STORY: "Hours and Minutes" (23 pages)  Cecilia Reyes tries to return to her hospital job, but finds that everyone hates her now that they know she's a mutant.  When she inadvertently lets Pyro escape the hospital, she gets fired and returns to the X-Men.

What you need to know:
Well, the key point is that Cecilia fails to return to her normal life and ends up stuck with the X-Men (thought she doesn't officially join the team for a little while yet).  Obviously.

Pyro turns up in the hospital, with his powers out of control due to the Legacy Virus, and having been shot in the stomach.  He claims he was robbing a bank to pay for a scientist who said he could take away mutant genes.  That's the first reference to Dr Aubrey Agee, the focus of a later Seagle storyline.  Anyhow, being a villain, Pyro betrays Cecilia and escapes, torpedoing her chances of keeping her job.

Daredevil puts in a guest appearance to give Cecilia a pep talk. Oddly enough, this is the first time Daredevil's appeared in costume in Uncanny X-Men (though he appeared way back in the sixties as Matt Murdock).  His meeting with Cecilia also appears briefly in Daredevil #371, though it'd be stretching a point to call this a crossover.  At this point, Daredevil was written by Joe Kelly, who was also writing X-Men vol 2.

Scott and Jean take a leave of absence from the team and are seen on a plane to Anchorage, which is the closest thing there is to a Summers family home.  (Scott's paternal grandparents live there, and he lived there with Madelyne Pryor.)  The chronology of this seems decidedly screwy, since Cecilia says it's only been a few days since Operation: Zero Tolerance ended - how did Scott and Jean get a furnished home in Anchorage so quickly?

There's an evil murderous thingie in a box on board the aircraft, which Jean detects telepathically.  That's a set-up for next issue.

The issue also features the first appearance of Staci and Chris Miller, who are Scott and Jean's neighbours in Anchorage.

Sauron arrives from the Savage Land in a crate belonging to Kevin Plunder.  Presumably he stowed away.  Sauron was meant to be dead at this point, but his return is explained (sort of) in a flashback in issue #354.  For those who don't know, Kevin Plunder is Ka-Zar, and the "hot redheaded babe" who picked up one of the earlier shipments is presumably his wife Shanna.  At this point, the Plunders were moving to New York in preparation for a short-lived Ka-Zar series.

Comments:
This is technically the first solo issue of the Steven Seagle run, but at the time Seagle said that he regarded issue #353 as the real beginning of his run.  Issues #351-352 are fill-in stories with fill-in artists, which advance the plot a little, but are basically just getting some of the set-up out of the way.

This is a much-needed character piece for Cecilia Reyes, who spent most of Operation: Zero Tolerance running around in sister title X-Men, whining about how upset she was about the whole thing.  She desperately needed a chance to show some other personality traits, and this issue gives her that opportunity.  After the hopeless excess of OZT, it's a refreshing change to see Seagle taking a much more down-to-earth approach to the mutant prejudice concept.  Despite the fact that Cecilia isn't accepted back at her job, Seagle at least does include some sympathetic co-workers, which is a start.

Having said that, it's a fairly obvious story designed to give Cecilia a rationale to remain with the X-Men when she didn't really have one, and it's also hampered by highly inappropriate art from Ed Benes.  Although he's a competent enough storyteller, Benes has obviously swallowed wholesale the school of thought that says female characters should always be drawn with an arched back to enhance their sex appeal.  This is all very well if you're drawing T&A material (if you must), but wholly inappropriate for a downbeat character piece like this one.

FEATURE CHARACTERS
Storm (last in X-Men vol 2 #71; appears between pages in X-Men  vol 2 #71; next in X-Men vol 2 #72, then in issue #353)
Wolverine (last in X-Men vol 2 #71)
Cecilia Reyes (joins the X-Men; last in X-Men vol 2 #71; appears between pages in X-Men vol 2 #71; appears between pages in Daredevil vol 1 #371; next in X-Men vol 2 #72-75, then in Excalibur vol 1 #121, then in X-Men vol 2 #76-78, then in Uncanny X-Men / Fantastic Four '98)

SUPPORTING CHARACTERS
Cyclops and Phoenix III (both last in flashback in issue #376)
Staci Murphy Miller and Chris Miller (first appearance for both)

VILLAINS
Pyro (last in issue #338; next in Daredevil vol 2 #355)
Sauron (between flashbacks in issue #354)

GUEST APPEARANCE
Daredevil (between Amazing Spider-Man #429 and Daredevil vol 1 #371)

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