A lot of people overlook X-Factor and I can understand why: its reputation is that it has a cast of third-stringers who never do anything interesting. What makes Peter David's storytelling in this book so powerful to me, though, is that he knows that about them and it's even acknowledged explicitly from time to time by the characters themselves. They know they are not Magneto or Iron Man - or Thor - and that they have to get creative if they're going to be as effective as the first-tier heroes and mutants. Lots of people, in the book and in reality, dismiss the cast of X-Factor as nobodies with nothing interesting to say but that dismissal is tragically short-sighted.

The thing that Peter David does to make this book so good is to weave long-form storytelling into these short bursts of plot. In the last year we've seen at least three or four complete investigations by the team - arcs of two to four issues, overlapping, that were superficially focused on the Invisible Woman, Monet, the initial job for Hela and now the chosen task of chasing down Hela to free the imp - and they've all had a certain satisfying flavor and consistency but otherwise, in comparison to the dystopian time travel, pregnancy and team reformation storylines of the years before, more or less seemed like stand-alone, one-off, throwaway adventures by a team that doesn't get to be the focus of huge Marvel metaplots.

It's in these "little" stories, though, that we find a rich substratum of ongoing narrative. In this issue alone I count indications of or allusions to at least six major ongoing concerns of the X-Factor story: Rahne's ex-boyfriend-baby-daddy, Layla's special Doom-glove, Jamie's narrated notation that Banshee would be in charge had she not said to him "let it all be on your head," Shatterstar's absolute abandon when entering the fray against an endless array of enemies, Banshee's testament to Thor's responsiveness as a god and whatever just happened to Darwin at the end. Each of these are little moments - a panel or two, a glance, a single sentence fragment in a narrative sidebar - that hint at stories to come or remind us of stories past. We know that Shatterstar is going to get himself into real trouble sooner or later. We know that Rahne's deceit is quickly crumbling. We know that Layla's time with Dr. Doom is going to come back to haunt, well, somebody. That isn't just because so many of us have followed the enthusiastic bad boy headlong into trouble and gotten burnt, or seen someone's secret life fall apart, either. We know these things because Peter David has created a strong sense of continuity, of ongoing story, for these characters. What for so many other books becomes a Sisyphean burden of aggregate story weighing down the narrative and limiting their options has, in X-Factor, proven to be an engine of steady forward movement instead. David is constantly sowing the seeds of the future and often by letting characters make the most natural - if difficult - choices available to them in the present, based on their past. He's writing a story in which characters have to decide what to do and letting them make those decisions in front of us - so much so that Layla, the one character for whom so much is already decided, stands out to the others as bizarre - so that we feel a genuine sense of the risks they're taking and the ingenuity required of them and, later, the ramifications that form future stories make sense.

Whenever this stuff comes back up, we're going to be able to look back on issue #212 - or whatever issue originates whatever story eventually pays off - and know that it didn't come out of nowhere. The things that happen to this team don't just happen. Peter David finds a half dozen ways to plant the causes for his story's later effects in almost every issue, even the "throwaway" stories. A significant portion of the beauty of his work, for that matter, is its sleight of hand: he feeds us cameos by ancient gods and genuinely amusing banter and a classic noir ambience that works every single time, yes, but threaded through it are the stories that really make the book, the stories of the characters themselves and the way they change as they change the world around them. Marvels mutant stories are interesting and exciting for lots of reasons, not least of which is the deep empathy any of us has for someone who starts to feel like a weirdo as a teenager and worries they will never, ever fit in anywhere because of whatever makes us all seem so very strange, but one of the more subtle reasons these stories can be compelling is that mutants, defined by evolution, have the greatest narrative capacity to change and grow over time. Grant Morrison has done the near-impossible with his work on Batman this year because he has allowed that monolith of myth to change. Marvel's universe, and mutants in particular, are much more mutable at their core even if that quality is rarely exploited. Peter David gets that characters are at their most interesting when in transition and that the minor characters can be the most interesting of all. I mean, c'mon - Darwin saves the day? And comes off looking like maybe he's, for now, the most interesting person in the cast? When is the last time that happened?

So, what didn't I like? Thor hadn't made up his mind at the end of last issue. What made him decide to throw in with Madrox before the beginning of this one? Or am I just forgetting something? Gah. Little things like that drive me crazy sometimes.