Writing: Mark Waid
Art: Andy Kubert
What Went Down: Outside the mansion, Cannonball is sitting up in a tree watching Xavier in his study. Cyclops walks by, and empathizes with Sam about how hard the Professor can be on his students. He brushes off the weird behavior as something bigger just bothering Xavier. Oddly, a charged card seems to whiz by Cyclops while he’s talking, only to reveal Gambit and the rest of the X-Men searching for Juggernaut on the school grounds. Cyclops decides that Xavier is too stressed, and shouldn’t be alerted unless absolutely necessary, so the team splits up to look around.
In the psi-shielded chamber, Juggernaut states his admiration that Xavier would fake his own death and act like such a creep. Jean starts reading his mind, but realizes that Juggernaut left the door open, so Onslaught could still know what they were doing. When she shuts it, her telepathic bond with Cyclops is severed, worrying him. Sam wonders why they don’t just use Cerebro to find Juggernaut, but Storm explains that he’s a human. Iceman asks Beast if he remembers their first encounter with the villain, and of course he gets the details wrong.
Meanwhile in Jersey, the authentic Beast is finally breaking free of the chains in his cell. He goes through the trap door, only to be stopped by some people behind him. At the mansion, Cyclops bursts through the doors to Xavier’s study to tell him about the severed psionic link. Xavier notes that he can no longer sense her either, but he seems unworried about it. Cyclops discovers that Xavier is researching Franklin Richards, the son of Mr. Fantastic and the Invisible Woman of the Fantastic Four. Xavier claims he doesn’t remember pulling up that data. He agrees to search for Jean, and tells Scott to turn off the defenses when he learns about the Juggernaut’s presence.
In the chamber, Cain relives the experience of finding the Cyttorak Gem and turning into Juggernaut. In his mind, he and Jean focus on a black obelisk that represents the memory block. In the study, Xavier contemplates all his recent failures. A news report shows that one of the teens responsible for killing the mutant back in X-Men: Prime has been arrested. He gives a racist statement, causing Xavier to smash the TV and trash his office.
Jean discovers who Onslaught is, even though Juggernaut still doesn’t know. Instead of telling him who it is, she just tells him to run. Leaving the chamber without his helmet, Juggernaut’s perceptions are warped M.C. Escher-style. Terrified, Cain seeks out his stepbrother, only to find his hoverchair empty. Onslaught grabs him, stabs him in the stomach, and pulls out the Cyttorak Gem, as well as revealing that Xavier and Onslaught are the same person. Then Xavier summons the X-Men to his study.
How It Was: Low and behold, this issue opens with Cannonball, former leader of the “edgier” X-book—X-Force, pouting in a tree after being yelled at by Xavier. This is the kind of thing that drove fans crazy in the 90s, but the X-office continued to write him as a wet-behind-the-ears novice until he left the team to go back with X-Force. Meanwhile the X-writers seem intent to giveaway the reveal at the end of the issue by having Xavier act so over the top evil towards Cyclops that any other reveal for Onslaught wouldn’t have made any sense. Plus the rest of the X-Men are searching for Juggernaut, so they have nothing to do for the entire issue.
Waid goes for a horror movie motif with Jean and Juggernaut, building the tension of whether the monster will find them until he jumps out and “stabs” Juggy to “death.” Unfortunately, like a horror movie, we get the main characters making lots of stupid decisions, such as leaving the door to the psi-proof room open, or having the pair split up after Jean learns the bad guy’s identity and chooses not to share it with her ally. It all comes off as rather dumb and plot convenient, plus Juggernaut is once again being wheeled out to make Onslaught look more impressive by comparison, exactly like the issue twelve months ago.
Also, most of the Jean/Juggernaut sequences are made up of unnecessary flashbacks and exposition about past stories to pad the issue out until the writer can get to the end. Waid seems to be leaning particularly hard on the Z’Nox story as an example of a less virtuous Xavier to somehow justify his transformation into Onslaught, which seems unnecessary, but maybe they were still creating the character as they were going.
And at least having Xavier as Onslaught leads to some interesting story ideas. If you want to talk about a huge anti-climax, then we’ll talk about the Beast’s plot line. Here he breaks his chains (why wouldn’t he have done this first thing?) and escapes through the trapdoor, only to be recaptured a couple of pages later. How’s that for plot progression? Very, Very Tiring. This is a very weak ending, or beginning depending on how you look at it. The identity of the main villain is pretty much a gimme, and all the other characters are pretty much running around in circles or filling up panels to get to that spoiled ending.
C
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