Writing: Scott Lobdell and Mark Waid
Art: Jeff Matsuda
What Went Down: The issue begins with Pamela Greenwood, the waitress from last issue, under fire behind the counter at Harry’s Hideaway. Bishop has apparently lost it and attacked her, convinced that she has been spying on him. Beast happens to be in the neighborhood and shows up to try to stop him. After knocking Beast unconscious, Bishop calms down and questions his own actions. Pamela seems rather calm and offers to talk with him, but a police officer interrupts them. Bishop uses the last of his stored energy to knock out the cop, and Pamela takes him to her apartment to protect him.
At the Massachusetts Academy, home of Generation X, Gateway has appeared, and Banshee is looking to investigate. Gateway sucks Chamber into a portal and disappears. Banshee asks M if she picked up anything telepathically, and of course she picked up only one word—Onslaught.
Beast wakes up with a cop pointing a rifle in his face. He decides that the best move is to deactivate his image inducer to reveal his true form. At Pamela’s apartment, her kitten is resting on the sleeping Bishop. Pamela picks it up, and when she turns around, Bishop is pointing a gun at her. Pamela starts crying and Bishop relents. The next page reveals that Dark Beast is coaching her on what to do while observing Bishop. Pamela is a result of scanning Bishop’s brain to find qualities that he might find appealing in a woman. We also see a captive Havok in the background. Dark Beast decides that the best course of action is to have Pamela kill Bishop.
Regular Beast has escaped the pursuing cops and is looking for Bishop. He sees Bishop fly through a window and realizes that he was right about Pamela, who turns out to be a mutant assassin called Fatale. Fatale alerts Dark Beast to the standard Beast, who the evil McCoy has never seen before. Dark Beast orders her to abort the mission, so Fatale tries to escape. She accidentally ruptures a gas line, which appears to blow her up, but really only covers her escape. Bishop feels vindicated that he was right about the waitress, while the Dark Beast begins work on assimilating the real Henry McCoy.
How It Was: Because you forgot about it, Scott Lobdell reveals the identity of the waitress at Harry’s Hideaway. Since she turns out to be an assassin working for Dark Beast it’s probably safe to say that this wasn’t the original intention for her character. Then again, since Dark Beast has been retroactively retconned into past Marvel continuity, this works as kind of a cute way to demonstrate the AoA McCoy’s influence and reach. But for someone who has been in the regular Marvel Universe for twenty odd years, the fact that he doesn’t know who the regular Beast is is really baffling. After all, the standard Beast has been a member of the Avengers as well as a respected doctor who does a lot of public work. It sort of makes Dark Beast come off like an idiot if he didn’t think to check for himself in this universe.
For the most part this is a Bishop centric issue, and his personality is all over the place. Lobdell and Waid seem to be going for a fracturing of Bishop’s mental state. The fact that he doesn’t know if he can trust his own carefully honed instincts is pretty interesting. But I dislike that he keeps reverting between normal Bishop and his old shoot first/ask questions later personality whenever the plot necessitates. Waid does an admirable job of trying to make Pamela sympathetic, but it’s kind of obvious that she is either playing him or she has the worst judgment ever when she brings a lunatic back to her apartment. Beast’s judgment is also a little iffy, as I would think that changing your appearance to a blue-haired beast would be the fastest way to get shot by the cops.
Ultimately, it’s still hard to get over the fact that we’re dealing with a plot point from so far back in X-continuity. It’s an okay issue, but other than Dark Beast learning about himself, it doesn’t feel very significant. I will say that Jeff Matsuda does a pretty great job; I can’t help but smile at panels of Bishop holding a kitten. There’s nothing really substantial going on.
C-
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