Some Walk By Night, Some Fly By Day: X-Factor #230 Review

A beleaguered detective agency. A hot blonde who doesn’t fit in. An ill-advised love story. A bizarre cast of supporting characters. Celebrity cameos. Breaking the fourth wall. Snappy patter by the bucketload. I finally figured out why I like X-Factor so damn much: it’s Moonlighting. Moonlighting with superpowers. And a more reliable production schedule.

X-Factor #230 is the second part of a decompressed storyline and there’s next to no action in it… but I wholeheartedly recommend it anyway, even for new readers. Because it is just so much damn fun to read, and that’s saying something for an issue where the male lead is dead, the female lead is depressed into inaction, and the only fights-and-tights action happens in the in-house ads for Avengers Vs. X-Men.

To bring you up to speed (Although Amanda is perfectly capable of doing so… go ahead; I’ll wait), Madrox The Multiple Man is dead… although he appears to be alive and jumping through multiple alternative dimensions. But his team at X-Factor Investigations isn’t aware of that, mostly because the evidence all points to his being dead… that evidence being that they’ve got his body in a Frigidaire in the conference room. It’s a tragedy… because that means the office beer must be sitting on a desk getting warm somewhere.