After their ill-fated trip to Otherworld, the mutants of Krakoa have learned a terrible truth and are preparing for war. But what is war without death? Leah Williams, Carlos Gomez, Israel Silva and Joe Caramagna show us in X-Factor #4.
Cori McCreery: SWORDS! SWORDS! SWORDS! SWORDS! SWORDS! SWORDS! SWORDS! SWORDS! SWORDS! SWORDS! SWORDS! SWORDS! SWORDS! SWORDS! SWORDS! SWORDS! SWORDS! SWORDS! SWORDS! SWORDS! But uh. Also a very dense issue and uh, FEELINGS.
Andrea Ayres: Iâm still reeling from this issue. Itâs certainly an issue we could spend the next few weeks unpacking, but here we are. Ready with our hot takes and hot faces, fresh from the crying. This was an emotional onslaught from start to finish. It begins with Siryn screaming for help and never releases us from that moment of tension. The crossover is a decidedly different feeling from the rest of the X-Factor run. Itâs nice to see Williams flex her writing skills. There are massive, Krakoa-shattering implications regarding Otherworld and immortality. In keeping in line with Leahâs original intention for X-Factor, we see how protocols and rules canât always predict or respond to reality.
A Desperate Wispy Thing
AA: Polaris crushed us in this text, I think thatâs safe to say donât you Cori? When Polaris delivers her brief monologue about self-hatred and the desire to âfeverishlyâ seek validation from everyone around her? Yah. Definitely felt that one. The issue indexes heavily on the anguish she feels. She feels a pang of deep guilt and responsibility for not stopping the sword responsible for killing Rockslide. Gomez does a good job of capturing the emotional intensity of these moments with evocative facial expressions. I will admit, however, that there were times when the coloring dampened the emotional impact for me. Still, not really enough to take away from my overall favorable impression of this entry into our 22-issue saga. At one point, Xavier asks Polaris what is wrong because her âmind is like a siren.â And believe you me, thatâs how I felt reading this issue. My mind is still on fire.
CM: Good Lord, Lorna in this issue wrecked me on an emotional level. When I started my complete X-Men read through back in December of last year, I had almost no knowledge of her whatsoever. Basically, I knew âgreen hair, maybe Magnetoâs daughter?â and thatâs it. But as Iâve read through five thousand issues and counting, Lorna has fast become my second favorite X-Man, falling behind only Kate. I love her dearly, which is a testament to the character since for the majority of her existence sheâs been written extremely poorly.
You have to cherry pick pretty heavily to get good Lorna stories, but Iâm confident in saying that I will happily add X-Factor #4 to that list when asked for recs. That list will essentially be: Kingbreaker and War of Kings, X-Men: The Hidden Years but ignore anything that isnât Alex calling her Magnetrix in the text, and X-Factor by Williams, BaldeĂłn, and this issue by Gomez. All of Lornaâs inner monologue was spot-on, and truly felt in place for where Williams is leading her character. This is a woman who struggles with her place in the mutant world, sheâs essentially their equivalent of a princess, but she is also so thoroughly shattered by the events of her life this far that she struggles to maintain that persona. Her expectations for herself are higher than anyone elseâs expectations for her, save maybe her own fatherâs. She demands better of herself, but also deals so thoroughly with just not wanting to exist, and itâs absolutely crushing. God, I just love her so much. Iâm so happy sheâs in good hands finally.
AA: Reading your words, I can feel how much she means to you. So much of who she is and how much she struggles stems from her relationship with her father. We get a real sense of the tension between the pair and itâs hard to read. My dad died before I ever got to resolve or move beyond the teenage angst portion of our relationship. Weâre trapped in a time of locked heads and having that linger is a weight on my shoulders, canât imagine what itâs like for Polaris.
The way Polaris is holding the Rockslide is a great character moment. She is protecting Rockslide as much as she is using him to protect her; like a teddy bear. Thereâs concern on her face leading up to the moment the prophecies reveal themselves and Rockslide is smashed into pieces. Itâs an interesting dynamic as it happens in the presence of Magneto. He treats her like a child still. She looks to others for validation because she did not receive it growing up. Even when we think there is a moment where Magneto may reveal a bit of sympathy for his suffering daughter he uses the moment to tell her that the pain she feels is her fault. Itâs a message sheâs received throughout her life, this time is no different. She blames herself for the suffering of others. How many of us do this? Whatâd you think about this moment? Was there any other part of this prophecy reveal that stuck out to you?
CM: Sheâs internalized so much over the years while having to shoulder everything. Sheâs been paired with Havok for so long, that people tend to forget that she has her own problems that go beyond holding him together. It doesnât help matters that the only writers to really tackle her mental health did so extremely poorly [Ed. note: Chuckles Austen and Peter David]. The stark differences between how Williams and David portray her mental health is staggering. With Williams, it feels real, it feels painful, itâs heartbreaking. With David it was a joke. Haha what a crazy broad amiright? Which is why much like our colleague Emily, the first time I heard Taylor Swiftâs âmad womanâ, I was like âOH THATâS A LORNA SONG.â Sheâs trying to find herself, but she still needs support and comfort, and sheâs not getting that from the one person on the island who should be giving it, so she has to find it in the form of a rock teddy bear made from the corpse of a friend. I could cry about Lorna and her struggles all day, but itâs probably best to move on, just know that I will protect my baby with my dying breath.
Dying Sucks
AA: No way around it, dying blows. Rictor confirms this. It may blow less if you can be reincarnated a near-infinite amount of times? Or so we thought. X-Factor #4 introduces what one may call a slight wrinkle into the entire immortality thing. Apparently, if a mutant dies in the Otherworld, their Cerbero backup is corrupted. Thatâs what ends up happening to Rockslide. I donât know about you but the panel where Rockside says âbut I feel fine.â Definitely haunting.
CM: And here we were worried about this event having low stakes. Hahahaha *nervous laugher*. So much for that thought, not a single one of our sword bearers are actually safe and now Iâm terrified because I love an awful lot of these dummies. Also, I loved Rockslide, and therefore Iâm already devastated. This is a horrifying new development in the protocols. Itâs also a philosophical question we have been debating in the Slack, of what personhood means really. Rockslideâs not dead per se, but the personality he had is gone. His memories are gone. But you wouldnât necessarily say someone with amnesia is dead, so what can we really say here? Is the implication that he can never get back what was lost to him enough to say that at least the Rockslide we know is dead? This is the exact kind of messy and tricky question I had hoped X-Factor would address, so Iâm glad to see it happening here.
AA: Iâm really glad you brought up a bit of the discussion we had in Slack because I canât stop thinking about what one of our colleagues said. I hope they donât mind my bringing it up here but it got me thinking about the connection between memory, identity, and who we are. If we remember Giant Size X-Men: Storm something Storm says keeps circling around in my head. That is her question of âwhat is a life?â That question feels central to what X-Factor #4 is doing here. Itâs asking us to better probe what makes us, well…us. Is it a collection of memories? Is it our body (husk)? Is it our DNA? If we take away or remove any combination of those do we continue to be the same person? Does any of that matter? And finally, how do others’ perceptions of us influence who we see ourselves as?
I thought I was very sure about how I felt about this until a colleague said they were not comfortable with linking memory so closely to identity. At first, I believed they were mistaken. Now I am not so sure. When I was a kid my mom had a brain aneurysm. When she woke up she didnât know who we were or who she was. She was fundamentally changed but one of the lasting regrets and great personal pains of my life was that my family simply couldnât accept this. To be honest, we didnât know how. We expected her to be the same mom she was before and she couldnât be. If we had made space for her to be different if we allowed her to be the same but new? What might have been? I canât read this issue and not reflect on these elements. It feels like Williams is really prodding us to question the idea of resurrected mutants. I know when I read the past issues of mutants being resurrected. Iâm going to need you to step in here, Iâm wading into some deep ass waters hahaha.
CM: I too, have been thinking about my own life experiences and how they interact with this narrative. My step-dadâs best friend fell from a horse when I was younger and got amnesia from the ensuing head injury. But to my step-dad it didnât matter that his friend no longer remembered him because the other memories were still there. I hadnât really thought about this like this until our colleague brought it up, and ever since itâs been fueling things in my brain. Are not other peopleâs experiences with us all a core part of our being? Even if we no longer have a memory of the event ourselves? Will Anole still think of this as his Santo? Will those past memories still drive their relationship even if they are one-sided? How does real-world amnesia differ from this, where a whole personality is overwritten? These are extremely deep questions, and I am very intrigued by the ramifications of all of this to play out in future issues.
AA: *Vigorous head nod* The consequences are so deep.
Thereâs again a sense within the issue itself that they are dealing with questions they never conceived of until now. There are issues with the resurrection protocols, the idea of having these husks, and how all of the stakes are amplified in times of war. Emma calls attention to the cavalier attitude of the would-be generals (aka the Quiet Council) with respect to sending people to slaughter. Either way, the lack of established precedent in times of war (referenced on page 20) tells us a lot about how messy things are going to be from here on out.
Well, Damn
AA: Okay, what do you think? Do you think Doug has it right on that closing data-page? Some of the sword-bearers definitely feel obvious enough. âYana being perhaps the most obvious followed by Storm? Perhaps there will be something horrifically inaccurate about one of the interruptions or the prophecy is able to be read in multiple ways? So many directions it could go.
CM: We get confirmation that âYana is right, as her sigil lights up immediately unless theyâll light up for any sword no matter the bearer? But I did really appreciate that she scowled when she heard the prophecy and then was basically just âFine $&% it, letâs go.â I think heâs right on most of these, but think that somehow the one he thinks is him and Warlock will be the one that is horribly wrong. There are a few sets of twins in the X-Men, but I do think this is Brian and Betsy, mostly for the sword descriptions that go with them. But more importantly, now that we have the stakes for the event with how Otherworld death works, who do you think isnât coming back the same?
AA: Oh crud you really got me with that question there. Who ISNâT coming back the same? I feel like if I had even an inkling as to the answers to this Iâd be writing the comics and not reviewing them hahaha. Something that Lorna says, âSaturnyne wrote the instructions for me using the Earthâs geomagnetic spectrumâŚâ I wonder if there is something that will happen to the polarity resulting in something going wrong? You know this is the problem with comics. You read too much into everything. And by that, I mean my favorite thing about comics. At any rate, I think given what we know about Otherworld death people are likely to meet parts of themselves they werenât necessarily ready to ever learn about. What are your thoughts on who wonât be coming back the same?
CM: I think Brianâs not coming back at all. I feel that in my bones that our good boy is just not going to make it. The cover to Excalibur after the event has neither Braddock twin, but does include Meggan. I donât feel like Betsy is gonna die, but who knows? On the subject of good boys absent from post-Swords covers⌠New Mutants has a Warlock sans Doug. So I also think Dougâs not going to do well on his trip to Otherworld. Gorgon probably loses his fight, but does anyone really care about Gorgon?
I hope â˘â¤ČŚâ⢠dies. He deserves it. [Ed. note: Periwinkle Papa? More like Perishedwinkle Papa]
AA: I feel like itâs hard for me to argue with your calls here. I feel like one way or another â˘â¤ČŚâ⢠is going to get whatâs coming to him. Cori, I feel like we have only scratched the surface of this issue, itâs so deep. Thereâs so much more I could say, but I wonât because I know our readers have lives.
CM: And now we get to rest while the rest of the crew tackles the rest of the event. I feel like our issue was dense enough to take two months off, see you all on the other side!
X-Trenuous Thoughts
- I LIVE FOR FAE BULL%&$#. Pump these Otherworld data pages into my VEINS.
- The Seelie and Unseelie courts referenced in the data pages may refer to the Scottish interpretation of good vs bad fairies. Seelie: good/pleasant. Unseelie: unfavorable/unhappy.
- Otherworlds in Celtic lore (and their associated castles) take the form of common motifs in Irish tales:
- A messenger who summons the hero by challenging them or asking for help;
- A perilous passage marked at the point of transition by some form of water;
- A threatening giant with magical powers who lives in a demonic castle;
- A powerful woman who teaches and tests the hero;
- A magical cup.
- All this and more in Whitaker, Muriel A. âOtherworld Castles in Middle English Arthurian Romance.â Late Medieval Castles, edited by Robert Liddiard, by Nicola Coldstream et al., Boydell & Brewer, 2016, pp. 393â408.
- I need to see how Merlyn and Lady Roma come into this. Okay, we need a ToX for the data pages aloneâŚ
- Krakoan reads: Mauramasa
Andrea Ayres is a freelance writer and pop culture journalist.
Yes, it's Cori McCreeryâstrange visitor from DC fandom who came to Xavier Files with powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal critics. Cori, who can leap tall buildings in a single bound, race a speeding bullet to its target, bend steel in her bare hands, and who, also works as an editor for a great Eisner winning website, Women Write About Comics, fights a never-ending battle for truth and justice.
