Uncanny X-Men #349

Uncanny X-Men #349

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

Uncanny X-Men #348

Uncanny X-Men #348

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-