Anatomy of an X-Team: Case Study 2 – X-Factor #71-111

Last time we looked at the X-Men Gold team’s composition from the early ‘90s and whether and how close it adhered to The Template. This time, we’ll look at the concurrent run of X-Factor.

X-Factor (1991 – 1995)

Following the Muir Island Saga, the old roster consisting of the first X-Men was reclaimed and split between the two teams calling themselves X-Men. Taking their place would be a mix of characters, from lower-tier sometimes X-Men Havok and Polaris, Muir Island’s Jamie Madrox, former New Mutant Wolfsbane, sometimes Avenger and former Brotherhood of Evil Mutant Quicksilver, and the supporting character’s supporting character Guido Carosella. They would become the government’s mutant team, replacing the troubled Freedom Force under the aegis of Dr. Valerie Cooper.

In the 1991 franchise reboot, each of the books launched or, as in the case of X-Factor, soft-relaunched with a new theme or gimmick. X-Factor would grab firmly onto the social commentary mode of the franchise, famously established with God Loves, Man Kills. This time around, the book would touch on topics like political correctness, refugees, and foreign intervention/apathy, and probably the most ‘90s of all: talking to a therapist. Both the roster and creative team are less stable in X-Factor during this period than it was in the contemporaneous X-Men books, and the title drifted away from its initial concept.

Val Cooper – Home Fires

Val Cooper doesn’t feature much as she’s less a super-powered adventurer than a highly educated bureaucrat. Early on she’s responsible for assembling the team, testing them, proving to themselves and to the reader what they’re capable of. Ostensibly and officially, she was the liaison between the team and their government sponsors – essentially the boss and public face of the team.

As the run went on and changed creative hands a few times, Dr. Cooper became less and less involved as the book drifted away from being a topical, current events type book. Ultimately her position would be untenable, as she was caught deceiving the team both on behalf of the government (continuing the same rich tradition that gave us the government sponsored genocidal giant robots program) and due to some mind control shenanigans at the hands of the Acolytes. As a result, at the end of Fatal Attractions, she would be pushed out and replaced by Forge (who would serve in this role until the end of the book’s run).

Havok – Team Leader

Alex Summers is often cast as a discount Scott, which is the topic of many stories involving him although this run doesn’t touch on that directly. Little really needs to be said about this as a glance at any page with Havok in it will immediately prove his role in The Template. He is the clear leader, the heroic face of the team, and the tactician.

Polaris – Girlfriend

If Havok is discount Cyclops Polaris is discount Jean Grey, almost comically so. Jean had red hair, Lorna, green. Jean moved stuff around with her mind in a red or pink wavy bubble, Lorna did it with a green one. Apart from mind reading, they’re given much the same treatment – including not really having much of a role outside their relationships with their respective Summers brother. Lorna’s case is no different. Nearly all of her interactions revolve around the presence, absence, or needs of Alex in this run. (Much later she would take the role of Team Leader and grow a little as a character, but that wouldn’t be until after Age of Apocalypse and is outside the scope of this article).

Multiple Man – Best Friend

Jamie Madrox is probably the least easy fit for this team in The Template. He’s cast as a sort of sad clown – the sort of man who makes jokes as a defense mechanism to hide his problems and self-doubt. His powers are meant to weave into this, an ironic metaphor for someone who feels so lonely as well as a way to pile on an identity crisis to the confidence issues.

His stories tended to focus on these darker issues. The inaugural issue of this run ends with the murder of one of his duplicates which instigate a “who even is the real Jamie Madrox?” thread. In fact, death is something that Madrox or one of his dupes experiences at least three times during this run, definitively in issue #100 when he finally succumbs to the Legacy virus. Of course, it was just one of his dupes. It always is.

Through all of this darkness, it’s natural that a character like him would be drawn toward the light, and who among the team shines brighter than Guido Carosella aka Strong Guy. Guido is another sad clown type and the two would find solace in their mutual bond, making this probably the most reciprocal bromance of the era.

Strong Guy – Heavy / Best Friend

Like Havok, any page with Strong Guy in it makes obvious where he fits in the template. He is constantly either clowning or using his power to absorb kinetic energy and convert it into strength to lift or punch a rival heavy. I’d love to say more about him because he’s so damn charming and really carries the appeal of the book in this period, but unfortunately, there’s not a lot that needs unpacking about him here.

Wolfsbane – Innocent

The role of Innocent often falls to the youngest member of the team and such is the case here. Rahne Sinclair is young, naive, burgeoning on adulthood and not entirely in control of herself which makes her an apt adolescence metaphor.

Most of her time in this period is spent wrestling with being bonded to Havok (through some Genoshan shenanigans during X-Tinction Agenda), developing a rivalry with Polaris, or struggling with what she represents with regard to morality in a holdover from her messed up upbringing at the hands of Reverend Craig. She doesn’t provoke a lot of ‘this is what we fight for’ moments or otherwise reinforce the mission of the X-Men, which is one of the functions of the Innocent, but in every other way she fits the role.

Quicksilver is arrogant, irritable, and a non-conformist. Of everyone on the team, he’s the only one not wearing X-Factor colors. Although he is effective and reliable when the team needs him, he is regularly apart from them on his own adventures with his own agenda. Further, like Rahne, he never really gives the book an opportunity to bring up its themes and the run gradually started to feel very unspecific. Later in the run, Quicksilver was reclaimed by the Avengers and the role of outsider was nearly taken up by the recently introduced Random. He never joined the roster properly, but he did a better job of providing a contrast to the team and gave the book a few opportunities to declare what it is about.

Verdict:

If this whole project were a scatterplot, X-Factor in this era would fall very close to the line of best fit. Havok and Polaris are frequently depicted as the Luigi and Daisy to Cyclops and Phoenix’s Mario and Peach, and while the rest of the team’s individual members had less direct analogs to more established X-Men, the team as a whole slots very nicely into The Template. The frequent changes in creative teams, frequent disruptive events, and a failure to take advantage of the Innocent and Outsider roles contributed to a non-specificity to what the book was about. It was never very clear about its themes for more than a few issues at a time, and while it may not be a sterling example of an excellent X-Book, it is about as clean an adherent to The Template as they come.

Next time we’ll look at the early run of X-Force and see how unwieldy a book can get when no structure underlies a team’s composition.