Writing: Scott Lobdell
Art: John Romita Jr.
What Went Down: The Beast is in the mansion’s power core, running a diagnostic to check for damage after Magneto’s EMP pulse from Fatal Attractions. Jubilee is yelling at him through his headset because he promised to take her to the Rocky Horror Picture Show (she can’t be that big of a fan since she didn’t bother to dress up). She tries to get Iceman to take her instead, but he is busy upgrading the security around the med-lab.
Outside Bishop is meditating/absorbing the energy from melting snowflakes (I feel like melting snow wouldn’t release energy, but what do I know?). Storm stops by to tell him that she is meeting Gambit and an old friend in town, and he tells her that he is done dwelling on the future. Bishop throws a snowball at her, which is answered by a giant pile of snow landing right on top of him. Meanwhile, Sabretooth is freaking out in his cell.
In the med-lab, Bobby reflects on Emma Frost’s career as a villain, and then the power goes out. Suddenly pink energy from the alien technology in the mansion shoots out and hits Bobby and Emma, knocking out the former. Bishop runs in the mansion, and Beast tells him to check on Sabretooth.
Sure enough, Sabretooth has escaped and is about to kill Jubilee. Bishop tears out the power lines in the walls to charge himself up, and blasts Creed. Jubilee is obviously traumatized by her experience and begs Bishop not to leave her alone. In the power core, Beast works to keep it from melting down.
Sabretooth escapes into the sewers, and Bishop follows. Bishop shoots him with the remaining energy he has stored. The two are at a standoff until Jubilee shoots Sabretooth with a taser from behind.
Storm meets up with her old friend Yukio in New York City. Yukio has asked for Storm’s help with an entity that has been chasing her. The three men that Yukio was just dancing with transform into members of the Phalanx, setting up the cliffhanger.
How It Was: With the wedding over, Uncanny can finally get back to some regular stories. This issue starts what will become a common trend for Sabretooth stories—he escapes and the X-Men have to hunt him down and stop him. To be fair, I think this issue does it best out of all of the future issues that deal with Sabretooth escaping. We have all of the common horror movie tropes here: power outage, teenage girl alone, homicidal maniac that only one man can stop. It’s also nice to see Bishop acting cool again after months of him doing nothing but annoying people by talking about the future.
The scenes with Beast are okay; they do give us some humorous dialogue, but they also fail to generate any tension over the unnecessary core meltdown sub plot. Jubilee also gets some nice scenes where she stands up to Sabretooth despite being absolutely terrified of him. Lobdell actually gets some mileage out of this since Jubilee’s default character is usually calm and sarcastic. The Iceman/Emma stuff doesn’t seem important now, but actually leads to a pretty good story later.
The art is looking really great this issue, with some great action scenes and very detailed backgrounds. The first three pages contain some of Romita’s nicest looking spreads of the Beast. All around, a pretty good issue.
B+
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