STORY: "...For the Children!" (22 pages)  A new team of Acolytes attack Our Mother of the Sacred Heart School, intending to recover a mutant child and slaughter pretty much everyone else. Fortunately Tom Corsi and Sharon Friedlander (long forgotten supporting characters) are now working at the school, and Sharon telepathically calls the X-Men. The X-Men fight the Acolytes and manage to rescue most of the children. The Acolytes storm off in disgust on finding that the mutant they were after has Down's Syndrome. In the proud tradition of such stories, the X-Men get blamed for everything.

What you need to know:
Sharon Friedlander and Tom Corsi are now working at a convent school. Sharon is killed by the Acolytes (it's slightly ambiguous in this story, but Storm confirms it next issue).

A new team of Acolytes debuts. We see far more of them in issue #300, but for the moment the story introduces Carmella Unuscione (who has a force field), Joanna Cargill (who we've seen before - she was a member of Apocalypse's ultra-obscure original henchmen, the Alliance of Evil, under the name Frenzy) and Sven, Harlan and Eric Kleinstock (triplets who merge bodies and do some generic flying and shooting stuff as well). Eric thoughtfully gets himself killed in this issue, which is one less interchangeable Acolyte to keep track of. The Acolytes also obligingly mention that Fabian Cortez is still running the show.

Cargill and Gambit talk as if they know one another.

Charlotte Jones gives a stolen coroner's file to the X-Men. A passing reference in the second story in issue #300 reveals that this is Xavier gathering information about Legacy Virus victims.

Incidentally, the letters column of this issue also contains a spectacularly wrong- headed letter from one Jami Johnson who wrote in to complain that in issue #294, Xavier's plea for tolerance included a passing reference to gay people as well as black people which is, apparently, somehow racist. It's one of those letters that's hilarious until you realise the author has the vote. There's also a laugh-a-minute editorial from Tom DeFalco reminding us all of Marvel's great triumphs of 1992. Who could forget Idol, Kid 'n Play, Mutatis or that all-time classic Dinosaurs: A Celebration? Of thirty new titles mentioned, none are still going - the last to survive was Cable.
 

Comments:
The main point of the issue is to introduce the new team of Acolytes.  Keeping the numbers down to five in this issue (and killing off one of them), Lobdell seems to be trying to leave space for the Acolytes to have individual identities.  He even sets up a subplot, never alluded to again, of a history between Gambit and Joanna Cargill.  Of course, soon the Acolytes turned into a bloated team of undifferentiated characters, and all individuality was lost.

It's a reasonably effective introduction for them, nonetheless, as they put up a decent fight and get to do something suitably villainous.  I've always quite liked the idea of there being mutants out there whose "powers" aren't even a mixed blessing but an outright disability.  It has to be said, though, that the idea of the kid having Down's Syndrome doesn't come across at all well.  The dialogue assures us that he has it, but he looks completely normal to me.

FEATURE CHARACTERS
Professor X, Storm (both last in X-Force vol 1 #19), Bishop (last in X-Force vol 1 #18) and Archangel
Jean Grey (last in Wolverine vol 2 #66; next in X-Men vol 2 #19)
Gambit (last in X-Men vol 2 #17; next in X-Men vol 2 #19-24, then in issue #304)

SUPPORTING CHARACTERS
Sharon Friedlander (last in issue #278; dies)
Tom Corsi (last in issue #278; next behind the scenes in Generation X #50)
Charlotte Jones (between issues #294 and #322)
Robert Kelly (last in issue #281)

VILLAINS
The Acolytes: Joanna Cargill (last as Frenzy in Captain America vol 1 #414), Carmella Unuscione, Sven Kleinstock, Harlan Kleinstock (all next in issue #300) and Eric Kleinstock (dies; first appearance of the latter four)

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