STORY: "The Sky Is Falling" (22 pages)  In Ptarmigan Creek, Alaska, the founding X-Men defeat a mysterious flock of crows, but none of them are quite sure how they managed it.

What you need to know:
For what it's worth, the various possible reasons given for the crows are:- supernatural intervention from Chulyen the Native American Crow God; a mechanical crow from an unknown source, which Jean destroys; a chemical leak poisoning the birds' water source and causing "accute environmental poisoning evidencing as manic psychosis in the birds" (sic); and the X-Men's own arrival in town.

Scott and Jean's neighbour Melissa learns who they really are, which is probably a set-up for a plot that went nowhere.

A subplot scene shows Dr Agee working on a cure for Rogue, and shows us his deformed sister Rebecca for the first time - the point being that Agee unfathomably thinks he's cured Rebecca and is revealed as a lunatic.  Oddly, this contradicts issue #359, where Agee is well aware that he failed to cure his sister.

Bishop reveals that he knows Deathbird was "feigning his paralysis" in order to hold on to her, but persuades her to release him so that he can stop their craft crashing into a sun.  (Because, of course, Bishop knows so much more about flying Shi'ar spacecraft than Deathbird.)  He claims to love her, which reads like a lie

Comments:
This is a thoroughly weird story.  I can only assume it was another set-up for a future plot, because it makes absolutely no sense on its own.  There's this bunch of crows, a whole load of competing explanations for why, and they all get beaten at once, so nothing is revealed.

Regular readers may be beginning to see why it's taken me so long to update this section of the site - with hindsight, this issue is either an unfathomable set-up for a plot that never happened, or an utterly cryptic mess.  Once again, it's hard to think of any reason to hunt this issue down unless you're an absolute completist.

FEATURE CHARACTERS
The Beast and Iceman

SUPPORTING CHARACTERS
Cyclops (next in X-Factor #149)
Phoenix III and Archangel
Chris Miller and Melissa Murphy (no further appearances for either)
Bishop (last in issue #354)

VILLAINS
Moon Wolf (no further appearances)
Aubrey Agee (next in issue #359)
Deathbird (last in issue #357)

OTHER CHARACTERS
Connie (no further appearances)
Rebecca Agee (first appearance; last in flashback in issue #359; next behind the scenes in issue #359)

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