O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay! The end of ‘They Keep Killing Madrox’ is here and it’s left me a very happy comic book geek! I won’t spoil the surprise until I actually get to the review, but suffice to say all my fears from the past few months have been put to rest. Writer Peter David did not shoot me in the face with sadness. Instead he has brought joy and happiness back into the world!

X-Factor #232

Sing with me, fans of Multiple Man, at the glory of this issue!

Comic rating: 4/5: Good!

That is to say, it’s not a great issue. Heck, it’s probably not even a good issue. But the ending bumped it up a notch. Like last issue, with Caplok vs. Iron Man, we basically spend the entire issue hanging out with Jamie Madrox on some strange, foreign dimension. He meets a new group of strange, altered characters, with the issue based almost exclusively around those characters. Once again, Madrox is just along for the ride in his own starring story. That sucks! David is writing such a great Madrox, but he doesn’t have anything for the character to do. We also don’t get anymore answers to…anything really. No better idea what Madrox is dealing with, nor any hints about the ‘truth’ of his powers.

Still, good enough read, with a fantastic ending! I’m one happy comic book fan. Spoilers and synopsis after the jump!

We open where we left off, with Madrox facing down the Dread Dormammu! Turns out he’s pretty much exactly like regular Dormammu in this world. Evil and fireheaded and everything. Nothing different or fancy about him. One new bit of information is that this world’s Madrox was Doctor Strange’s apprentice – but Dormammu just killed both him and Strange, so what does it matter? Our Madrox has jumped into this world and is utterly confused, even as Dormammu taunts him as if he knows him, mocking the ‘japes’ Madrox likes to make. I think that’s a fancy way of saying that Madrox is a joker. He likes to joke around.

Madrox makes a break for it, escaping outside to discover that this New York is a little bit different…

It's Sauron over the Twin Towers! Too soon?

Dormammu follows him outside, dropping a little exposition about this being the day he finally defeated Doctor Strange. So he’s not about to let the good doctor’s apprentice survive, and he blasts Madrox with The Flames of Faltine! But Madrox ain’t havin’ it. A protective green bubble sprouts up around him to block The Flames of Faltine, surprising both Madrox and Dormammu. Curious about this development, Dormammu instead entraps Madrox in The Crimson Bands of Cyttorak! He wants to get a closer look to see if he can determine what’s so special about this guy. Madrox tells Dormammu that he’s not Madrox’s type.

Madrox gets no respect, I tell ya

We then get a one-page recap of everything that’s happened so far in the ongoing story of Madrox’s ‘death’. We see little glimpses of the different worlds he’s visited, from the one where he was killed by Rahne’s demon wolf girl child, to the one where he was blasted out a window by Caplok. And Dormammu can see that the elderly, bearded Tryp is somehow involved. Yet Dormammu can’t reveal anything new to us? None of his mystical powers can reveal any secrets or give us new information? Nope, just a recap page.

Then as Dormammu tries to determine the depth of Madrox’s magical prowess, our hero surprises him.

More like Crimson 'Breaks' of Cyttorak, amiright?

Booyah! Take that, Crimson Bands of Cyttorak! Not so hot now, are you?

Madrox conjures up a couple duplicates (neat!) and faces off against Dormammu, suddenly talking like he has some clue about what he’s doing. The dupes surround Dormammu and reveal that the Dread One used up a lot of power in “our battle”, and he’s just hiding his weakness with all this bluster. Well the Madroxes all start picking up the broken shards of Cyttorak and set about stabbing them into Dormammu. They surround him and just go stab crazy on the guy!

Why did Doctor Strange never think to just stab him?

Madrox then reabsorbs all of his duplicates and casts Dormammu from the world! Depart, he says! Depart! While he’s doing this, the whole banishing thing, Madrox’s inner monologue asks what the hell is going on!? Then Madrox the person answers, and they got back and forth for a bit, Madrox the person chatting with his own inner monologue. Until it’s reveal that the Astral Form of Doctor Strange took refuge in Madrox’s body. Then once he was comfortable, he took control of Madrox and used his own power to defeat Dormammu.

When his Astral Form leaves Madrox’s body, Strange says that he won’t last long in this form. However, there is one boon he can grant Madrox: he can send him back to his own world. It won’t be easy. Madrox will instead keep going back through the worlds he’s already visited until he finally returns to his own universe. Strange opens up a portal, which isn’t very stable. He tells Madrox not go to through until he gives the signal…but something’s wrong. Strange is having trouble controlling the portal. Things are whipping around, out of control.

Until…

Getting in one last one for good measure

Dammit. Stop killing Madrox!

So the new corpse gets sucked into the portal, and Doctor Strange apologizes to Madrox that he won’t be able to help him with what comes next.

And then the scene we’ve all be waiting for. Jamie Madrox, the Multiple Man, returns to life in his own world, in his own body! You may recall from a previous issue that Layla Miller took the corpse and had some doctors stitch it back up, so the gaping chest wound is gone. Then she put the body on ice and hasn’t left its side. Well sure enough, Layla is there when Madrox wakes up and climbs out of the freezer he was in.

Boy is she ever!

Hubba Hubba

Layla is gushing over Madrox as he tries to make sense of what’s happening. He’s cold, from the ice, and still a little out of it. But Layla says she’ll warm him up.

Boy does she ever!

Awwwooooooogah!

Not only is Madrox back to life, but he gets to knock boots with Layla Miller at long last! They’ve been teasing that hook up since the earliest days!

But all is not well in Madrox land! Something is wrong, and there’s a dark vortex brewing over that movie studio where Madrox was killed several issues ago. Lightning and portals and trouble. Then, suddenly, who should appear out of ether but the three ‘villains’ from the last few issues!

Dormammu! Caplok! And Vanora, Rahne’s demon wolf girl child!

They need a good villain team-up name...the Sca-Vengers?

Dun! Dun! Dun!

So woot! Madrox is back among the living, in his own dimension, and little the worse for wear! All these months of being worried that Peter David was just going to leave him dead have been avenged! I’m a happy camper once again. And I’m looking forward to the new dynamic with Havok and Polaris on the team. Are they going to try and take leadership from Madrox? I guess we’ll see! I bet Madrox is the kind of guy who would be happy that he doesn’t have to be in charge anymore.

But other than the return of Multiple Man from the ‘dead’, there wasn’t much else to this issue. It was even lighter than last issue plotwise. Basically we get an alternate reality Doctor Strange and Dormammu who aren’t really that different from their main counterparts. They battle it out with Madrox just kind of being there. Sure he’s sort of participating, or at least his body is. But that doesn’t change the fact that Madrox was still just a bystander in his own story.

I guess this is building up to future stories and challenges, but that’s all we get: teases. No big surprises, no big revelations, no answer to Peter David’s teased question that maybe Madrox’s origins aren’t what we think. Nothing. Nadda! The most we get are a few new villains thrown into the book there at the end. But other than Rahne’s alternate reality child, why would Caplok and a new Dormammu matter to this book? Why would they even bother going after X-Factor?

Oh well, I’m going to stop complaining and just enjoy my favorite comic book character!