rXtrospective: The Only Game in Town

For weeks, people have been asking, "Keith, when are you finally going to talk to us about that X-Factor story you teased back in September!?" Well, adoring fans, your wait is over. rXtrospective is back, and we're covering X-Factor (vol 3) #28-32, The Only Game in Town. These issues are written by Peter David with art by Pablo Raimondi, Valentine De Landro, Andrew Hennessy, and Craig Yeung. Jeromy Cox and Chris Sotomayor did colors, and Cory Petit did letters.

X-Factor is a team of mutants allied with, but not necessarily affiliated with the X-Men. They were initially founded by Jamie Madrox, the Multiple Man, as a private investigation firm meant to help the mutant community in New York City. They are also reeling from the effects of Messiah CompleX, but not because of the "death" of Xavier or the destruction of his institute. During that crossover, Madrox, whose mutant power allows him to make copies of himself, sent duplicates (dupes) into the future to try and gain information from the future and bring it back to the past. (When his duplicates die, the original Madrox gains all their memories.) As one of his dupes was getting sent to the future, X-Factor's pre-teen ally Layla Miller jumped into the time machine and traveled forward with him to a dystopian future and became trapped there even after Jamie's dupe died.

But we're not talking about Messiah CompleX! This is the next chapter. The team is demoralized by the loss of Layla. At the moment, the rest of the team consists of Siryn (Theresa Cassidy), Wolfsbane (Rahne Sinclair), Strong Guy (Guido Carosella), M (Monet St. Croix), and the only human on the team, Rictor (Julio Richter). Rictor is a mutant that was depowered along with the majority of the mutants in the world by the Scarlet Witch's Decimation, and he's questioning his value to the team even more in the wake of Layla's disappearance. At the local bar, Theresa shares a major development with her teammate Monet; she is pregnant with Jamie's baby!

Meanwhile, Jamie is having an argument with Rahne, who announces her intent to quit the team. Jamie berates her, accusing her of leaving them when they need her most. He eventually pushes her too far and, enraged, she transforms into her half-wolf form and tells him why she is really leaving; she had a vivid vision of murdering Jamie and a surprisingly returned (and fully grown) Layla, on their wedding day. She is certain that it is not a dream, but a vision of the future. After this shocking revelation, Rahne leaves.

Jamie goes out to pick a fight with the mutant-hating Purifiers in order to vent his anger. Rahne’s presence on the team gave him faith that what they were doing mattered. Layla’s presence gave him hope for a better tomorrow. In the absence of faith and hope, “all that matters is action.”

After his fight with the Purifiers, Jamie runs into Guido. Guido had recently been offered a job as “sheriff of Mutant Town.” Jamie asks when Guido’s leaving just like everybody else. The following exchange is one of my favorite parts in this story:

Back at their headquarters, Rictor reads the beginning of a goodbye note from Rahne before burning the rest. Theresa tries to tell Jamie about the pregnancy, but he assumes she’s going to tell him she’s quitting. He tells her he knows what she’s going to say and that he can’t believe she would do this to him. They get in a huge argument before Rictor comes downstairs and announces that he’s quitting the team. Jamie storms off to convince him to stay. Before things can spiral further into sitcom territory, Monet points out that this whole scenario is just like an episode of Three’s Company, and that Jamie clearly didn’t actually know what Theresa was talking about.

At this point, the story develops into more standard superhero-versus-supervillain fare. A former Purifier who was kicked out for letting Rictor sneak in undercover during Messiah Complex hired Arcade, the amusement park themed assassin, to kill Rictor specifically and X-Factor as icing on the cake. Arcade takes things to an extreme and entraps all of Mutant Town in a laser dome and subjects the entire neighborhood to holographic threats ranging from simulated deep space to the deep jungle. Arcade captures Rictor and attaches him to a device inspired by Edgar Allen Poe and James Bond: Rictor is strapped upside-down to a large cross with a bladed pendulum swinging closer and closer to his groin.

The whole team (minus Rahne) pulls together to defeat Arcade and save as much of the neighborhood as they can. Once the laser dome is shut down and emergency responders take over, Jamie is approached by Valerie Cooper, head of the mutant-centric division of S.H.I.E.L.D. called O.N.E. She says that she can no longer allow X-Factor to operate as a super-powered team outside of the government’s jurisdiction, offering them a place in her organization. While “considering” her offer, X-Factor instead demolish their own headquarters and flee to Detroit.

In the epilogue, we see them months later (and Theresa very pregnant). Valerie finally caught up with Jamie and tells him that “This is going to be the start of a beautiful friendship.”

Over-all, I like this story, but I don’t love it. There’s some great self-conscious gags, like Guido lying about turning his job down, and avoiding the long, drawn-out, sitcom miscommunication with Jamie and Theresa. Julio burning Rahne’s letter unread was a nice surprise take on a common trope. I absolutely love the way Pablo Raimondi draws Rahne in half-wolf form. Peter David makes me love all of X-Factor through their dialogue, especially Jamie and all of his dupes.

There’s a terrific gag when they are defeating Arcade. When Rictor punches him in the face it pops right off of his head, revealing robotic circuitry where his face used to be. They ignore the decommissioned robot stand-in for Arcade and leave to save civilians in the city. After they leave, the “robot” stands up and peels the fake circuitry from his face. It actually was Arcade the whole time!

Despite these moments of greatness, the story is only ok. Arcade is not my favorite villain, I definitely don’t need a whole five issues devoted to his elaborate death traps. The part that really bothered me, though, happens before all of the Arcade nonsense even starts.

Rictor sees someone who he mistakes for Layla, but actually turns out to be a young sex-worker, whose pimp and enforcers show up to beat Roctor up. The whole scene makes me uncomfortable. She is clearly underage, but instead of framing the interaction like a girl being manipulated into selling her body to pedophiles, the interaction seems to be written in a darkly humorous tone that I find distasteful. Jamie speaks to her like she’s a piece of garbage, angry at her for propositioning him. She is written as though she is a consenting, willing participant in this work. And when Rictor is fighting her pimp’s enforcers, she tazes Rictor to AID THE MEN WHO FORCE UNDERAGE GIRLS INTO PROSTITUTION. To make things even worse, after Arcade springs his trap, she is one of the civilians we see being burned alive by the laser dome. David could have easily shown her pimp being vaporized, but chose to torch the young girl. Maybe he saw it as comeuppance for tazing Rictor? I see the inclusion of her character and that whole section of the story unnecessary and repugnant.

Bet you didn’t see all that coming. Thanks for sticking with me until the end. But wait, what’s going to happen with Rahne now that she’s off the team? We’ll find out next time, on rXtrospective!