Fyrcyning wrote:

Then the Simonson/Simonson team. Somehow, Louise Simonson seemed to have no idea how to write X-books, and while her X-Factor stories were more likable than her New Mutants ones, the majority of them were not very convincing. Her husband Walt Simonson's angular art was ill suited to the book. It worked in some books like Thor but here it definitely doesn't.


I think that what works and doesn't work in terms of writing and art is a matter of personal preference, and perhaps the context in which you remember the stories. By the time, X-Factor came around, I had been reading X-Men since the middle of the Claremont/Byrne run (#115), and I have a different recollection of the Simonson/Simonson run.

On the writing, I actually think that 'Wheezie Simonson was the editor for Uncanny X-Men since issue 137, and she knew her X-stuff very well. Her writing style was much more in line with what Claremont had established in Uncanny than what she inherited on X-Factor (which was a relative mess).

When Louise took over X-Factor, her efforts made the book readable; it returned the heroes to more "heroic" characterizations. You have to remember that X-Factor was a Jim Shooter-contrived sales ploy to further capitalize on mutant popularity. Bob Layton's original storyline had heroic Scott Summers abandoing his wife and baby to hook back up with his resurrected girlfriend with no remorse, soul-searching or real explanation. It was fairly awful. In my opinion, it took Louise's writing to help the characters to regain some of the humanity and voice (originally given to them by Claremont's writing in Uncanny) which made them so popular to begin with. . .Something else to recall is that without Louise's creation of the Apocalypse character, X-Factor's big antagonist was supposed to be the Owl (snore), and there would be no Archangel character or story.

As for the art, I immensely enjoy Walt Simonson's style on any title. At the time, I enjoyed his work on X-Factor more than I did Romita Jr or Marc Silvestri's work on Uncanny X-Men; it's all a matter or taste.