X-FACTOR ANNUAL #3

"UNNATURAL SELECTION"
Writer: Louise Simonson | Penciler: Terry Shoemaker | Inker: Al Milgrom
Letterer: Joe Rosen | Colorist: Petra Scotese | Editor: Bob Harras
Editor-in-Chief: Tom DeFalco

The Plot: Far beneath New York, a group of Subterraneans are assaulted by Stack and Purge and their men, the Gatherers and the Purifiers. A telepathic cry from one Subterranean alerts various psychics on the surface and X-Factor goes underground to investigate. They eventually catch up with the Gatherers and Purifiers and a fight breaks out.

Meanwhile, the villainous Apocalypse deduces that the High Evolutionary is behind the attacks and goes to visit him in his space station. They battle in space while arguing philosophy, then Apocalypse teleports both of them beneath the Earth's surface to observe the fight.

While X-Factor battles the Purifiers and Gatherers, the Psychic Subterranean is nearly killed. But the Beast rescues him, prompting him to release a psychic blast which defeats Purge. Apocalypse taunts the High Evolutionary for proving Apocalypse's philosophy of survival of the fittest, then departs. The Evolutionary decides the Subterraneans are worthy to survive his culling for the time being, and teleports away with his men.

Beast invites Val-or, the psychic Subterranean, to come with X-Factor for training in the use of his mutant powers, but he elects instead to remain with his people and use the ability for their benefit.

Continuity Notes: As explained by Purge, the Subterraneans are genetically altered slaves created by the ancient Deviants.

It's noted that Apocalypse destroyed the Empire State Building in X-FACTOR #25. When we first catch up with X-Factor this issue, they're working to repair the damage.

When X-Factor heads underground, Beast is reminded of the team's battle with Grotesk in X-MEN #41.

Circa 1988: X-Factor at this point consists of Cyclops, Marvel Girl, Beast, and Iceman. Thanks to Apocalypse's Horse(wo)man Pestilence, Beast's intelligence is currently decreasing every time he uses his incredible strength. He spends this issue pretty dumb. Iceman, meanwhile, is wearing a large belt to regulate his powers thanks to a spell cast by Loki.

The telepaths who react to Val-or's cry for help include Marvel Girl, a blonde woman who I suspect to be Emma Frost, Psylocke of the X-Men, X-Factor's Ward Artie Maddicks, Doctor Druid of the Avengers, Franklin Richards, Exacalibur's Rachel Summers, Caliban the mutant-sensing Morlock, and the High Evolutionary.

Caliban is a prisoner of Apocalypse.

The High Evolutionary's Plot: As explained by Apocalypse, the Evolutionary has sent his Gatherers and Purifiers out to cull evolutionary dead-ends from the Earth's population in order to remake the world in his image. In the Evolutionary's own words, he is "... like a benevolent parent... who makes the choices for those who are too immature to choose for themselves."

My Thoughts: The story begins en media res, which which is normally a perfectly valid way to start an issue, but it just feels off here. Normally such an opening would include some narration explaining the situation or perhaps a flashback a bit later explaining how we got to this point, but this book literally starts in the middle of a scene, in the middle of a conversation, and it really feels like a page or two of lead-in material is missing.

And in fact throughout the issue, Louise Simonson seems averse to narrative captions of any sort, save the barest minimum necessary to set a scene. This is something that could work on the regular X-FACTOR title, where her husband Walter was the arist at the time, but -- with all due respect -- Terry Shoemaker is no Walt Simonson, and his pictures are often hard to follow without some sort of narrative description. I'm not a huge fan of too much narration, but in this case we have far too little, leading to a very confusing reading experience.

That said, the fight between the Evolutionary and Apocalypse is entertaining, as these two seem like natural enemies. The former's goal is to cull those he believes to be unnecessary from the genetic pool, while the latter has dedicated his life to natural selection. Apocalypse comes across as the voice of reason here, telling the Evolutionary that everyone, every species, deserves its chance at survival, and to make that choice for a species is a crime against nature.

In most of the stories I've read about the High Evolutionary, he seems like a decent guy, not a superevillain. He's misguided sometimes, but rarely, if ever, does he come across as a genocidal madman. But maybe I haven't read enough of his stories, because that's exactly how he looks here. When a character's words and actions make Apocalypse seem perfectly sane and reasonable, something's obviously wrong with the character in question.