STORY: "The Story Of The Year!" (23 pages)   As Operation: Zero Tolerance spreads, J Jonah Jameson refuses to help Bastion. Meanwhile, Spider-Man prevents Callisto and Marrow from assassinating government agent Henry Gyrich, although Callisto is injured in the fight.

What you need to know:
This is Uncanny X-Men's token contribution to the Operation: Zero Tolerance crossover, which was busily dragging down the quality of all the other X-books at this point.  It has virtually nothing to do with the title's ongoing plotlines and in fact, the only X-Man to appear is Gambit in a one-page subplot.  But hell, let's pretend this issue matters and go through the motions.

Callisto and Marrow try to murder Henry Peter Gyrich in protest at his association with Operation: Zero Tolerance.  This follows up on Cable #42, which set up their new status as terrorists.  Lobdell seems to be suggesting, however, that Callisto is actually trying to work Marrow through her mental problems in some way.  Seems a bit harsh on poor old Gyrich, doesn't it?

Gyrich's bodyguards, Boyd and Mathers, are revealed to be Prime Sentinels (brainwashed cyborgs, basically).  They're also the bodyguards who were on duty when Graydon Creed was assassinated, which is a fairly obvious hint as to who killed Creed.

Gambit is shown drinking water from a pool in a wasteland described simply as "somewhere far away."  He is met by a character resembling a horse with a mohekan, pretty obviously intended as a Kymellian (the alien race in Power Pack's origin). However, because the creators are making this stuff up as they go along, next issue the horse will be identified as Grovel - a character who looks not the slightest bit similar - and the location will later be given as a frozen wasteland in Antarctica. (So why isn't the pool frozen over?)

Grovel makes his debut here. Do you really care?

Bastion tries to get J Jonah Jameson on side by offering him information stolen from the X-Men's computers (having already captured the mansion in another part of the crossover).  Jameson refuses, on the grounds that he doesn't hate mutants and the real story is Bastion himself.  A nice sequence, giving Jameson the positive spin he only really gets outside the Spider-Man books.

The price rises by four cents.  Curse that inflation.

Comments:
It's an annoying detour from the plot, but it could be worse.  While Bastion is still a one-dimensional villain, Lobdell does manage to get some personality into Jameson, Gyrich, Marrow and Callisto. The guest starring Spider-Man is a character well suited to Joe Madureira's style, and if nothing else, it's reasonably entertaining. At this point the Operation: Zero Tolerance crossover was looking as if it might actually be okay (it later fizzled out horribly), and this issue, with its hints of political manouevring that were never properly followed up, is a big part of that.  At the end of the day, though, OZT collapsed at the end with a hopeless ending, and it's difficult to look back very fondly on any of the individual issues.

Effective from this issue, Marrow is suddenly pretty.  This is a redesign of the character carried out by Joe Madureira, presumably with a view to the fact that it had been decided by this point to put her on the team after Operation: Zero Tolerance.  And while the message of the book is supposed to be tolerance, inclusiveness and so forth, we couldn't have ugly people on the team, now could we?  Marrow later gets even more prettified under Alan Davis's plotting, but the change is nowhere near as jarring as this one.

Incidentally, it should probably be noted that Scott Lobdell apparently strenuously objected to the idea of putting Marrow on the team, what with her being a murderous lunatic.  That's why the storyline is structured to keep Marrow away from characters who knew about all that.  The idea was to deal with it later, but of course Lobdell wasn't around to do that.

FEATURE CHARACTER
Gambit

GUEST STARS
Spider-Man I (between Marvel Valentine Special #1 and Spider-Man Team-Up #6)
J Jonah Jameson (between Sensational Spider-Man #19 and Spider-Man Team-Up #7)

VILLAINS
Bastion and Operation: Zero Tolerance (all between X-Man #30 and X-Men vol 2 #66)
Henry Peter Gyrich (last in issue #344; next in X-Men vol 2 #65)
Agent Boyd and Agent Mathers (both between X-Factor #130 and X-Men vol 2 #67)
Grovel (real name unrevealed; first appearance)
Spat and Landscape (both behind the scenes; chronologically earliest appearance for both)
Magneto (behind the scenes; last in flashback in Gambit '99)

GUEST APPEARANCES
Robbie Robertson (last in Spider-Man: Dead Man's Hand; next in Spider-Man Team-Up #7)
Ben Urich (between Punisher vol 3 #17 and Amazing Spider-Man #423)

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