STORY: "A Nation Rising" (22 pages)  Rogue and Iceman's road trip goes awry when their car breaks down in the middle of nowhere. Rogue insists on sticking to their "no powers" rule. Meanwhile, Gambit regains consciousness. Storm, Wolverine and Cannonball meet with Charlotte Jones to investigate the nightclub killings and get attacked by two members of Gene Nation.

What you need to know:
Well, principally, Gambit wakes up after a three week coma.  For the first time, Psylocke senses "danger" before he comes into the room, something which is followed up in the next issue. Presumably what she's picking up on is Gambit's realisation that if Rogue has absorbed his memories (by using her powers on him), she must know the secret he's been keeping from the X-Men, as revealed in issue #350.

Sabretooth is feeling a bit better after Wolverine impaled his head. Now he's running around the grounds like a particularly excitable dog.  The narration suggests that this is genuine (and logically the telepaths ought to be able to check, despite the bemusing suggestion of some other titles that Sabretooth is faking it).

In a subplot scene, the Beast visits Trish Tilby to take her to task about revealing the existence of the Legacy Virus (in the X-Men: Prime one-shot).  Quite rightly, Trish tells him it's a major health issue and the X-Men have got a damned cheek trying to hush it up.
Noah DuBois shows up again, this time monitoring the Friends of Humanity. Again, it's never clear why.

According to Noah, the Friends of Humanity are riding a groundswell of popular approval after the Gene Nation killings in the previous issue.  Of course, this parallels the Days of Future Past storyline, in which a successful attack by a pro-mutant terrorist group was one of the key events leading to a rather unpleasant alternate future.

Iceman hallucinates seeing Emma Frost once again.

We're told that there's no obvious cause of death for any of the people found at the disco in the previous issue.  They just "stopped."  Having said that, the doctor who tells us this is a member of Gene Nation in disguise, so it can perhaps be taken with a pinch of salt.  This certainly doesn't seem like what the characters were reacting to in the previous issue, though.  The art in that story kept the corpses off panel for the most part, but everyone seemed to think it was one of the worst things they'd ever seen, not just thirty-odd people who'd keeled over and died.  On the other hand, Charlotte Jones accepts this issue's account without question, and she was there.

And finally, two members of Gene Nation - Sack and Vessel - make their debuts in this issue.  Sack has the power to take over other people's bodies, which usually kills them in the process.  If he's telling the truth about the deaths in the previous issue, then possibly this is how he did it.

Comments:
There's a lot going on in this issue, but it's all far too disjointed to add up to a satisfying story.  It just kind of jumps around various ongoing subplots, nudges them on a bit, and then moves to the next one.

A particular disappointment is Cannonball's first appearance as a member of the X-Men.  If you're wondering where he came from all of a sudden, the answer is X-Force #44 - at around this time, the X-books were so ridiculously interlinked that major plot developments quite often happened in completely the wrong title. Unfortunately, Cannonball's depiction here as a slightly bumbling, nervous kid who can't even take Sabretooth for a walk was to set the tone for things to come.  The creators took an awful lot of flak on this point from readers who had watched the character develop into an effective and competent team leader in X-Force over the previous three years and could hardly believe their eyes when they saw him being used as comic relief in the X-Men books.  The creators tended to argue that Sam was overawed by the X-Men, but even that doesn't fit with earlier stories.  Cannonball's involvement in the team is, all told, a dreadful mistake, and one that the creators of X-Force eventually had to rectify when the character was returned to them.

And yes, that is Ultimates penciller Bryan Hitch doing the fill-in artwork on this issue.  This is back in the period when everyone said he was an Alan David clone, although he was looking a bit more dynamic even then.

FEATURE CHARACTERS
Archangel (last in Wolverine vol 2 #91; next in DC vs Marvel #1-2, then behind the scenes in DC vs Marvel #3-4, then in X-Men '95, then in issue #325)
The Beast, Cannonball II and Storm (all last in X-Force vol 1 #45 (Storm behind the scenes))
Gambit (last behind the scenes in X-Men vol 2 #42)
Iceman and Rogue (both last in X-Men vol 2 #42)
Psylocke and Wolverine (both last in Generation X #6 (Psylocke behind the scenes))

SUPPORTING CHARACTERS
Charlotte Jones (last behind the scenes in X-Men vol 2 #42)
Trish Tilby (last in Cable #22; next in Sabretooth (first one-shot)

VILLAINS
Graydon Creed and the Friends of Humanity (all last in X-Force #40)
Gene Nation: Sack and Vessel (real names unrevealed; first appearance for both)

OTHER CHARACTERS
Noah Dubois (next in Wolverine vol 2 #92)
Dr Chen (full name unrevealed; first and only appearance; deceased; used as a host body by Sack)

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