The X-Men are on their way to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, with Marvel Studios announcing the cast and the release date. One of the things that fans loved about the MCU from the beginning is that it used the origin stories of the comics to bring its heroes and villains to the big screen, often starting at the beginning of their lives. While the cast announcements show that Marvel Studios isn’t exactly starting at the beginning with the men and women of X, they are introducing the original five X-Men immediately, so there’s a good chance that they’ll pay homage to the original team.
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One of the most interesting things about the team’s history is that the O5 aren’t actually all that popular as a unit. They were the version of the team that failed; it wasn’t until 1974’s Giant-Size X-Men #1 introduced the All-New, All-Different team that the X-Men finally became popular. However, that doesn’t mean that the O5 aren’t a great group of heroes, something which was proven 41 years ago when they were brought back together as X-Factor. While it doesn’t always get the credit it deserves, the first 70 issues of the series are some of the best mutant stories you can imagine, expanding on the lore of the X-Men in the ’80s and introducing readers to one of the best villains ever. It’s a classic and it proves that the O5 peaked decades after their introduction.
X-Factor Made the Original Five Cool for the First Time
A lot of people like to point at the ’60s as the peak of Marvel Comics and there’s a lot to this idea. It was when the publisher was able to create a new superhero universe without leaning to hard on legacy, a very impressive achievement. However, for my money, ’80s Marvel is height of the House of Ideas. The publisher was pushing the edge of what superhero comics could be in the decade of excess, with the mutant corner of the Marvel Universe becoming the epicenter of everything. Chris Claremont’s run on the X-Men made them into the most popular characters in comics and the publisher began expanding their footprint, giving readers miniseries and all-new team books like New Mutants. It was decided that the O5 needed its time to shine again, leading to the resurrection of Jean Grey and X-Factor.
X-Factor #1 took the concept of a mutant team to the new place. The O5 decided that the best way to help mutants was to pose as the X-Terminators, a group of humans who would come to town, capture the mutants there and take them away. However, they were really taking them away for training, so they could learn to live with humanity, taking their own part in Xavier’s dream. It was an awesome premise, one that got better after they gained control of Ship, Apocalypse’s sentient Celestial spacecraft, giving them the ultimate mobile base. It introduced new young mutants like Rusty, Skids, Artie, and more, as well as giving readers the debut of Apocalypse himself. One of the reasons that the X-books were so popular in the ’80s was because writers like Chris Claremont and Louise Simonson were constantly taking the concept in new directions and X-Factor was a perfect example of what they did best.
X-Factor would kick off in the capable hands of Bob Layton and artists Jackson Guice and Keith Pollard, introducing readers to the Alliance of Evil and Apocalypse, before Louise Simonson would take over the book. Simonson’s run on X-Factor is one of the best in comic history, especially when husband Walt joined the book as artist during the Archangel storyline, because she never let the team truly rest on its laurels. At this point as characters, the O5 had very little success as a unit. The return of Jean Grey meant that readers were going to pick up the book, but it needed more than just the “X” on the cover to keep readers around and Simonson gave that to readers in numerous ways.
Apocalypse was the key to the book’s early success, a shadowy manipulator that hooked readers. The Archangel story would become one of the most popular and important in X-history, taking a founding member of the team and finally making him cool for readers and introducing the concept of the Four Horsemen of Apocalypse, which would become one of the most important parts of the villain’s repertoire. It’s also a perfect example of what made X-Factor such a fantastic series.
The book threw interesting storylines at the whole cast. Cyclops had to deal with the death of his marriage and the rekindling of his feelings for Jean. Archangel had to learn to manage the changes made to him by Apocalypse. Iceman’s powers were amped to insane levels by Loki and he had to learn how to control them all over again. Beast started off the book in his human form and then went back to his beast look, and had to deal with the changes to his life associated with that. Jean had to deal with the legacy of the Phoenix and Cyclops’s marriage, all while Apocalypse was there in the background, scheming.
X-Factortook a group of mutants that had never been the most interesting and was able to finally make readers want to read about them. It gave readers the perfect big bad in Apocalypse, a villain who kept developing over the course of the series, allowing the book’s narrative to expand in exciting new directions. It was the perfect way to create a team book that would hook readers. Seriously, go back and read those old issues of the book; it’s grade-A superhero awesomeness, with all the soap opera stuff you love about Claremont’s Uncanny or Simonson’s New Mutants. It’s the height of the O5, reaching levels that they would never hit again.
X-Factor Deserves More Respect On Its Name
The original five X-Men have all become legends, but it’s time to face facts – for most of them, the only reason we love them as much as we do today is because of their 70 issues in X-Factor. The series is a gem of ’80s Marvel and it never really gets the praise it deserves anymore. It took the least interesting team of X-Men and was able to finally make them worth reading about as a unit. Sure, there had been times when characters like Cyclops, Jean, and Beast were fun to read about, but as a group, the O5 just weren’t anything special. At this point, usually I would say, “X-Factor reminded everyone why they loved the O5,” but that’s not accurate. It’s better to say that X-Factormade people see for the first time that you could put these characters together and tell compelling stories with them.
X-Factor was one of the first X-books I read. My local library had a pretty good selection of ’80s Marvel (I read a lot of New Universe comics) and had a pretty sizable collection of early X-Factor. Those early issues were some of the most exciting comics I had ever read, the easy sympatico of the team and their history together informing the book at every turn. A friend brought “Endgame”, the last major story for the team (they were a part of “The Muir Island Saga”, but “Endgame” was the story that closed out this version of the team), to school so I could read it and it was the perfect capstone for a series that showed the Silver Age failure of the X-Men was a fluke.
The First 10 Members of X-Factor, Ranked by Power
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