X-Termination 1, X-Factor 253

X-Termination 1
Lapham, Liu, and Pak (s) and Lapham (w) and D. Lopez, A. Lopez, and Martinez (a) and Mossa (c)

The X-Termation event officially starts after a bit of prologue work in Astonishing X-Men and X-Treme X-Men over the last few weeks. AoA Nightcrawler has recruited AoA (or Dark) Beast to get them back into their universe from the 616. Dark Beast decides that the only way would be to go inside the Dreaming Celestial in San Francisco, as the Celestial is a sort of access point to all universes. It's a dangerous prospect and has never really been considered before but, with the aid of some helmets Beast whipped up to guard their psyches, Nightcrawler successfully teleports the pair inside. Meanwhile, Wolverine and his astonishing X-Men team are still tracking Nightcrawler. Wolverine has been betrayed by the elf and intends to make sure it doesn't happen again. If there's a weakness in this premise, I think it's here. I understand that Wolverine's mad and this comic does what it can to illustrate why Wolverine's so mad (he was betrayed by Nightcrawler who Wolverine trusted, despite being told not to, but that betrayal led to Wolverine having to kill his own son) but it still feels a little forced. To the issue's credit, I think they know that. I think they go out of their way to establish why Wolverine's mad and focus on it a little more instead of shying away. I do believe that Wolverine would consider Nightcrawler an enemy now, but in the way he doesn't go hunting down Creed or Mystique 24/7, I imagine Wolverine wouldn't send an X-Men team out after Nightcrawler. There is, the comic points out, a more personal element to this too; not only was Wolverine betrayed by someone he thought of as an ally, he was betrayed by someone who is another universe's equivalent of his dead best friend. It's not so far-fetched that it's lingering over my head all the time, but it's enough that I'm a little dismayed when Wolverine and team travel through the portal into the Age of Apocalypse Universe with Beast and Nightcrawler because it seems excessive. When they get to the AoA, things escalate, as Nightcrawler learns he's missed the war, all his friends from this universe are dead except for Creed and Jean, and Weapon Omega has been stopped. Dark Beast is captured by Jean and friends and told he'll stand trial for his crimes after he fixes the portal, which is still open and tearing things apart a bit. Wolverine and his team come through the portal and get into an argument with Jean over what's happening and who gets to hang out with Nightcrawler. Dazzler and her X-Treme X-Men team burst through the portal warning of the horrible things on the other side, which then proceed to come out. Three extremely powerful entities emerge and one kills Charles Xavier (the one that's just a head) and seems to grow. Now, as we move on to part two in the next Astonishing X-Men, three X-Men teams are facing down the possible end of the multiverse.
It's an interesting story to tie these three teams together and it'll be fun going forward because we have three different teams from three totally different backgrounds (including the X-Treme X-Men team whose members come from all sorts of different backgrounds as it is) forced to work together and to work alongside people they'd rather not work alongside (i.e. anyone and Dark Beast, Wolverine's team and Nightcrawler, Wolverine's team and most of Jean's team who are villains in the 616, etc.). One of the interesting things about this issue was that it centered itself around Nightcrawler, even putting Nightcrawler's thoughts on display as the captions. This takes some of the ambiguity out of his character, showing us that he regrets betraying the team and understands why Wolverine hates him. It also shows him as still mourning the loss of his wife and now re-appearing in the AoA as a man without a home. The aftermath of Weapon Omega has left him feeling just as much an outsider here as in the 616. Knowing what we know of him through his thoughts, we know he's still a pretty good guy at heart, someone who may wish for his own death but will still fight beside whoever he's with for the right cause. I think it's a really smart decision to take that ambiguity away for the audience's sake. Let Wolverine be mad at him, let us know that Wolverine won't forgive him, but let us know that he's on our side. The issue escalates quickly as all three teams meet up. Should be fun moving forward.

X-Factor 253
David (w) and Kirk and Leisten (a) and Milla (c)

I think I've put my finger on why I'm not a huge fan of this "hell on Earth" arc of X-Factor, a book I routinely love. I've already touched on this before but I had decided that it was rooted in my own anti-Rahne biases. I think that plays a role but the real key is in the captions. As I said above with X-Termination, it's an interesting decision for a writer to have to make to choose whose thoughts are shown in the caption. With the disappearance of thought bubbles in comics (as brought to my attention, in fact, by Peter David's Writing For Comics and Graphic Novels), captions play a similar role but usually only give us one character's thoughts, where thought bubbles could potentially drift to a couple characters in any given issue. Single-character books, like Winter Soldier or Captain Marvel, will typically focus the captions on the titular character, while team books will often use captions either as a narrator, like Avengers or Uncanny Avengers, or will select one character per issue or arc to focus on, like X-Factor or X-Termination. Throughout this arc, the captions have been with the thoughts of Tier, Rahne's son. My problem with that is kind of two-fold but both severely affect my enjoyment of this arc. For one, Tier doesn't have much to say. He's a kid in the middle of this weird situation so he mostly just remarks on how weird this situation is. When he's an interesting character, it's because he's gone berserker which means he's not thinking and has no real memory of the event, so his captions don't bring us for that ride, just the before and after, again leaving Tier with little of value to say. The other problem with Tier's captions, for me at least, is that I tend to view X-Factor as the ultimate family-driven book. They're not a family but they act like one. They're a closer team than just about any other team in the Marvel Universe and, for me, that's what drives this book. When you take the focus off of the team, I lose some interest in the title itself. If there's going to be a center to the book in the captions, I want it to be in the form of someone on X-Factor.

Jamie, as a horrible goat-headed demon, is guarding Jezebel for Mephisto when Strong Guy shows up and knocks Jamie out to rescue her. Strong Guy reveals that he's playing an angle that suits him but won't say what that angle is, making his character more compelling again. Meanwhile, X-Factor debates using Tier as a weapon against the Hell lords, as he's already taken down one of them himself. He takes down Satana in this issue, so that plan seems like a go. Monet, who has been weakened by Pluto and fainted earlier in the issue, gets the news of internal bleeding from Layla, who knows that she'll die from this. Monet confirms this with Layla and tells Layla to tell no one before flying off. These are the moments in an X-Factor book that intrigue me. They're the character moments that only need a page, despite the huge implications, because they're precisely what David has set up with his run. It's a strong team element driven by people and little interactions. Hopefully next issue will see a return of Madrox as Madrox and not as goat-headed Madrox. Also, according to the title page of the comic, Peter David is recovering well from his December stroke and has been released from the hospital and is writing again. Hooray! Still continue to learn what to do to help if you're so inclined.