The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1580: X-Factor #10, November 1986

Sorry for the pause. Went camping for a couple of days. I find it very therapeutic.

A commenter on my Instagram mentioned how much they enjoy this crossover, and I have to agree. Basically what we have is the original X-Men and the current team stumbling back from some serious beatdown into the middle of a massacre. Someone is just outright slaughtering the Morlocks. And, as of this issue, they've had their asses handed to them again and again, and only just escaped death themselves, so they're picking everyone they can and getting the hell out! Both teams! In contrast to so many of the crossovers we see now, this one is pretty tiny. The surface world would be affected in no way. But the fashion now is for the heroes to throw themselves at it, whatever the magnitude, and just trust that they'll win. I kind of appreciate seeing one where the heroes are thinking "Fuck! This is insane. We gotta rescue who we can and get the fuck out!" We don't see nearly enough of that.

The other great thing about the crossover is that it works. It's a wonderful meshing of stories, there are a mere 5 crossover issues, and only 3 in each main series are given to the story. The first X-Men and X-Factor titles are really more epilogues to their previous stories, the massacre itself only happening on the last page or two. Two of the five crossover issues are actually not completely pertinent to the plot, offering more a view of the consequences, rather than the action, of the events of the main story. Regardless, it's a neatly told story, and I think serves as a template for these kinds of "Events." Rather than involve everyone, make them more intimate. This story is claustrophobic and unpleasant, and is super-effective, much more than the yearly get together to save the universe.

I have discovered of late that there is an issue that crosses over that isn't on the map in the back of the comics, Daredevil #238. Off to the shops I go!

"It'll take more than that to stop me, little piggies..."

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 992: X-Factor Annual #3, 1988

"The Evolutionary War" was the first cross-Annual crossover, a notion that became par for the course in the early 90s. We don't see Annuals much anymore, which is kind of a pity and kind of good. Annuals were always nice for the longer format stories, but those stories weren't always of the highest caliber.

Being that it's the first Annual crossover, it begins in medias res, with the High Evolutionary's forces well underway in their quest to exterminate evolutionary dead ends. You get the sense that a lot of this extermination/sterilization has taken place under the radar of the dominant human species, which adds a fairly chilling aspect to this story. The High Evolutionary, much as he keeps telling himself he's doing good, is really quite fascistic. He's an evolutionary fascist? Which makes his conversation in today's comic with the uber-Darwinian Apocalypse so interesting. I feel like, had this conversation been written about 20 years later, it would have been really quite poignant. Here, it skims the surface, and really offers a nice look at two opposing villainous impetuses that seem to be attempting similar goals.

X-Factor themselves are kind of incidental. And I really would like to know what happens to the mutant Moloid (Va-Lor) after this issue. We probably never see him again.

Dear gods, I have to read The Punisher tomorrow. I'm not a fan.

To be continued.