You need to sign in or sign up before continuing.

elisenic's review

4.0
adventurous dark emotional funny medium-paced

crookedtreehouse's review

4.0

I'm skipping the X-Cutioner's Song issues in this volume because I already talked about them when reviewing [b:X-Men: X-Cutioner's Song|11010430|X-Men X-Cutioner's Song|Scott Lobdell|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1355157109l/11010430._SX50_.jpg|69326262].

The next issue is the story the collection takes its name from. It's part of David's farewell storyarc, and it's fantastic. It's each of the members of the team meeting with psychiatrist and Hulk antagonist, Doc Samson and trying to work out their benefits/problems with being part of X-Factor. It's a very twenty-first century issue but it came out in the early 90s.

The team's trip to Genosha ends up adding a fascinating angle to the Havoc/Rahne issue as well as introducing the team to The Legacy Virus, which is going to ravage the X-portion of the Marvel Universe for years. We even see the introduction of a questionable guru character whose motivations and behaviors don't precisely align, as well as some inner-team turmoil when there's a possible betrayal.

This is just a really solid collection of stories, especially if you skip the X-Cutioner's stuff. Nothing against the overall X-cutioner's story, it's a decent crossover but you only get three non-consecutive portions of it here which makes for a choppy and unsatisfying read. Otherwise, this is a must-have for Peter David fans while also being a decent primer for Scott Lobdell who does his best to keep David's charm while also adding his own ideas into the story.