X-Factor #-1 Review

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Reviewer: Jesse Baker
Story Title: A Summers Tale

Written by: Howard Mackie
Penciled by: Jeff Matsuda
Inked by: Art Thibert
Colored by: Glynis Oliver
Lettered by: Richard Starking
Editor: Kelly Corvese
Publisher: Marvel Comics

Welcome to the 1997 brainfart that was “Flashback Month”, as Marvel stopped all of their books in the tracks for one month for a series of 1960s retro-style flashback issues with minus-one numbering. The event was universally loathed mainly do to the pointlessness of it, resulting in extremely low sales for Marvel the month of the event for the bulk of the company’s books. Still some decent issues came out of the entire mess (most notably the -1 issues of Thunderbolts, Incredible Hulk, adjectiveless X-Men, and Daredevil). And X-Factor. In fact, the “Flashback” issue of X-Factor would be the book’s last gasp of any real sort of quality as the book immediately went into the toilet, as the book lost all direction and sense of identity before being cancelled and replaced with Mutant X (which is a whole other story in terms of horror, but that’s a tale for another time).

The issue opens with Mystique and Forge teasing readers with them getting together at long last. As they are about to kiss, the Stan Lee narrator (who’s in EVERY flashback issue that month) bursts through the panel and yells out to the readers that Marvel doesn’t publish romance comics. Of course, this coming from a guy who wrote Amazing Spiderman, which was as soap-opera as one could get in the 1960s so take this with a grain of salt. Stan then proceeds to mock the codenames of Shard, Wildchild, and Polaris as well as badmouths Sabretooth (who ended up being forced onto X-Factor after TPTB realized that Sabretooth being an X-Man was a stupid idea and pulled him from the roster) by telling the three heroes never to trust him. Shard, Polaris, and Wildchild respond like a bunch of bored teenagers and are ultimately sent off into the forest while Stan tells his story.

Stan Lee wants to tell a tale about former X-Factor member Havok and how he became a baby-eating plane hijacking uber-terrorist he was at the time that this issue was published. For the record, this issue came out shortly after the God-Awful decision was made to turn Havok evil and form his own evil terrorist clique called “The Brotherhood”. It was a god-awful storyline complete with the sack of crap Age of Apocalypse refugee Dark Beast playing mentor/brainwasher to Havok. The new Brotherhood group was also ultra lame with rejects from Gene Nation, another generic mutant terrorist group from the mid-1990s, making up the team. Furthermore there was the nasty little fact that every writer using Havok at the time repeatedly stated every time Havok appeared in a book that Alex Summers was TRULY EVIL AND NOT FAKING IT OR UNDER SOME SORT OF MIND CONTROL by having every single person Havok met during this dark time say this out loud for everyone to hear. So of course, when it comes time to resolve the plot Howard Mackie plays the “He’s faking it” card on Havok and the whole horrific storyline was swept under the rug and never mentioned again.

Like all Minus One issues, this story is set in the past as we flashback to Alex Summer’s past, back when he was 13 years old. The home belongs to Havok’s adopted parents the Blandings, who adopted young Alex after the death of his parents. We get some exposition out of the way as we learn that the Blandings adopted Alex after their star jock son Todd died and that the Blandings are having a difficult time adapting to having Alex replace their son. Mrs. Blanding tries to serve Alex Todd’s favorite sandwich before Alex corrects her on the fact that it was Todd’s favorite and not his (which makes her burst into tears all of a sudden). Meanwhile local pee-wee football coach Mr. Blanding announces to Alex that he’s going to be the team’s new starting quarterback despite Alex’s lack of talent as a jock. Alex tries to talk out of being quarterback but Mr. Blanding is in complete and utter denial and is deluded into thinking Havok has potential to be a star jock and beat up kids weaker than he is. We also meet Haley, Alex’s adopted sister who hated her older brother (who got all of the attention from her parents) but desperately wants Alex to try and act like her brother so that her father has a reason to live.

As Haley and Alex head to practice, Alex comments that his brother was the jock in the family. This causes Haley to hint that Alex can get girls to go with him to dances if he’s a jock. Alex is oblivious to this comment as we see Sinister (formerly Mr Sinister, as Marvel dropped the “Mister” part of the character’s name during the 1990s) watches in the shadow. After a pathetic practice (which includes Mr. Blanding outright ignoring Alex’s suckiness in favor of delusions) Alex has a run-in with a group of older teenagers led by a dude name Vince. Apparently Vince hates the Blandings, hated their son Todd, and now hates Alex for being adopted by the Blandings. Now for the record, Jeff Matsuda clearly draws Vince and his gang as being older teens, but earlier in the issue we see a picture of Todd and Matsuda clearly draws Todd as being a super-deformed 13 year old. Now we can somewhat explain this entire thing away by saying that the picture of Todd was an old one but still it’s very shoddy artwork for Matsuda.

Anyway, Vince has a baseball bat and makes it clear that he hates Alex and his new dad for the special treatment Mr. Blanding is giving him as well as makes cryptic comments that he killed Todd for being the most popular jock on campus. OK, this all-but-confirms that Todd wasn’t the same age as Alex when he dies and it’s a good thing too given the fact that it would make zero sense for a 17-18 year old to be worried about a 13 year old becoming the most popular and powerful person on campus. Alex starts feeling the plasma energy bunring within him (complete with smokelike rings forming around his hands) when Haley appears and rescues him. While they walk home, she tells Alex she won’t be around to rescue him from fights and that the strange energy projectile power Alex feels inside of him is really just puberty.

At home, Mrs. Blanding apologizes for the food mix-up and tells Alex that she loves him. Meanwhile Mr. Blanding has a temporary moment of clarity and offers to let Alex leave the team, which Alex declines. Anyway, as Mr. Blanding leaves Alex in his room, he also tells him that he knows about the run-in with Vince and that he’s proud that Alex didn’t fight since fighting is what got Todd killed. Funny, severaly pages earlier Haley stated that a car ran over Todd after the driver was hit by a rock and swerved into him. I’ll get back to this in a moment.

That night Alex watches the night sky as he flashes back to him parachuting to the ground with his big brother Alex as Mr. Sinister (in his human form) approaches Vince. Vince is still planning revenge against Alex as Vince makes vague referrences to having a bad relationship with his parents. Sinister introduces himself as Mr. Essex and all but tells Vince that he needs to go take care of his problem that he’s thinking about rather than whining about it. As Sinister morphs into his regular form (complete with soul-patch facial hair that the character suddenly developed after Age of Apocalypse), he comments about the purpose of the conversation, which was to put Alex in a situation that would result in the triggering of his mutant powers.

So Vince and his goons kidnap Alex and Haley and take them to an abandoned warehouse where they have to find the exit before Vince kills them. While Alex suddenly starts feeling light-headed and faint, Haley is left to deal with beating up Vince’s accomplices but quickly falls down as Vince shoots her in the knee with his gun. Vince again, all but admits to killing Todd as he gives his justification for hating Alex. Basically Vince hated Todd for being loved by all and for having a loving pair of parents and that in this rant he mixes up Todd and Alex’s name like any psychopath would. And if that wasn’t enough to clue you in on the fact that Vince is crazy, Matsuda gives Vince swirly crazy eyes during the big rant sequence.

At this point I would like to point out that while they don’t outright say it, that Vince’s entire spiel paints his character and Todd Blanding as having a bully/victim relationship. That would explain his hate for Todd and the parents, who he sees as enablers for Todd’s cruelty. Of course, given the outright sledgehammer of plot is already in play with Vince being the person responsible for Todd’s death, you would think that Mackie would spell it out rather than be ultra-vague with the character’s motivations. But then you realize it’s Howard Mackie that wrote this story and you realize that’s why there is no clear-cut motivation other than he’s a crazy loon.

Anyway, after kneecapping Haley, Vince puts the gun to Alex’s head only to announces that he’s going to kill the Blandings and ruin Alex’s “perfect little world”. Vince has totally lost it BTW as he is oblivious to the fact that Alex is already an orphan and runs off to kill the Blandings who Alex has zero emotional connection with do to their obsession with their dead son. Haley (who’s still able to walk suprisingly despite the bullet to her knee) begs the still dizzy Alex to save the Blandings. She explains that Todd would save his family and when that doesn’t get a reaction from Alex, she plays the “you’ll be free from Todd’s shadow if you save mom and dad” card. When this doesn’t move Alex, she finally tells him that this his his chance to prevent a repeat of his parents deaths, which motivates our young hero to go save the Blandings.

Back at the house, Vince is ready to shout the propane tank outside of the Blanding house and kill everyone (including him apparently) when Alex and Haley arrive. Haley begs Alex to stop the big psychotic bully when she brings up Todd’s name again. Apparently this is enough to make Alex lose it as his plasma beam powers finally manifest. And his target for his first beam? Vince, who is reduced to a charred skeleton by the beam. As Alex and Haley freak out at what has happened, Mr Sinister appears again and mindwipes both Alex and Haley as the issue comes to an end. As the issue ends, Stan Lee shows back up and declares this is the event that made Havok turn evil even though it is clearly stated that Alex was mindwiped. Anyhow Stan DOES give some hope to the readers by saying Havok’s story has more twists and turns to go as the issue ends. Sadly no one told Stan that Havok’s future included the horrifically bad Mutant X series and being written by Chuck Austen, in which case staying a villain might have been a MUCH better career move.

EXTRA REVIEW CONTENT
Letter Page: As part of the whole retro-feel of the flashback gimmick, the letter pages for all of the Marvel books were redesigned ala the letter pages of the 1960s Marvel books. The main point of the letter page though for this issue is to pimp the next issue of X-Factor (X-Factor #136) as a big turning point for the series. A turning point yes, as Sabretooth nearly kills the entire X-Factor team and goes back to being a villian full-time. The core roster would be replaced with new generic mutant characters connected to XSE (the futuristic version of the X-Men that Bishop was a part of) and an extremely lame and convoluted storyline before the book was folded and replaced with the even crappier “Mutant X”.

Operation Zero Tolerance Preview: A fluff piece as Scott Lobdell is interviewed about the upcoming “Operation Zero Tolerance” crossover. Operation Zero Tolerance was supposed to have led to a stripped down X-Men team that didn’t have all of the fancy alien technology that the Shi’ar gave them over the years It was also supposed to have led to the return of Magneto (as a seperate entity as Scott Lobdell was prepping “Joseph”, the young amnesiac version of Magneto that joined the X-Men team after Onslaught, to be revealed to be dead X-Men villain Proteus) to the X-Books. Magneto was supposed to have shown up at the last minute to kill Operation Zero Tolerance big bad Bastion and then blow up the Shield Helicarrier as payback for the US Government declaring war on mutantkind. Sadly this ending got vetoed by editorial and the entire arc was pretty much stripped and castrated to such an extent that it was just another “all-hype” crossover that failed to deliver anything of substance in regards to outright and major change to the X-Men. Scott Lobdell would also, BTW be gone from the X-Books by the end of the crossover as well, making it one collossal flop of a big event.