X-Factor - Nation X: PAD jabs at the X-Office?

The following contains minor SPOILERS for X-Factor: Nation X #1.

Peter David loves metatextual commentary in his funny books.  It's often as heavy-handed as his puns, but the man knows his industry as well as his characters, and has smart things to say about both.  The X-Factor: Nation X one-shot can be read as a fun reunion of the X-Factor mutants with the X-Men.  Or a critique of Matt Fraction's "Nation X" plot.  Or even a musing by the X-Factor title on its place in the X-Men family of books.

Foremost, this one-shot plays as a fun reunion of old friends.  Shatterstar's encounters with the X-folk of known and suspected alternate sexuality is played for laughs, as is Strong Guy's meeting with the other strong guys -- who spend the issue hitting each other for the simple reason that that's what they do.  Darwin closes the loop on his original quest to find Professor Xavier, and Longshot's past relationship with Dazzler is acknowledged and left wryly messy.  Even some past resentment between Moonstar and Monet (of which I wasn't aware) is duly noted.  This montage of meetings spreads across several pages, leaving the reader the impression that all the necessary bases are being touched and stories are being swapped off-panel.  The focus of the reunion is between Madrox and Layla -- who have seen the future since their last encounter with the X-Men -- and Cyclops, who has been busy plotting the course of mutantkind's future.  Cyclops and Madrox are, interestingly, both framed as leaders with a vision for their people.  Where Cyclops is steadfast in his resolve that his "Utopia" is the best hope for mutants, Madrox (in character) sees both sides, though in the end remains unreconciled with Cyclops.

Their debate, paired with a plot thread involving "Crone, Scribe of the Others", lays out an argument that could be between Peter David and Uncanny X-Men writer Matt Fraction.  When Fraction took the X-Men from their Westchester mansion to San Francisco, he commented that the mansion was an easy target for their enemies, and living in a city famous for accepting the different was a tactical move by Cyclops.  Bizarrely, the first thing they did on arriving was to buy up a secluded set of buildings and establish a quasi-military base.  After a race riot, Cyclops took all the remaining mutants to an artificial island off the Californian coast, and dubbed it "Utopia".  Despite their professed ideal to integrate man and mutant, Marvel writers always showed the X-Men as isolationist -- but at least most of the rest of the world's mutants lived among humans.  Since the "House Of M" story whittled down the number of surviving mutants to fewer than 200, all of Marvel's mutantkind is isolated -- and ghettoized.

"The ghetto will burn," Crone writes.  "They always burn.  The blood is erased by the flames.  But it will happen again. And again."  And of course, it has happened, not only in human history but in X-Men history, with all the mutant sanctuaries.  Xavier's mansion was repeatedly destroyed and rebuilt.  Avalon crashed and burned.  District X was consumed by flames.  Genosha was annihilated.  The Australian base was torn apart.  Providence sunk.  Too many mutants gathering in one place has been a consistent disaster throughout Marvel history.  Cyclops, self-appointed leader of his race, risks the final fate of his race on "faith that this time, this place, is happening for a reason other than to be perverted by a future that may or may not occur."  Alas, the X-Men franchise lives so long as its status quo of "persecuted minority fighting for survival" is preserved, so these characters may never escape their fate.

Peter David has kept his stories fairly separate from the rest of X-continuity, and it seems significant that this "tie-in" issue is a standalone one-shot.  The freedom X-Factor has to address the larger issues surrounding its characters is constrained by what's happening in the flagship titles.  When this iteration of the title was launched, its original mission statement was to investigate M-Day and how the "No More Mutants" curse could be lifted.  The "mutant messiah" story took that plot away from X-Factor (it's interesting that X-Factor won't be a part of the upcoming "Second Coming" crossover), and it had to find new directions.  I wonder if the discussion between Peter David and X-editor Axel Alonso was similar to the exchange between Madrox and Cyclops.  Madrox: "...you've taken the survival of mutantkind onto your shoulders.  The train's moving, and I'm asking: what's the plan?"  Cyclops: "The train's going with or without you.  Climb aboard or get the hell off the track.  Your choice."  Issues like this one make me wish Peter David were the conductor.