Them Reviews - X-Factor #31

After the events of the last two issues, Mutant Town has been trapped by Arcade who was hired by an ex-Purifier to basically fuck with everyone before destroying the whole place. So Arcade was defeated and they've closed in on the Purifier but they're too late to stop events because the place was set to go up with the guy's death. Dudes dead, no everything is going up in flames. I really liked this issue. Mutant Town is encased in a giant force field letting nothing in or out which leaves X-Factor to run around futily saving people while Rictor fiddles with Arcade's computers to bring down the field. The reason I liked this issue is cause we had lots of great moments with the individual characters. Madrox saves an old guy on a roof with a clever use of his power to make multiples of himself. Siryn saves a comedianne while she's dying on stage. Really, that was some funny shit, especially since I was watching Last Comic Standing all night before reading this issue. Monet manages to save a bunch of punks calling themselves the X-M's. She is, naturally, a total bitch while doing it. Every character had a great moment in the issue. Hell, practically every page was a great moment. The way Arcade slips out without being captured was cool shit. Seeing a bunch of people burn to death while a group of firefighters are helpless to do anything was cool. The moment the force field comes down was cool. Just a cool issue. The one thing that bothered me is that lately Madrox, who supplies the narrative for the issue, is basically playing the reluctant hero and hasn't yet come to terms with it. I've been seeing this since I started collecting this series. Madrox, and by extension Peter David, really needs to get his shit together and come to a realization. I think we're well beyond the point for self-realization here. It's time for Peter David to really take these characters to the next level and gets past this navel gazing rigamarole. I expect that we'll be seeing new developments soon since at the end of the issue Valerie Cooper comes out saying things are gonna change. Let us hope. Alas, I'm dropping the title so any changes will probably be a work in progress by that time. One other quibble. Pablo Raimondi is a good artist. Very good artist. For whatever reason Valerie Cooper looked just like Gwyneth Paltrow in this issue. Maybe David was originally going to present Pepper Potts in this issue since there are references to Tony Stark, but they used Valerie Cooper instead. Or maybe there was some confusion between David and Raimondi, but it's kind of jarring cause I was sitting there wondering what Pepper Potts would be doing in X-Factor until they used the character's name. Overall, this was a strong issue, very much recommended.