Writing: Scott Lobdell
Art: Chris Bachalo
What Went Down:
Maggott is up on top of the World Trade Center, reliving memories from
people who have visited the monument.
Note that this is a power of Maggott’s that will never appear again. Anyways, he finds the memory of Joseph
kissing Rogue in the Christmas issue, and wonders why the moment was so
significant for the girl. Out of nowhere we see the pink effect of Psylocke’s
power.
Back in the underground Antarctic cave, Trish Tilby recaps
the plot of the story up until now with internal monologue. She finds that her boyfriend the Beast has
been turned human by the technology in the cave. Also, the attackers from last issue have
vanished for no reason.
In the dungeon, Gambit sits brooding over his decision to
sleep with Rogue. He thinks that he
doesn’t deserve happiness, and he’s also worried how she will feel when she
finds out about his secret. Rogue comes
up to him hugging him and thanking him sincerely for the experience. She tells him that she loves him; Gambit
responds that she doesn’t even know him and runs off.
Below the WTC, despite seeing the effect of Psylocke’s
powers, Maggott roams the street vendors unassaulted. Then in the middle of a crowd, Psylocke just
starts beating the heck out of Maggott.
When asked why, she just keeps repeating some vague nonsense about
sensing a great darkness in him without any other justification. Also it’s important to note that Psylocke has
some new powers and personality quirks due to her exposure to the Crimson Dawn
that were detailed in a mini-series with her and Archangel. Maggott decides to fight back and turns blue
while up in the sky Archangel watches the battle.
Grovel tries to get Gambit to open up about his
feelings. Gambit wants to tell Rogue the
truth about his past, but he is afraid of losing her. On the other end of the cell, Spat tries to
help Rogue remember what is bothering Gambit.
Joseph bursts through the door with a broken robot. Gambit picks the locks on their chains, even
though earlier he said he couldn’t, and the group begins their escape.
Back in New York, Maggott and Psylocke fight. Psylocke uses her psychic blade on Maggott,
but for some reason she can’t focus, and one of his slug’s tries to eat her. Archangel swoops down in time to hit it away
with a post. Warren questions the wisdom
of seeking out this threat when there are so many already, but Psylocke insists
that there is “great darkness” in him.
Nanny shows up to foil the escape plan at the South Pole,
all while a mystery person watches on a monitor. Nanny decides she is just going to kill
everyone, but her head gets knocked off at the last second. The Beast guessed that since Trish Tilby was
human, Nanny wouldn’t recognize her as a threat, so he had Trish hit Nanny
really hard with a crowbar. The X-Men
get their powers back, but Gambit decides to go with Spat and Grovel to accept
the consequences for his mystery actions.
He still refuses to tell Rogue what is bothering him.
How It Was: Well,
I’ll be…finally some action in a super hero story. Of course none of it occurs in the main ongoing
plot thread involving the majority of the team.
Instead we get a fight with Maggott and Psylocke, which is probably a
little hard to follow since the audience doesn’t know what Maggott’s powers are
or why he is turning blue. The fight
itself is nicely done by Bachalo, but it’s a little anti-climactic to have
Warren stop the slug with a post, especially after it ate an entire truck in a
previous issue. The main problem with
this thread is that Psylocke comes off as a huge jerk jumping Maggott for no
substantial reason. She just keeps
babbling about the darkness in him, but that describes like half the X-Men at
any time. Plus, like most 90’s X-Men
threads, she completely forgets about it after this story concludes.
In fact the only thing that might be more anticlimactic
would be to have Trish Tilby beat the villain in one hit after three issues of
this storyline. It’s not so much that I
mind Trish delivering the final blow and showing that she can actually be
useful. It’s just that I’d like to see
the heroes fight the army of cannon fodder robots for a couple of panels at
least.
Once again, the most interesting aspect of this story
remains the complex and conflicting feelings Gambit continues to have over his
past and his relationship with Rogue. I
like that Gambit and Rogue having sex makes Gambit feel more guilty, calling
into question whether his motivations were to make Rogue feel better, or just
to dodge her questions and make her feel more attached to him. I still don’t like Spat and Grovel, but using
them as sounding boards for the characters to express their feelings isn’t a
terrible use for them. Most important of
all, after years and years of teasing, the X-staff is finally getting to
Gambit’s big secret in the next issue.
Yes, most fans had already guessed the specifics at this point, but at
least it was going to be over. This
story though was an unnecessary diversion from the final goal. Yes the moments with Rogue and Gambit were
important, but absolutely everything else in the last three issues can pretty
much be forgotten. Not Lobdell’s finest
work, which is disappointing since this is his final story arc, but the Gambit/Rogue
stuff was pretty well done, even if it could’ve all happened in one issue.
D
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