X-Factor 38 - Inferno

The many versions of Jean Grey come together.

X-Factor #38

Writer: Louise Simonson
Penciler: Walter Simonson
Inker: Al Milgrom
Letterer: Joe Rosen
Colorist: Tom Vincent
Editor: Bob Harras
Editor-in-Chief: Tom DeFalco

Madelyne Pryor prepares to sacrifice her baby son Nathan Christopher Charles and tells the combined X-Factor and X-Men how she will gain power and have revenge upon them all. There are still demons around that are loyal to her and she sets them upon the two teams whilst also influencing them. The X-Men become more demonic and attack X-Factor, calling them "mutant hunters" which Cyclops explains was a now abandoned cover but Storm says they have seen no news of any change. She then remembers Madelyne is the one who collected the news for them and realises the teams have been manipulated to keep them apart. Madelyne tells Jean how she subconsciously used her powers to make Cyclops lose a previous fight with Storm that gave her the leadership and led to him quitting the team. She then offers Death/Angel power for revenge on all who have hurt him and he starts to succumb. The fight is complicated further when Dazzler and Longshot, both now incredibly vain and seeking the spotlight, start turning on other X-Men who they see upstaging them. Death/Angel frees Jean from her bonds but then Madelyne creates a forcefield around her, Jean and the baby. Madelyne tells how she was a clone created by Mr Sinister and Jean realises that just as with Phoenix she has again been duplicated with her duplicate unleashing dark power. Madelyne continues with how she has some of Jean's memories and the two realise that when Phoenix died and tried to return the portion of Jean to the original but in suspended animation she rejected the images of destruction and so the force found the genetically identical Madelyne instead making her everything that Jean rejected. With Madelyne's influence on the X-Men now fading they start coming back to normal and along with X-Factor they try to find a way to break through the forcefield. Wolverine convinces Havok to help who agrees but tells Cyclops he still doesn't approve of his actions and his brother admits he isn't proud either. Madelyne continues with how Mr Sinister arranged for her and Cyclops to get together and then once the baby was born and Jean returned he took steps to erase all trace of her ever having existed but the X-Men prevented the Marauders from killing her. Psylocke works on Longshot and gets him to find the weak spot in the forcefield which the others all blast. Madelyne explains how she censored news to manipulate the X-Men to stay apart from X-Factor. Then came S'ym and N'astirh driving her over to the darkness. She now prepares to destroy herself despite Jean's pleas. The forcefield is breached and Cyclops rescues his son so Madelyne unleashes an explosion of energy but fails to kill the boy. Mind locked with Jean she dies and tries to take Jean with her but the piece of the Phoenix force within her emerges and returns everything to Jean who now accepts it and absorbs them all. The demons vanish and the Empire State Building is restored. Death/Angel reflects and takes the name Archangel. Both teams reflect on what they've been through - and the need to confront Mr Sinister.

And so we have the final showdown with Madelyne Pryor amidst a major infodump issue that seeks to retcon a lot of the events of the last few years. Many readers were not happy with the way Cyclops was written through them whether it was losing a duel and thus the leadership of the X-Men to a depowered Storm or leaving Madelyne the moment he heard Jean had returned from the dead or failing to search for her afterwards until she had completely disappeared. In addition the length of time it took for the two teams to meet had become far too long. Although Louise Simonson's script has Scott admitting he is not proud of his actions, much of the blame is removed from him through the destruction of Madelyne as a character. Instead of having simply been corrupted by the influence of demons it's now revealed that through her creation and the intervention of the Phoenix force she was using her power to undermine Scott much earlier and then using her position to keep the two teams apart whilst Mr Sinister intervened to keep her apart from Scott. It's written in such a way to make it seem as though it was all planned and does its best to redeem Scott without going the whole hog and just having him mentally manipulated for years. It also makes a lot more sense of some of the more problematic elements caused by the creation of X-Factor. But in doing so it's making Madelyne a far worse character than a woman corrupted by outside influences.

With the Phoenix revelation Inferno effectively becomes an explicit sequel to the Dark Phoenix Saga as now seen through the lens of other retcons. Both stories involved a duplicate of Jean Grey being manipulated by others, ultimately succumbing to the power within her and turning dark (even down to the similar names and costumes for the Black Queen and the Goblin Queen), bringing down great destruction and finally committing suicide. Given the anniversary nature of the event it's perhaps unsurprising that the X-Men titles would return to their most famous story. And it's also clear that editorial demands wanted Madelyne removed completely with earlier attempts not succeeding. Having a little seen sinister force manipulating events doubtless reflects the editorial interference in the titles over the previous few years. But it can't take away from the fact that Madelyne had been built up as a character in her own right beyond someone who happened to be the spitting image of Jean and had shown herself to be a strong independent female character. Now she's been turned into literally a manipulative witch, used and sacrificed to satisfy the demands of others. It's hard to see how one spouse could have been so heavily absolved without such character assassination of the other but it doesn't sit easily. The reactions of others such as Havok's outrage at how his brother treated his sister-in-law or Jean's reaction to a duplicate of her becoming destructive again do feel credible.

But there's also redemption in these issues with Warren finally coming to terms with his own corruption at the hands of Apocalypse and resisting Madelyne's attempts to bring it out. In adopting the name "Archangel" he makes a clear rejection of all that others have done to him and can now fly tall. However it's surprising that he takes so many years to get rid of the costume Apocalypse gave him - had someone in Marvel signed a licensing agreement that locked him into that look? (He was in the first line of Toy Biz figures in 1991 but that agreement wasn't signed until 1990.) It's a final step up in empowering the character beyond the rich guy who could fly that he had been for so many years.

As a retcon heavy issue much of the action is limited with the further fight between the two teams largely serving to delay them from going after Madelyne but it does also allow for X-Factor to explain once more about how their initial set-up cover got out of control due to the manipulation of another and for the X-Men to realise how they too have been manipulated. The uneasiness between the two teams remains and shows you can't just remove a single point of disagreement and have everyone happy with each other. But all this is the sideshow to a very dramatic ending for Madelyne as she and the writers bring destruction down upon her. It's a well written issue and it solves the problem of Madelyne in the narrative once and for all but as was often the case with X-Factor a lot of heavy lifting was required to get the team to where editorial wanted it to be and this is perhaps the biggest lifting of all through destroying her character completely.