Writing: Scott Lobdell
Art: Roger Cruz
What Went Down: Psylocke is taking the time to invade Gambit’s mind while he’s unconscious to find out what he is so afraid of. The landscape of Gambit’s mind is a black and white noir version of Bourbon Street. Gambit discovers Betsy’s intrusion, even though he shouldn’t be able to. Gambit wakes up and asks what Psylocke was doing. She makes up an excuse about being worried about him and leaves.
In New York City, three of the X-Men and Charlotte Jones are getting ready to throw down with two members of Gene Nation with the unfortunate names of Sack and Vessel. Storm worries about Wolverine losing control of his feral nature, and we find out that bullets can’t hurt Sack. Sack also brings up that their forefathers were the Morlocks, which alarms Storm. We also find out that Vessel’s powers involve absorbing the life essence of people, explaining the dead people with no physical markings. Storm interprets this to mean that Vessel is stealing people’s souls, and Wolverine seems to buy this explanation as well.
Rogue and Iceman find a small town to call for a tow truck. Inside that bar, Bobby once again sees Emma Frost, this time as the waitress of the bar. In the air, Sack is in the process of absorbing Cannonball, while down below, Vessel attacks the Graydon Creed rally. Beast shows up in time to save Creed from being crushed by debris and rubs it in that a mutant saved the life of an anti-mutant bigot.
Wolverine attacks Vessel, who starts to leak energy. An energy blast knocks Wolverine away, but he figures out that they have to destroy Vessel to release the people’s souls. Cannonball flies into a building to defeat Sack. Storm overloads Vessel with lightning, causing lights to pour out of him, releasing the “souls.” Both Sack and Vessel’s remains seep into the ground, hinting that they will return.
At the bar, Rogue pays for the bill and tells the waitress to give her regards to Grey Crow. Rogue doesn’t know why she said this because it is a residual memory from Gambit, and the waitress turns out to be an old friend of Gambit’s. Outside, Bobby is trying to call the Massachusetts Academy. Emma Frost is standing next to the ringing phone, saying that there is no one to take Drake’s call.
How It Was: It’s hard to know how to judge this story since it’s mostly set up for future stories. Should it be measured on how intriguing the set ups are, or on how good the payoffs turned out to be? For example, the scenes hinting at Gambit’s past really felt significant at the time, but we won’t get any real resolution until #350 in about two years time. The Iceman scenes do go somewhere, but the territory of Iceman not utilizing his powers to their fullest has already been explored in past Uncanny issues.
This leaves us with the fight with Sack and Vessel that is woefully unexciting. Unlike the Holocaust fight going on in X-Men at the same time, this battle features uninteresting characters and has no real stakes for the reader to be concerned about. Lobdell tries to up the tension by having Storm bring up the fate of people’s souls, but it really feels like a random conclusion that she’s jumped to. Vessel absorbs energy, he’s an energy vampire. Storm seems to be overreacting; after all, she doesn’t say that Rogue is stealing people’s souls when she absorbs people’s energy. The outcome of the story is so hollow; it’s meant to feel significant when the energy returns to the victims’ bodies, but they’re still dead so it doesn’t really matter.
Other than some fun scenes between Beast and Graydon Creed, and some intriguing Gambit mysteries that take a long time to pay off, there is not a whole lot to recommend in this issue.
C-
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