The (Bittersweet) End Of X-Factor #262 – Review

(Ed. Note – This review will be rife with spoilers starting with the very next line. Really. There’s no going back now, ok? Still here? All right then. You were warned.)

X-Factor Investigations is closed.

The long running title from writer Peter David closed up shop with issue #262, the end of a six part series of stand alone stories wrapping up the storylines of each of the main players. The finale focuses on the fate of group leader, Jamie Madrox, and his sometime wife, Layla Miller, “the girl who knows stuff”. In the aftermath of the “Hell On Earth” story, they’ve taken refuge on Jamie’s childhood home, a now abandoned farm. Jamie has been transformed into a demon by another demon named Mephisto with seemingly no way to be changed back. Layla, a mutant who’s power is “knowing stuff”, has been blindsided by the discovery that she is pregnant. Truly, the end times are upon us.

So, is it happily ever after for our crew?

Well, given that David had one remaining issue to wrap everything up, he tells the remainder of the story as succinctly as is possible within the space of 22 pages. Despite the knowledge of magic that Layla has received, nothing she has tried has broken the spell which has transformed Jamie into a demon. As the days have passed, he seems to be regressing further and further into a mindless, very dangerous, animal. The farm is running out of food. Finally, Layla is visited by her old mentor/enemy, Tryp, who warns her that she and Jamie will soon be attacked by outsiders he has set as a final revenge upon her. If Layla lives, supposedly mutants will overrun the world one day and humans will be hunted to extinction. This is his last chance at future human survival.

Layla and Jamie do survive. Plotwise, David uses a deus ex machina to pull it off, but also uses the opportunity of this divine intervention to reunite the couple with former X-Factor member Siryn, who has since assumed the mantle of the goddess Morrigan. She is able to turn Jamie human again and defeat the would be invaders. Jamie and Layla end their story by deciding to retire from public super sleuthing. In fact, Jamie ends the book by saying:

We have a child to raise. A farm to get back up and running. And a world to leave to other people to save. We’re done. We’re done.

So, the happy couple fades into the west. It’s a sweet ending for Jamie and Layla and, if you’ve been following them through the run of the book as I have, you can’t help but cheer that they are able to achieve this.

Too bad though, through no fault of Peter David’s own, this issue was released the same week that rival publishing house, DC, chose to proclaim that superheroes can’t be married. The climate and tone set by Dan Didio in his myopic speech at Baltimore Comic Con mars what might otherwise be a sweet ending for Jamie and Layla. Sure Didio was talking about the philosophy currently being employed by the editors of storylines at DC, but it’s not exactly like Marvel has many characters with active running storylines that are currently in the bonds of marriage. Sue and Reed Richard, Northstar and Kyle, Black Bolt and Medusa. I think that about covers it. Heck, Marvel is the company that famously nullified the marriage of Peter Parker and Mary Jane Watson, all for the purpose of supposedly drawing younger male readers who might identify more readily with a single Spidey. Not exactly a rousing argument for character diversity as viewed through the lens of relationships with others.

David says on the final page of this issue that after the individual storylines of the heroes in X-Factor were settled in this series, he and editor Jordan D. White plan to move on to “something new” and that X-Factor #260, which focuses on a single, and very angry, Polaris, should give readers a “serious clue as to what that is.” So, Jamie and Layla go into the happily ever after, and seemingly are rewarded by being taken off the board. I do hope that it is not permanent; hell, Layla’s existence may lead to the extinction of humans…that sounds like an interesting story about a married person with a kid. However, the last panel of the book, in which a grinning Jamie Madrox repeats, “We’re done.”, lends an air of finality. Readers of Marvel books who are interested in the adventures of characters to whom they may relate better because they are married will have to look to Fantastic Four and the last couple issues of Astonishing X-Men, as that book will be ending in October.