Writing: Scott Lobdell
Art: Tom Grummett
What Went Down: Archangel receives a call from his ex-girlfriend, Detective Charlotte Jones. Warren tries to apologize for not calling her in months, but she brushes him off. Charlotte has called Warren in to get his opinion on a mutant specific case, and to warn him about possible backlash from the media. One of Charlotte’s subordinates decides that Archangel is dangerous and attacks him, but Warren deflects the energy weapon and temporarily paralyzes the cop with a wing dart. Charlotte chastises the men, and then leads Warren into the crime scene. It’s a nightclub full of dead bodies; Archangel is told that there is something he can see better from above, but we’re never told what this is referring to after he flies up.
Outside the mansion, Storm is reflecting on her friendship with Gambit as she worries about him in his coma. Wolverine shows up to talk for a bit, but then disappears when Siryn of X-Force comes by to ask for help.
Beast has decided to take Bishop to New Jersey to see a movie in hopes of helping him relax and get over his nightmares/visions about the Age of Apocalypse. In case you’re wondering, they go to see Pulp Fiction, which had just won a bunch of Academy Awards at the time. Beast tries to get Bishop to open up, but they are interrupted by something falling out of the sky, smashing through buildings and cars. That something turns out to be the Juggernaut, and he’s been beaten up pretty badly.
Jean and Cyclops are visiting Jean’s parents to tell them that they learned her sister was assimilated by the Phalanx during the Phalanx Covenant. This wraps up a story from the eighties that dates all the way back to X-Factor #2. Jean and her father talk, and Jean has a flashback about her sister because, according to her, telepaths’ brains never forget anything. Scott and Jean drive away, but an invisible, intangible Noah Dubois of Landau, Luckman, and Lake is observing them.
Beast examines the Juggernaut and determines that he has no pulse. Psylocke shows up just because, and the Juggernaut wakes up scared out of his mind. Everybody fights; Betsy stabs Juggernaut with her psychic knife and senses his overwhelming fear. Bishop covers himself with power lines to finish off Juggernaut, but not before the villain explains that he was knocked to New Jersey from Canada. Bishop subdues Juggernaut, but only because the bad guy was already weakened, and Juggernaut tells the X-Men that he was beaten up by someone named Onslaught.
How It Was: First of all, it’s important to note that the Blue/Gold Team split is pretty much dead starting with this issue; all the X-Men are free to come and go in any X-Men title and fight with whomever they want. This leads to a lot of stories that emphasize smaller groups of X-Men, which is nice because it gives the writers an opportunity explore a lot of different groupings, personalities, and relationships, although the inclusion of X-Force at the mansion serves as little more than a distraction to the main events. It’s also really nice that the main titles have more impact on each other.
Also starting this month, some moron at Marvel thought that a great way to improve their comics would be to take the issue numbers off of the covers to make collecting an even bigger pain in the butt. If you’re wondering, you can still find the issue number in tiny print inside the barcode, but this is still really inconvenient. Don’t worry; Marvel was bombarded with fan complaints, so this trend only lasted about a year.
Now as for the story—it’s a nice, slow set-up issue that brings up a couple of plot points that are sure to be explored in the next couple of issues, as well as farther down the line. There’s nothing really wrong with this except for the fact that X-Men Prime was already supposed to have done this. Future issues notwithstanding, the awkward interactions between Archangel and Charlotte are well handled, and Beast is pitch-perfect as always under Scott Lobdell.
The parts that stick out the worst are the scenes with Jean exploring the death of her sister. This “mystery” had been set up almost a decade before, and even the resolution to her sister’s whereabouts occurred ten months before this issue came out. It’s nice that Lobdell follows up on the point, but it’s too little, too late for anybody to actually care about this character that never really had any significance to the X-Men franchise. Plus Cyclops’ “what if we weren’t X-Men?” discussion is really cliché and has nothing to do with the situation. It appears that Scott Lobdell was setting up a storyline involving Noah Dubois, who appeared two years ago and appears in a couple of future stories, but nothing ever comes from these cameos.
The Juggernaut fight is well handled, even if it’s a blatant example of cutting down a strong character to make a new threat look more menacing. The impact is pretty much lost due to the fact that Juggernaut hasn't appeared in either of the main X-Men books since the eighties. My one nerdy nitpick would be that Psylocke shouldn’t be able to use her powers on Juggernaut when he has his helmet on, and for that matter, why is she even there? And of course, this is the first we hear about the enigmatic Onslaught. Fair warning, the X-Books are going to be setting this one up for over a year, and a lot of the clues go absolutely nowhere. But this initial story actually works really well once we figure out who Onslaught is (SPOILER: IT’S PROFESSOR X). An inauspicious start, but it is nice to see that the writers are mixing it up a little bit with the presentation and structure of the books. Plus fill-in artist Tom Grummett draws a pretty awesome Juggernaut.
B-
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