Editor's Note: X-Factor Special: Layla Miller arrives in stores tomorrow, August 20.

"Stuff Happens"

Plot: Layla Miller has been stranded in the future. Bishop's childhood future, to be exact. Not a happy time for mutants. What's she going to do about it? You know, stuff.

Comments: This issue is a solo focus on one of the only interesting upshots of the House of M series. Mostly. Layla's not the sort of character who can stay solo for long. She must be a hassle to write a lot of the time; she's a kind of portable, tiny, cute deus ex machina, who at any moment can provide all the answers needed to move a story along, or stop it stone cold dead. Her real power resides in how much she reveals of what she knows. There's a modicum of choice there, but, as she explains to an ally in this issue, not really very much. She's a piece on a cosmic chess board. Knowing what the next move will be doesn't mean you get to make the moves yourself.

David has been her steward since she showed up in X-Factor, and he's cared for her the best way he knows how: he's focused on the psychology of the person inside the power, or (given the nature of X-Factor) with or without the power at any given time. Bad things happen to good David's people, but they generally find their way nonetheless.

Maybe the best thing about Layla Miller is that nobody else can tell so deadpan a joke. The grizzly humor of the guards at the mutant internment camp, betting on her behaviour as their caged animal, meets a charmingly narrated fate thanks to Layla knowing enough to just get out of the way of some cosmic justice at the right moment.

Then she's free to roam into the city, one that seems hardly to be in the future at all (David makes no attempt to alter language over the projected decades, for example as Joss Whedon does in the Fray universe). At least it doesn't seem quite the apocalyptic mutant nightmare that Bishop always described.

But I suppose it's bad enough, and Layla has to be careful making her way through it, pushing news media (through everyone's braincase Ethernet implants) in socially subversive ways, being the agent of chaos that the paranoid powers that be are trying so hard to keep at bay with their anti-mutant fervor.

This is a nimble story, where Layla's future (to which she had seemed abandoned) is shown to be an arena for her continued pro-mutant activity, especially when she meets up with some surprisingly transformed allies at the story's climax. That these developments were still a surprise to me, despite being pretty much stock features of time travel (especially X-related time travel) stories, is a testament to David's skill. He keeps his eye on the feelings, and lets the plot take care of itself. Which it usually does.

That's rather the opposite tack to that of Layla herself, who is all about plotting her next move, but reveals a complete dearth of time for emotional processing in a particularly poignant scene. Such a breakdown could be melodramatic, but David has earned it with his ever-evolving character work.

DeLandro achieves many chilling scenes with the art, stranding an abused and vulnerable-appearing teenager in a future so fraught with ill will. Keep a special eye on the Sentinel shrapnel that comes to litter Layla's path, as there are a few subtle jokes going on.

This one-shot idea for ongoing Marvel titles has been a bit scattershot, but this is another good one.

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