STORY: "The Crawl" (23 pages)  Psylocke and Archangel attack Maggott in New York because she senses a "darkness inside him."  Meanwhile, the X-Men escape capture in Antarctica, and Gambit turns himself over to Spat and Grovel.

What you need to know:
Maggott stands on the roof of the World Trade Center and is able to mentally sense events that have taken there before (specifically, Magneto showing Rogue his machine that suppresses her powers in issue #341).  This is the first and last time that Maggott does this or anything even vaguely resembling it.

According to Maggott, until recently his life was "little more than indentured servitude."  Subsequent stories establish him as a black South African, which is reasonably consistent with that comment, although I suspect Lobdell had something more specific in mind.

According to Maggott, his two slugs have been tracking Magneto (or more accurately, Joseph).  Quite how they've got this ability is entirely unclear since they don't seem to be able to do it with anyone else.

Psylocke attacks Maggott on sight for no other reason than that she "senses a great darkness within" him.  She doesn't elaborate on what that means, although she appears to think he's going to hurt the X-Men.

Maggott's mental link with his slugs somehow prevents Psylocke's psychic knife from working on him.  More or less consistent with later stories.

Grovel identifies his people as the Klyruvians, presumably an alien race of some sort.  He says he has worked with Gambit in the past.

Rogue again has flashes of Gambit in the Morlock Massacre, kept just about vague enough to hold the revelation until next issue. Oddly, Spat refers to there being eight Marauders present.  There were actually nine (Sabretooth, Scalphunter, Vertigo, Arclight, Riptide, Scrambler, Prism, Blockbuster and Harpoon).

Comments:
And here ends the Scott Lobdell era, issues #289 to #349.  Lobdell has declined to comment publicly on the reasons for his departure, although the general tone in which he does so suggests that it was acrimonious.  He actually has some involvement in issue #350, but it doesn't really count, for reasons I'll get onto shortly.

This issue is meant to be Maggott's big introduction, leading up to his joining the team in a few issues, but the problem is that Lobdell really hasn't thought it through.  According to Joe Kelly, when he took over writing the character, virtually nothing had been worked out about him.  Unfortunately, then, Lobdell gets to end his run with a story that exemplifies some of the worst aspects of his writing - the tendency to shove vague hints out there and hope that a plot will emerge in due course.  Given how little of this issue makes any sense in retrospect, it's a hard one to recommend.

Of some interest is that this is the first appearance on the title of Chris Bachalo, who takes over as the regular penciller in issue #353.  For my money, Bachalo's best work was on Shade the Changing Man several years before this, but he does a pretty good job on this issue, combining the highly odd quirks of his personal style with a relatively conventional storytelling sensibility with effective results.

FEATURE CHARACTERS
Archangel, the Beast, Gambit, Joseph, Psylocke and Rogue

SUPPORTING CHARACTERS
Trish Tilby, Maggott, Meany and Eeny

VILLAIN
Magneto (last behind the scenes in issue #348)
Spat, Grovel and Landscape (behind the scenes)

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