Writing: Fabian Nicieza
Art: Andy Kubert
What Went Down: The next generation of mutants start out this issue with Clarice getting captured by Harvest and the Phalanx. Clarice uses her power to escape, and Monet punches the crap out of the bad guys. Too bad for our heroes that the bad guys just reform afterwards.
In the water below the boat, Banshee and Everett climb up the anchor chain to rescue the children. Inside the boat, Emma and Jubilee have somehow found their way inside, where they fight Phalanx infected rats and discuss Jubilee’s fears about her powers.
When all seems lost for the young mutants, they are saved in the nick of time by …Sabretooth? Yes Sabretooth takes the time to track down the Phalanx base and help rescue the children. Banshee and Everett join in, and together they annihilate Harvest for the second time.
Sabretooth refuses to explain how or why he came back to save the children. The heroes discuss how best to help Paige, who has been infected by the Phalanx, when Sabretooth takes it upon himself to tear her skin off. Luckily, her mutant power turns out to be the ability to shed her top layer of skin to reveal a different material, in this case metal skin. Harvest then returns for a third time to try to kill everyone.
As Emma tries to escape with the kids, they discover the bodies of some people and a dog absorbed by the Phalanx. This inspires Clarice to stop running and stand up to Harvest. Using her powers she tears Harvest apart, but for some reason she gets caught in the effect herself. So Clarice dies and the X-Men’s victory comes at the tragic cost of a character that was two issues old.
How It Was: Nicieza sets up a climactic battle to end the crossover, and it succeeds in feeling like a final, brutal story ending fight. The problem is that the final baddie is too powerful, and it makes for an uneven final chapter. The Phalanx, and Harvest in particular, are all shallow characters with little motivation or personality. They’re supposed to be unbeatable, which is good for setting up adversity for the heroes, but they’re so unbeatable that the fight doesn’t make sense. There is a difference between creating a novel challenge for the heroes and having the bad guy come back over and over again with no logic or reason behind it. And why does Clarice have to die to defeat the bad guy? Why can't she use her powers like she did in part 3?
The reason of course is because the writer wants to get a cheap emotional ending without having really earned it; Clarice wasn’t really developed enough to care about, but that hasn’t stopped her from becoming very popular. This is mostly due to her return in Age of Apocalypse, which occurred four months after this book came out. It’s a much more successful take on the character whose only real purpose was to make the end of this story kind of sad.
Sabretooth’s return makes for an intriguing mystery of his allegiance. Unfortunately it is later forgotten, and Creed just says he was only pretending to be good even though there was no real reason behind it. The reveal of Paige’s power is well done, though.
This is an underwhelming conclusion with awful villains and some under-developed new characters. Plus there isn’t really any resolution at all to the question of where the X-Men have been taken to (that occurs in Wolverine and Cable of all places). It’s an epic finale, just not a very good epic finale.
C-
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