Issue(s): X-Factor #119
Cover Date: Feb 96
Title: "The best offense"
Credits:
Howard Mackie - Writer
Steve Epting - Penciler
Al Milgrom - Inker
Robert Piotrowski - Assistant Editor
Kelly Corvese - Editor
Review/plot:
Checking in with Howard Mackie's run on X-Factor and, well, it's definitely Howard Mackie. I'd almost call this a "downtime" issue with the amount of people just standing around and talking while nothing is actually happening, but we seem to actually be in a slow lurch towards a rehash of the Adversary storyline from Fall of the Mutants. If *i* were to bring back the Adversary, i'd have Forge temporarily join Excalibur since Captain Britain has indirect ties with that story via Roma. But the truth is that the Adversary didn't really need to come back, ever. Not only is he not really thematically appropriate for the mutant books; his depiction at the time was that he was so apocalyptically powerful that any return is only going to make him look smaller and diminish the X-Men's sacrifice in defeating him. But Mackie is going to Mackie. And i mean that very literally; the Adversary as seen here might as well be a random ill-thought-out villain of the month from Mackie's Ghost Rider run.
This is also the era where Mystique is an unwilling member of the team, something that i kind of know about but have mostly avoided.
There's nothing wrong with the idea, which is building on Mystique's Brotherhood becoming Freedom Force to avoid government prosecution, and this incarnation of X-Factor having replaced Freedom Force as the government sanctioned mutant team. Mystique and Forge also have ties going back to when they were both quasi-government agents in Claremont's run (Mystique as Raven Darkholme, Forge as an arms dealer). But if anything interesting comes of all those connections, it's not in this issue.
Statement of Ownership Total Paid Circulation: Average of Past 12 months = 213,745. Single issue closest to filing date = 204,600.
Quality Rating: D
Historical Significance Rating: 1
Chronological Placement Considerations: N/A
References:
- Aurora and Wild Child broke up in X-Factor #117 and Wild Child is trying to put it behind him by hanging out with Bishop's hologram sister, Shard, and commiserating with Polaris, who recently lost Havok.
- Sabretooth is being held in a government research facility after being injured in Sabretooth: In the Red Zone. In a desperate bid to add some action to this issue, he briefly escapes, menaces Val Cooper, and is captured again.
Crossover: N/A
Continuity Insert? N
My Reprint: N/A