STORY: "Blackbirds" (23 pages)  Rogue has dreams in which she is compelled to absorb people's minds against their will. When Wolverine is found unconscious on the grounds, the X-Men believe Rogue has turned on them, and she flees in tears, only for the team to find that Sauron was responsible.

What you need to know:
Rogue's dreams are apparently triggered by stress over the loss of Gambit in the Antarctic, which is attributed here to her acting under the influence of Gambit's own personality.

In an initial dream scene, Rogue imagines absorbing Wolverine's mind and learning that he has a son.  This is probably just a dream, although it's not entirely impossible that it was intended as a reference to the child he fathered in the long-forgotten one-shot Wolverine: The Jungle Adventure.

Rogue tries to persuade Joseph to let her absorb his memories in order to try and find out his history.  Joseph refuses, on the basis that this is just an ulterior motive to give her the excuse to use her powers.  He's probably right.

Joseph has a fit for unexplained reasons, though he shouts that "He is near."  This is presumably a reference to Sauron, but quite why Sauron's presence would cause Joseph to have a fit is unclear.

A bird motif keeps appearing throughout the artwork, continuing the running theme of the Seagle run.

Jubilee and Iceman are visiting the mansion, for no particular reason.

Department of Education inspector Margaret Stone comes to see the X-Men's school and is naturally appalled by the conditions.  This subplot rears its head again in issue #355 before being completely forgotten about.

The X-Men find their abandoned Blackbird in a pond in the grounds. Of course they do.

Subplot 1: Psylocke tries to persuade Archangel to leave the X-Men, in a rather melodramatic manner which he obviously finds off-putting.  This is yet another one for the "aborted Kelly/Seagle plots" file.

Subplot 2: We get to briefly see Bishop and Deathbird on their spacecraft, the first time we've seen them since the other X-Men made it back to Earth.  Deathbird has got Bishop trussed up in some kind of medical equipment, is making protestations of love to him, and is claiming that they're going to go back and reclaim her empire together.

Subplot 3: Scott and Jean arrive at their new home in Alaska to find that it's completely covered in snow.  Jean uses her powers to clear the snow, leaving a cleared area in the shape of the Phoenix emblem.  This is foreshadowing for yet another aborted plot.

Comments:
Even with a Rogue storyline kicking off, there's still a hell of a lot of this issue devoted to slowly advancing the subplots.  After Kelly and Seagle were bounced from the titles, X-Men fandom retroactively decided that they were slighted geniuses and that their run had been magnificent.  That's not my recollection of the reaction at around this period, when people were mainly just grumbling about the slow pace.

There's some pretty good character material for Rogue here, but other than that it's difficult to view most of this period as representing anything more than fragments of stories we never got to see.  The ideas are there, but they never went anywhere before Marvel took fright and went back to playing it ultra-safe for another few years.  On that point, at least, the conventional wisdom is right.

Chris Bachalo's real debut as the regular artist comes in this issue, and it's immediately obvious in the presence of the recurring bird motifs throughout the artwork.  Nonetheless, he starts fairly slowly, with pretty conventional art here for the most part.  A drastic change in the appearance of Cannonball leaps out at you, as Bachalo reverts to the original character design which hadn't been used in a decade, but for the most part this is conservative material by Bachalo's standards.

FEATURE CHARACTERS
Storm, Joseph (both last in X-Men vol 2 #72), Cannonball (last in X-Force #76), Iceman (last in X-Men vol 2 #71), Wolverine (last in Maverick #4) and Rogue (the latter two both also in flashback in issue #354 between pages of this story)
Psylocke (last in Iron Man vol 3 #1; next in X-Men vol 2 #73, then in Wolverine vol 2 #125-126, then in X-Men vol 2 #77-78, where she leaves the X-Men)

GUEST STAR
Jubilee (last in Generation X #40)

SUPPORTING CHARACTERS
Cyclops and Phoenix III (both next in Cable '98)
Maggott and Marrow (both last in X-Men vol 2 #72)
Bishop (last in issue #348)
Archangel (between Iron Man vol 3 #1 and X-Men vol 2 #73)

VILLAINS
Sauron (last in flashback in issue #354)
Deathbird (last in issue #348)
Dr Aubrey Agee (first appearance; last in flashback in issue #359; next in issue #355)

OTHER CHARACTER
Margaret Stone (a school inspector; first appearance; next in issue #355)

Last updated: 4 March 2006

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