X-Factor: Happenings in Vegas, Peter David

"Remember when we warned you about the shocking twist involving Madrox's baby? Remember when the return of Shatterstar wound up making every comics-related website? Well, that was just a warm-up for the shocking events in this volume. X-Factor gets a new client, a tall green-garbed woman with a deadly secret, but that's just a set-up for the jaw-dropping surprise to come."












X-Factor is a tonally strange comic to pin down, being, as it is, a detective comic with a cast of mutants and others than generally tends towards the soapier side of pulp fiction, and features some of the most character-led plot in the entire genre.

And that also, from time to time, features actual superheroes appearing and engaging in heroic battles, as though that were what this is a comic about.

But it isn't, it's not your general superhero battle book, although there are plenty of fight scenes. It's not Heroes for Hire, and it isn't the X-Men, it's a weird halfway house of both, and like the latter it is ALL ABOUT the character arcs.

This is a little disappointing then, because by and large this is a self-contained arc, featuring some set up for future stuff, some extra little conflicts on the side, and a main plot that features the X-Factor group teaming up with Thor to fight dead vikings in Las Vegas, a city which has almost no native heroes that I can think of but routinely gets trashed.

Oh, the Thor stuff is fine, but from a series that started off exploring sex crimes of the super people, or sent its main characters off into the future to fight in the Summers rebellion, a Noodle incident that had been referred to for decades beforehand, a vignette on how women are tricky things to understand and how Thor can hit things isn't quite as cool.

Also Try:
Peter David, X-Force: The Invisible Woman has Vanished, Madrox
J. Michael Straczynski, Thor