What's Your Issue? Spotlight on X-Factor #231

Welcome to my new weird semi-regular segment, What's Your Issue? where I review individual comic issues because I just read 'em and have no one to talk to about 'em. For our first installment, we're talking about X-Factor #231 which came out this week.

The issue opens with Multiple Man Jamie Madrox still in the same alternate world we left off in; a dual set of Sentinel-size Iron Men are about to put him out of his reality hoping misery (which will probably just send him to another world anyway, as this keeps happening when he "dies"). A scan by of one of the Iron Men reveals that Madrox is somehow out of phase or out of sync with their world, so they decide to take him to their "boss." If you guess that to be Tony Stark, then you've read yourself some Marvel Comics in the past few decades.

The older Tryp has gained a new ally (a shadowy red-eyed figure) to help rescue Madrox from Stark's tower. Jamie is in rare form while being taken to Tony's office, giving off a lot of one-liners and zingers that make it really the best part of the comic. Tony and him have a conversation where it's revealed he was in space when Wanda reset reality, only removing most of the humans from the world instead of most of the mutants (as she did in regular continuity). They are interrupted when Tryp's friend busts in, a franken-like amalgam of Steve Rogers and Deathlok. Basically, it sums up the awesome cover.

A superhero slugfest ensues, with really the Captain Deathlok dude dominating in my opinion. The secretary is killed by him in short order, only to have it revealed that she's some sort of killer robot who starts attacking him. Awesome. Tryp and Madrox try to talk, but the latter is slammed out a window, duplicates from impact, and then the dupe can fly so the pair are saved... until he's reabsorbed and Jamie falls to his death anyway. He wakes up in a new Dr. Strange/magic-esque world.

They Keep Killing Madrox has proven to be pretty entertaining, even though I don't really know where they're going with this. I guess it'll all come to a head next month when Peter David reveals the ultimate point for Jamie moving through parallel worlds. I guess reality is breaking apart slowly, if Tryp can be believed, and Madrox is getting a "preview" of this. It's been an oddly fun story, even though I'm still behind and haven't read the first part. I like issues that highlight the team dynamic in X-Factor more than solo characters, so I hope the book gets back to that soon.