Writing: Scott Lobdell
Art: Joe Madureira
Note: See X-Men Unlimited #12 next
What Went Down: Ozymandias opens the issue walking under a sculpture of the Fantastic Four mourning the loss of Franklin. He is staring at his risen lord Apocalypse. Apocalypse knows that Onslaught is a threat to him, and this fact is reinforced by the appearance of Uatu, the Watcher. Uatu and Apocalypse apparently already know each other, and Apocalypse explains that he is here to observe the end of the Age of Wonders.
In an Avengers Quinjet, the Avengers fly over the ruins of Xavier’s mansion. Nate Grey senses that the X-Men are alive, when suddenly the plane is forced down and ripped open. The X-Men and the Avengers have a minor conflict while Jean Grey ensures that the Avengers are really who they say they are; the X-Men are paranoid after the betrayal of Xavier. Nate mistakes Jean for Madelyne Pryor, a clone of Jean that Nate resurrected after he came to the main Marvel Universe.
Frustrated, Nate uses his mental powers to take all the X-Men’s memories and show the Avengers what Onslaught really is. Cyclops blasts Nate to free his teammates. Nate claims that he knew Xavier was evil from the moment he came to this world, and Wolverine tries to pounce on him. The X-Men inform the Avengers that Xavier has somehow been influenced by Magneto, creating Onslaught, which causes Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch to feel guilty about the actions of their father.
On Muir Island, Moira MacTaggert is briefing Excalibur about Onslaught. Many of the former X-Men want to go to America to help, but Moira insists that they need to stay and unseal the Xavier Protocols.
Below the mansion, Bishop replays Jean’s urgent message, confirming that Xavier is indeed the X-Men traitor. Gambit walks in and Bishop sort of apologizes for accusing him of being the traitor.
In another room, the Avengers and X-Men explain that Onslaught is pure psionic energy. Jean guesses that the transformation was spurned by the shutting down of Magneto’s mind in X-Men #25. Storm brings up that all information about Onslaught at this point has been supplied by Onslaught, which really means that all the “hints” up until now should be ignored because the writers didn’t organize this story very well. X-Force shows up, and they are assigned to protect Nate Grey, since Onslaught’s research showed he had an interest in the young mutant. Part of the heroes break off to warn the Fantastic Four while Cyclops and Jean go off to Muir Island for the Xavier Protocols. Another group is tasked with searching for Magneto, since he is supposed to have some part in the creation of Onslaught. Storm says she is worried about Cable, so she goes off to meet him in his title.
Wolverine says he has a hunch about Onslaught, so he tells the Vision that he’s going off to follow up on it. Vision comments on the contradictory nature of Wolverine as he drives away. Iceman fills Warren and Betsy in on recent events. Bobby calls Psylocke out on seeming cold and detached, which of course is attributed to the Crimson Dawn. They are sent to meet Scott and Jean on Muir Island. In the sewer, Dark Beast excitedly takes Onslaught to his lab. He starts to explain to Onslaught that he did not actually create the Morlocks, he just experimented on them, but Onslaught attacks him because he already knows all this information. He asks McCoy about soldiers for his army, while inside Onslaught, Charles Xavier is shown to be floating alone in oblivion.
How It Was: Whereas the Onslaught: X-Men one-shot set up the main ideas of the story, Uncanny #355 briefly reiterates those ideas and sets up the various missions that will hopefully further the plot. The major flaw is that none of these missions actually affect the plot other than the oh so brief appearance in Excalibur to get the Xavier Protocols to build the plot device that helps the heroes fight Onslaught. Finding Magneto doesn’t affect the story, finding Cable doesn’t affect it, you can probably already guess what’s going to happen in Fantastic Four without reading it, and Wolverine’s spirit journey to find Onslaught’s origins doesn’t really impact how they fight him at all. This means that the majority of issues in “Phase 1” end up being the equivalent of filler.
Once again, these aren’t really problems with the issue, only the narrative structure of the event. As far as the issue itself… it’s dense—there’s a lot of exposition on top of an unnecessary “heroes’ misunderstanding” to generate some action. Apocalypse shows up, making you believe that he’s going to play an important role, but all he does is appear in an issue of Cable before disappearing. As usual, the Watcher is dragged out to make sure that the average Marvel reader understands how “significant” this story is. Plus, this issue was many readers’ first impression of Nate Grey, which shows him as an over-hyped, whiny teen who just irritates all the heroes.
This issue burns away a lot of the momentum that Onslaught: X-Men gave it. While it’s nice to see that all of the individual heroes have a role to play at this point, the fact that none of these threads really influence the overall plot at all really hurts this book. This issue consists of a bunch of facts we already know and some in-story advertisements for a bunch of other books to come out later. Plus Storm’s dialogue pretty much admits at the start how poorly planned out this thing was to begin with, what with none of the build up to this story really mattering. While the Bishop and Gambit scene is handled well, especially Gambit acknowledging just how shady he really is, the rest of the X-Men are already getting forced to the side in a storyline where they should be central to the events, since this involves their mentor. It’s disappointing to see so much potential that later just gets squandered.
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