We had a relaunch of X-Men last year with Jed MacKay and Gail Simone leading the way on the X-Men and Uncanny X-Men titles respectively. With those came another series of books, one of which was X-Factor. Bleeding Cool ran an article that some of these books, in particular Nyx and X-Factor that launched with the two main X-Titles would be cancelled at issue #10..and possibly X-Factor.
I do hope X-Factor is not cancelled. Mark Russell is one of my favorite writers, and has been for the last few years or so. He is incredibly skilled at instilling wit and satire in his work and this really made X-Factor the perfect companion piece to the action packed X-Men book, and the family drama/with a healthy dose of action Uncanny X-Men.
Plus my favorite character in the book is definitely Granny Smite. Her power is that she cannot die so she thrusts herself in dire situations that would kill anyone. But nope, she represents a generation that simply rolled up its sleeves and applied a bit of elbow grease to get the job done. And it is this grit that makes her a worthy addition to X-Factor and inspiration for this week’s doodle.
She is clearly smiling as she falls down on a floor of spikes. I did show this to Franka and she did tell me she knew what it was supposed to look like.
So there.
Russel used X-Factor to put a mirror up to society and explored a lot of different things, such as how we use social media and how these companies are starting to influence our own society and create the inbetweens as we try to figure out how to interact with one another. Of course I do not want to get political, but he does this while also making it incredibly humorous.
I am used to seeing Russell more on the DC side so it was interesting for me to see how he would do with a Marvel cast of characters. After reading his X-Factor for the first time, it was one of those things that developed to an ‘of course he would be great on X-Factor. If you are not familiar with Russell’s work I can heartily recommend you finding it and if memory serves he started to blow up from Cereal Fan-Fiction. Yes, you read that right.
If X-Factor is cancelled then I do hope Marvel gives him something else. We need Mark Russell.