A lot of story is contained in the five issues collected in X-Factor by Mark Russell Vol. 2: Know Your Enemy. Angel makes his triumphant return as the team leader. The team dips its toes in the One World Under Doom and X-Manhunt crossovers, and the big reveal of what, or who, is being kept within the top-secret floor.
The momentum of the series started and stopped because two of the five issues had to be part of different Marvel-wide crossovers. How they were integrated into the larger storyline and what threads emerged from the issues were impressive, but to fully enjoy the trade, you also needed to be following the macro stories occurring within the universe.
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The primary detractor from my enjoyment of volume 2 was the “social media super team” subplot. The social media-ness was more subdued compared to issues #1-5, but the whole thing felt dated and uninteresting. The jokes didn’t land, and the satire wasn’t fun to engage with.
The overall story could be followed by a casual fan, but X-Factor was lore-heavy and required prior knowledge of multiple previous events and character arcs. Not a bad thing, but this iteration of X-Factor feels more like a supplementary comic to the heavy-hitter X-series comics and is not able to stand on its own two feet.
By issue #10, the cast really grew on me. Pyro might have been a silly interpretation of the character, but he had his moments. The secondary characters were memorable (well, maybe not Forgetmenot, but in all seriousness, he was used perfectly multiple times to inject levity). Granny Smite is going to continue to show up in the Marvel Universe, I know it. The right blend of cynicism and optimism, she was a character whom I rolled my eyes at first, but really turned around on as issue #10 ended. Havok and Polaris playing the adults in the room throughout the series reminded me how much I enjoy those characters together.
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The back half of the now-cancelled X-Factor had great moments, but the overarching story lacked the punch to move it from good to great. A few standouts include the conflict between the Summers brothers, done for the umpteenth time, but that doesn’t make it any less fun, the various Angel reveals, and the end of issue #9 that caused pandemonium on an airplane.
There was a consistency to both the writing and art that was refreshing. Mark Russell had a firm grip on the characters, and each one had a unique voice that never faltered. I found myself smiling at many of the quips and different interactions between the members. Bob Quinn handled the art duties for every issue, and the steady hand made it so I was never taken out of the world, and I just never put the trade down until the final page. The sacrifice made to ensure a guest artist isn’t used is that there were lulls within the trade that lacked dynamism and interesting layouts. If you had to pick two from fast, good, and interesting, then interesting was more often than not left on the sidelines. I enjoyed his take on the legacy characters that appeared throughout the series, like Juggernaut, Cyclops, and Angel.
Maybe this iteration of X-Factor won’t be remembered as one of the classic storylines, but there is something here that will give it an underrated, cult classic reputation given enough time. This is not the last time you will see many of the characters redefined by this run, and I will follow closely when they start to appear in different pockets of the X-universe.
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