Writing: Scott Lobdell and Steve Seagle
Art: Pascual Ferry
What Went Down:
Two cops walk down to the basement of the police station, looking for
the cause of the power outage. Marrow
attacks them both and knocks them out.
Upstairs, Charlotte Jones decides that she can’t leave her friends to
die, even if it means risking her son’s life.
In the interrogation room, Iceman detects the Sentinels on the other
side of the glass. They attack, but
Cecilia’s forcefield once again holds them off.
The human police officers barge in, weapons drawn, and the battle
escalates.
At the White House, Senator Kelly is feeling guilty about
paving the way for Operation Zero Tolerance.
He comes to the conclusion that genocide is not a solution after
debating with Henry Peter Gyrich. He
decides that he needs to talk to the President to resolve this.
In New York, the real police exchange gunfire with the
Sentinels. Iceman breaks a wall and
provides an ice slide for escape, afterwards bringing the ceiling down on the
robots. Downstairs, Marrow prevents the
prisoners from escaping by scaring them.
Back upstairs, one Sentinel survives and shoots at
Iceman. Charlotte Jones jumps in
between, severely wounding herself. She
explains that her son was kidnapped and asks them to rescue him. At a dock in New York, Sabra prevents two
criminals from stealing some cargo.
Marrow shows up to offer help and make fun of Cecilia’s
problems. The two women almost get into
a fight, but Iceman intercedes. After
stabilizing Charlotte, they leave. Walking
down the street, the three mutants are ambushed by an army of soldiers and
Prime Sentinels. The issue closes on
Charlotte’s son Timmy being watched by an old woman who tells the boy that his
mother is undercover.
How It Was:
With this issue, the Operation Zero Tolerance plot starts to take some
missteps. The threats still haven’t gone
beyond Sentinel ambushes for Cecilia to hold back (hell, it’s even the
cliffhanger for the issue), and the renewed emphasis on Senator Kelly is not a
good sign of where the story is going toward its resolution. I can’t nail down what Gyrich’s purpose is in
this story. He seems firmly committed to
the idea of mutants as a threat that need stopped by any means necessary, but
he is sympathetic to the Senator for some unknown reason. Plus, Gyrich was attacked by Sentinels in
Uncanny #346, so he should probably feel a little more strongly about OZT. It’s good that the story is drawing parallels
between racial profiling, unsubstantiated fears, and the Nazis, but shouldn’t
Senator Kelly have thought of all this beforehand? On top of that, the entire purpose of
Iceman’s team has suddenly switched from protecting mutants and stopping
Bastion to saving the son of a third-tier character that hasn’t been seen in
this book in years.
What makes up for all this is the addition of Marrow to the
team. Now I’m the first to balk at the
idea of a villain becoming a hero, and it’s obvious that the X-staff has
changed her quite a bit in trying to pull this off (even going so far as to
change her appearance to something more aesthetically pleasing). She was a homicidal maniac willing to blow up
a subway full of humans, so this new take on her is a bit of a stretch. Still, she adds a lot of humor to this story
and offers a new contrast for Cecilia.
The story up until now has focused on Cecilia’s problems, but compared
to Marrow, Reyes has had it easy. Marrow
lived in a sewer, never saw the sun, and had to hunt and fight for
survival. And Cecilia might be able to
see that if Marrow wasn’t so crass and confrontational. Suffice to say, Marrow adds a new voice and a
wholly unique perspective to the other two that adds to the story.
Whereas the characters are spot-on and compelling, the
narration is a little overwrought. There
are sequences that are just too full of unnecessary information, like the
description of the making of the two-way mirror in one scene, or the entire
career history of the two cops in the opening three pages (surprisingly, they
do appear in a later issue). Also there
are some sequences that just pull you right out of the story: a tattooed
elderly gentleman worried about dying in the precinct and the friends talking
outside about breaking into the police station serve no purpose.
But now I’m nitpicking.
I do like this issue for the humor, the animosity and tension between
the characters, and at the time I was wondering how this was all going to
end. This is still one of the better
portrayals of Iceman you’ll get for a long time, and both Marrow and Cecilia
are shaping into interesting characters.
B
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