X-Factor was a funny book. It tried to be The Original X-Men, but at the sametime tried to move away from that concept, and this hurt the book sometimes for fans who wanted Original X-Men stories.

It was too much like a soap opera at times, but when it hit it's mark it hit.

The whole Cameron Hodge/The Right storyline was good as was the Apocalypse storylines.

At least the Layton issues revolved around the original X-Men. What I disliked about the Louise Simonson issues was the introduction of all of the other mutant characters/kids. It took away what was cool about the concept to begin with.

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Well, a few of them were introduced by Layton/ Guice. Wonder why Shooter's golden boy Layton was off the book so soon. He started it up then, boom!, he's gone by issue 6.

And didn't Silvestri's fill-in between Guice and Walt was pretty sweet.

As I understand it from the Comics Creators on X-Men interview with Louise Simonson, Bob Layton was late with issue 6, and Louise Simonson filled in for him using his basic plot, Layton decided to leave the title and Simonson found herself being named the new writer.

She then arranged for issue 6's conclusion, with the mystery villain being Apocalypse instead of The Owl, to be re-written and went from their.

Ive talked about the book here. I really really enjoyed it. I thought Louise Simonson did a great job. Especially dealing with Laytons premise. Im honstly at a loss as to how the mutants pretending to be mutant hunters thing was suppose to work.

Im now reading Essential X-Men 8. So let me state here a public apology to Marc Silversti for all the cracks I made on his work. It has been first rate here. I lumped him in with the other Image guys and that was wrong. Also Claremont seems to have gotten thing on track. The Advesary story is one of my favororite X-Men storylines ever.

Not as good as the Hellfire Club/Dark Phoenix storyline. But thats not an insult.

To get back to X-Factor. Im really impressed with the cross continuity they have here. Its really nice and seamless. I love the two books giving two different prespectives on the same character.

Sorry for blathering on. I read my X books thru essentials. So I rarely get to talk about em. Since whats new for me is ancient history for most.

QUOTE:   The main problem with X-Factor is that people were excited about the reunion of the original X-Men, but we were stuck with a clunky cover story that they were pretending to be mutant hunters.  That simply made the whole thing too convoluted.  I'm sure they thought it would be an interesting hook that would lead to neat conflicts, but it was a poor choice.  When they jettisoned it in later issues, the replacement was for them to live in a giant Celestial ship that overlooked Manhattan.  What?

The mutant bounty hunter idea is gone by the teens, though.  The originals were there for 68 issues.  Ship doesn't come until 50 and it's not like it made them outcasts again.  It's just a cool new headquarters for them.  X Factor were publically recognized heroes after Fall of The Mutants.  The city threw a celebration for them.

How close in tone is it supposed to be to the original series?  They weren't publically recognized heroes.
Layton, and Simonson initially, may have thought they were being true to the original series by the idea of them taking in and training young mutants to use their powers responsibly and for good.

QUOTE: Scott lost his appeal from that move alone, and as a bi-product it seemed as if Claremont and Simonson had to undo this with the whole "Inferno" storyline.

Except they didn't undo anything.  They made Maddie evil and said that Sinister created her as part of some bigger plan.  None of that changes what Scott did.
For a story supposedly designed to repair him, I think they missed the boat.

It took me a couple years, but I wound up really enjoying X Factor.

QUOTE: So let me state here a public apology to Marc Silversti for all the cracks I made on his work. It has been first rate here. I lumped him in with the other Image guys and that was wrong.

Silvestri was a genius. He did a couple of one shots, Cloak & Dagger #6 I think, and a real short stint on Web of Spider-Man before he landed Uncanny, around issue 10 or so. His comic company blows, it has nothing in common with what he used to do when he started.

I always liked Silvestri best of the Image guys, going back to his 'Uncanny' work.  I don't enjoy his Image work very much as I think he lost a lot of his own look in favor of looking more like Jim Lee's stuff. 

I agree that X-Factor was a launch people were excited about because of the team but the book never really fell together that I recall.