The day we’ve all been waiting for has arrived: the full X-Factor teaser has been released and Multiple Man lives! My fears of Jamie Madrox dying were for naught. Behold, faithful readers, of the awesomeness that is X-Factor!

He may be tucked way down off to the side, but at least he's there!

Madrox dying would have really put a crimp in my comic book reading habits. For all you non geeks, I figure it would be like if your favorite sports star was no longer playing the sport. Or if your favorite TV character left the show. The final season of Scrubs just wasn’t as good without JD. Of course I watched it, but it felt less than itself. That’s what a Madrox-less X-Factor would have been like.

And it’s not just Madrox, but Longshot and Polaris as well, which was one of my guesses from the last post. So that’s very exciting. Granted, there are now 11 characters on the team. That means less panel-time for everybody. But I’d like to think that writer Peter David knows what he’s doing. The man rejuvenated Multiple Man, after all! I’ve got to have faith!

For anyone interested, here are the full X-franchise teaser images for all their titles. None of the character reveals have made me want to pick up a book that I wasn’t already planning to pick up. Though now I’m even more excited to be getting Wolverine and the X-Men since Iceman and Toad are on the team. My brother Cippy is getting Cyclops and the Uncanny X-Men.

First is Wolverine and the ‘Gold Team’.

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Second is Cyclops and the ‘Blue Team’.

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The only sadness in all of this is that my other favorite X-Character, The Mimic, is not on any team. Oh well. Back to comic book oblivion for him.

Remember last week when Marvel Comics was teasing the possible death of my favorite comic book character, Jamie Madrox the Multiple Man? Well this week the teaser swings back in the other direction, indicating that Madrox may not be dying after all. He may still be around come the new X-Franchise revamp this winter. Clearly Marvel knows a thing or two about marketing. As a comic book geek, I’m on the edge of my seat.

Behold! The X-Factor teaser cover now has 3 distinct hidden characters!

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Could one of those three silhouettes be Multiple Man? Focus on the silhouette on the left. He’d got Madrox’s style of hair, and he’s clearly got some sort of collar, just like Madrox’s signature trench coat. This greatly increases the odds from last week, when Marvel had yet to reveal Strong Guy and that area was just one big blob of black. Back then, in the long long ago, I surmised that maybe there were two characters hidden in Strong Guy’s shadow. Now that there are 3, that gets my hopes up! Behold last week!

See the difference?

As I wrote last time, Marvel is making a big push for the X-Franchise in 2012, everything from Uncanny X-Men to New Mutants to my personal favorite, X-Factor. The teams are going to get new lineups with a bunch of new drama to deal with. Marvel is teasing this big push by releasing the covers for the upcoming issues, only with all the characters blacked out as silhouettes. Then week-by-week, they’re unveiling which characters are hidden in which silhouettes and will be on which team.

I read comics based primarily on the characters. So this teaser strategy is perfect in determining which X-books I’m going to be reading.

Hopefully next week (or the week after) we may find out once and for all if Madrox is making the cut.

That’s the extent of the news, but if you’re interested in comic book stuff, I think I’m going to break this down a little bit more. So we’ve got three characters, one of which has short hair, one of which has a bit longer hair to the ears and one of which has either big hair or is wearing some kind of a hood. I think this means we have two guys and a girl, or a hood.

Let’s break it down:

Who are we missing? Out of the current X-Factor team, the three missing characters are Madrox, Longshot and Darwin (though he’s on sabbatical). They do not yet appear on this cover. Both Madrox and Longshot have similar hair, and could be either one of those two short-haired male characters. Darwin could be wearing a hood. So perhaps nobody dies in November and the team stays exactly the same with the addition of Havok, that blonde guy in the middle with the blue glowy powers.

Remember the 90s? Back in the mid-90s, there was an X-Factor series very similar to the current series. Both were written by Peter David, both were about a mutant team spun-off from the X-Men and both featured the same characters. In fact, Multiple Man and Strong Guy both became popular in the mid-90s X-Factor. Havok was on that team as well, along with Wolfsbane and a few others.

The 90s were X-Treme!

So with Peter David still writing, and Havok joining the team, we’re clearly looking at some kind of 90s reunion sort of series. Comic book fans love references to old stuff, and the 90s X-Factor was incredibly popular. Heck, love for that series is what gave birth to the current X-Factor after all. So Marvel is definitely banking on that. Which means, why kill Multiple Man? Keep him around for the 90s reunion!

Which leads me to believe that the ‘hooded’ figure is actually 90s member Polaris! She’s the chick up there with the green hair. Polaris and Havok have been out having an adventure in space for the past few years. They’re a couple. So it only stands to reason that Polaris would join Havok in X-Factor, as well as add to the 90s reunion.

So I think Polaris is that hooded or big-haired character.

And I’m going to go out on a limb and say Longshot in the character in the middle, with the hair that goes down to his ears.

Or we might just have some random new character add some new blood to the team!

They could all be Madrox! Remember, Multiple Man’s super-power is that he can make duplicates of himself. Walking, talking, thinking duplicates of himself. And the catalyst for Peter David’s recent revival of Multiple Man was that he sent a bunch of duplicates out into the world to learn different things. Then when the main Madrox reabsorbs them, he gains all that knowledge. Perhaps the main Madrox will still die…but then a bunch of duplicates from around the world will return and join the team. That would account for the different hairstyles and the possible hood.

We shall see! I’ll stay on this story all month if I have to!

Update: New teaser reveals gives us new hope! Click here.

This just in, Marvel Comics may kill my favorite comic book character of all time! Anyone who remembers my list of My 6 Favorite Comic Book Characters will remember that Jamie Madrox, the Multiple Man, is my absolute favorite. But new teaser images released from his comic, X-Factor, are hinting at the death of Multiple Man sometime this Fall.

Can I not have nice things?

My favorite hero

Starting in October/November or so, the entire X-Men line of comics is undergoing a Regenesis. After the Schism, Cyclops and Wolverine will be splitting the X-Men down the middle. Half will stay with Cyclops in California, while half will return to New York with Wolverine. Likewise, Marvel is splitting their X-Men comics down the middle. Four titles will be on Cyclops’ side and four will be on Wolverine’s side. We’ve known for a few weeks now that X-Factor will be on Wolverine’s side. Their new Regenesis comic is scheduled to come out in January.

So why do I think Multiple Man is a dead man? Two reasons. First, here is the new teaser image released today:

Where is Multiple Man hiding?

Mutiple Man is nowhere in sight! Several characters are still in silhouette, including an obvious Strong Guy and Banshee, but many more have been revealed. Amongst them is the return of Havok, the blonde guy front and center. Havok is not a regular member of X-Factor, so his joining the team is one of the new changes as part of Regenesis. But Havok is in the leader’s spot, and Multiple Man is supposed to be the leader of the team. So there we have one very big clue.

Second, the solicitations for the November issue of X-Factor claim that one member of the team will die!

In this issue, a member of X-Factor dies.

Eep!

So someone will die in November, and Multiple Man is nowhere to be seen on the January cover. In fact, Havok has seemingly taken over Madrox’s role as leader of the team. So I think the clues are pretty strong towards Multiple Man dying. Another character on the team, Longshot, is also so far missing from the cover. And somebody’s probably standing in front of Strong Guy. So there’s still hope. But it’s not looking good.

And this sucks.

I mean, what the hell? I know it’s silly to get upset over the ‘death’ of a fictional character. But level with me here. Multiple Man is my favorite comic book character. I love reading about his adventures. I read comics for the characters. The writer of X-Factor, Peter David, plucked Madrox from obscurity a few years ago and has been writing him as a fascinating and complex protagonist for a long time now. Madrox is a star! Sure there are probably plenty of in-story reasons to kill him, but c’mon. Can’t I have my favorite character still alive? Still around to read about on a monthly basis?

Comics will just be a bit more depressing if Multiple Man is dead.

But I suppose it’s not that big of a deal. He ‘died’ once before, back in X-Factor #100. Then a few issues later he came back and just said, “Nope, I didn’t die, it was only a duplicate!” So that could always happen again. I’ll keep my hopes up that he’ll stay alive, or that PAD has some deeper plans for Madrox than just killing him off in order to write Havok instead.

On a semi-related note, they also revealed the Regenesis cover for Wolverine and the X-Men. My brother and I have agreed to split, he’ll get the Cyclops led Uncanny X-Men while I get the Wolverine book. And now I’m definitely happy with that choice because look who they’ve revealed to be on Wolverine’s team.

Toad is in the bottom left corner

Iceman and Toad! Two of my favorite X-characters! And Toad is supposed to be a bad guy, a member of the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants! I’ve been a fan of Toad since the X-Men movies, and he’s been simmering in the background, waiting for years now to do something awesome. This could be it! I can’t wait to see Toad take center stage!

If only it wasn’t at the cost of Multiple Man…