With this miniseries, Peter David turned a fringe character into a star and launched the best reboot in Marvel history: His subsequent run on X-Factor.
The story isn’t all that important, but the elements of it matter. Madrox is living in Mutant Town and decides to open a detective agency called “Triple X.”
His first case: Investigating the murder of his own duplicate bodies. Jamie is drinking heavily, and regularly, when one of his dupes shows up at this office–stabbed. Rahne arrives as well, and sobers him up. They decide to investigate the stabbing, while leaving a dupe behind in the office to serve as bait.
Joining his team: Rahne and Guido, none of whom could ever be confused with A-list characters.
Along the way there is a shady reporter, a conspiracy, and voiceover narration by Madrox himself–all the essential elements for great noir–along with terrific, wry humor.
Also in this tale: Madrox’s dupes have their own personalities. And some of them are a$$holes.
And when they die, they are reabsorbed–and main Madrox can remember what they saw. So, he’s been sending them around the world to learn things and gather information. Now, Madrox is pretty damn smart.
And pretty damn capable, too.
Turns out, the killer is an assassin named Clay.
Clay can also create dupes of himself.
More importantly, Clay is a hitman for hire and the man who hired him to kill Jamie? One of Madrox’s own dupes–who doesn’t want to die or be enslaved by Jamie.
At the end, after solving the mysterious murders, he changes the name of his Agency and offers a new take on an old favorite…
X-Factor Investigations!
Never content to rest on his laurels, Peter David tells the story as a noir. He’s already had success at Marvel with a monumental role on Hulk that brought the character to his “grey” roots and flipped the book from one about savage fighting into a gangster flick. He wrote dystopian futures in The Last Avengers Story and the Hulk’s Maestro storyline. He had a traditional superhero run on Spider-Man, where he famously killed Captain Jeanne DeWolff. Now, noir. The man is amazing.