This week gave us two issues of Peter David’s rather fan-beloved X-Factor, and what’s interesting is that they basically serve as a seminar on what works and doesn’t work in this series.

The former issue, a oneshot about everyone’s favorite nigh-omniscient Layla Miller, revisits perhaps the second largest dangling plot thread from Messiah CompleX and provides welcome answers to longtime fans of this series. It’s a great issue, justifying its extra length and significantly moving forward Layla’s storyline, dealing with the sort of mutant vs. government issues that have always been the major subject material of this series. As a matter of fact, it’s almost a textbook lesson on shared-universe writing regarding the deftness with which David balances the plotting demands of the X-franchise and the narrative demands of the main character. Valentine De Landro is a perfect fit for the material, providing just the right amount of noir and just the right amount of superhero bombast.

This is why I was rather glad I read this special after X-Factor #34, which manages to almost as skillfully distill everything unappealing about David’s X-Factor – ill-conceived and frustrating action sequences (even to the characters! – do we need ANOTHER team-up misunderstanding? It’s not any funnier if all the characters are going “Wow, this sure is a stereotypical team-up misunderstanding!”), tie-in material that rolls in and out without fanfare or major effect, interesting ideas (Darwin as a human-Skrull link) thrown out and never touched on, and a distinct lack of servicing the book’s needs and plots in favor of servicing the Marvel Universe, Secret Invasion and David’s own She-Hulk, with which this X-Factor arc was crossing over. All it really needed were some Star Trek jokes to complete this bizarre shrine to David’s worst excesses.

However, all of this would be passable without Larry Stroman’s astonishingly regressed art style. I remember when he was with this same writer, on this same property, in the ’90s; it was a very visually appealing sort of Mignola/Jae Lee-esque style with imaginative panel layouts. I don’t know if it’s the inking here or what, but Stroman’s art here is a disaster – anatomy that should have been exaggerated instead becoming impossibly distorted, unrecognizable characters (I *still* can only tell that’s Darwin from the dialogue) and overall poor storytelling sense all contribute to the rushed feeling. Maybe Stroman just needs more time to get his groove back. I hope so; I really, really liked early ’90s Stroman. But this is not him.

It’s really interesting how both of these books – branched off of the same narrative trunk, but so completely different – hit this week to provide such a blatant contrast. (It’s also confusing as to why Marvel would schedule things this way, but oh well.) However, while X-Factor #34 is simply a bizarre misstep in a usually consistent series, the Layla Miller Special is a great character piece and an incredibly fun chapter in the same story. The latter outweighs the former.

Layla Miller Special:

X-Factor #34: