What’s it going to take, Marvel Comics and Peter David, for you to see the error of your ways and bring my favorite comic book character back to life? To ensure that he makes it through this wild, strange trip you have planned for him? I want him back on his feet and having fun by March. You got that!?

Maybe this is cosmic punishment for having not yet read Peter David’s Dark Tower series.

It’s not like I don’t want to read Dark Tower. It’s all in a big pile there on my desk, waiting for me to get around to it. So how about that, PAD, what if I read Dark Tower? Then will you be kinder to my favorite character? What if I go back and read your original Incredible Hulk run, the one that everybody says is awesome? I don’t even care that much about the Incredible Hulk.

But I’ll do it if it makes you happy!

Is it that I’m not buying enough X-Men series? But I don’t care about Generation Hope, X-Men, X-Men: Legacy, New Mutants, Shiny Mutants, X-Treme, X-Boys, X-Gobbledegooks, etc. Whatever the hell else you’re publishing. Don’t take my indifference out on my favorite character!

I think the real problem is that X-Factor just has too many characters. Why couldn’t he kill one of them?

Don’t think Peter David doesn’t tease that possibility throughout the issue. I was kept guessing right up to the very end as to who would die. There’s even one scene where the bad guy attacks everyone, seemingly making everyone a possibility!

It could be any one of these indistinguishable blobs!

Of course, this leads to a really cool moment. But we’ll get to that later when I review the issue tonight. What I’m saying is that Peter David had a whole cast of characters to choose from when deciding who to kill in this issue. So I’m going to have to assume that the old standard Friar’s Club motto is in effect.

You only roast the ones you love.

So they killed Multiple Man. But why not kill someone else? X-Factor is overflowing with characters, and PAD does his best to give them all some kind of spotlight in each issue. That leaves little room for really fleshing them out. It’s a complaint I’ve had for awhile now. But even with so many characters, PAD finds something for them to do.

X-Factor first started as a mini-series called MadroX, re-introducing the character of Multiple Man and giving him a new spin as a private detective. He and his two best friends, Strong Guy and Wolfsbane, opened up their own office in New York City and started investigating mutant-related issues. It was a very good story, full of character with a focus on down-to-Earth superheroics. They were people first, superheroes a distant third. Naturally, Strong Guy and Wolfsbane stayed with Multiple Man in the jump from the mini-series to the ongoing series.

Strong Guy:

Get it? He's strong

Guido Carosella is exactly what his name implies: he’s super strong. He’s also funny, snarky, and something of a big galoofus. But that’s what’s so much fun about him. There’s very little angst to Strong Guy. He’s just cool. Right now, Strong Guy is in the middle of a story about his soul. He ‘died’ a few issues ago, shot by a criminal. But then there’s some mystery surrounding his ‘return’ to life. Everyone was pretty damn sure he was dead…until the doctors simply found him alive and well in his hospital bed. It’s been strongly hinted that teammate Layla Miller used her power to bring dead things back to life to save Guido, but doing so costs them their soul.

So Guido couldn’t die, we’ve got to find out what’s up with his soul!

Wolfsbane:

She gets a lot hairier, if that's your thing

Rahne Sinclair has been a member of the X-Men family for decades. She’s basically a werewolf, only they say it’s her mutant power. She’s young, sometimes naive and quite religious, but still very loyal and friendly. She’s the younger sister to Madrox and Guido, and the whole team really. And man, oh man, what hasn’t Rahne been up to? When she started with X-Factor, she was relatively well adjusted. But then Marvel plucked her from X-Factor to join the renewed X-Force, where she was put on a team of killers. In the very first arc, the bad guys kidnapped Rahne and put her through the ringer. They injected her with drugs, turned her into a savage killer and much worse. Only recently did she finally break away from X-Force and rejoin X-Factor, where everyone has been kind of taking care of her. There was also that issue where she gave birth to a god-like demon child. So Rahne’s been through a lot, and is still on her emotional recovery. Not gonna kill her off.

Layla Miller:

So she and Madrox get married? Not as creepy as you think

Layla Miller is a weird character. She first appeared as a little kid in the series House of M, a big Event Comic about the entire Marvel Universe being shunted into an alternate reality where they all lived different lives. Writer Brian Michael Bendis created her as a dues ex machina, who randomly had the power to make everybody remember their real lives. Then Bendis dropped her once that was all over. Peter David picked her up for X-Factor and essentially remade her completely into an enigmatic and creepy little kid. Layla Millers ‘knows stuff’, in that she has knowledge of the future and simply knows what’s going to happen. She doles this out from time to time. She also has the power to bring the dead back to life.

Layla, too, is in the middle of some big stories. Not only the Guido thing, but she’s also got some mystery going down with Doctor Doom. Through some time-travel shenanigans, Layla is now a young woman and no longer a little kid. Plus she’s been really moody ever since bringing Guido back to life, with everyone noticing and commenting on it. So Layla’s got a lot on her plate right now.

Banshee:

Why thank you, Internet

Theresa Cassidy, formerly known as Siryn, is the daughter of former X-Man Banshee. She’s been a staple of X-Men comics for a long time as well. She’s sort of the lead female in X-Factor. Like her father, she has the power to scream really loud. She took her father’s codename after he died a few years ago. Banshee’s biggest stories are behind her right now. There’s not much drama in her corner of X-Factor. So she could have been on the chopping block, but then you’d probably have an outcry of ‘Women in Refrigerators’. That’s comic book lingo for when female characters are killed or generally mistreated just to make the male characters look good, or give the male characters some drama. Peter David is too smart to make that mistake. So he wouldn’t kill her out of nowhere when she’s got nothing else going on.

Monet:

She doesn't look like much of a painter

Monet St. Croix was always a weird choice for this series, but she’s fit right in. Monet was introduced in the mid-90s for a series called Generation X. There’s often a wave of new teen mutants introduced every one and while. Right now it’s Generation Hope. But Monet debuted back then, but didn’t have anywhere to go once Generation X was cancelled. She bounced around for awhile until she wound up in X-Factor, where she’s been ever since. She’s the snarky, bitchy one on the team. She’s also invincible, so it would be hard to kill her. But right now, Monet is tied into Guido’s soul storyline, so she’s pretty vital to that whole she bang.

Rictor: 

Superheroes were not immune to the 80s and 90s

Julio Richter (who names these people?) has the super-power to cause earthquakes. He’s been around for a long while, and like many of the others, randomly found himself on X-Factor when the series picked back up after MadroX. Richter has always been a focal point of X-Factor since the very beginning, having lost his mutant powers after House of M. So Rictor’s struggles at being a normal human were a big source of drama. Well Rictor just recently, within the past month or two, got his powers back and Peter David has only just started to explore what that means for the character. He’s safe.

Shatterstar:

Ponytails, pouches and headdresses - the classics

Shatterstar’s origin is far too complex to really get into right now. He’s some kind of genetically-engineered warrior, who loves a good fight and a good movie. Frankly, I forgot how Shatterstar joined X-Factor, but he did so long after the series kicked off following MadroX. He’s also at the heart of a romantic subplot with Rictor, the two of them making waves for coming out as sort-of gay a few years ago in X-Factor. But that storyline is far from over, especially with the new boost from Rictor’s repowering. Shatterstar’s got a lot of story left to tell.

Longshot:

Remember when Longshot was on the Exiles? Man, I'm old

Longshot is another genetically-engineered warrior, created by the alien Mojo for his Mojoworld TV programs. Eventually the X-Men saved Longshot, and he’s been kicking around with them for a long while. Longshot also joined X-Factor a few years after the new series started. David has said that the similarities between Longshot and Shatterstar are there on purpose, because he’d going to be exploring the so far untold connections between the two characters. So Longshot has to be around for that.

Darwin:

Ladies love a pale, ghostly string bean

You might remember Darwin from the movie X-Men: The First Class this summer. He was the black guy WHO DIED WITHIN 10 MINUTES OF BEING INTRODUCED! THE BLACK GUY WAS THE FIRST TO DIE! Anyway, Darwin clearly wasn’t black in the comics. They just cast him as a black guy and then killed him first because fuck you, that’s why. Darwin has the power to adapt his body to survive anything. He joined X-Factor alongside Longshot, but left a few months ago after his body adapted to combat a god. Darwin has been missing ever since, off on a journey of self-exploration. So it would have been pretty silly to bring him back for just one issue, then kill him.

Pip the Troll:

Yes, he's smoking a cigar. You want to fight about it?

What the hell is Pip the Troll still doing in X-Factor? For a team already overloaded with characters, why did David randomly add Pip the Troll? He was a guest star in one storyline, then randomly stuck around as the receptionist. It makes no sense! He adds nothing! Give the receptionist duties to one of the many other characters. Pip just takes away pages from other characters. Pip is a long-running space character from Marvel, who’s been around for decades. He made that one guest appearance and just now won’t leave. And nobody’s said anything about it in the comics. There was no ‘you’re hired’ scene or anything. He just stuck around, and that was that.

He should have died!

But he didn’t, Madrox died. You only roast the ones you love, and I think it’s pretty clear that Madrox had the least going for him. Most of his biggest storylines were already laid to rest, and he didn’t have anything big going on at the moment. Besides, he’s the star. If you’re going to send anyone on a weird, trippy journey through the afterlife and alternate dimensions, you send the star.

Besides, the remaining questions about Madrox, such as his ‘marriage’ to Layla Miller and the secret of his powers, look like they might be answered with this new storyline. So I guess we’ll just have to wait and see what happens.

Still, his being dead makes me kind of sad…

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Bargaining is the third stage of grief. Here are the others:

Denial.

Anger.

Depression.

Acceptance.