Writing: Scott Lobdell
Art: Joe Madureira
What Went Down:
Joseph, Gambit, Rogue, and the bounty hunters Spat and Grovel start off
preparing to battle Nanny and her army of robots and cyborg animals. Joseph recognizes Nanny, leading to concerns from
the X-Men that Magneto’s memories might be returning. Instead of a battle, Nanny just turns on a
power dampener and defeats all of them…after three pages of battle poses. Trish Tilby observes the X-Men being captured
and runs back to tell the Beast.
Elsewhere in space, Deathbird is talking to an injured
Bishop. She tells him that he has been
severely wounded, the X-Men are all dead, and now they will rule the Shi’ar
Empire together. Back on Earth, we find
out that the underground caves were below Antarctica, and Nanny has taken the
heroes to one of Magneto’s old bases. Rogue isn’t feeling well, and she even
takes on the personality of Sabretooth for a moment, yelling at Gambit for
working with Essex. When Rogue doesn’t
remember any of this, Gambit tells her she didn’t say anything important.
In a separate room, Joseph is being served by Nanny, but he
is still chained up. The robot insists
that he is Magneto, but will not free him.
However she does show him newsfeeds of the Operation Zero Tolerance
invasion, as well as images of the other X-Men who were captured by the
Sentinels. When a picture of Moira
MacTaggert appears, Joseph feels an unexplainable need for vengeance.
Next we get a page of Archangel and Psylocke returning to
Warren’s apartment to find it trashed after events in X-Men #67, which I will
get to later. Psylocke disappears while
Archangel looks at some bullet casings.
In Antarctica, Beast takes a page to reflect on why he
shouldn’t date because his lifestyle puts the ones he loves in danger. He discovers restraints that Magneto trapped
the X-Men in from way back in Uncanny #112-113, also Nanny’s first
appearance. It appears that people are
sneaking up on Beast, but next issue this is completely forgotten, so just
ignore it.
Gambit, Rogue, and the bounty hunters have been chained to
stakes in a dungeon. Gambit demands to
know who and why Gambit is being hunted.
Spat responds that he knows why, and he wouldn’t believe who. Gambit’s memories overtake Rogue; she is
caught in a memory where Gambit saved a girl named Sarah, who later grew up to
be Marrow. Rogue forgets the memory as
soon as it is over, and Gambit refuses to tell her what it was. Instead he suggests that this might be their
last night alive, and since their powers are negated, they can actually
consummate their relationship.
How It Was: Is
it possible to have a story where too much is going on, but not a lot is actually happening? That’s what this feels like. There are lots of different scenes, but we don’t
learn anything new from most of them.
Beast brooding about his relationship is nothing new, and the scene with
Betsy and Warren doesn’t lead to anything until next issue. There’s a pretty long scene with Nanny
mentioning that Joseph might be Magneto (something we already know), and Joseph
learning about Operation Zero Tolerance (something we already know). Plus the sequence where Beast remembers the
first Nanny story isn’t important to the plot at all. Add the five-page non-fight at the beginning of
the book, and the continued presence of Spat and Grovel (although Landscape has
completely disappeared for no reason; he was so boring the story actually
forgot about him), and this is a book that is doing a lot to make me dislike
it.
What saves this book, and actually makes it a great deal
better than last issue, is the Gambit/Rogue material. Having Rogue’s memories of Gambit’s actions
resurface and having her unable to remember them herself is a neat device, and
Gambit’s reactions to them are well handled.
I also like that Gambit decides to ask Rogue to sleep with him, and even
better, his motivations for doing this might be a little bit selfish. Gambit’s guilt and his fear of being
discovered are infinitely more compelling than anything else going on in this
book at the moment. Plus I like that
it’s done with subtlety; the scene is more effective because we don’t get to
see it. Even with the Rogue/Gambit
stuff, I can still only give this a mild recommendation.
C-
C-
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