The removal of Larry Stroman from X-Factor’s pencilling duties would be welcome in any event, but the return of Valentine de Landro is a double cause for celebration. De Landro has pretty much established himself as the definitive penciller for the book, and there’s been no drop off in the quality of his detailed but expressive work. Unfortunately, however, his return is somewhat ill timed, with this issue’s plot being mainly padding for the Darwin Awards arc’s inevitable trade paperback.

Despite the explosive cliffhanger that the field team faced last time, the main focus of this issue is events on the home front, with Val Cooper attempting to coerce Siren into accepting the O.N.E.’s somewhat sinister “protection” for her unborn child. The events of the Messiah Complex crossover are subtly allowed to overshadow the conversation, with the implication that another mutant birth could turn into a similar fiasco kept in the background. This danger allows Cooper slightly more credibility as a character than normal, although her initial belief that handcuffing Rictor is a sound negotiating strategy is a little hard to accept. The conclusion of this element raises a smile, but the subsequent scene where Theresa comes fractionally closer to killing Cooper is a little more difficult to accept as a result. The last scene of the issue makes clear that the government’s offer is about to become a lot less academic, and hopefully having the couple reunited will give more life to this strand.

Elsewhere, Madrox and his crew benefit from Peter David’s rewinding of events, allowing their situation to be fleshed out before the bomb blast seen at the conclusion of the previous issue. Once the gang recover, there’s little new that hasn’t been seen before in the title, with character threads present without being advanced. Jamie continues to be worried by the unpredictability of his duplicates, Monet and Longshot continue to instinctively flirt and Guido continues to solidly advance the plot without comment. As for the actual investigation that the team is undertaking, there’s little progress, with the one update on the Karma Project’s experiment being entirely predictable.

The writer obviously feels completely at home with this book, with the updates on his family life now an established part of the recap page. It’s just a pity that a desire to drag the story out for its secondary publication format has left purchasers of the single issues slightly short-changed.