STORY: "Riders on the Storm" (22 pages)  Magneto's airship begins to fall apart under the strain of the storm, and the X-Men try to get to safety.

What you need to know:
Magneto's plan fails when his airship falls apart under the stress of turbulence, meaning that he loses all the gas he'd gathered.  He gives up and flies off (which means flying into a massive storm under his own power, and he certainly suggests this might be a suicide attempt).  Avia flies after him, and the X-Men stop the Angel giving chase.  But we'll see her again next issue.

With the airship tearing itself apart, the X-Men resort to lashing themselves to the balloons and basically hoping for the best.  In a truly remarkable plot contrivance, the Beast not only manages to crash in Africa, but lands at the feet of Ororo Munroe.  This leads into her guest starring role in the next storyline.

Iceman gives up waiting for the storm to clear, and tries to travel from Tierra del Fuego to the Savage Land by crossing the sea under his own power.  Apparently it's a distance of 700 miles.  That rather begs the question of how the Angel managed to get to the Savage Land in X-Men vol 1 #62 by simply falling down a hole in Tierra del Fuego - a story which Iceman actually references in the scene in question - but to be fair, it didn't make any sense in the original story anyway.

Havok and Lorna Dane are still in the Savage Land, helping out Ka-Zar.

Candy Southern turns up at the Mansion and promptly gets captured by a robot sentry working for a rather grumpy Professor X.  (Presumably Xavier sets the robot on her, because it would be a bit of a giveaway if the everyone who knocked on the door got attacked by robots.)

The number #71 ought to be on the cover somewhere, but I can't see it, and I'm not aware of any particularly convincing suggestions.  It's probably one of the covers where the lettering covered up the number.

Comments:
An odd little transition issue, which serves mainly to transport the X-Men from the Savage Land to Africa so that they can have their next adventure.  It must be said that this requires considerable suspension of disbelief.  Ororo's home country at this point is supposed to be Kenya, which straddles the equator.  So to believe that the X-Men managed to get there by balloon from Antarctica in a matter of hours...  well, it calls for an awful lot of generosity on the part of the reader.  Throw in the fact that the Beast then has to land metres away from Ororo, and you're giving a simultaneous battering to geography and probability.  (Hidden Years never actually specifies Kenya, but the country was well established by this point, and even if you ignore that, getting to anywhere in Africa is still hugely implausible.)

Otherwise, it's a slightly unsatisfying issue.  The Magneto/Nhu'Ghari storyline sort of peters out without a proper resolution, and it seems a touch odd to be setting up Havok, Lorna and Iceman for another Savage Land adventure straight after the one we've just had.  Xavier and Candy Southern have a good scene together, though.

FEATURE CHARACTERS
Professor X, Havok, Lorna Dane (all last in issue #3), Cyclops, the Angel, the Beast and Marvel Girl I

SUPPORTING CHARACTERS
Iceman, Avia and Candy Southern (last in issue #2)

VILLAINS
Magneto (next in issue #10)
The Nhu'Ghari (no further appearances)

GUEST APPEARANCES
Ka-Zar and Zabu (next in Astonishing Tales #1; both last in issue #3)
Ororo Munroe (last in flashback in X-Men vol 2 #78)

Revised: 31 May 2006

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