STORY: "Knots" (22 pages)
Forge asks Storm to marry him. Meanwhile, Iceman goes for dinner with Opal and his parents. His enemy Hiro interrupts, but it turns out that he has come to defend them against his own teammates.

What you need to know:
Forge asks Storm to marry him.

Mystique is living with the X-Men in this story after helping Wolverine defeat Mojo in Wolverine #52.

Bobby's father turns out to be a racist, a subplot which rears its ahead again several years later.

The Cyburai have been dispatched to kill Iceman's parents in one of these silly Japanese Honour plots that Marvel keep inflicting on us. Hiro has left the team to stop them, obviously having a tighter grip on reality than most Japanese characters in the Marvel Universe.

Comments:
And this is the real beginning of the Scott Lobdell era - from this point on he's writing the plot as well. Issues #289 and #290 are a two-part story which seem to serve mainly to get unwanted supporting characters out of the way, as well as provide some much needed angst.

Half the storyline is concerned with getting rid of Forge, and breaking off his relationship with Storm. It's not entirely successful because Forge's emotions seem to leap all over the place - one minute he's proposing marriage, the next he's concluded that their relationship is doomed to failure and storms off in a huff without even having a proper conversation with her. Hardly the actions of a stable individual, and you have to wonder why the X-Men allow him to take the supposedly insane Mystique with him. But Lobdell makes the story work with a powerful final scene (in which Storm reveals that she was going to marry him after all, if only he'd stopped to listen) and a very interesting sequence in which Jean Grey seems to be implying that Storm doesn't really love Forge, even though she thinks she does. It's an interesting, if unexpected, take on their relationship, and the only real problem with it is that it's all bulldozed through so fast that Forge's actions seem downright implausible.

The other half brings back Hiro and the Cyburai, a bunch of Japanese cyborg samurai who fought X-Factor a year or so before. The main purpose of this half of the plot is to get rid of Iceman's girlfriend Opal Tanaka by setting her up to trot off with Hiro instead (which she duly does in a few issues time). While Hiro comes out of the story quite well, and Bobby's father is also made a more interesting character by setting him up as a racist, I'm really not nearly as keen on this half. The Cyburai were never strong characters in the first place, as they fall victim to Marvel's infuriating habit of writing everybody from Japan as if they were totally obsessed with antiquated honour codes. The problem is that the more outrageously silly the characters' actions become, the more obvious it gets that their "honour code" isn't a cultural things at all, it's just a poor substitute for a proper motivation. Though Hiro is well written (his "honour" routine at least seems to be on the same planet as normal human psychology), the rest of the Cyburai come off very badly. The attempts to set Opal up with him also result in her suddenly becoming implausibly enamoured of all this "honour" stuff, which doesn't work at all given that she spent most of the previous Cyburai storyline complaining about how silly it all was.

A mixed bag, but not a bad start at all. Worth having for the Storm material.
 

FEATURE CHARACTERS
Jean Grey (last in the second story in Uncanny X-Men Annual #16), Bishop, Forge, Iceman and Storm
Professor X (next in flashback in X-Men vol 2 #10, then in X-Men vol 2 #10-11, then in Infinity War #2, then in Fantastic Four #367, then again in Infinity War #2, then in Fantastic Four  #368, then concurrently in Quasar #38 and Infinity War #3, then again in Fantastic Four #368, then again in Quasar #38, then again in Infinity War #3, then concurrently in Infinity War #3 and Warlock & The Infinity Watch #8, then again in Quasar #38, then in Infinity War #4, then in Fantastic Four #369, then in Alpha Flight vol 1 #111, then again in Fantastic Four #369, then again in Infinity War #4, then concurrently in Infinity War #4 and Wonder Man vol 2 #14, then again in Infinity War #4,then in Quasar #39, then behind the scenes in Sleepwalker #17, then in Sleepwalker #18, then in Infinity War #5, then in Dr Strange vol 3 #46, then in Infinity War #6, then concurrently in Infinity War #6 and Fantastic Four #370, then again in Fantastic Four #370, then again in Infinity War #6, then in Avengers vol 1 #350-351, then in issue #291)
Archangel (last in the second story in Uncanny X-Men Annual #16; next in Infinity War #1-2, then in Moon Knight vol 3 #41, then in New Warriors vol 1 #27, then in Quasar #38, then in Fantastic Four #368, then concurrently in Infinity War #3 and Moon Knight vol 3 #41, then concurrently in Infinity War #3, Quasar #38 and Warlock & The Infinity Watch #8, then in Infinity War #4, then in Fantastic Four #369, then in Alpha Flight vol 1 #111, then again in Quasar #38, then again in Infinity War #4, then in Quasar #39-40, then in Infinity War #5, then in Wonder Man vol 2 #15, then concurrently in Infinity War #6 and Fantastic Four #370, then again in Infinity War #6, then in issue #290)

SUPPORTING CHARACTERS
William Drake and Madeline Drake (both last in Iceman vol 1 #4)
Hiro (last in X-Factor #64)

VILLAINS
The Cyburai (last in X-Factor #64)
Mystique (last in Wolverine vol 2 #53)

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