No, it’s not really the last issue of “Fallen Angel.” We’re relaunching with a new storyline in a few months.
As for X-Factor, my feelings on spoilers for this issue are well known, but I figure I might as well start a comments thread before people start posting in other threads. All I ask is that if you have not yet read X-Factor, for crying out lout, DON’T READ THIS THREAD.
PAD
UPDATE: On Newsarama the week of January 5th, there was some debate as to whether there should be active speculation about the baby. Those who felt they knew what I was up to were worried that accurately guessing would spoil it for others. I didn’t think that it would, but I offered to let people send me guesses and I would post in this space if anyone got it right so they could have bragging rights.
One person did: The fan who posts under the name “Wraith.” He didn’t quite foresee the shocking result, but he got the main beat correct. So he gets to boast that he thinks like Peter David…which, in the final analysis, is a dubious distinction at best.
• 
That was pretty messed up, Mr. David. It’s good to see that after a lot of years reading your comics and novel work that you can still surprise me – and quite frankly *kind* of make me want to punch you in the face, but in a good way, if you take my meaning.
Rest assured I will be tuning in over the next few months to see how Jamie and Theresa – everyone else for that matter – deal with this.
Holy #%^&ing @#*%!
That’s…that’s all manner of messed up.
I just read X-Factor #39
Holy !@#$.
I need to go order more. I think this one has legs.
X-Factor was pretty nuts. I’m a father of 1 – soon to be 2 – and that would be such a horrible, horrible thing to go through.
I agree with some of the other commenters that now the child-of-dupe issue definitely needs resolution (but I think I saw a preview hinting at exactly that – can’t wait!!).
Also curious about Darwin’s coloring – he’s half black/half latino correct? But always showed up as an albino before…it sure would be nice for his skin color to reflect his actual ethnicity once in a while.
What happened seems to me to be, in some ways, just a deus-ex-machina way of getting rid of the kid (since parenting in comics outside the Fantastic Four is evidently a HUGE NO-NO) BUT at the same time it still had a strong emotional impact and will move the story along.
That being said, I really would like to see more actual parents in comics – especially the ones I read.
Congratulations: In preparation for my coming 2nd son I’ll be cutting my pull list way back, and X-Factor made the cut.
Plus, I got my wife to read it..the whole series. And she really likes it. She hasn’t read this issue yet..I hope she still likes it after that.
Question for Luigi Novi
I know the photo is yours, but is this you?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PxjGfD0Bw9c
Joe V.
Hi, um, I nearly cried because of what happened to Sean in that issue of X-Factor. I mean, it was brilliantly written, but it was sad. Like really sad. I hope that what he goes to see John about is something to do with Sean. I hope the baby returns some day.
WOW!
X-Factor was good!
*SPOILER*
So.. will Madrox develop new mutant powers since absorbing his son? Perhaps a sonic scream? And have we seen the last of Sean? I wouldn’t be surprised at the worst possible time, Madrox goes to make a dupe in battle and little Sean pops out.
Well did Jamie ever touch John Maddox’s son? I don’t keep my comics in order and am not gonna dig it up for an internet message board (I am only so much of a nerd). John wouldn’t absorb his own son as he’s just a dupe, too.
Now let’s say that Jamie never touched Sean, and he grew up, got to sixteen and had some teenage sex, produced a child who would be even farther from Jamie, genetically, but still dupe of a dupe of a dupe. Would Jamie be able to absorb him too?
Terry is my favourite X-Woman ever. And though I’m happy there is now an out for her to not have to be stuck as Jamie’s wife, I think it was unnecessarily cruel to have her baby killed in front of her. It left a bad taste in my mouth especially considering how everyone but Jamie was made out to look like jerks. If it wasn’t for the fact that her and Ric are in this book, I probably would’ve dropped it awhile ago. Sorry, I just can’t jump on the ‘OMG it was awesome’ bandwagon. I can’t help but feel she got the šhìŧ end of the stick AGAIN in this title. It’s pretty depressing.
Here’s to hoping for a better next issue or two.
This issue left me in tears because of what happened to Terry. How you can mess up a character so much?!
It’s all about Jamie, even when Terry had her baby killed right in front of her. Was Jamie’s narration was supposed to get the reader on his side? How he regretted everything and he needed sympathy? Because you failed at that, and I wished Terry snapped his neck…
Whatever lust you have with Jamie, please get over it! You have other characters that you can use, Peter David, you may want to use them. Jamie doesn’t have to the center of X-factor.
Wow. I just finished this issue of X-Factor, and I’m still slack jawed. That was one hëll of an idea, and the execution, going from the reaction shot, to the full page spread, to Terry’s immediate response and her reaction in the aftermath…
That was truly horrifying. Well done.
Very nicely done. Didn’t see it coming, but it was set up perfectly and reasonably.
One thing I wonder about though; does Jamie now have detailed knowledge of what a fetus experiences, at least from the point where the brain developed enough to make memories?
My understanding is that a newborn baby–much less a fetus–has no understanding or sense of himself, much less memories. That they don’t even realize they’re entities separate from their mothers until a few weeks after their birth.
The bottom line is that my feeling is that when absorbing the child, Madrox essentially absorbed a blank slate. There’s nothing for him TO remember beyond vague sensations. Or if there is, Jamie’s unconscious mind is going to be dámņëd sure to suppress it so that he doesn’t have to deal with it.
PAD
I can’t recall when was the last time I read a comic so emotional and terrifying, thank you Peter.
I don’t have any children but it was still horrifying and I wouldn’t have expected it from you considering you always let us know about your daughters in the recaps.
Everybody feels upset and sad because that’s how you should, it was well written.
I’m not sure how I would feel if Sean pops out later, I think this story was good as it is, especially in connection with his confidence and Val’s comment.
Also I felt some chemistry between Syrin and Rictor previous issues and couldn’t imagine how it would work out when I was at the marriage proposal part in this issue, now I see.
Yeah, my head kind of went “Ka-Blewey!!” in those last couple of pages. Keep them final X-Factor page twists a’commin’, that’s one of the things I love about this book the most.
It was Jaimie’s kid too Heather Lee, speaking as a father I don’t think my grief would be less than my wife’s if something happened to one of our children.
Plus let’s not forget this isn’t the end of the whole thing, I’m sure we’ll be seeing the fallout from this for a long while.
The baby’s fate explains a lot about the five-month time jump in #32. It also explains what “Layla” meant when she said the baby would be “one of us,” and then ominously warned that Jamie didn’t know “the right stuff.”
Now, PAD, I’m looking forward to see what kind of crazy šhìŧ goes down in #40–is the meeting with John Maddox going to show the actualization of that incredibly foreboding moment in #28 in which Jamie asks himself, “what will be required…to take my compassion away as well”?
Peter, did you purposefully write the Moloch storyline to run a number of issues so that the final issue would be #33? Or is that just a coincidence?
Also, in your opinion, would Maddox end up accidentally absorbing any biological child of his, or just one fathered by a dupe?
Joe V. Question for Luigi Novi: I know the photo is yours, but is this you?
Luigi Novi: Oh wow, someone used my pic in a YT video. Thanks for pointing that out to me, Joe. No, it’s not me. For one thing, my YT handle is sva1994, and the author of that video calls himself blowshimselfupdude. For another, while I don’t necessarily disagree with blowshimselfupdude’s observations, it’s not the way I tend to view things, because I go more by creator rather than character, whereas bhu-dude seems to be as much character-oriented as he is writer-oriented, and seems to want Peter to work on bigger characters. Me, I’ve come to be more creator-oriented, and where it concerns writers like Peter, I actually prefer that he work in more narratively intimate settings where he can have a bit more control and explore a character’s inner workings and themes, as opposed to the big corporate “franchise” books in which editors and other higher-ups tend to interfere with crossovers and “events”. Look at X-Factor. Peter is doing great work on it, but even there, because it’s related to the X-franchise, we had Rahne and Layla taken away from it, without any apparent care given to how it might muck up Peter’s work on the book, and in the case of Layla, for no good reason that I can see. I know Peter said that he’d like to work on Batman, but if he ends up staying on books less likely to be editorially hijacked, that’s fine by me.
Blowshimselfupdude obviously got the photo from Peter’s Wikipedia article, which I’ve often edited, and to which I added that photo. It’s one of many comics creator Wiki articles that I’ve added one of my pics to. To see all my comics creators pics, go to the Comic book creators category at Wikimedia Commons. That category, which currently spans two pages, has pics from all contributors, not just me, but mine have my name in the file name, and tend to depict the subject looking right at the camera. Keith DeCandio’s is on the second page.
okay, this story was already strange enough, but if we’re talking about Jamie procreating, well it’s somewhat in the correct arena. Since it’s rather hard to keep complete conscious control during the acts of intimacy and without consciously controlling it, any kinetic impact activates his power and creates dupes and I would consider repeated vigorous thrusting of the pelvis to be at least mildly kinetic, wouldn’t be um dozens if not hundreds of Madroxes in the room if he were actually in coitus? Wouldn’t that be a tip off that he wasn’t the real deal?
For that matter, would his……seed not be dupes?
Luigi–the issue numbering was just coincidence. In fact, if there’s a significance to the number 33, I’m unaware of it.
As for your second question, I figure just one created by a dupe.
PAD
The significance (that I thought you might’ve been going for) was that Jesus was supposedly 33 when he died, and the issue featured Jude sacrificing himself to save the world.
Oh. No, your humble Jew didn’t have that information at his fingertips, sorry.
PAD
“Terry is my favourite X-Woman ever. And though I’m happy there is now an out for her to not have to be stuck as Jamie’s wife, I think it was unnecessarily cruel to have her baby killed in front of her.”
The baby wasn’t really *killed* though, was he? When Jamie creates a dupe, and then reabsorbs it, do you consider it killing the dupe?
From Terry’s point of view, he was. And like Obi-Wan said, so much depends upon our point of view.
Also, I can’t help but ponder whether or not it’s possible to be “cruel” to a person who, in the strictest sense, does not exist.
Yes, I definitely was not expecting that. And I certainly don’t know what to expect of the next couple of issues.
But I’m feeling pretty ambivalent about this issue, and I’m not sure I can put into words exactly what I’m thinking.
THANK YOU for making the effort to avoid having spoilers clinch the ending. I normally peruse review sites in advance and the fact that I was still shocked at the end was a treat.
I have no idea what’s going to happen in issues 40 & 41 (much like 39 actually) but X-Factor 39 was jaw-droppingly powerful – incredible story. Very curious where it leads.
With Fallen Angel, been a fan since the DC days and have to say that I’m glad it’s only going on hiatus. Didn’t love ish 33 though & think the titular character – even though she has never been warm – has become a little unpleasant to read. A hardcase is fine but Angel herself has become a little rote with her indignities.
Anyway, bigtime & longtime fan …
From Terry’s point of view, he was.
I agree with this. From Terry’s side of it–and indeed from all of X-Factor’s side of it–the baby died. She went through over 8 months of pregnancy and had major surgery for a baby who only lived a few hours. No matter what words one uses to describe the event, Terry lost her baby.
Whatever relationship she may have with Jamie in the future depends on whether and when she accepts that the baby’s loss was just as much a tragedy for Jamie as for her. And I don’t think it reflects badly on her that she’s reacting the way she is now, nor that it reflects badly on X-Factor that they let her react that way, for now. She’s mad as hëll that she doesn’t have a child to bring home from the hospital, and she needs to be mad at someone. Since Jamie was the one holding the baby when he died, he gets the blame. That’s an emotional reaction, but an understandable one. It was also an emotional reaction when she jumped out of bed and started trying to claw Jamie’s chest open, but an entirely believable one. If she still blames Jamie for the baby’s loss after six months of canon-time, that’s another matter.
(PAD, please tell me Terry will still be in X-Factor at that point? Please?)
I hope that we see some psychological trauma on both ends of this relationship. While everyone can very quickly empathise with Theresa I really was empathising with Jamie. He also just lost a child. Lost a family. And while he might be a lot closer to the explanation of why and be able to deal with that part of the equation easier it shouldn’t take away from the actual loss.
re: X-Factor
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!
I thought I had it all figured out. Silly me. I guess reading you all these years enable me to see certain things coming: I even was right on the name of the baby. But, as always, you proved to be unpredictable. Now, this may sound stupid but, barely 10 minutes after finishing the issue, I even get the feeling that everything you’ve written about your daughters was for us to think “oh no, Peter wouldn’t do anything to the baby”.
Thanks for yet another masterpiece. Layla’s one-shot wasn’t that long ago for you to make something this great now.
Speaking of which, should I be worried about Layla’s fate now?
I can’t say the surprise in X-Factor surprised me. After all, making a baby involves multiplying through many impacts… o:)
To be honest, I was not surprised.
Well, the exact outcome surprised me but I was expecting something. The really surprising would have been that the child had lived a normal life wih his mum till he become a teenage. That is, in 2050 in comic years.
The comic companies want to preserve so much their characters that they never evolve. If a character change, it changes back later. Spider-man is an example.
And yes, I still think that the X-factor is one of the best comic books out there!
Hmm, there is something that it does not make sense in the Madrox story.
In a story one or two years ago, there was a dupe who was a priest and had a wife and two children and everything seemed to indicate that they were the dupe’s sons. So dupes can have children. Maybe they cannot be close to Madrox prime?
He had only one child and that’s going to be addressed.
PAD
Okay, here’s another question which is tangential but related to the issue:
Jamie assumed, as of issue #14, that he had slept with Theresa while the Don Juan dupe had gone to bed with Monet.
As of #39, Jamie supposed that the Don Juan dupe had actually slept with Theresa.
So, does that mean that the original Jamie therefore slept with Monet…or did the randy dupe do them both?
(Because if the dupe did them both, I think that would be really, really funny.)
On a more serious note, I wonder how much of Monet’s wanting to tear out Jamie’s spine is out of solidarity with Theresa and how much of that is Monet’s fear that she could easily have gone through the same thing.
Not that you haven’t heard it all ready, but man that is an evil , unexpected way to remove the baby. A definite way to ratchet the tension up.
You are still one of the most inventive bášŧárdš in the business. Thanks for sticking with the book and keeping it fresh.
Not that you haven’t heard it all ready, but man that is an evil , unexpected way to remove the baby. A definite way to ratchet the tension up.
You are still one of the most inventive bášŧárdš in the business. Thanks for sticking with the book and keeping it fresh.
OK, add me to the “didn’t see that one coming” pile…
The pseudo-scientist in me is slightly perturbed however… I could buy Maddox making and re-absorbing duplicates. That’s what they are, duplicates of him, presumably down to a cellular level… But a baby – even a dupe’s baby – would be only half descended from those cells, the other half coming from the mother and presumably whatever she ate to fuel the growth of the child…
On further consideration, anything else I say is going to contain the phrase “half of a baby” and I’m just not going to go there, no way, no how…
Nice, if very disturbng, work, PAD.
Cheers.
OMG.
I just read Fallen Angel #33.
Holyyyyyyyyyyyyy Crap.
Just read X-Factor #39 yesterday.
PAD, you’re a mad, twisted geniues and I love it.
To address a previous comment, I’ve often lamented the reset button in comics (why “Brand New Day?” Don’t we already have Ultimate Spider-Man?) but I don’t consider it pressed here. This was a natural extension of ongoing storylines, some brutal irony (I think it qualifies as irony, but I’m no Alanis Morrisette) and I can’t wait to see what happens next.
I finally got my copy. I was interested enough I read it as soon as I got in my car. When I was done, my immediate gut reaction was to go back in and cancel my sub to X-Factor and save my money.
Look, here’s the thing. It is not that you messed with a baby. It’s not that everything has to be happily ever after. It’s the fact that there seems to be a very consistent viewpoint that everything is pointless. There seems to be little true redemption. Random chance seems to render life meaningless. Not just in this book, but in pretty much everything I read by you, PAD.
I didn’t drop the sub. Not yet at least. But the joy of reading PAD is gone, so it may just be a matter of time.
Iowa Jim
Thanks heaps for the FINAL ISSUE! heart attack. 😛 Why the relaunch, out of curiosity?
Illyria’s appearance in July is going to be…somewhat weird for me. No offense, you know I love ya, but it smacks of fanfic. It’s like if you were writing the Hulk and all of a sudden Q from ST:TNG popped up. It’s just a great big clashing of universes.
Now, if it gets more people to buy the book, I’m certainly not going to complain. And I am, of course, a huge Illyria fan and a Liandra fan for LIFE. I trust you to put the two universes together well, like you did with Shi, but I am having a left-field-crossover knee-jerk reaction.
But you KNOW I’ll be there buying it. 😛
Didn’t see the end of X-Factor #39 coming. It was a shocking curve but I’m not entirely sold on Jamie’s theory.
You see, a baby is made when a pre-existing egg in the mother’s womb is fertilized by the father’s sperm. The result is a brand new life bearing the genetic information of both parents. Baby Sean fits into this category as he clearly had some of his mother’s physical traits, the red hair being the most prominent.
A dupe on the other hand is an exact copy of Jamie prime bearing all of his (and *only* his) physical traits. If Jamie is now able to absorb bodies with a genetic make up partially alien to his own then what’s to stop him from eventually absorbing anyone he chooses?
There has to be more going on here than meets the eye.
The birth hair of a child means absolutely nothing. Both Kathleen and I, at birth, had blond hair which turned to brown. Kath’s brother had brown hair which turned blond.
You’re not the only person to bring up the question of mixed DNA. And I will say the same thing I’ve said before: You guys have had a week to consider the ramifications. I’ve had one hundred and four weeks. Whatever you come up, the chances are spectacular I’ve already thought of it and am going to address it.
PAD
Peter, I reread X-Factor #13 & 14. In the former, Jamie doesn’t know if he slept with Theresa, and a dupe slept with Monet, or vice versa. In the latter, he tells Monet that he’s 90% certain that it was a dupe that bedded her, and he who bedded Theresa. Now issue #39, he says that Sean was an infant dupe. What does he mean by this? That his biological children are “dupes”, or that an infant fathered by a dupe is also a dupe? If the latter, does this mean that he now knows that it was a dupe who slept with Theresa? Is this one of the things that you indicated would be addressed?
I didn’t see any hair color on the baby except for on the cover, where it was shown as brown. No one remarked on the baby’s appearance except for when Guido told Jamie the baby looked just like him.
(Of course it’s a moot point; I just want to know if I’m missing something. I was born with brown hair, for example, that later turned red. Go figure!)
I guess I’ll comment on Fallen Angel being rebooted, and why I’m dropping it.
I’ve continually been annoyed at the price point of Fallen Angel, since it’s the only comic I’ve been paying $3.99 for over the last 3 years. Since Marvel has decided to bump up the price of a number of their 22 page books to $3.99, I’ve decided to drop/not buy any of those books. I don’t mind it for more content, but not for 22 pages. So with this era of FA coming to a close, then it gives me a good excuse to drop the book, which I probably wouldn’t have done if you had continued the numbering, since I’m sometimes too lazy to tell my LCS to take it off my pull list.
Maybe I’ll check out a trade of the new material down the road if the price is right.
I agree with Greg F. about the frustration of the $3.99 price point. But the only 2 books that I am buying at $3.99 at this point are Fallen Angel and Sir Apropos Of Nothing, and I am enjoying them enough to keep buying them at that price. Most other books at $3.99 have extra pages for that price, so I feel the value is there for those books.