STORY: "Deadly Messengers" (23 pages)  Psylocke enters Gambit's mind without his consent to try and find out what he's hiding, but Gambit blocks her probes. The X-Men fight Sack and Vessel but they escape. Iceman is still having hallucinations of Emma Frost and tries to get help from her.

What you need to know:
As Psylocke herself says, her decision to enter Gambit's mind without consent is a total violation of all the X-Men's ethical standards for telepaths.  So that scene really tells us a lot more about Psylocke (and her hypocrisy) than it does about Gambit.

Gambit blocks Psylocke's probe, which ought to be impossible. This may be a reference back to a dropped plot from Gambit's very early appearances, in which he was shown to have some kind of telepathic power to charm people into trusting him.  Supposedly this power was explicitly referred to in the scripts, but it's been dropped by later writers.  Although Gambit tells Psylocke that he knows what she was doing, he never does anything about it - perhaps he is afraid that the X-Men will want to find out what he was hiding from Psylocke.

Vessel's superhuman powers are revealed. He siphons "psionic and... physical residue" from the recently deceased and turns it into physical strength.  Of course, this doesn't really mean a great deal, but the rather religious Storm interprets it as stealing souls.  Oddly, Wolverine (who isn't supposed to believe in such things) goes for that interpretation as well.

When the X-Men's fight against Gene Nation spills over into a Friends of Humanity rally, Graydon Creed insists on staying (and as a result has to be saved by the Beast).  It's this sort of flagrant idiocy that made Creed such an implausible villain.

In a rather badly drawn sequence, Vessel refers to one of the X-Men as the "first one", but it isn't clear which.  Presumably he's referring to the Beast.  This is a reference to a continuity rewrite that arose out of the Age of Apocalypse story.  At the end of that story, the Beast's evil counterpart from that timeline (yes, I know, I know) came to Earth in the past.  X-Men: Prime then retroactively wrote him into continuity as the founder of the Morlocks.  As several people pointed out, this flatly contradicted previous stories which had told us that Callisto founded the Morlocks, and the Dark Beast's involvement was quietly scaled down again.  Anyhow, that's probably what Vessel's referring to.

More hallucinations of Emma Frost. This is building to something, honestly.

Rogue and Iceman visit the town of Millstone, Arizona, which just happens to be the first town they got to after their car broke down last issue.  By an amazing coincidence, this is a town where Gambit once lived before he was an X-Man - a rather tenuous piece of synchronicity to say the least.  Anyhow, Rogue is still being influenced by the memories she picked up from Gambit and tells waitress Claire DeLuc to "give my regards to Grey Crow."  Claire still has a photo of herself, Grey Crow and Gambit.  This plot is not referred to again for four years, at which point Fabian Nicieza picks it up in Gambit's solo series, revealing in the process that Grey Crow is actually the Marauder Scalphunter.

Iceman phones Emma Frost for help, but she refuses to answer even though she knows it's him. It's not at all clear why.

Comments:
A slightly better issue, since at least this one's got a plot and sticks to it.  Unfortunately, it's a fight with Gene Nation, and the creators seem very muddy as to precisely what the point is.  Gene Nation are supposed to be a terrorist group motivated by politics and revenge, so quite why we get all this stuff about soul stealing is beyond me.  In any event, Gene Nation aren't too interesting at the best of times - there's not much to them beyond the rather obvious "we're bitter and we really hate you" angle.  Fortunately, they don't stick around much longer.  On the bright side, the subplots are far more interesting, with lots of interesting hints in the Rogue and Iceman stuff (albeit that they're not properly dealt with for years) and an excellent opening sequence with Psylocke and Gambit.

Roger Cruz fills in on art again (if you're keeping count, you may notice that because he put all his efforts into the Age of Apocalypse miniseries, supposed regular penciller Joe Madureira has now been absent from the regular title for an awfully long time).  His chameleon tendencies are really showing here, as he shifts gear from bad Jim Lee to a bad Joe Madureira pastiche.  Really, he makes an awful hash of this issue.  A sequence with Sack attempting to take over Cannonball's body is drawn as nothing of the sort, and there's a lot of really badly posed characters to contend with.  It doesn't help that one of the guest inkers (probably Al Milgrom, I'd guess) is using far too much black and makes it all look very dark and muddy.

FEATURE CHARACTERS
The Beast (next in Wolverine vol 2 #92, then in DC vs Marvel #1-2, then behind the scenes in DC vs Marvel #3-4, then in X-Men '95, then in Avengers: The Crossing)
Gambit (next in Wolverine/Gambit: Victims #1-4, then in DC vs Marvel #1-2, then behind the scenes in DC vs Marvel #3-4; also in photograph following the flashback in Gambit vol 1 #3 and preceding the flashback in issue #350)
Iceman (next behind the scenes in DC vs Marvel #1, then in DC vs Marvel #2, then behind the scenes in DC vs Marvel #3-4)
Psylocke (next in DC vs Marvel #1, then behind the scenes in DC vs Marvel #2-4, then in flashback in the second story in X-Men '95)
Storm (next in DC vs Marvel #1-4)
Wolverine (next in Wolverine vol 2 #92, then in Wolverine/Gambit: Victims #1-4, then in Incredible Hulk vol 2 #434, then in DC vs Marvel #1-4)
Cannonball II and Rogue

SUPPORTING CHARACTERS
Charlotte Jones (next in X-Force vol 1 #54)

VILLAINS
Graydon Creed (next in flashback in Machine Man/Bastion '98)
The Friends of Humanity (next in X-Factor vol 1 #119)
Gene Nation: Sack and Vessel

GUEST APPEARANCES
Emma Frost (between Generation X #9 and Wolverine vol 2 #94)
Grey Crow (later Scalphunter, as revealed in Gambit vol 3 #7; in a photo which is his chronologically earliest appearance, preceding his behind the scenes appearance in issue #193)

OTHER CHARACTERS
Claire DeLuc (a waitress; first appearance; next in Gambit vol 3 #8)

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