Review: X-Factor #1 (2020)

Welcome back, everyone! Today I have some more comics that I was able to read after getting them in from my local shop Vibranium Comics in Ocala Florida. These guys have been awesome during the Covid crap, as they have a nice little pull list for me, and then like once a month they are shipping them to my house since I have such bad health-related things going on that I am in a particularly high-risk group of getting it and/or dying from it if I were to get it. So yeah, my family and I are taking no risks and it’s great that Vibranium and our other local comic shop Bearded Browncoats are willing to do this for us. Huge thanks and shout out to both of them for this and be sure to click on the links in their names to be taken to their Facebook pages and just show ’em some love ok!

So, since I have a few comics I want to talk about you’ll see a couple of these go up within the next week for newer comics and series, and then I’ll be picking some more random freebies from ComiXology Unlimited to do reviews on soon as well. Be sure to check out our Facebook page as we are switching to that from the group format we had before because it will be easier for me and the group voted on that as well. You can find that page HERE for All Things Geek and I plan on making a comics based page soon and will have that link up soon as well! But now into the review!

So far, I have been enjoying the hell out of the new Dawn of X series…there have been a few hiccups in it like Fallen Angels and so far Cable is just so so but for the most part I’ve loved it all and also you can’t expect to have every book in such a huge far-flung series of titles be winners. Recently though, they have put the X-factor brand back together and for the most part except for one member, it seems like this will be a wholly new team and that it will be following the X-Factor Investigations type of X-Factor storylines.

A little history for those that don’t know or are too young to know and haven’t read back issues. X-Factor was started as a sham corporation called X-Factor Investigations (At least I’m pretty sure they had investigations in their name but not the comic title at that time). This team was composed of the original class of X-Men under the disguise of humans who hunted down mutants. They would then take these captured mutants and train them to use their powers. After that, there was the Muir Isle Saga crossover of the X-men universe titles and out of it came a new X-Factor team that was a government-sponsored mutant team that basically replaced the old Freedom Force team with good guys instead of Brotherhood of Evil Mutants types. Basically, they took Marvel’s version at the time of the Suicide Squad and gave them the boot for better nicer employees. From 2005 to 2013 they went back to the X-Factor Investigations thing but this time they really were a detective agency. All-New X-Factor had a new team, but I know nothing about that team other than it was a corporate-sponsored thing. And that brings us up to now and what I am about to tell you about.

So, as I’m sure any reader of the new X-Men comics knows, the mutants of the world are now all congregating to the island of Krakoa which is now a nation for the mutants. The mutants and Krakoa have an agreement that it can feed a tiny bit from every mutant and in return, it keeps them safe and provides a home. The safety has been dubious at best due to people always wanting to invade and kill mutants because they are still hated and feared by normal people.  Sometimes prejudice just doesn’t seem to go away. One of the other really interesting things about the new X-Men nation is that through the power of five mutants that have so cleverly been nicknamed the Five is that the mutants that have died can now be resurrected. So this means the writers can bring back anyone they could ever want for any of the new stories. However, with over 6 million dead mutants, you can imagine that there is a long list. So what happens when someone is sensed to be dead by an oh say sibling but they don’t have proof. Do they have to stand in line for 6 million other mutants to have their turn at rebirth? Well at first it seems that way but Northstar is not content to just wait in line and so he raises a ruckus.

So Northstar believes Aurora his twin sister is dead. He has no proof just this feeling or premonition he had, but while no one else believes him without proof he’s not willing to let this go. As pointed out though the proof is needed because you can’t just go resurrecting people all willy nilly what sort of precedence would that set if you suddenly have an army of all one powerful mutant or something? There have to be rules. This is where Polaris steps in reminds people she was part of a detective team and maybe she can help him find out if something happened to his sister. So a new team is formed to find out what if anything happened to Aurora. This team is made of Northstar, Daken, Polaris, Rachel Summers (Prestige), Eye-Boy and Prodigy.

In this first issue, they do the sleuthing you would expect a mutant detective team to do. Sometimes their powers seem a little too tailor-made for such a story and I can see where if they just repeat this sort of thing time and again where it would get kinda stale. At the ending of the story, Polaris puts Northstar in charge of the new X-Factor Investigations and they have an HQ set up for themselves so they can do for others what they were able to do for Northstar. Find some sort of closure for other mutants who don’t know what has happened to their lost loved ones. I can see this going one of two ways. They either branch out the team to different members to keep it fresh or they take on different types of cases to keep it fresh. Otherwise, I have a feeling this comic will fail fast because like I said this team the ay it stands is just too tailor-made and tidy for a detective team. They all could solve this on their own for the most part but especially Prodigy and Prestige. Eye-boy and Daken lend themselves to a perfect hunting pair between their powers and honestly Polaris and Northstar aren’t really needed unless there is fighting which I mean come on Rachel and Daken have that pretty well in hand themselves. Northstar and Polaris just kinda seem like additions to fill out the roster so that people don’t put up the same argument I’m putting here because they can be like “Yeah I see your point but what about these two?”

All in all, I do recommend this first issue. I think this first issue was good and I enjoyed it. I just have my fears about how this could easily go wrong if they don’t branch out because the way they ended the first issue it really seems like the whole basis of the story arc is going to be missing persons. I mean maybe some of these missing persons will lead to some good bigger arcs all merging together on their own and keep it interesting but there is only so far something like that can be drawn out with such a perfect little team. We will see what happens though.

So have you taken a look at this title yet? Did you like it and, if so, do you have the same worries as me? If you didn’t like it let us know why down below. We would love to hear your comments and remember if you would like to support us you can go to our Patreon page HERE and become a backer. Right now, we only have the backing options up for the gaming side of things, but we’ll be adding more options here soon for comics and many other things.