affairs by having the Shadow King’s disembodied corpse face floating above everyone, but then, for the sake of, I don’t know, plot I guess, the Shadow King just fucks off out of this comic for the next 30 pages?? Seriously? Like, he just stops possessing everyone for a few hours so we can do this story?? And when he … “loosens his hold,” Moira and Lorna don’t kind of shake the cobwebs loose and wonder why they’ve been dressing like they’ve been sleeping over in Lady Gaga’s basement for the last 18 months? Ya gotta be shitting me with this shit. And then, because this is a Marvel comic, a fight still happens, because it has to, FOR NO GOD DAMNED REASON, causing hundreds of thousands if not MILLIONS of dollars of damage to Moira’s scientific research facility.
Namorita gets slugged in the face by someone with super strength for the second time in two issues, and eventually everyone stops fighting and we continue on with the story like nothing happened.
What was the point of that! There have been a lot of pointless battles in these X-Men comics where all the good guys just start fighting each other for no good god damn reason instead of having a normal conversation, but this was one of the most pointless. It would have made sense if the Shadow King was still possessing everyone, but he’s in the bathroom for this entire comic! Yes, I know we can see him in Moira’s eyes, but that makes even less sense! Why did they stop fighting then! What’s he doing in there! Why do these characters act like this??? (X-Men Annual #15 – 1991)
Man I can’t tell any of these Kings of Pain covers apart. They all look exactly the same! BDSM Halo character. Obese guy on a leash. Different superhero team bouncing off them. It’s like an Instagram story from a Chris Claremont pajama party. (X-Men Annual #15 – 1991)
Probably because Professor X has been partying in space for like 5 years and he let a space monkey shoot Colossus’s sister with orgasm beam. Or because he has an affinity for recruiting child soldiers to fight really dangerous villains. Or because he always leaves the toilet seat up and Colossus is more considerate of the X-Women than that. I can think of like 10 reasons right off the top of my head! (Uncanny X-Men #279 – Aug1991)
Ooo zombie Colossus. Come on Charles, start snapping these X-Men out of their Shadow King trances! You’re just as strong as he is, if not stronger! You melted his brain that one time! I’m actually surprised that Stevie Hunter is still alive here. I thought she was doomed at the end of the last issue but it turns out Colossus has been chasing her ever since then. (Uncanny X-Men #278 – July 1991)
The Uncanny X-Men finally launch an assault on the Shadow King’s lair on Muir Island, and they get fucking ANNIHILATED. Jesus. How is Storm surviving this??? She gets incinerated and then she gets turned into a test launch for a North Korean rocket.
And then Banshee gets taken out by his daughter, which … actually this isn’t surprising. Does Banshee even know he has a daughter? I don’t think I’ve ever seen them interact. He probably hesitated because he couldn’t remember her name. I doubt Siryn is even possessed here. She’s probably just clubbing him in the skull with a rock because he’s a dead beat dad.
Man, this was one of the worst assaults I’ve ever seen the X-Men execute. Fucking Cable and X-Force just infiltrated this exact same island and they didn’t have any problems. Shit maybe Cable was right when he said they were better than the X-Men. Stop legitimizing Cable’s bullshit, Claremont! (Uncanny X-Men #278 – July 1991)
Belch!!! This is more disgusting than that time Maddie was tricked into making out with Mastermind. How does a monster with that many rows of teeth even pucker its lips to kiss someone?? Woof and it’s double creepy considering how starved Rogue generally is for physical contact. I don’t even want to think about how far the Shadow King is taking it with all the women he has mind controlled right now. It’s likely a full on astral orgy going on over there. Gross gross gross see this is why god didn’t give men powers of telepathy. (Uncanny X-Men #278 – July 1991)
Ugh I cannot believe this comic is drawn by Paul Smith. Ok enough about that already. The X-Men arrive back on Earth accompanied by their mentor Professor X who has been off world for 78 god damn issues. This is a momentous occasion that should feel like a grand return to form, and it does to some degree, but knowing this is the very last Uncanny X-Men story written by Chris Claremont during his franchise defining 17 year run on the series, it ends up feeling more bitter sweet than anything. I’m glad he was able to get Professor X back home and provide some symmetry to his narrative. He actually did a decent job of concluding most of the plot threads that were dangling out there, but I’ll always be curious about what was supposed to come next. I guess we’ll never know. Anyway, upon returning to Earth, Professor X had to steal the Blackbird back from the UK military who were guarding it for Excalibur (since Nightcrawler apparently stole it from the X-Men during Fall of the Mutants when he thought they were dead, but I did not do a post about that and hence I completely forgot it happened, so I was quite confused during the scene where Professor X steals it back in this issue). The X-Men are planning their final assault on the Shadow King and Muir Island, one last grand adventure with the whole team together (including Chris Claremont). Let’s just savor this as much as we can. (Uncanny X-Men #278 – July 1991)
I do not like this comic art. I do not like it in my shopping cart. I do not like it when I fart. No, I do not like this comic art. Paul Smith is one of the greatest X-Men artists of all time, but dang, after the last few issues drawn by Jim Lee, which had extremely dynamic layouts and eye popping detail that was practically jumping off the page, these panels feel like they were drawn in the 1960s. Bland, straightforward, and derivative. While I’m enjoying the beginning of this new story and am looking forward to the long awaited resolution of the Shadow King plot line, this all feels awfully disjointed from the previous few issues, and not just in its aesthetic design but also in its continuity as well. For instance, how did Guido get here? How did Rogue get here, for that matter, and where did she get a clean uniform? She’s been wearing the same stained rags for her entire jungle adventure in the Savage Land which lasted for months. Same goes for Moira who has been dressing super provocatively for the past several dozen issues or so (or so we’ve been told) but is now wearing some kind of Scottish tribal chieftain uniform or something. And where did this gladiator arena come from? We just visited Muir Island to murder Proteus and things hadn’t yet devolved into Mad Max in Thunderdome. Not impressed with this continuity at all. (Uncanny X-Men #278 – July 1991)
Oh. It all makes sense now. The Shadow King exists in the real world and he started Q-Anon and Trumpism and instigated the 2021 attack on the capital and drafted the Don’t Say Gay bill and the trans-exclusive bathroom bills and is about to overturn Roe v. Wade and gave birth to Marjorie Taylor Green, Lauren Bobbitt, and Matt Gaetz. Seriously. This comic was written over thirty years ago, but it perfectly describes the state of America last Tuesday. Are we ever gonna get better than this. (Uncanny X-Men #278 – July 1991)
Yikes! I recall the art in these next couple of issues being a little jarring, coming after the groundbreaking work of Jim Lee, Scott Williams, and Joe Rosas that we witnessed in the last couple of issues of Uncanny X-Men. But what I didn’t remember is that this comic is drawn by Paul Smith, one of my favorite X-Men artists of the past. I’m not sure what they’re doing to his artwork in this issue, but it is not working for me. (Uncanny X-men #278 – July 1991)
Double oof. This is absolutely heart wrenching to see X-Factor forced to give up their kid. This had me legitimately stressed out, thinking about holding a dying child and having to decide in an instant whether to give him up to a stranger from the future who may or may not be telling the truth, not knowing if you’ll ever see the kid again or even if you’ll ever know what happens to them. And then I remembered that we do find out what happens to him. He turns into Cable. And then I stopped caring so much. Cyclops sure doesn’t seem to care. Take a second to think about how you would feel after doing this, and then compare it to how he behaves.
He doesn’t give a shit! “Well I guess it’s back to Earth then. Gonna have a lot more free time on my hands now that I don’t have to care for that baby. Maybe I’ll start watching Frasier.” (X-Factor #68 – July 1991)
Oooook… Apocalypse basically breaks apart like tinfoil when Cyclops shoots him now. Seems legit! I’m sure that was the real Apocalypse. No reason to check the debris and make sure he’s dead.
Oof I gotta tell ya, as much as I hate Cyclops, and as much as I hate Cable, it’s hard to hate Nathan-Christopher, because he’s just a baby, and it sure is hard watching him die at the end of this comic. Like he gets infected with some kind of techno-organic virus that starts eating him alive. Pretty creepy. I don’t really understand why Apocalypse is doing this, when he could just kill him, and all of X-Factor, just by punching them, but I suppose it’s got something to do with absorbing their powers and making himself stronger. But if not, seriously this is a convoluted way to kill a baby. (X-Factor #68 – July 1991)
This comic is told from Cyclops’s perspective, complete with an agonizing narration from him (agonizing for me, not him), in which he waxes about the insidious chess match he’s played against Apocalypse over the years, and how he’s spent so much time “studying Apocalypse … trying to learn as much as possible about how he thinks.” Psssh ok, Kasparov. On the previous page you couldn’t even be bothered to listen to Apocalypse when he was DIRECTLY ADDRESSING YOU.
Does Cyclops really fancy himself as being locked in some kind of complex stalemate with a villain he is even close to being on the same level with??? Give me a freaking break. (X-Factor #68 – July 1991)
I can hardly believe that this “The Twelve” storyline, about 12 chosen mutants who are destined to shape the future of their species, is serviced in this way. After being apathetically introduced ages ago in X-Factor #14 (54 issues ago), it hasn’t been mentioned again until now, and I’ll be fucked if I have any idea if it’s addressed again until nearly a decade later when the whole thing is finally resolved in Uncanny X-Men #376-#377. Which I’m told is absolutely dreadful. That is what I would call, a failure in storytelling.
It doesn’t sound uninteresting on its surface, if you can suspend your disbelief and accept that Cyclops is one of these special, chosen mutants. A little open ended maybe. I bet Claremont introduced the initial setup for this story without having much of a payoff planned out, which is the worst possible way to go about telling a story. That’s how we end up with shit like the new Star Wars trilogy. Is it too much to ask that people actually write out a whole story before they start telling it? (X-Factor #68 – July 1991)
Why! Whhhhhhhhhhhhyyyy is this happening to Cyclops!! I ask thee, cruel fates, hasn’t Cyclops sacrificed enough?? How much more must he sacrifice to sate your perverse and disturbed proclivities!! How much more must he suffer! He has already suffered … so … so much. (X-Factor #68 – July 1991)
I have a confession to make… I’ve been an X-Men fan since I was a kid. I’ve read X-Men comics for like 30 years. And despite this, for all these years, I could barely remember that that Sebastian Shaw had a son. It’s not my fault! I quit reading for about 6 years right around when this comic came out! I can see why people like him though. Shaw himself has such a relatable surliness, and now you’re telling me he’s got a delinquent and possibly illegitimate kid? Who was probably sired by Harry Leland?? Who do I have to blow to get a mini-series about the day to day family life between these two? Or possibly a prequel story about the early days of the Hellfire Club when Harry Leland was cucking Shaw. Because I would read that all day long. I can’t wait to see where this story goes next, but to be honest I’m not sure which comic book it continues in. Is it unmemorable because Claremont is about to leave so someone else continues it? This seems like it’s much more his aesthetic than Peter David. (X-Factor #67 – June 1991)
I don’t know how I didn’t realize that until now. Oh, and those extra Apocalypses turn out to be decoy robot Apocalypses, and the real Apocalypse is now some kind of bloated Peter Griffen looking Apocalypse.
Again I have to ask, why does Apocalypse need all these decoys and henchmen and soldiers. He could single handedly kill all these people in about 2 minutes. (X-Factor #67 – June 1991)
Here’s some back story on that cyborg Rachel Summers looking Askani character. She’s apparently from the future, and for a hot second I thought that other robot guy was Deathlok, but no, we aren’t that lucky, it’s just some weirdo named Boak. So we’ve got the cyborg knockoff Wish versions of Rachel Summers and Deathlok conspiring to go back in time to save the future from Apocalypse, but instead of saving Cyclop’s kid, Askani accidentally handed him straight over to one of Apocalypse’s henchmen within minutes of arriving in the past. What a complete fuck up! How does a character recover from that!
Apocalypse actually seems like a pretty darn good babysitter here. That kid doesn’t look uncomfortable at all. It seems like all his needs are being met. And look how nice Apocalypse’s thugs are being! You can’t fake that kind of warmth and sincerity. I mean, this kid looks safer than when he’s with X-Factor who are always carting him off to fight trolls when it’s past his bedtime. Are we sure this leads the galaxy to ruin? Maybe Askani should check her nexus logs again. (X-Factor #67 – June 1991)
Isn’t this how it always goes in comics. No, our heroes did not die in the obliterating atomic space explosion that happened at the very end of the last issue. They conveniently wrapped themselves in a telekinetic life support bubble. Within the vacuum of space. And then the Inhumans saved them. I don’t know why I get so worried about these superheroes! Nothing bad ever actually happens to them! Even Ship is still alive somehow, and they’re the one that blew up!!
One time in my high school psychology class, we did an exercise where everyone in the class sketched a picture of the human figure and then the instructor described a list of analyses based on what we drew. For instance, she said that if you applied strong shading to an area of the body, you may feel insecure about that area. After she said this, I stole my best friend’s picture when he wasn’t looking and shaded in the crotch, and then I put it back on his desk. Then I yelled “hey everybody look Dave shaded in the crotch on his!” and everybody laughed. This cover reminded me of that. You know, now that I typed that all out, I think I told that story on my blog before. Sorry everyone. (X-Factor #67 – June 1991)
Back in space we’re having quite the celebration after the X-Men helped Lilandra and Professor X defeat Warbird and reclaim the Shi'ar Empire. Of course, nothing is ever that simple in space right? We’re all just going to spend 5 minutes fighting and then we’re going to celebrate by canoodling with horny aliens and if you can’t have sex and need to compromise for it, picking bar fights? No, I imagine there’s something else going on here.
Seriously why is Psylocke always naked! She’s always naked! She can’t get attacked when she has a bathrobe on? Or her pajamas? She’s British! I know she wears pajamas! Seriously. Anyway, she gets attacked here by someone who I’m going to nickname Calves because god damn. (Uncanny X-Men #275 – Apr 1991)
