Writing: Scott Lobdell
Art: Adam Kubert and Cedric Nocon
What Went Down: Spider-Man (the Ben Reilly Spider-Man, that is) shows up at the mansion at the middle of the night and is attacked by Bishop. Because this Spider-Man was a clone, he doesn’t recognize a lot of the characters’ changes, and he calls Jean Marvel Girl. Spidey has showed up to warn the X-Men that Jameson is digging around about Graydon Creed, and he might be in danger.
At X-Factor headquarters in Virginia, Mystique is watching Graydon Creed on the news and contemplating killing him to protect mutantkind, even though he is her son. She recognizes Iceman in one of the shots, from the back of his head no less, and announces that this changes everything.
At JFK airport, the X-Men have decided to send the Beast on the plane in order to watch over Jameson without raising suspicion. Of course he’s recognized by Jameson, who is excited that he must be getting close. To be fair, Cyclops is also on the plane and remains undercover. In the Blackbird, Joseph has been trying to understand the history of the X-Men and asks about the connection between Cable and Cyclops.
In a hotel room, reporter Nick Bandouveris has just discovered files proving that Graydon Creed’s parents were Sabretooth and Mystique. Back on the X-Jet, Joseph tries to synthesize and paraphrase the history of Cyclops and Cable, much to the amusement of Storm. On the plane, a mutant telepath from Havok’s Brotherhood of Mutants tells the passengers to remain calm and buckle their seats. Havok rips off the roof of the plane, and Jameson asks what he is doing. What is Havok’s reason for attacking? He is upset that Jameson is investigating Creed, because he doesn’t want it to look like mutants need help. No really…that’s his reason for trying to kill Jameson.
Cyclops blasts Havok to establish to the reader that their powers cancel each other out. Cyclops instead blasts Havok’s anti-gravity generator, and they both fly out the plane. Cyclops asks his brother what is wrong, and Havok says some cryptic things about finally being in control. Lobdell tries to establish Havok’s history of being mind controlled multiple times as motivation for his frustration with Xavier’s methods. Meanwhile, Joseph stops the plane from crashing.
The Brotherhood plane fires on Joseph, but he is able to shoot it down. Havok activates a teleport machine and leaves Cyclops to die, but Storm rescues him in the nick of time. Joseph lands the plane at an airport, and Jameson recognizes him as Magneto. Joseph contemplates how much he enjoyed saving the plane.
At the same time, Nick is waiting for Jonah, who has been delayed by the plane crash. Bastion shows up, kills Nick, and steals the files because Graydon Creed is still valuable to Zero Tolerance.
How It Was: This is an odd one, but most of it has nothing to do with Scott Lobdell. See at the time in X-Factor, Havok had left to join the Dark Beast because he was brainwashed. After Dark Beast was defeated during Onslaught, the writer of X-Factor set up Havok as a permanent villain. Initially he was written as insane, later it’s established that Havok just wants to save mutantkind with a more active stance than the X-Men, and finally it’s established that he was undercover. Either way, it is hard to reconcile later stories with this portrayal of Havok, since at this time all his appearances were so inconsistent. Lobdell tries his best, using Havok’s numerous times mind controlled as a kind of internal motivation, but really this is just silly. All Havok does is complain about control while he plummets out a plane, and his reason for attacking Jameson in the first place is absolutely absurd.
Spider-Man’s appearance is also kind of silly. We get the traditional heroes misunderstanding fight, followed by Spidey just delivering the plot to the X-Men. Isn’t this the kind of thing that, I don’t know, Iceman could have picked up on to give him something to do for his assignment—to give it a purpose. It is nice that they acknowledge how long it’s been since the X-Men and Spider-Man teamed up, but other than that these scenes are kind of a waste.
Joseph actually gets a few more good scenes. It’s nice to see him get the opportunity to save actual people for a change, and it’s also amusing to see him poke fun at the sheer impenetrability that is X-Men canon by way of using Cable and Cyclops as an example. I do feel like his debut to the world should affect the team more; after all, Jameson brings up the point about Magneto being bad PR, but nothing ever comes of it. The subplot with the reporter goes absolutely nowhere, other than to show that Bastion isn’t a nice guy, and I’m pretty sure that a lot of people already knew who Creed’s parents were, including the X-Men.
While this issue continues the Jameson subplot, nothing really compelling is going on here. Jameson claims he’s getting close to a discovery, but if it’s one that readers already know, then what’s the point? All of this is going to be made moot in a couple of issues anyways when Creed dies, but more on that later. This is just an odd one, with an odd villain who has odd motivations that never quite add up. Some good stuff for Joseph, though.
D+
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