STORY: "Big Night" (22 pages)  Gambit, the Beast, Rogue, Joseph and Trish Tilby have been scattered around an alien landscape which is actually an illusion created by the supervillain Landscape.  (No, really.)  Gambit is captured by bounty hunters Spat and Grovel, whom he has betrayed in the past. Joseph is approached by a Nanny robot.

What you need to know:
We see Grovel in full for the first time, and this time he's a giant reptile rather than a horse.  Oh, and the landscape which was barren and empty last issue is now a jungle.  And people wonder why nobody cared about this storyline.

We also see for the first time Grovel's partner Spat.  Spat and Grovel were former allies of Gambit, but he apparently somehow betrayed them in Madagascar, leading to Spat taking a shot that was meant for Gambit, and aging in reverse from then on.  God alone knows what the point of all this was meant to be.  I understand this plot thread was later picked up on in the Gambit cybercomic, but I could never find the damn thing on Marvel's website.  Anybody reading this who knows the plot, mail me.

Anyhow, there's a price on Gambit's head.  Spat and Grovel have been sent to capture him.  According to Gambit, "It doesn't take a genius to know why you've been hired."  Naturally, this is never adequately explained.  Some of the dialogue here may suggest that Spat and Grovel were aware of Gambit's involvement in the Morlock Massacre (as finally confirmed in issue #350).

The Beast promptly passes out on arriving on Earth, for no apparent reason.  Maybe he just landed awkwardly.

Although none of the characters comment on it (because they aren't together to realise), Bishop doesn't arrive on Earth with the other X-Men.  This is because he's still in outer space with Deathbird, as revealed in a few issues time.

The Nanny robot that approaches Joseph in this story is probably most recognisable to today's readers as the robot aide that looked after Magneto and Rogue's baby in the Age of Apocalypse stories, but it's actually the robot that Magneto used to hold the X-Men prisoner way back in issues #112-113.  That robot was seemingly destroyed in Magneto's Antarctic base, which of course is where this story is taking place.  So maybe Lobdell was thinking some of this stuff through after all.

Marrow's hero turn continues, as Callisto convinces her to go out and help the X-Men against Operation: Zero Tolerance (a plot thread picked up in X-Men vol 2 #67).  However, Marrow refuses to promise not to use lethal force.

A brief flashback establishes that as a small girl (remember, her origin story involves several years in another dimension with accelerated time), Marrow saw Archangel nailed to the tunnel walls during the Morlock Massacre and thought that he was beautiful.  This is later picked up by Joe Kelly in several of his X-Men issues.

Maggott continues tracing Magneto, visiting the town of Pine Bluff, North Carolina.  That's where Joseph and Rogue fought Humanity's Last Stand in X-Men Unlimited #11.  He nearly gets lynched, but beats off the locals with his giant maggotts.  You know, you can see why everybody said he was a stupid idea, can't you?

Comments:
Yes, well. Lobdell's run is drawing to a close, and this is a bizarre mix of ideas adding up to what's generally a mess.  Presumably there was a story to Spat and Grovel, but Lobdell never got around to doing it, and they never really become particularly interesting characters.  Landscape, a character contrived purely for plot purposes who doesn't even appear in subsequent parts of this storyline, is another strange idea sitting around without going anywhere.  On the other hand, Callisto and Marrow's scene is pretty good at setting up Marrow's implausible reformation as a hero, and the final sequence with the Nanny robot turning up out of the blue is a nice scene for longtime readers who get the reference.

Joe Madureira seems to be on autopilot this issue, with some really weak pages as the issue goes on.  Callisto and Marrow's scene survives his uninspired work, but the art is notably poor, to the point where the writers had to resort to captions to tell us that Marrow had left the room.  The Maggott sequence is clunky and seems rushed, and Landscape's costume, a blue-green thing covered in multicoloured splotches of paint, is the single ugliest thing you've ever seen.

This is a period of the title for completists only. Things pick up in a bit, honest.

FEATURE CHARACTERS
The Beast, Joseph, Rogue (all last in issue #345) and Gambit
The Angel (in flashback ...)

SUPPORTING CHARACTERS
Trish Tilby (last in issue #347)
Marrow (in flashback which is her chronologically earliest appearance preceding the flashback in the second story in X-Men Unlimited #18)
Maggott, Eeny and Meany (all last in issue #345)

VILLAINS
Grovel
Spat (real name unrevealed; first appearance; from behind the scenes in the previous issue)
Landscape (Brett --; surname unrevealed; first appearance; from behind the scenes in the previous issue)
Magneto (behind the scenes)

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