Previous Posts: Introduction | Chapter 1: Lee/Kirby Part 1 | Chapter 2: Lee/Kirby Part 2 | Chapter 3: The Roy Thomas Era (1966-1968) | Chapter 4: The End of the Silver Age (1968-1970) | Chapter 5: Origins and Flashbacks Part 1 | Chapter 6: Silver Age Flashbacks Part 2 | Chapter 7: X-Men: First Class Vol 1 | Chapter 8: X-Men: First Class Vol 2 Part 1 | Chapter 9: X-Men: First Class Vol 2 Part 2 | Chapter 10: The Hidden Years | Chapter 11: X-Men on Hiatus (1970-75) | Chapter 12: The Champions Part 1 (1975-76) | Chapter 13: The Champions Part 2 (1977-78) | Chapter 14: The College Years (1978-83) | Chapter 15: The New Defenders Part 1 (1983-84) | Chapter 16: The New Defenders Part 2 (1984-85) | Chapter 17: The End of the New Defenders (1985-86)

 

In 1986, the X-Men franchise was going from strength to strength, and Marvel decided it was time to launch a second spin-off series, featuring the original team reunited for the first time since 1969. So, as we discussed last week, Iceman, Angel and Beast were the last surviving members of the New Defenders’ last mission and disbanded the team in New Defenders #152. Jean Grey was found alive and well at the bottom of Jamaica Bay in Avengers #263 and Fantastic Four #286 (having been replaced by the Phoenix entity in X-Men #101). And Cyclops quit the X-Men after losing a trial by combat for the leader position to the powerless Storm in Uncanny X-Men #201. All these plot threads get drawn together in the launch issue of the new book, X-Factor.

The launch of X-Factor was notoriously difficult. Uncanny X-Men and New Mutants writer Chris Claremont wanted nothing to do with the book, as its premise was unravelling his stories that killed Jean Grey and married off Cyclops — but at least that gives us a set up that keeps the X-Factor separate from the other X-Books for its first few years. Nevertheless, the creators and Marvel editor-in-chief Jim Shooter couldn’t agree on the core concept of the book, leading to multiple hasty rewrites of the first issues and finally the swift exit of the original creative team of Bob Layton and Jackson Guice. And oh boy, does the chaos show in the quality of these early issues.

 

X-Factor #1 (February 1986)
Writer: Bob Layton
Penciller: Jackson Guice

Iceman and Beast are finally moving out of Angel’s house in New Mexico and heading to New York to get on with their post-super-hero lives. Bobby has a job lined up at an accounting firm and Hank has interviews lined up for professorships at a number of universities. Angel is just planning to stay in New Mexico and, I guess, hang out by the pool with Candy Southern. Bobby makes a last ditch effort to convince Angel to form another super group, but he brushes him off. Nevertheless, as Beast and Iceman drive off, Angel tells Candy “there go the best fellows a man could know!”

Right after Hank and Bobby leave, Angel gets a call from Reed Richards, telling him that Jean is alive. Angel rushes back to New York. From there, he calls Scott, who’s been living in Alaska with his wife Madelyne Pryor and their newborn son, to come see her. Scott drops everything and goes to New York without explanation, over the ultimatum given by his wife. It has to be said, Madelyne is being written aggressively naggy here in an unsuccessful attempt to make her the bad guy.

Jean is thrilled to see her old teammates again – particularly because Scott doesn’t tell her he’s a married father and none of the guys tell her either. But after she reads reports of the rise in anti-mutant hysteria, she shames the guys out of retirement. Jean doesn’t want to rejoin the X-Men, because she’s been told they’re currently working with Magneto (as of Uncanny X-Men #200), and even though Cyclops could try to explain what’s going on with them, he doesn’t.

Angel decides to bankroll a new superhero team, but with a ridiculous twist: X-Factor will publicly declare themselves mutant hunters, using that as a cover to rescue and train young mutants. Everyone thinks this is a wonderful idea that couldn’t possibly backfire, but you won’t be surprised to find out it does fairly quickly.

This issue also introduces Cameron Hodge, who serves as X-Factor’s public relations specialist. As we’ll eventually find out, he’s actually a mutant-hating bigot, and the whole “mutant-hunter” gimmick is a deliberate attempt to ramp up anti-mutant sentiment. Angel says Hodge was his college roommate, but he must mean a prep-school roommate, pre-Xavier’s. After all, Warren only briefly attended UCLA after leaving the X-Men and was out as a mutant during that time. Anyway, Hodge’s backstory is that he was always jealous of Warren for his money and good looks and came to hate mutants after Warren came out years later. There is an obvious queer reading into this character.

X-Factor’s first gig is hunting down Rusty Collins, a young pyrokinetic naval officer whose powers flare out of control when his superior takes him to a San Diego brothel and a prostitute tries to have sex with him. He accidentally disfigures her before running away. X-Factor manage to track him down, bring him back to their base and bill his mutant-phobic commanding officer $42,000 for the service. This bewildering turn of events raises a ton of questions: Why was this officer personally paying for the service? Why does he let this private organization just walk away with Rusty rather than turn him over to face justice?

There’s a little fudging with secret identities to make this all work. Since Warren and Hank are two of the best-known mutants in the Marvel Universe at this point, they don’t tend to appear publicly with X-Factor, even though Warren is obviously still the group’s public benefactor. Bobby’s identity was also public knowledge in New Defenders, and he’s fairly cavalier in this issue about changing into his ice-form at his accounting firm. But that doesn’t really become an issue in the story. Future issues are remarkably inconsistent about whether these characters are celebrities or not.

Dumb trivia: This issue is titled “Third Genesis” – a reference to Giant-Size X-Men #1’s title “Second Genesis.” You’d think the New Mutants would’ve been the third genesis, but alas. Strangely, Generation X #1 is also titled “Third Genesis,” editorial having evidently lost count somewhere. There’s also X-Men: Deadly Genesis, about the scratch team formed in the margins of Giant-Size X-Men #1. The first seven issues of X-Men Vol 2 are often packaged as “Mutant Genesis” although that title wasn’t used for any of the stories. And Uncanny X-Men #392, where Jean recruits a scratch team to fight Magneto on Genosha, was titled “From the Ashes of the Past… Still Another Genesis!” Young X-Men #1 was titled “Final Genesis,” and indeed MArvel hasn’t used this title format since.

 

X-Factor #2 (March 1986)
Writer: Bob Layton
Penciller: Jackson Guice

X-Factor fight Tower, who’s been sent to capture Beast by Carl Maddicks, who wants to find a “cure” for his mutant son Artie.

Bobby and Hank have decided to find an apartment together in New York so they can have more privacy, (hmmmmm……) but aren’t having any luck finding a place they can afford on their X-Factor salary.

They decide to go visit Hank’s old “girlfriend” Vera Cantor, who’s had a major personality transplant since we last saw her in New Defenders as the ever patient, mousy girlfriend. She’s wearing a one-shoulder crop top and has a half-shaved head, bragging about listening to alternative music, running a bookstore on St. Marks Street that specializes in “left-wing music and literature from South America.” And if your gaydar isn’t screaming “LESBIAN” at you, you should have it recalibrated. Bobby seems to be flirting with Vera, but his thought balloons assure us it’s mostly just to get a rise out of Hank.

Tower is a fairly obscure character with not much of a backstory, but he’s also pretty queer coded, with his purple and mauve outfit and his repeated comments about Hank’s appearance – he calls him “blue-buns” at one point.

Cyclops finally tries to call Madelyne but finds the number has been disconnected. If this is the first time he’s tried to call her, given that several weeks have passed since he left, you can hardly blame her.

Carl Maddicks was the Secret Empire spy Hank worked with and was seemingly killed all the way back in Amazing Adventures #11. We’re simply told his gunshot wound weren’t fatal. Carl uses his son Artie’s telepathic projection power to learn the secret of the formula Hank used to mutate himself back in that story. He’s hoping to reverse-engineer it so that he can undo mutations. He ends up experimenting on Hank with chemotherapy and radiation that nearly kills him.

 

X-Factor #3 (April 1986)
Writer: Bob Layton
Penciller: Jackson Guice

After subduing Tower, X-Factor rescue Beast from Maddicks and take in his son Artie to train him in his powers and protect him. When the armed guards for the company he’s working for storm his secret lab, Carl Maddicks sacrifices himself to give X-Factor a chance to escape with his son and provide him with safety. And it turns out that Maddicks’ treatment for Beast actually does reverse his mutation back to his original, more human look from the 1960s.

Iceman doesn’t have a lot to do in this issue, but he does make a joke about how Hank’s “girlfriend” is going to take his new look.

 

X-Factor #4 (May 1986)
Writer: Bob Layton
Penciller: Jackson Guice

Tower and Frenzy try to recruit Rusty for their mysterious employer and are thwarted by X-Factor.

Tower again compliments Hank on his new look while they’re fighting at LaGuardia Airport.

Rusty and Hank have an awkward exchange in the X-Factor changeroom where Rusty can’t help but stare at Hank’s body.

Warren is about to tell Jean he has feelings for her when he gets a call from Candy Southern, who needs him to make some decisions for his business. He brushes her off essentially telling her that running the business is her job – not far off from how she was portrayed in New Defenders.

Meanwhile, Hodge sends X-Factor to investigate a supposed mutant at a posh Massachusetts boarding school, but he turns out to be a fraud. The terrified reaction of the student leads Jean to question the effects of their mutant hunter lie.

Frenzy is definitely queer-coded in her appearance, with her black leather fetish outfit and close-cropped hair.

 

X-Factor #5 (June 1986)
Writer: Bob Layton
Penciller: Jackson Guice

X-Factor fight the Alliance of Evil, who are trying to kidnap a power-boosting mutant heroin addict named Michael Nowlan. And in the coda, Apocalypse makes his debut.

We open on X-Factor working out together in their underwear. Bobby makes a crass comment about Jean’s body, which she shrugs at. She’s no longer telepathic, but presumably she remembers he’s gay from the Silver Age and is just being sympathetic.

Meanwhile, Jean again points out the absurdity of the “mutant hunter” gimmick, but the team just brushes off her concerns.

Vera takes Bobby and Hank clothes shopping at a Soho boutique called “Electric Penguins” which is absolutely a lesbian clothing store.

Jean enrolls in night classes in Psychology at Columbia, in a plotline that goes nowhere.

Nowlan immediately sees through X-Factor’s disguises because of his powers, but the Alliance handily defeat X-Factor and capture him and his wife. Incidentally, the “Alliance of Evil” is only given that name on the cover, not in the story itself, where they’re only referred to as the Alliance. Of the other members, Stinger also appears to be somewhat queer coded, with her short pink hair. In a coincidental note, she had a brief friendship with Bobby in Nation X #1 (2009). As of present continuity, she’s in a relationship with Omerta, with whom she’s had a child.

 

X-Factor #6 (July 1986)
Writer: Louise Simonson
Penciller: Jackson Guice

X-Factor battle Apocalypse and the Alliance of Evil, but the Nowlans are killed and Apocalypse escapes.

Louise Simonson takes over the book and the writing instantly becomes about 50 percent lighter, with fewer enormous blocks of exposition. It’s frankly a huge relief. She’s the first woman writer to be assigned an ongoing X-Men book, a number that, if I’m counting correctly, has over the past 35 years swollen to six total (Marjorie Liu, Kelly Thompson, and Mariko Tamaki, Tini Howard, and Leah Williams are the others — the latter four all since 2018).

Nowlan refuses to expose the connection between X-Factor and the group of mutants who look exactly like them, and the Alliance are too dumb to figure it out on their own.

Jean is directly demanding that Cyclops and X-Factor tell her the truth about what they’re all keeping from her, but Cyclops effectively changes the subject by attacking Angel. Iceman at least calls Scott on it, but no one is willing to tell the truth and it’s evident that all our heroes are pretty rotten.

The story ends in a bizarre anticlimax where Apocalypse just walks away, the Alliance surrender to a handful of cops, and X-Factor mourn the deaths of the Nowlans.

The next issue starts a story that continues basically straight into the “Mutant Massacre” story, so a bunch of guest appearances have to fall here. The Chronology Project places them between issues #7-8, but I don’t see a viable gap in the story there.

 

X-Factor #7 (August 1986)
Writer: Louise Simonson
Penciller: Jackson Guice

X-Factor battle two mutants suffering from radioactive poisoning, Glow Worm and Bulk.

Beast’s sometimes girlfriend Trish Tilby makes her debut as a reporter covering X-Factor. She interviews Vera on the street and gets a bit of an earful before Hank cuts her off.

The big plot development is that this issue Jean figures out that Scott’s married and tells off the other boys for keeping her in the dark.

Also debuting is Rusty’s eventual girlfriend Skids, but she doesn’t do much more than wear the most 80s outfit imaginable.

 

Iron Man Annual #8 (October 1986)
Writer: Bob Harras
Penciler: Paul Neary

X-Factor try to rescue young reality-warping mutant Willie Evans from Project Pegasus, putting them at odds with Iron Man. They eventually team up to rescue the boy and protect him from himself. In the end, the boy seems to die, but it’s strongly hinted he survives due to his powers.

Evans debuted in Fantastic Four #203 and he was mooted as a potential member of the New Mutants – that issue ends with Mr. Fantastic referring Willie and his father to Xavier’s School. Here, his father says he didn’t think it was a good idea.

Iceman doesn’t get to do much in this issue.

 

X-Factor Annual #1 (October 1986)
Writer/Artist: Bob Layton

Russian diplomats ask X-Factor to visit Russia so they can learn how to hunt mutants better. We learn that the Russians are herding mutants into camps.

When X-Factor are invited to Russia, Bobby makes a crude transphobic joke of the sort that were commonly made about Soviet female athletes in the 1980s.

Bobby gets lured into a trap by an evil scientist promising to set up a rendezvous with an attractive, introverted, female secretary. Well, “In Soviet Russia….”

Later, Bobby appears to straight-up murder the villain, Doppleganger, but Beast reassures him he had no choice. Don’t worry, he survives.

 

 

Amazing Spider-Man #282 (November 1986)
Writer: Tom DeFalco
Penciler: Rick Leonardi

Jonah Jameson hires X-Factor to hunt down Spider-Man, and they accept, because everyone in X-Factor is a moron at this point in continuity.

Jameson makes it clear that he thinks X-Factor are “vultures who are fueling the country’s anti-mutant paranoia,” a reminder that Jameson is meant to be a good journalist who fights for the little guy when not dealing with his bête noire Spider-Man.

Spider-Man is pretty weak from his own ongoing stories, so he doesn’t put up a big fight against X-Factor. In the end, X-Factor decide to give Jameson his money back, telling him that Spidey’s not a mutant so not their responsibility.

 

Marvel Fanfare #32 (May 1987)
Writers: JM DeMattias, Kerry Gammill
Artist: Kerry Gammill

Spider-Man calls in Angel, Beast, and Iceman, as well as the Human Torch, to help him rescue Frog-Man and Captain America from the Yellow Claw. The heroes are arbitrary – Bobby and Warren don’t even have lines in this. Presumably they’re just chosen because they recently had appeared in Amazing Spider-Man and they had dealt with Frog-Man in New Defenders.

This appears way out of publishing order because Angel still has his wings, and this is the last possible break in the story for that to fit.

 

 

 

X-Factor #8-9 (September-October 1986)
Writer: Louise Simonson
Penciller: Jackson Guice

X-Factor try to keep Freedom Force from arresting Rusty in a big fight in Central Park that overlaps with Uncanny X-Men #209.

Once again we open on X-Factor all hanging out in their underwear. Unfortunately, this will be Vera’s last appearance for years — she next crops up in X-Factor #55.

Freedom Force is the old Brotherhood of Evil Mutants, plus Spiral and Spider-Woman. The Brotherhood turned themselves in to the government and work as official mutant bounty hunters in exchange for pardons for their crimes, so they’re kind of like Marvel’s version of Suicide Squad. Freedom Force recognized Rusty from last issue, where he went out publicly without a mask as part of X-Factor’s ruse, because everyone in these early issues is a moron. Mystique also recognizes Angel’s involvement in both groups and leaks the news to Trish Tilby.

The battle eventually gets drawn into the Morlock Tunnels, where the Mutant Massacre has begun in Uncanny X-Men #210. This is the first X-Men crossover, sparking an annual tradition due to its massive success. Though it’s technically a crossover, in order to preserve the separation of the two teams, the Uncanny X-Men issues don’t actually intersect with X-Factor, so we won’t be covering them here, but we will get into the X-Factor issues next week.

 

Where to find these issues: All of these issues except Marvel Fanfare #32 are collected in X-Factor Epic Collection Vol 1: Genesis and Apocalypse. They’re also available on Marvel Unlimited, except for Marvel Fanfare #32.

Meanwhile, in the Mutant world:

• In Uncanny X-Men: Phoenix becomes obsessed with killing the Beyonder (#202-203, Secret Wars II #7-9); the X-Men spend time on Island M and fight the Chief Examiner (Marvel Fanfare #40); Kitty and Wolverine celebrate Thanksgiving with the Morlocks and Power Pack (Power Pack #19) and escort the Power kids to a Lila Cheney concert (Power Pack: Grow Up!) Lady Deathstrike returns and attacks the X-Men (Alpha Flight #33-34); Nightcrawler fights Arcade again (#204); Wolverine fights the newly cyborg Lady Deathstrike (#205); The X-Men fight Hungry for famine relief in Africa (X-Men: Heroes for Hope); Wolverine battles Overrider with Captain America (Captain America Annual #8); Freedom Force attacks Kitty (#206); Rachel hunts down Selene, and Wolverine attempts to kill her to stop her from killing Selene, then the X-Men and Hellfire Club get into a fight with Nimrod in Central Park where Leland and Von Roehm are killed (#207-209).
• In New Mutants: Magneto takes over the school (#35); the mutants have a terrifying encounter with the Beyonder (#36-38); Emma Frost convinces Magneto to merge with the Massachusetts Academy, and then calls in the Avengers to take down Magneto (#39-40); Moonstar goes home (#41); Sam brings Lila home to mom (#42); they battle Empath (#43); they fight Legion (#44); the New Mutants befriend a local mutant who commits suicide after his friends threaten to call X-Factor on him, and Kitty explicitly compares mutants to gays at his funeral — the first time homosexuality is actually mentioned this way in an X-Men story (#45)
• And Nightcrawler went on an inconsequential adventure across dimensions (Nightcrawler #1-4), and Longshot debuted and escaped the Mojoverse in the not originally X-Men related miniseries Longshot (#1-6).