One of the many titles I’ve been reading over the last year has been X-Factor. This is just yet another title in the X universe with mutants who are a investigative team rather than a fighting team. The leader of the group is Jamie Madrox aka the Multiple Man. His power is that when his body is hit with a hard impact he creates duplicates of himself. He has not super strength, speed, heat vision, or any of the normal powers, just the duplicates of himself but even someone with speed or strength can get overwhelmed by numbers. 

Well, here in X-Factor there has been a lot going on, a whole lot and even after a year of reading I’m still trying to connect all the dots. I’m not really sure why I first picked up the title when I did because it was in the middle of a story arc and some issues in. I know not to do that kind of thing, it’s not a good way to start any kind of story, confused and lost, but I did and here I am now a year later still reading it. For whatever reason I first started reading it I’ve found that I like the characters and the story lines are quite good.

Only problem is that it does seem like a whole lot is going on. The team is split up in way too many groups and each of the members are off doing different missions or working on one case or another. Though with the team being spread out around the world it’s still not the only thing that makes the title hard to keep track of everything, there is the future story line. Yeah shocker huh, a future story plot going on in a X title but this time it’s just talked about off and on instead of having it done and over with. Ok, sure there was a whole plot that just happened where it was in the future and told a lot, like one big thing is where Bishop got his M tattoo on his face, and it talked about what was going on and then it ended. Normally good but thing is the story is not really over. There’s still a character stuck in that future hell that’s supposed to happen and so there’s still that to try to keep track of along with all the other story lines.

Here’s my point, it’s a good comic but come on guys reel it in some. If you’re only reading this one title then the story is fine, cool even but the odds of someone reading only 1 title is low. Especially so when it comes to a X title. There’s just something about the X titles that when you read 1 you read them all and consider how many there are it’s can get tough to keep track of it all.

Speaking of some unnecessary story lines, Spider-Man Secret Wars just finished it’s 4 issue story arc. If you never read the Secret Wars it was a story that happened in the 80’s where this entity called the Beyonder came to Earth, took a bunch of super-powered good heroes and villains, then put them in some other galaxy to fight each other. Their goal was to see who was the best. This is also where Spider-Man got his black suit from that turned into Venom. So if you haven’t read it I would advise you to read it, it’s a very good story.

Now in this 4 issue story, each issue has some sort of tie in with what happened during the Secret Wars. However this time the stories in Spider-Man Secret Wars are stories that are what we didn’t see in the original. I really like the concept, getting to read parts that never were told that fills in the space between what we did see. Only problem is the stories make no sense for the most part.
In the first issue the story makes Spidey look like an asshole. I’m a huge Spider-Man fan and I know how his character is so reading this first issue had me wondering why and how it got published that way. Out of the 4 issues the only one that was actually a fun read was issue 2. The other 3 just wasn’t much fun at all. As I said with the first, it made Spidey seem like an asshole, issue 3 just didn’t make any sense, and issue 4 just seemed like it was done to talk about what Doctor Doom was doing. This title wasn’t anything of what I was expecting it to be and seems like Marvel was depending on the fact that the title is Spider-Man Secret Wars to sell it. It worked since I got all 4 issues because of  it being a Spider-Man title but after reading it I just didn’t feel like it was a good Spider-Man title.

For the fun comic of the week to read, this time it’s Wolverine Mr. X. It’s a one shot comic that talks about the relationship between Wolverine and Mr. X. Just a good one to read that gives a little back-story to Mr. X and don’t require anyone to have much knowledge on either character to understand it.

Marvel Comics Official site: marvel.com/