Issue(s): X-Factor #70
Cover Date: Sep 91
Title: "Ends and odds"
Credits:
Peter David - Writer
Kirk Jarvinen - Penciler
Josef Rubinstein - Inker
Suzanne Gaffney - Assistant Editor
Bob Harras - Editor

Review/plot:
This isn't really part of the Muir Island Saga, but it gives us a chance to see the aftermath, focusing on character moments really for the first time in a long time for either X-Men or X-Factor. And it's without a doubt the best part of the crossover, and a good sign of what is to come now that Peter David is writing the book (although not with these characters, for the most part).

For Professor X, we see him searching the Astral plane (so to speak) for any signs that his son, Legion, is still mentally alive after the Shadow King died while possessing him last issue.

It's eventually determined that Legion is indeed gone.

For Rogue and Mystique, it means reconciling after each of them was thought dead by the other.

For Wolverine and Cyclops, it means renewing their rivalry over Jean (as she stares blankly into the foreground).

And we do get some scenes with some of the characters David will be writing. Readers of this site know my general attitude about cheesecake, but when it's done for humor like this, i think it's funny.

Note that Guido is suddenly talking in full sentences, though.

Val Cooper approaches Polaris and asks her if she'd be interested in starting up a new version of Freedom Force. Polaris says that she doesn't want to be associated with a group "that had the Blob and those guys". Val says the name isn't important.

There are other fun moments as well. Just a nice downtime issue, giving the characters (and us) a chance to breathe.

Quality Rating: B+

Historical Significance Rating: 1

Chronological Placement Considerations: This is an epilogue to the Muir Island Saga, following Uncanny X-Men #280.

References:

• Val Cooper explains how she and Mystique switched places to fool the Shadow King in Uncanny X-Men #266.

Crossover: Muir Island Saga

Continuity Insert? N

My Reprint: N/A

Charlie knew that Scott had a son, or at least a child. Madelyne was very very pregnant when he went to Paris to assist in Magneto's trial.

X-ellent issue. Immediately reminiscent of Claremont at his best, and funny. Fnord, I'm surprised that you left out the 'he's all right' scene, or at the very least, the final 'what am I going to do with thirteen X-Men.' Is there any better way to show that the series has indeed come full circle from where it was back in 1975?

Also, the New Mutants told Xavier Maddie gave birth to a son.
"And wife that he apparently never did". Maddie DEFINITELY existed. Another attempt at minimizing Scott's actions.
One major problem I had with this issue- shouldn't the X-Men be asking Valerie Cooper what happened to the Inferno babies now that they've finally got ahold of her? More on that next issue.

Geez, how did I forget Illyana's babbling at Xavier and Corsair about Scott's son? And, thinking about it, when they shared memories in "New Mutants" #51, he would have seen the X-Babies kicked out of the Danger Room so Scott and Ororo could fight, well after Nathan Christopher was born.

"And wife that he apparently never did" I would write off as Xavier's exposition. Doesn't help the Scott-Jean-Maddie triangle, but I think it's a fair way for Xavier to describe the results when he's really not focusing on anything Madelyne ever had anything to do with. There are better ways to briefly summarize complicated subplots, but they wouldn't be discovered until Garth Ennis was writing "Preacher." Meanwhile, we're going to get worse examples in the next few issues of "X-Men."

@Michael

The Inferno babies were a Louise Simonson plotline so that got dropped when she left New Mutants and X-Factor.

I think it was finally resolved in one of the countless New Mutants relaunches over the past 10 years.

Yeah, we saw what happened to the Inferno babies in the Zeb Wells New Mutants series. But my point is that PAD should have addressed it SOMEHOW, if only because the plot relied on the X-characters trusting Val. But PAD ignored a lot of what had gone before to make his X-Factor series work, although in some cases it was necessary because previous writers had left these characters a mess. More on that next issue.

Either Lorna's outfit has convenient detachable pants, or she keeps a thongtastic version of costume for travel purposes.

Either way, an embarrassing bit of fan service by David and some borderline sexual harassment by Guido.

Just to clarify, Lorna's thong was first seen in the Kings of Pain Annuals.

@Michael - The full line is "Scott is in mourning for a son I didn't know he had, and a wife he apparently never did."

When typed out, I think it's clear that the script's intent was for Xavier to say that Scott never knew Madelyn, not that he "never had her." But the words "had" and "did" are italicized, giving the impression that you (and I originally) had that it was more whitewashing of Scott.

So either bad lettering or the letterer really hated Maddie?

Supposedly the post-Regenesis New Mutants had a theme of dealing with unfinished business and loose ends, so we may be seeing more stuff in this project that'll come up again in that era.

It doesn't completely alleviate the issue, but did any of the future members of X-Factor know anything about the Inferno babies? Rhane did, but she was also going through other problems which might take priority. Otherwise, it's almost like the new members of X-Factor were chosen precisely because they were outside of the on-going plotlines. No matter how long they were around, they would be newcomers to the storyline, and Val would not be obligated to tell them things they didn't need to know.

It's Rahne I was thinking of- she should definitely be more wary of Val then she is. Again, let's save this discussion for next issue.

Fnord doesn't show my favorite bit of the issue - Beast quoting Yeats while Peter tries to claim it's a Russian poet. Very much a Chekhov move on Star Trek.

And some of the people are left out of this entirely, like Banshee and Siryn, so that "13" was definitely just thrown in there for the symmetry rather than them actually having 13.

I'm no fan of Peter David, but this is a nice issue. Really glad him and Nicieza wound up resolving this storyline, there's some actually decent bits in it as a result.

Something I'm noticing on this read-through, the relative popularity of Uncanny vs X-Factor. When X-Factor #1 came out, it was 201 issues behind Uncanny. Here, it's 209 issues behind thanks to the summers where Uncanny was one of the popular titles going bi-weekly. It's comparable to how Avengers and X-Men debuted the same month but, because the Avengers were much more popular in the 60's, by the time they crossed over in 1968, Avengers was already 8 issues ahead.

This marks the end of a not-so-good era for the X-Men. Ever since UXM 255 that the title became uninteresting in my opinion (with very few exceptions).

The reboot issues were the first comics I actually read, but I don't really remember them. I'm looking forward to see if the plots improve, but reading the comments on these last few entries clearly tells me otherwise.

Some of us would say it also marks the end of a not-so-good era for Uncanny X-Men ever since 1975.

Yeah, I know.

I've read everything from Fatal Attractions up to Eve of Destruction so I kinda know what's coming.

I'm just waiting to fill the gap between this point and Fatal Attractions to make an evaluation of my own.

From what I remember, events like Fatal Attractions, Legion Quest and most of all AoA, are good.

On the other end we get Onslaught, Maximum Security, Zero Tolerance and that one where the X-Men battle Cerebro robots, that one's awful imo.

Onslaught is awful, Maximum Security is an Avengers story written by the Avengers writer and is basically unrelated to the X-Men (and the X-Men tie-in issues are written by poster-boy Chris Claremont anyway), the main issues of Operation Zero Tolerance are great and the Cerebro robots was a single issue.

I'm pretty sure the event where the x-men battle cerebro robots and rescue Xavier is a 5 or 6 parter involving both x-titles.

Oh and I forgot to mention the phalanx saga in space and the whole revolution thing in 2000, Which marked the return of Claremont and imo its a really low point with dozens of villains being introduced in really uninsteresting and complex plots

Bibs is right, the Cerebro robots were in the two-part Children of the Atom storyline (Uncanny X-Men #360 and X-Men #80) first, then the six-part Hunt for Xavier storyline (Uncanny X-Men #362-364 and X-Men #82-84). I don't think it was awful, but it'd have been better if it was just a single issue.

Revolution was staggeringly bad. It was like Claremont was throwing in every single idea he'd had for the X-Men since leaving the book in as short a space of time as possible. Dull and incoherent garbage.