From Paris to New York to Bete Noire…whad’ja think?
PAD
58 comments on “OUT THIS WEEK: X-FACTOR #15, FALLEN ANGEL #12”
Liked Fallen Angel, saw the Jude messing up coming the moment the gal walked through the door. Looking forward to the “not Linda” story that is coming.
I liked it. Here are some random thoughts:
-ZOMG! Did Monet really do that?!? What is this gonna mean for her future on the team?
-Even with Monet translating most of it, there might’ve been a little too much French dialogue. I have some grasp of the language but I wasn’t able to get it all, and only was able to deduce the entirety of what Monet said in her cell because she was pointing at the toilet and used the term “WC.” Hate to think how readers who don’t know any French at all felt.
-Most amusing lines in the issue for me considering the context:
“No problem, skank.”
“What, you don’t want to hear me mock Doc Locke?”
“That’s not a rod, that’s…(etc.)”
“Which one is the original?!?”
-Does Deadpool still have a thing for Siryn? Any chance he might show up in this book? Not everybody is capable of writing good Deadpool dialogue, which is why his book was never the same after Joe Kelly left and sales declined. But I think with your sense of humor and knowledge of pop culture you could write him pretty well. Plus it’s not as though you’re a stranger to writing smartass characters (the grey Hulk circa 1990 being one example, Madrox being another).
-If I’m a 27-year-old female who looks half my age, and I’m in command of a Hydra base, and am no longer undercover, should I perhaps take my hair out of pigtails after I change into my uniform? I mean, I’d probably want to be taken seriously. But then again, this book isn’t always serious.
-Hydra seems to be getting kind of pitiful in its old age, if we can go by what happened in this issue and in Captain America recently.
-Did Jamie somehow make a conscious decision despite the brainwashing to dupe himself that much, or was it just dumb luck?
-Could Locke’s failure be attributed in any way to the fact that at first he thought he was working on a dupe, rather than the original?
-Jamie wonders why Tryp didn’t just grab him and take him away after his parents died. Good to see this being addressed, since it’s something I wondered myself and look forward to finding out.
And that’s it. I also left some comments about Wonder Man in the comments section for the video of the loud baby panda, but I don’t know if you saw them. But here with X-Factor, great job!
Oh yeah, almost forgot: I had no idea Jamie could dupe stuff he was holding as well as his body and clothing. So…does this mean the guy can solve world hunger?
… or at least walk onto the Letterman stage proclaiming, “Free iPods for everyone!”
Possible spolier: I really like what you’re doing with the “Asia Minor” character, PAD. You’ve taken a highly annoying character (IMO) and made him much more intriguing in the span of one issue. So Asia is an avatar of evil for the city of Bete Noir? I can’t wait until next month.
BTW…got a chance to see the cover for the “Linda” (nudge, nudge, wink, wink)issue of “FA”. Nice homage in its own “nudge, nudge, wink, wink” way.
Get Jamie to pull himself together, would ya? It’s getting increasingly fatiguing to figure out just who is the original….
X-Factor was another good issue.
But it would be nice if the detective agency would do some detective work again, like solving little tragic noir everyday crimes.
Or would that be to easy with a telepath in the team?
Hey Peter I’ve just recently picked up the Fallen Angel trade which i’ve really enjoyed. I’m planing on reading the series monthly can you tell if and when a IDW trade will be coming out and what issues it will cover so that i can pick a suitable jumping on point.
cheers
Rob Brown said:
-Did Jamie somehow make a conscious decision despite the brainwashing to dupe himself that much, or was it just dumb luck?
Who is to say he didn’t. After all– they never said the duplicate the resulted from Jamie being spanked a birth ever remerged. For all we know- the real Madrox is with Tryp. Or Clay is the real Madrox.
Or maybe there is no ‘real’ Madrox. I think Claremont’s original idea was that each Madrox was a distinct individual. This backed up somewhat by the ‘Fallen Angels’ miniseries and by Grant Morrison’s run on X-Men.
I just wanted to comment briefly on the digest edition of ‘Spider-Man Adventures’, which technically came out last week, but obviously personal issues intervened from you mentioning it.
Specifically, it was a lot of fun (in a weird synchronicity, I’ve been heavily into Essentials of late, so I just finished Man-Thing, Monster of Frankenstein and Werewolf by Night), and I really enjoyed seeing Hawkeye. I did wonder, though–was it more fun writing single-issue stories that didn’t have to tie into any continuity (*cough* Civil War *cough*) or did you wind up missing the elements that come with being part of a “bigger picture”?
Either way, very fun, very recommended (in fact, all the “Adventures” line is great, very fun old-school comics.)
X-Factor would be better if Rahne was in it.
Looking forward to the Linda Danvers-esque story in Fallen Angel.
So…Civil War: The Return announced a new series. Any chance someone over here is writing it who’s name rhymes with Eater Ravid?
Brian
X-Factor is the only reason I look forward to Comic Book Wednesdays anymore. I hope you stay on the book for a long, long time. Your Madrox is fast becoming one of my favorite characters. I’d like to see him end up with Siryn! And please keep having him narrate the books. He’s the best.
Liked ’em both.
With Fallen Angel, J.K. Woodward’s art is still inconsistent. In one panel, he’ll draw excellent faces, and render the lighting on them just perfectly, like the shot of Jude on Page 4, Panel 6. But other times, his faces look like he doesn’t know what he’s doing, like the shots of Xia in the second and third panels of Page 2, or the shot of Asia on Page 19, Panel 5. I just don’t get it.
I’m also not sure I like the idea of a drug dealer like Asia who openly says his victims are trash getting off scott free by the end of the story. While I’m for the exploration of the idea of legalized drugs, that doesn’t mean those who deal junk that kill people are not morally culpable, and if there was any ambiguity within Asia’s character up until now, I think it’s gone. Angel can be forgiven for trying to shield him from the consequences of his actions because she was trying to save Keith. I was also curious as to what Asia’s physical or chronological age was, and surprised by the scene at the city limits, since I didn’t know he was one of those people whose age was slowed/stopped within the city. is he?
X-Factor of course, was great. Good art. Good story. And I got to learn a bit of French. 🙂 The one confusing thing was when Monet shish kebabed the captured bigot arsonist. She throws the bar way off panel to the right, where she and Theresa are looking, but the blood splatter seems to be erupted up, as if it’s coming from below the panel. Other than that, the whole issue was great. Though I’m curious as to the story behind the girl who’s twenty-seven but looks like a grade schooler. What’s the deal with her age? Will she return later, and her story be told?
Great job, Peter. 😉
Peter,
Could you make a mention on your blog about your appearance on my friend Lucas Siegel’s radio show tonight? The site is: http://playordie.fearlessradio.com and listeners should click on “Listen-AM” to listen in from 8-9 pm.
Thank you, sir.
-Jeff
Hmmm. Very enjoyable. Both of them. X-FACTOR is inching its way up to my favorite Marvel title based on the writing. FALLEN ANGEL, on the other hand, is a title that Marvel should have picked up when DC cancelled it. It makes a perfect fit for Marvel’s Icon line-up.
Say is Woodward leaving the book? I noticed that he is only doing the cover for the current issue that is being solicited by Previews.
Due to some unusual circumstances at the job, I was able to get to my comic shop early instead of wating til the weekend.
Read Fallen Angel #12 last night. Fabulous read as always, wish it was bigger and came out more often cause I always am wanting more at the end.:)
Great work, Peter!
Oh yeah, almost forgot: I had no idea Jamie could dupe stuff he was holding as well as his body and clothing. So…does this mean the guy can solve world hunger?
This question seems to have come up every couple of months since the Madrox mini-series (where he mentioned that if he duplicated while wearing handcuffs, the dupe would also be wearing them). I think this is the first time it’s been explicitly mentioned that he could duplicate something he was holding rather than wearing, although we didn’t actually see him do it. (My take on his solving world hunger: No, because when the dupe was reabsorbed the duplicated stuff would also disappear–and feeding the dupes would require more food than he could generate. Unless people started eating the dupes directly…)
Well the question is, if Jamie is holding a hamburger, dupes himself, and someone else eats the dupes hamburger…what happens when he reabsorbs the dupe?
“Unless people started eating the dupes directly…)”
Ewwwww. I had never thought of that as a way around the problem of the Dupes consuming more food than they could produce. It reminds me of a short story that I read called the Cold Solution which was written in answer to the classic Sci-fi story the Cold Equations.
Jamie has duplicated things in his hands. If you recall when he sent a dupe to meet with Tryp, that dupe eventually got defenestrated and Jamie absorbed them (he duped when he crassed through the window) before they hit the ground. Jamie used that dupe to get sample of Tryps DNA. He duped himself while he had some sort of sampling device that he could palm and it duped with him. When he absorbed the dupes, the device also was re-integrated and the data that was in the device went into the original. I thought that was kinda neat.
Though I’m curious as to the story behind the girl who’s twenty-seven but looks like a grade schooler. What’s the deal with her age?
She probably either has whatever Gary Coleman has or is simply able to pass for a young girl. My guess would be that she got trampled or crushed by the Madroxes. We never even learned her name, so how important can she really be?
Unless people started eating the dupes directly…
I second the “Ewwwww.”
OK, how about this: Jamie gets sent to a few thousand starving people with a package of food, he makes an equal number of dupes with an equal number of packages, all the starving people eat, and Jamie doesn’t reintegrate all the dupes until like 8 hours later when everybody’s digested their meals. Could that work?
Who is to say he didn’t. After all– they never said the duplicate the resulted from Jamie being spanked a birth ever remerged. For all we know- the real Madrox is with Tryp. Or Clay is the real Madrox.
I gather that was in response to my question about why Tryp didn’t capture Jamie after the tornado.
While it’s a plausible explanation, it sounds disturbingly like that wildly popular (italics here indicate sarcasm) clone story in the Spider-titles in the ’90s. You know, “Hey fans, guess what? Turns out that the character you’ve been following all these years is just a copy and the original has been doing stuff behind the scenes all this time! Isn’t that cool?” No. No, it’s not.
Great X-Factor issue !
And if you think about this duplicating power with open imagination… Madrox can be one of the most powerful mutants of the world.
Get inside Iron Man´s armor and duplicate yourself, that´s a smart solution to the 50 states iniciative. Pick up the ultimate nullifier and… relax because the Celestials are going to flee from your corner of the universe !
Pick up the ultimate nullifier and…
While that’s a cool idea, I’m going to take an educated guess and say that I find it highly doubtful that Maddrox could make a duplicate of something like the Ultimate Nullifier. I’ve speculated before that Maddrox would be unable to duplicate any truly unique item. I’m thinking of mostly cosmic stuff like the Cosmic Cube, Infinity Gaunlet, Darkhold, Eye of Agamotto, etc. but I’d also guess that Captain America’s shield fell into that catagory. I have no evidence to support that hypothesis. Only the gut conviction that you can’t just make more of those things.
When I read the preview for this issue, I thought it was going to be a hilarious one (Cut off one dupe two more shall take it’s place!). Now I’m quite worried about the psychological damage done to Madrox.
Fallen Angel was great. We have more information on who Asia is, and his role in Bete Noir. But the real shocker for me was about Jubal and his mom – whoa.
Fascinating book, and still my favorite title.
OK, how about this: Jamie gets sent to a few thousand starving people with a package of food, he makes an equal number of dupes with an equal number of packages, all the starving people eat, and Jamie doesn’t reintegrate all the dupes until like 8 hours later when everybody’s digested their meals. Could that work?
Depends on how realistically nitpicky the writer wants to be, really. One argument is that once the food stops being recognizably what it was when duplicated, it wouldn’t disappear once the dupes were reabsorbed. (Actually, I don’t even know for sure if duplicated items would disappear when the dupes were reabsorbed, but it seems like the best away around the “why not just duplicate a diamond ring a hundred times?” problem.) Certainly the caloric energy wouldn’t go away (as in the Hydra scientist’s example of duplicating nuclear bombs–once they’ve gone off they don’t un-explode if the dupe goes away…).
The more nitpicky answer comes from an idea I’ve heard in various sources on time/dimensional travel (notably the RPG supplement GURPS Time Travel, but I’d swear I’ve heard it elsewhere). The idea there is that when you return to your own time/dimension, “native” materials remain behind…including any that have been integrated into the body. In the duplicated meal example, any amino acids that have been integrated into proteins, or calcium put into bones and teeth, or whatever would vanish when the dupe does (assuming that’s how it works).
Mind you, this is thinking way too hard about a power that’s not very scientific in the first place. (In the grand tradition of the old Handbook of the Marvel Universe, which wrings its hands over his ability to apparently turn energy into matter even though there shouldn’t be enough energy in a medium-sized tap to create an entire human body. I always figured he just got the mass from the same hypothetical dimension that growing characters like Henry Pym draw on.) As long as it’s reasonably consistent, I’m fine with whatever PAD comes up with.
Rob Brown said:
While it’s a plausible explanation, it sounds disturbingly like that wildly popular (italics here indicate sarcasm) clone story in the Spider-titles in the ’90s. You know, “Hey fans, guess what? Turns out that the character you’ve been following all these years is just a copy and the original has been doing stuff behind the scenes all this time! Isn’t that cool?” No. No, it’s not.
No– I wouldn’t think PAD would do something like that. Quite the opposite. More like Jamie’s folks gave Tryp the dupe which he thought was the real Jamie. He killed them so he could use Jamie for his big evil plan. Jamie was left alone because Tryp didn’t know he didn’t have the real Jamie. He didn’t find out until there were already too many of him to keep track of.
If the split was that close to birth before any personality was ingrained– both of them would be equally ‘real’.
I still don’t believe there is a ‘real’ Jamie. They are all unique all as ‘real’ as the others.
All this is fascinating, and I did buy the Fallen Angel issue (haven’t read it yet) but…what I really would like to see is Cowboy Pete’s take on the resumption of “Heroes.”
See, there’s something I don’t understand about the female FBI agent who’s picked up the mind-reading cop. She’s had physical proof that there’s weird stuff going on – a guy who’s a radiation source, at the very least, and this cop who can read her thoughts. So, when the raid on PrimaTech Paper goes bad, she instantly doesn’t freaking believe him? She’s ready to dump him, making him essentially unemployed since he’s suspended from the police?
This is either one of two things. Either it’s bad plotting, which means bad things for the entire series, or it’s emergency plotting. The actress playing the FBI agent may have wanted too much money or wanted more lines. So this was a way to drop her from the series without even the boon of a heroic death, like the suicide of Eden in the previous episode.
Perhaps the producers of the show have a saying; “Who needs God when you’ve got writers?”
All this talk about Jamie duplicating clothing, things he’s holding, handcuffs etc reminds me of that scene waaay back in the original X-Factor run where two Jamies merged back together, one with Ren on his shirt, and the other with Stimpy, and the final shirt was whole with both of them, leaving Val Cooper and Quicksilver wondering just how Jamie did such a thing.
J
X-Factor #15
Best. Issue. Yet.
So…Civil War: The Return announced a new series. Any chance someone over here is writing it who’s name rhymes with Eater Ravid?
I saw that as well.
And, knowing Marvel, it won’t be PAD on it.
Quite frankly, I’m wondering why the hëll Marvel’s even putting out another series again so soon. It makes me think they just gave PAD the finger, because not only is there’s nothing to say *yet another* ongoing is going to do any better, but the manner in which they are using this ‘incarnation’ of the character.
Oh, and I almost forgot…
It needs to be mentioned again, it seems (thanks Superman Returns!): Monet has two bullets bounce off her, yet her clothes are undamaged? 🙂
What’d I think? Seriously? I mean, seriously?
Great stuff all around. X-Factor just gets better and better. I’m looking forward to meeting more of Madrox’s dupes.
Loved ‘Fallen Angel’ as usual, although I can’t help reading Asia Minor without putting in the voice of Amy’s dad from “Futurama”. (Go on, try it. It makes his final line even more darkly hilarious.)
The issue does raise an interesting point with Xia: Is she not clear on how the line of succession works in Bette Noir after being with Juris for so long? Or is that one detail he kept to himself, for fear Xia would try to stop him from passing on the mantle? Even more intriguing: What WOULD happen if the direct bloodline of Cain was broken? Would the city even accept a “Next in line” like Jubal?
At least DC finally got off their collective kiesters to release the second Trade in time for me to get yet another friend hooked on the series. Now I’ve got someone else to discuss it with.
Congrats on another great read!
Jess Willey Said:
“I still don’t believe there is a ‘real’ Jamie. They are all unique all as ‘real’ as the others.“
Nonsense.
In PAD’s first X-Factor run, when the REAL Jamie gets knocked out, all of the duplicates disappear. The Ricochet dupe was an exception, ‘cuz the Senator manipulated him somehow. In the end, when the Ricochet dupe absorbed the REAL Jamie, the real one was able to absorb the dupe from the inside. To top it all off, Jamie comes out and says that there is only one Multiple Man, and to “accept no substitutes”.
Ack. I’ve accidentally posted the same thing twice in a row before, but four times must be a record. Not criticizing, just observing.
Doug Atkinson: Depends on how realistically nitpicky the writer wants to be, really…
I guess we’ll never know until he tries something like this.
I’m no doctor, or nutrition expert. With that disclaimer now in place, I’m guessing that if you don’t worry about the person being malnourished, and just want to give her stomach something to go to work on so her body stops wasting away, then it might still help her out even if the proteins and such disappeared later.
Hey Peter!
I’m French and I just wanted to thank you so much for the French dialogue in X-Factor being French and not, you know, gibberish. I honestly don’t think I spotted one single mistake,(only mayybe a few lines that sounded slightly unnatural, but I’m being a pain). It was a welcome relief from some other Marvel books, and by that I mean you, Fantastic Four 542, with your french lines that verge on absolute nonsense, and were probably translated by a computer or someone with no notion of the language whatsoever looking up every word in the dictionary. I mean, they did translate “Hail Hydra!” by “Grêle Hydra!”. Sure, Hail means grêle, but in the sense of precipitation! There’s a way to make Hydra cool again, make them shout “Rain Hydra!”. At least, that will confuse the heroes.
Anyway, enough rambling, I just wanted to say how much I appreciated the extra effort you put into something only few people can notice after all.
Here’s a translation btw. Thanks to the people at comixfan.com who helped out with it.
MONET: Excuse me, sir. What’s going on here?
ANTI-MUTANT BIGOT: True monsters live here! They are mutants!
MONET: Mutants? With powers?
ANTI-MUTANT BIGOT: No one really knows. But it is possible that their powers have been restored, and that is enough for me!
Later…
MONET (to cops): My name is Monet St. Croix. My father is Cartier St. Croix. He is an ambassador. I want to speak immediately to a lawyer. And give me back my Faberge egg, quickly!
Later still:
MONET: If you think I’m sitting on that toilet, you’re crazy!
Me, I just used Babelfish. Granted, since it’s in inanimate object, and not a person, it cannot translate a block of text perfectly for meaning, but the meaning was clear anyway, since it was easy to figure out what the text was saying, and I didn’t have to ask anyone else for help.
Near the end of Robinson’s Starman, there was a villain who spoke French, and I recall being able to work out most of what was said. In this week’s X-Factor, I had no clue for most it. It’s amazing how badly my language skills atrophied since I last took French class.
Peter:
Most of my comments concerning Fallen Angel 12 have already been mentioned in some context by other posters, which leaves me free to ask a question.
If Fallen Angel were still at DC and had either been promoted to Vertigo status or was a Vertigo title from the start, where would we be story wise there in comparison to the current IDW series?
Just curious.
Thanks in advance for the answer.
>>Quite frankly, I’m wondering why the hëll Marvel’s even putting out another series again so soon. It makes me think they just gave PAD the finger, because not only is there’s nothing to say *yet another* ongoing is going to do any better, but the manner in which they are using this ‘incarnation’ of the character.
This is hardly an attempt to give PAD the finger–if Marvel had relaunched the book less than a year later, using the same character, *then* you might be able to consider it some kind of personal insult.
But it has been over two years, and it isn’t the same character.
“Monet shish kebabed the captured bigot arsonist. She throws the bar way off panel to the right, where she and Theresa are looking, but the blood splatter seems to be erupted up, as if it’s coming from below the panel.”
——-
Perhaps she severed an artery.
Scavenger said:
“Well the question is, if Jamie is holding a hamburger, dupes himself, and someone else eats the dupes hamburger…what happens when he reabsorbs the dupe?”
Aw, Jeez, Scavenger, now my head hurts.
Alex Sanchez said:
Nonsense.
In PAD’s first X-Factor run, when the REAL Jamie gets knocked out, all of the duplicates disappear. The Ricochet dupe was an exception, ‘cuz the Senator manipulated him somehow. In the end, when the Ricochet dupe absorbed the REAL Jamie, the real one was able to absorb the dupe from the inside. To top it all off, Jamie comes out and says that there is only one Multiple Man, and to “accept no substitutes”.
On the other hand he was able to send his dupes out around the world months and even years at a time. Jamie had to sleep sometime or all those dupes did not disappear. So either a) Jamie has the worst case of sleep depravation outside of Gitmo. B) They never had to disappear. They believed they did so they went back because of shock. C) Pulling in dupes from far away things isn’t new. It is in the old Marvel Handbooks but every writer had forgotten about it. It is possible Jamie was, without knowing he was doing so, pulling them in before getting knocked out. D) When Haven altered Jamie the idea of a true Prime Jamie went away.
Besides– in Fallen Angels Jamie said: “All my dupes are their own people. I’m just the luckiest because I’m here with you.” Yes, that was Ricochet or one of his dupes– who had ever reason to lie, but so did the other Jamie.
When Haven altered Jamie the idea of a true Prime Jamie went away. Besides– in Fallen Angels Jamie said: “All my dupes are their own people. I’m just the luckiest because I’m here with you.”
Yeah, come to think of it, I never recalled seeing dupes whose personalities were different from the Jamie they split off from until after he contracted the Legacy Virus. And of course that was shortly before Haven tried to cure him and did whatever she did to him.
For anybody else with those old issues, does anybody think that DeMatteis had characters follow a statement with “Do you hear me?!” far too often, like I do?
No– I wouldn’t think PAD would do something like that. Quite the opposite. More like Jamie’s folks gave Tryp the dupe which he thought was the real Jamie. He killed them so he could use Jamie for his big evil plan. Jamie was left alone because Tryp didn’t know he didn’t have the real Jamie. He didn’t find out until there were already too many of him to keep track of.
Good point. That may very well be what happened. I wonder if Tryp would be able to tell the difference, since he, like Layla, knows stuff. Lots of stuff.
RE. possibility of Jamie ending world hunger:
It’s dawned on me that the characters in the Marvel Universe could solve a lot of the world’s problems if they just took the time to do so.
A while back, on another board, I was arguing with somebody about whether it’d be acceptable to drill in ANWR (I maintained it wasn’t; I mean when the area was expressly declared off-limits and safe for wildlife, and then you drill there, then nothing’s sacred). He, of course, said that we needed oil. So everybody involved in the thread got talking about different sources of energy and somebody mentioned that it’d be perfect if we could store power from lightning strikes.
In the M.U., Storm or somebody could fly up, make lightning strike the same place a few thousand times, punch the clock and leave.
Also, solar energy can be stored. So what if Reed Richards or somebody could rig up a portable solar energy collector, give it to Jamie, have Jamie dupe himself a lot, stand in the sun for a few hours. Then they could bring all the devices back to Reed, who would have another storage unit available that could absorb the stored energy from the portable units held by the Madroxes. Each Madrox hands over his device, waits until it’s drained, and then gets re-absorbed. The devices would disappear, but the energy they had collected would not.
Also, I wonder how many city blocks Johnny Storm’s nova flame would be able to power.
What about disease? Think what mutants like Elixir, or the late Morlock Healer, could do for cancer, AIDS, Parkinson’s, ALS, Alzheimer’s, and more. Surely patients suffering from those diseases would be desperate enough not to care whether or not their saviour was a mutant.
Plus, this just occurred to me, if Thor ever returned, would he and Storm working together be able to combat global warming? Thor’s a GOD!
The possibilities are endless, but I guess if all the world’s problems were solved then it’d become so unlike the one we live in that the stories would lose some of their appeal.
Rob Brown said: Yeah, come to think of it, I never recalled seeing dupes whose personalities were different from the Jamie they split off from until after he contracted the Legacy Virus. And of course that was shortly before Haven tried to cure him and did whatever she did to him.
The legacy virus itself mutated Jamie. There are virus which can change a mental state.
For anybody else with those old issues, does anybody think that DeMatteis had characters follow a statement with “Do you hear me?!” far too often, like I do?
Yes, yes I do. I like a lot of DeMatteis work. (Spider-Man, Doctor Fate) His run wasn’t anywhere near as good as PAD– and much better than the writer whose name I can’t say without spontaneously combusting. I think the quality of his work increases when working with Keith Giffen. When PAD leaves the book– and I’m talking years from now– or if he just needs a two or three month vacation, that’s the team he should get.
Good point. That may very well be what happened. I wonder if Tryp would be able to tell the difference, since he, like Layla, knows stuff. Lots of stuff.
Their DNA is exactly the same. Which one is real and which is a dupe would be next to impossible to tell until Jamie reached an age where the personality was much more fully formed. If there is in fact any difference at all. Reproducing at the first breath almost the same as giving birth to twins.
All this talk about working at Marvel, I bet you everyone there has “Down with DC Comics” dart boards in the office.
Rob, in Robert Kirkman’s comic, Invincible, he had one of his superheroes quit fighting and move to Africa to help people living in poverty.
• 
Liked Fallen Angel, saw the Jude messing up coming the moment the gal walked through the door. Looking forward to the “not Linda” story that is coming.
I liked it. Here are some random thoughts:
-ZOMG! Did Monet really do that?!? What is this gonna mean for her future on the team?
-Even with Monet translating most of it, there might’ve been a little too much French dialogue. I have some grasp of the language but I wasn’t able to get it all, and only was able to deduce the entirety of what Monet said in her cell because she was pointing at the toilet and used the term “WC.” Hate to think how readers who don’t know any French at all felt.
-Most amusing lines in the issue for me considering the context:
“No problem, skank.”
“What, you don’t want to hear me mock Doc Locke?”
“That’s not a rod, that’s…(etc.)”
“Which one is the original?!?”
-Does Deadpool still have a thing for Siryn? Any chance he might show up in this book? Not everybody is capable of writing good Deadpool dialogue, which is why his book was never the same after Joe Kelly left and sales declined. But I think with your sense of humor and knowledge of pop culture you could write him pretty well. Plus it’s not as though you’re a stranger to writing smartass characters (the grey Hulk circa 1990 being one example, Madrox being another).
-If I’m a 27-year-old female who looks half my age, and I’m in command of a Hydra base, and am no longer undercover, should I perhaps take my hair out of pigtails after I change into my uniform? I mean, I’d probably want to be taken seriously. But then again, this book isn’t always serious.
-Hydra seems to be getting kind of pitiful in its old age, if we can go by what happened in this issue and in Captain America recently.
-Did Jamie somehow make a conscious decision despite the brainwashing to dupe himself that much, or was it just dumb luck?
-Could Locke’s failure be attributed in any way to the fact that at first he thought he was working on a dupe, rather than the original?
-Jamie wonders why Tryp didn’t just grab him and take him away after his parents died. Good to see this being addressed, since it’s something I wondered myself and look forward to finding out.
And that’s it. I also left some comments about Wonder Man in the comments section for the video of the loud baby panda, but I don’t know if you saw them. But here with X-Factor, great job!
Oh yeah, almost forgot: I had no idea Jamie could dupe stuff he was holding as well as his body and clothing. So…does this mean the guy can solve world hunger?
… or at least walk onto the Letterman stage proclaiming, “Free iPods for everyone!”
Possible spolier: I really like what you’re doing with the “Asia Minor” character, PAD. You’ve taken a highly annoying character (IMO) and made him much more intriguing in the span of one issue. So Asia is an avatar of evil for the city of Bete Noir? I can’t wait until next month.
BTW…got a chance to see the cover for the “Linda” (nudge, nudge, wink, wink)issue of “FA”. Nice homage in its own “nudge, nudge, wink, wink” way.
Get Jamie to pull himself together, would ya? It’s getting increasingly fatiguing to figure out just who is the original….
X-Factor was another good issue.
But it would be nice if the detective agency would do some detective work again, like solving little tragic noir everyday crimes.
Or would that be to easy with a telepath in the team?
Hey Peter I’ve just recently picked up the Fallen Angel trade which i’ve really enjoyed. I’m planing on reading the series monthly can you tell if and when a IDW trade will be coming out and what issues it will cover so that i can pick a suitable jumping on point.
cheers
Rob Brown said:
-Did Jamie somehow make a conscious decision despite the brainwashing to dupe himself that much, or was it just dumb luck?
Who is to say he didn’t. After all– they never said the duplicate the resulted from Jamie being spanked a birth ever remerged. For all we know- the real Madrox is with Tryp. Or Clay is the real Madrox.
Or maybe there is no ‘real’ Madrox. I think Claremont’s original idea was that each Madrox was a distinct individual. This backed up somewhat by the ‘Fallen Angels’ miniseries and by Grant Morrison’s run on X-Men.
I just wanted to comment briefly on the digest edition of ‘Spider-Man Adventures’, which technically came out last week, but obviously personal issues intervened from you mentioning it.
Specifically, it was a lot of fun (in a weird synchronicity, I’ve been heavily into Essentials of late, so I just finished Man-Thing, Monster of Frankenstein and Werewolf by Night), and I really enjoyed seeing Hawkeye. I did wonder, though–was it more fun writing single-issue stories that didn’t have to tie into any continuity (*cough* Civil War *cough*) or did you wind up missing the elements that come with being part of a “bigger picture”?
Either way, very fun, very recommended (in fact, all the “Adventures” line is great, very fun old-school comics.)
X-Factor would be better if Rahne was in it.
Looking forward to the Linda Danvers-esque story in Fallen Angel.
So…Civil War: The Return announced a new series. Any chance someone over here is writing it who’s name rhymes with Eater Ravid?
Brian
X-Factor is the only reason I look forward to Comic Book Wednesdays anymore. I hope you stay on the book for a long, long time. Your Madrox is fast becoming one of my favorite characters. I’d like to see him end up with Siryn! And please keep having him narrate the books. He’s the best.
Liked ’em both.
With Fallen Angel, J.K. Woodward’s art is still inconsistent. In one panel, he’ll draw excellent faces, and render the lighting on them just perfectly, like the shot of Jude on Page 4, Panel 6. But other times, his faces look like he doesn’t know what he’s doing, like the shots of Xia in the second and third panels of Page 2, or the shot of Asia on Page 19, Panel 5. I just don’t get it.
I’m also not sure I like the idea of a drug dealer like Asia who openly says his victims are trash getting off scott free by the end of the story. While I’m for the exploration of the idea of legalized drugs, that doesn’t mean those who deal junk that kill people are not morally culpable, and if there was any ambiguity within Asia’s character up until now, I think it’s gone. Angel can be forgiven for trying to shield him from the consequences of his actions because she was trying to save Keith. I was also curious as to what Asia’s physical or chronological age was, and surprised by the scene at the city limits, since I didn’t know he was one of those people whose age was slowed/stopped within the city. is he?
X-Factor of course, was great. Good art. Good story. And I got to learn a bit of French. 🙂 The one confusing thing was when Monet shish kebabed the captured bigot arsonist. She throws the bar way off panel to the right, where she and Theresa are looking, but the blood splatter seems to be erupted up, as if it’s coming from below the panel. Other than that, the whole issue was great. Though I’m curious as to the story behind the girl who’s twenty-seven but looks like a grade schooler. What’s the deal with her age? Will she return later, and her story be told?
Great job, Peter. 😉
Peter,
Could you make a mention on your blog about your appearance on my friend Lucas Siegel’s radio show tonight? The site is: http://playordie.fearlessradio.com and listeners should click on “Listen-AM” to listen in from 8-9 pm.
Thank you, sir.
-Jeff
Hmmm. Very enjoyable. Both of them. X-FACTOR is inching its way up to my favorite Marvel title based on the writing. FALLEN ANGEL, on the other hand, is a title that Marvel should have picked up when DC cancelled it. It makes a perfect fit for Marvel’s Icon line-up.
Say is Woodward leaving the book? I noticed that he is only doing the cover for the current issue that is being solicited by Previews.
Due to some unusual circumstances at the job, I was able to get to my comic shop early instead of wating til the weekend.
Read Fallen Angel #12 last night. Fabulous read as always, wish it was bigger and came out more often cause I always am wanting more at the end.:)
Great work, Peter!
Oh yeah, almost forgot: I had no idea Jamie could dupe stuff he was holding as well as his body and clothing. So…does this mean the guy can solve world hunger?
This question seems to have come up every couple of months since the Madrox mini-series (where he mentioned that if he duplicated while wearing handcuffs, the dupe would also be wearing them). I think this is the first time it’s been explicitly mentioned that he could duplicate something he was holding rather than wearing, although we didn’t actually see him do it. (My take on his solving world hunger: No, because when the dupe was reabsorbed the duplicated stuff would also disappear–and feeding the dupes would require more food than he could generate. Unless people started eating the dupes directly…)
Well the question is, if Jamie is holding a hamburger, dupes himself, and someone else eats the dupes hamburger…what happens when he reabsorbs the dupe?
“Unless people started eating the dupes directly…)”
Ewwwww. I had never thought of that as a way around the problem of the Dupes consuming more food than they could produce. It reminds me of a short story that I read called the Cold Solution which was written in answer to the classic Sci-fi story the Cold Equations.
Jamie has duplicated things in his hands. If you recall when he sent a dupe to meet with Tryp, that dupe eventually got defenestrated and Jamie absorbed them (he duped when he crassed through the window) before they hit the ground. Jamie used that dupe to get sample of Tryps DNA. He duped himself while he had some sort of sampling device that he could palm and it duped with him. When he absorbed the dupes, the device also was re-integrated and the data that was in the device went into the original. I thought that was kinda neat.
Though I’m curious as to the story behind the girl who’s twenty-seven but looks like a grade schooler. What’s the deal with her age?
She probably either has whatever Gary Coleman has or is simply able to pass for a young girl. My guess would be that she got trampled or crushed by the Madroxes. We never even learned her name, so how important can she really be?
Unless people started eating the dupes directly…
I second the “Ewwwww.”
OK, how about this: Jamie gets sent to a few thousand starving people with a package of food, he makes an equal number of dupes with an equal number of packages, all the starving people eat, and Jamie doesn’t reintegrate all the dupes until like 8 hours later when everybody’s digested their meals. Could that work?
Who is to say he didn’t. After all– they never said the duplicate the resulted from Jamie being spanked a birth ever remerged. For all we know- the real Madrox is with Tryp. Or Clay is the real Madrox.
I gather that was in response to my question about why Tryp didn’t capture Jamie after the tornado.
While it’s a plausible explanation, it sounds disturbingly like that wildly popular (italics here indicate sarcasm) clone story in the Spider-titles in the ’90s. You know, “Hey fans, guess what? Turns out that the character you’ve been following all these years is just a copy and the original has been doing stuff behind the scenes all this time! Isn’t that cool?” No. No, it’s not.
Great X-Factor issue !
And if you think about this duplicating power with open imagination… Madrox can be one of the most powerful mutants of the world.
Get inside Iron Man´s armor and duplicate yourself, that´s a smart solution to the 50 states iniciative. Pick up the ultimate nullifier and… relax because the Celestials are going to flee from your corner of the universe !
Pick up the ultimate nullifier and…
While that’s a cool idea, I’m going to take an educated guess and say that I find it highly doubtful that Maddrox could make a duplicate of something like the Ultimate Nullifier. I’ve speculated before that Maddrox would be unable to duplicate any truly unique item. I’m thinking of mostly cosmic stuff like the Cosmic Cube, Infinity Gaunlet, Darkhold, Eye of Agamotto, etc. but I’d also guess that Captain America’s shield fell into that catagory. I have no evidence to support that hypothesis. Only the gut conviction that you can’t just make more of those things.
When I read the preview for this issue, I thought it was going to be a hilarious one (Cut off one dupe two more shall take it’s place!). Now I’m quite worried about the psychological damage done to Madrox.
Fallen Angel was great. We have more information on who Asia is, and his role in Bete Noir. But the real shocker for me was about Jubal and his mom – whoa.
Fascinating book, and still my favorite title.
OK, how about this: Jamie gets sent to a few thousand starving people with a package of food, he makes an equal number of dupes with an equal number of packages, all the starving people eat, and Jamie doesn’t reintegrate all the dupes until like 8 hours later when everybody’s digested their meals. Could that work?
Depends on how realistically nitpicky the writer wants to be, really. One argument is that once the food stops being recognizably what it was when duplicated, it wouldn’t disappear once the dupes were reabsorbed. (Actually, I don’t even know for sure if duplicated items would disappear when the dupes were reabsorbed, but it seems like the best away around the “why not just duplicate a diamond ring a hundred times?” problem.) Certainly the caloric energy wouldn’t go away (as in the Hydra scientist’s example of duplicating nuclear bombs–once they’ve gone off they don’t un-explode if the dupe goes away…).
The more nitpicky answer comes from an idea I’ve heard in various sources on time/dimensional travel (notably the RPG supplement GURPS Time Travel, but I’d swear I’ve heard it elsewhere). The idea there is that when you return to your own time/dimension, “native” materials remain behind…including any that have been integrated into the body. In the duplicated meal example, any amino acids that have been integrated into proteins, or calcium put into bones and teeth, or whatever would vanish when the dupe does (assuming that’s how it works).
Mind you, this is thinking way too hard about a power that’s not very scientific in the first place. (In the grand tradition of the old Handbook of the Marvel Universe, which wrings its hands over his ability to apparently turn energy into matter even though there shouldn’t be enough energy in a medium-sized tap to create an entire human body. I always figured he just got the mass from the same hypothetical dimension that growing characters like Henry Pym draw on.) As long as it’s reasonably consistent, I’m fine with whatever PAD comes up with.
Rob Brown said:
While it’s a plausible explanation, it sounds disturbingly like that wildly popular (italics here indicate sarcasm) clone story in the Spider-titles in the ’90s. You know, “Hey fans, guess what? Turns out that the character you’ve been following all these years is just a copy and the original has been doing stuff behind the scenes all this time! Isn’t that cool?” No. No, it’s not.
No– I wouldn’t think PAD would do something like that. Quite the opposite. More like Jamie’s folks gave Tryp the dupe which he thought was the real Jamie. He killed them so he could use Jamie for his big evil plan. Jamie was left alone because Tryp didn’t know he didn’t have the real Jamie. He didn’t find out until there were already too many of him to keep track of.
If the split was that close to birth before any personality was ingrained– both of them would be equally ‘real’.
I still don’t believe there is a ‘real’ Jamie. They are all unique all as ‘real’ as the others.
All this is fascinating, and I did buy the Fallen Angel issue (haven’t read it yet) but…what I really would like to see is Cowboy Pete’s take on the resumption of “Heroes.”
See, there’s something I don’t understand about the female FBI agent who’s picked up the mind-reading cop. She’s had physical proof that there’s weird stuff going on – a guy who’s a radiation source, at the very least, and this cop who can read her thoughts. So, when the raid on PrimaTech Paper goes bad, she instantly doesn’t freaking believe him? She’s ready to dump him, making him essentially unemployed since he’s suspended from the police?
This is either one of two things. Either it’s bad plotting, which means bad things for the entire series, or it’s emergency plotting. The actress playing the FBI agent may have wanted too much money or wanted more lines. So this was a way to drop her from the series without even the boon of a heroic death, like the suicide of Eden in the previous episode.
Perhaps the producers of the show have a saying; “Who needs God when you’ve got writers?”
All this talk about Jamie duplicating clothing, things he’s holding, handcuffs etc reminds me of that scene waaay back in the original X-Factor run where two Jamies merged back together, one with Ren on his shirt, and the other with Stimpy, and the final shirt was whole with both of them, leaving Val Cooper and Quicksilver wondering just how Jamie did such a thing.
J
X-Factor #15
Best. Issue. Yet.
So…Civil War: The Return announced a new series. Any chance someone over here is writing it who’s name rhymes with Eater Ravid?
I saw that as well.
And, knowing Marvel, it won’t be PAD on it.
Quite frankly, I’m wondering why the hëll Marvel’s even putting out another series again so soon. It makes me think they just gave PAD the finger, because not only is there’s nothing to say *yet another* ongoing is going to do any better, but the manner in which they are using this ‘incarnation’ of the character.
Oh, and I almost forgot…
It needs to be mentioned again, it seems (thanks Superman Returns!): Monet has two bullets bounce off her, yet her clothes are undamaged? 🙂
What’d I think? Seriously? I mean, seriously?
Great stuff all around. X-Factor just gets better and better. I’m looking forward to meeting more of Madrox’s dupes.
Loved ‘Fallen Angel’ as usual, although I can’t help reading Asia Minor without putting in the voice of Amy’s dad from “Futurama”. (Go on, try it. It makes his final line even more darkly hilarious.)
The issue does raise an interesting point with Xia: Is she not clear on how the line of succession works in Bette Noir after being with Juris for so long? Or is that one detail he kept to himself, for fear Xia would try to stop him from passing on the mantle? Even more intriguing: What WOULD happen if the direct bloodline of Cain was broken? Would the city even accept a “Next in line” like Jubal?
At least DC finally got off their collective kiesters to release the second Trade in time for me to get yet another friend hooked on the series. Now I’ve got someone else to discuss it with.
Congrats on another great read!
Jess Willey Said:
“I still don’t believe there is a ‘real’ Jamie. They are all unique all as ‘real’ as the others.“
Nonsense.
In PAD’s first X-Factor run, when the REAL Jamie gets knocked out, all of the duplicates disappear. The Ricochet dupe was an exception, ‘cuz the Senator manipulated him somehow. In the end, when the Ricochet dupe absorbed the REAL Jamie, the real one was able to absorb the dupe from the inside. To top it all off, Jamie comes out and says that there is only one Multiple Man, and to “accept no substitutes”.
Ack. I’ve accidentally posted the same thing twice in a row before, but four times must be a record. Not criticizing, just observing.
Doug Atkinson: Depends on how realistically nitpicky the writer wants to be, really…
I guess we’ll never know until he tries something like this.
I’m no doctor, or nutrition expert. With that disclaimer now in place, I’m guessing that if you don’t worry about the person being malnourished, and just want to give her stomach something to go to work on so her body stops wasting away, then it might still help her out even if the proteins and such disappeared later.
Hey Peter!
I’m French and I just wanted to thank you so much for the French dialogue in X-Factor being French and not, you know, gibberish. I honestly don’t think I spotted one single mistake,(only mayybe a few lines that sounded slightly unnatural, but I’m being a pain). It was a welcome relief from some other Marvel books, and by that I mean you, Fantastic Four 542, with your french lines that verge on absolute nonsense, and were probably translated by a computer or someone with no notion of the language whatsoever looking up every word in the dictionary. I mean, they did translate “Hail Hydra!” by “Grêle Hydra!”. Sure, Hail means grêle, but in the sense of precipitation! There’s a way to make Hydra cool again, make them shout “Rain Hydra!”. At least, that will confuse the heroes.
Anyway, enough rambling, I just wanted to say how much I appreciated the extra effort you put into something only few people can notice after all.
Here’s a translation btw. Thanks to the people at comixfan.com who helped out with it.
MONET: Excuse me, sir. What’s going on here?
ANTI-MUTANT BIGOT: True monsters live here! They are mutants!
MONET: Mutants? With powers?
ANTI-MUTANT BIGOT: No one really knows. But it is possible that their powers have been restored, and that is enough for me!
Later…
MONET (to cops): My name is Monet St. Croix. My father is Cartier St. Croix. He is an ambassador. I want to speak immediately to a lawyer. And give me back my Faberge egg, quickly!
Later still:
MONET: If you think I’m sitting on that toilet, you’re crazy!
Me, I just used Babelfish. Granted, since it’s in inanimate object, and not a person, it cannot translate a block of text perfectly for meaning, but the meaning was clear anyway, since it was easy to figure out what the text was saying, and I didn’t have to ask anyone else for help.
Near the end of Robinson’s Starman, there was a villain who spoke French, and I recall being able to work out most of what was said. In this week’s X-Factor, I had no clue for most it. It’s amazing how badly my language skills atrophied since I last took French class.
Peter:
Most of my comments concerning Fallen Angel 12 have already been mentioned in some context by other posters, which leaves me free to ask a question.
If Fallen Angel were still at DC and had either been promoted to Vertigo status or was a Vertigo title from the start, where would we be story wise there in comparison to the current IDW series?
Just curious.
Thanks in advance for the answer.
>>Quite frankly, I’m wondering why the hëll Marvel’s even putting out another series again so soon. It makes me think they just gave PAD the finger, because not only is there’s nothing to say *yet another* ongoing is going to do any better, but the manner in which they are using this ‘incarnation’ of the character.
This is hardly an attempt to give PAD the finger–if Marvel had relaunched the book less than a year later, using the same character, *then* you might be able to consider it some kind of personal insult.
But it has been over two years, and it isn’t the same character.
“Monet shish kebabed the captured bigot arsonist. She throws the bar way off panel to the right, where she and Theresa are looking, but the blood splatter seems to be erupted up, as if it’s coming from below the panel.”
——-
Perhaps she severed an artery.
Scavenger said:
“Well the question is, if Jamie is holding a hamburger, dupes himself, and someone else eats the dupes hamburger…what happens when he reabsorbs the dupe?”
Aw, Jeez, Scavenger, now my head hurts.
Alex Sanchez said:
Nonsense.
In PAD’s first X-Factor run, when the REAL Jamie gets knocked out, all of the duplicates disappear. The Ricochet dupe was an exception, ‘cuz the Senator manipulated him somehow. In the end, when the Ricochet dupe absorbed the REAL Jamie, the real one was able to absorb the dupe from the inside. To top it all off, Jamie comes out and says that there is only one Multiple Man, and to “accept no substitutes”.
On the other hand he was able to send his dupes out around the world months and even years at a time. Jamie had to sleep sometime or all those dupes did not disappear. So either a) Jamie has the worst case of sleep depravation outside of Gitmo. B) They never had to disappear. They believed they did so they went back because of shock. C) Pulling in dupes from far away things isn’t new. It is in the old Marvel Handbooks but every writer had forgotten about it. It is possible Jamie was, without knowing he was doing so, pulling them in before getting knocked out. D) When Haven altered Jamie the idea of a true Prime Jamie went away.
Besides– in Fallen Angels Jamie said: “All my dupes are their own people. I’m just the luckiest because I’m here with you.” Yes, that was Ricochet or one of his dupes– who had ever reason to lie, but so did the other Jamie.
When Haven altered Jamie the idea of a true Prime Jamie went away. Besides– in Fallen Angels Jamie said: “All my dupes are their own people. I’m just the luckiest because I’m here with you.”
Yeah, come to think of it, I never recalled seeing dupes whose personalities were different from the Jamie they split off from until after he contracted the Legacy Virus. And of course that was shortly before Haven tried to cure him and did whatever she did to him.
For anybody else with those old issues, does anybody think that DeMatteis had characters follow a statement with “Do you hear me?!” far too often, like I do?
No– I wouldn’t think PAD would do something like that. Quite the opposite. More like Jamie’s folks gave Tryp the dupe which he thought was the real Jamie. He killed them so he could use Jamie for his big evil plan. Jamie was left alone because Tryp didn’t know he didn’t have the real Jamie. He didn’t find out until there were already too many of him to keep track of.
Good point. That may very well be what happened. I wonder if Tryp would be able to tell the difference, since he, like Layla, knows stuff. Lots of stuff.
RE. possibility of Jamie ending world hunger:
It’s dawned on me that the characters in the Marvel Universe could solve a lot of the world’s problems if they just took the time to do so.
A while back, on another board, I was arguing with somebody about whether it’d be acceptable to drill in ANWR (I maintained it wasn’t; I mean when the area was expressly declared off-limits and safe for wildlife, and then you drill there, then nothing’s sacred). He, of course, said that we needed oil. So everybody involved in the thread got talking about different sources of energy and somebody mentioned that it’d be perfect if we could store power from lightning strikes.
In the M.U., Storm or somebody could fly up, make lightning strike the same place a few thousand times, punch the clock and leave.
Also, solar energy can be stored. So what if Reed Richards or somebody could rig up a portable solar energy collector, give it to Jamie, have Jamie dupe himself a lot, stand in the sun for a few hours. Then they could bring all the devices back to Reed, who would have another storage unit available that could absorb the stored energy from the portable units held by the Madroxes. Each Madrox hands over his device, waits until it’s drained, and then gets re-absorbed. The devices would disappear, but the energy they had collected would not.
Also, I wonder how many city blocks Johnny Storm’s nova flame would be able to power.
What about disease? Think what mutants like Elixir, or the late Morlock Healer, could do for cancer, AIDS, Parkinson’s, ALS, Alzheimer’s, and more. Surely patients suffering from those diseases would be desperate enough not to care whether or not their saviour was a mutant.
Plus, this just occurred to me, if Thor ever returned, would he and Storm working together be able to combat global warming? Thor’s a GOD!
The possibilities are endless, but I guess if all the world’s problems were solved then it’d become so unlike the one we live in that the stories would lose some of their appeal.
Rob Brown said: Yeah, come to think of it, I never recalled seeing dupes whose personalities were different from the Jamie they split off from until after he contracted the Legacy Virus. And of course that was shortly before Haven tried to cure him and did whatever she did to him.
The legacy virus itself mutated Jamie. There are virus which can change a mental state.
For anybody else with those old issues, does anybody think that DeMatteis had characters follow a statement with “Do you hear me?!” far too often, like I do?
Yes, yes I do. I like a lot of DeMatteis work. (Spider-Man, Doctor Fate) His run wasn’t anywhere near as good as PAD– and much better than the writer whose name I can’t say without spontaneously combusting. I think the quality of his work increases when working with Keith Giffen. When PAD leaves the book– and I’m talking years from now– or if he just needs a two or three month vacation, that’s the team he should get.
Good point. That may very well be what happened. I wonder if Tryp would be able to tell the difference, since he, like Layla, knows stuff. Lots of stuff.
Their DNA is exactly the same. Which one is real and which is a dupe would be next to impossible to tell until Jamie reached an age where the personality was much more fully formed. If there is in fact any difference at all. Reproducing at the first breath almost the same as giving birth to twins.
All this talk about working at Marvel, I bet you everyone there has “Down with DC Comics” dart boards in the office.
Rob, in Robert Kirkman’s comic, Invincible, he had one of his superheroes quit fighting and move to Africa to help people living in poverty.