Writing: Scott Lobdell
Art: Pascual Ferry
What Went Down: In his Virginia mansion, Senator Robert Kelly acts super edgy and waves around a gun, looking for someone. He finds Cyclops, who the Senator had called earlier. Kelly reveals that he is aware of members of Xavier’s Mutant Underground, but Cyclops doesn’t really care. Then Kelly begs for Cyclops’ help.
Above the Pentagon, the X-Men are hovering in the cloaked Blackbird while Jean Grey and Gambit infiltrate the building to learn about Operation Zero Tolerance. Cannonball compares the stunt to something he would’ve committed in X-Force, which honors Storm, while Dark Beast tries to maintain his identity in front of Iceman and Professor X.
In an underground sub-basement of the Pentagon, Jean is using her telepathy to disguise herself and Gambit. Also, in case you’re wondering, all of the mutant detecting technology in the Pentagon was created by Forge, who told the X-Men how to block it.
In Colorado, Archangel is still recovering from the injury Sabretooth gave him. Psylocke is also recovering, and she is easily able to sneak up on Warren outside. Betsy wonders about the changes the Crimson Dawn has done to her body and mind. Something appears behind Psylocke, asking for help. For some reason this causes Betsy to faint, and when Warren flies down to help her, the pain from his wing causes him to fall unconscious as well.
Back at the Pentagon, Jean marvels at the various politicians and officials assembled. The group is greeted by Bastion, who we are meeting for the first time. He describes Zero Tolerance as a survival task force, and tells the officials that there is a mysterious threat looming known as Onslaught. Also, Jean can’t scan his mind.
In Kelly’s mansion, Kelly is telling Cyclops that he found something after getting involved in Project: Widawake; something to do with the extinction of mutants. They are ambushed by an explosive from the Friends of Humanity. Oh and Graydon Creed is stupid enough to sit in a van outside the attempted assassination of a senator during his presidential campaign.
Over in the Blackbird, Xavier tries to listen to the presentation telepathically; Storm reminds him that he said he was unable to do this, but Xavier brushes her off. In the middle of his presentation on Onslaught, Bastion reveals that he can detect Jean and Remy, so he attacks them. The X-Men are surprised, so they proceed to run away. Gambit blows a hole in the wall, and he and Jean find that all the soldiers outside are sleeping. Onslaught appears to Jean, takes credit for knocking out the soldiers, and tells her that it was a gift.
Finally, Archangel and Psylocke wake up to find a Juggernaut-shaped shadow looming over them.
How It Was: After filling in for Andy Kubert two months previous, Pascual Ferry takes a shot filling in on Uncanny and does a pretty awesome job. While not a whole lot happens this issue, he manages to make Gambit and Jean’s escape look more frantic and action-packed than it actually is; he also sets a great mood with the shadowing in the Cyclops/Kelly sequences, definitely capturing the conspiracy mystery vibe. It’s too bad that there’s never any real payoff from this setup; it seems like Kelly is afraid Operation Zero Tolerance is going to kill him, but later it’s made clear that OZT doesn’t care about him at all, even releasing him after capturing Cyclops.
Really, this issue is setting up the main threat for after the Onslaught crossover, and frankly it’s a nice change of pace to see the X-Office planning these things so far in advance. While Bastion’s presentation only exists to regurgitate plot points from past X-Men issues so they’ll be fresh on people’s minds, the fact that he identifies Gambit and Jean, along with his appearance, adds some mystique to him. The fact that the head of this anti-mutant program is being run by an obvious non-human is very intriguing indeed. Jean and Gambit’s escape also makes for a brief, but well-executed action set piece.
The Archangel/Psylocke thread is a misfire. While it’s nice to check in on them after their injuries, all they do is recap what’s happened to them thus far and pass out. Psylocke is sensing psionic screams because of her exposure to the Crimson Dawn? What does that even mean? And it is very unclear whether Archangel passes out from the pain or crashes into the ground. Either way, neither character comes out of this looking particularly good. In fact, the falling unconscious serves no purpose except to create some anti-climactic tension, since they pick up right where they left off after they wake up. It’s a cheap plot device to postpone the scene for the cliffhanger, and it doesn’t work at all.
There are some nice, but insignificant moments in the Blackbird. It’s becoming clear at this point that the Dark Beast plot has some holes in it; namely, that he’s somehow hiding on a team with three of the world’s most powerful telepaths on it. And while this gets explained by Onslaught later, it still doesn’t answer why the Dark Beast thought this was a good plan in the first place, ignorant of Onslaught as he was. He really had no plan for this? And why is he still on the team after already being captured by Sinister once? Also, it’s about this point that the X-writers start to abandon subtlety as far as the hints that Xavier is Onslaught are concerned. The mystery doesn’t work at all because we’re only presented with one potential suspect who keeps acting more and more disturbed.
This issue crosses over with X-Force #55 for no particular reason; it’s a weak attempt to boost readership of the other X-books. Later we’ll see that many X-titles started having events happen in the completely wrong titles, but more on that later. While the Archangel/Psylocke sequences are panel padding nonsense, the introduction of Bastion goes off really well and succeeds in creating some intrigue in the events to follow Onslaught. Sure, the “hints” at Onslaught’s motivations never make sense in the long run, but as I said before, the focus is mostly on Zero Tolerance for next year.
B+
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