STORY: "The Hunt for Xavier!, part three: When You're Unwanted" (22 pages)  In San Francisco, the X-Men find the real Professor Xavier taking refuge from Cerebro with the new Brotherhood of Mutants.

What you need to know:
Xavier is reunited with the X-Men, which is obviously the important thing.  He doesn't have his telepathy in this issue - that's been missing ever since Onslaught, remember.  He'll get that back at the end of this storyline, in X-Men vol 2 #84.  Told you it was a reset-button affair.

Xavier is in Alcatraz, taking refuge with the new Brotherhood of Mutants - Blob, Mimic, Post and Toad.  It's the first time we've seen this particular Brotherhood and we're never really told why they formed.  The roster kind of stumbles around being directionless in a few further stories - when you're down to fighting Machine Man, you know your villain stock is in serious decline.  Regardless, the closest we get to a motivation is the Mimic's explanation that "the coming holocaust of mutants our leader warned us about more than warrants radical action."  But as Xavier makes clear next issue, the Brotherhood already knew about Cerebro before they broke Xavier out of jail - that was why they wanted him.  So how did the Brotherhood know about Cerebro's plan, and how did they know where Xavier was?  It's a massive great plot hole, basically.

Why is Cerebro hunting down Xavier and Nina?  Well, the answer to that is given over in X-Men vol 2 #83.  He needs Xavier to "make him whole" (whatever that means), and he needs Nina to make Xavier "whole" (restore his telepathy, in other words).  And then he'll be able to carry out his grand scheme.  X-Men vol 2 #84 explains that the grand scheme is to "catalogue" the entire planet - putting all the humans and mutants in suspended animation - and thereby achieve world peace.

The Toad is insane; this picks up on his condition when we last saw him in Generation X.

The X-Men take the opportunity to pop in and visit Black Crane, a mystic who's (you guessed it) an old, previously unseen friend of Wolverine's.  This is Black Crane's first appearance and he turns up once again in Deadpool #27.  Like Wolverine, Black Crane is apparently much older than he seems - he says that the last time he and Wolverine met was the "founding of the People's Republic [of China]".  That was on 1 October 1949, if you're wondering.

Conveniently, the X-Men's jet has now acquired a stealth mode.

The Blob now talks in one of those weird fonts that's supposed to suggest an odd voice.  Maybe he's got a sore throat.

In a subplot, Cerebro breaks into Area 52 (a joke riff on Area 51) to steal Bastion's nanotech.  He needs them for his Big Plan over in X-Men.

The price in Canada rises by 19 Canadian cents.  Curse those exchange rates.

Everyone in this issue does appear in the next chapter, X-Men vol 2 #83, but it's just a one page cameo.  Nothing of significance happens.

Comments:
This is Chris Bachalo's penultimate issue as regular artist, and he seems to be having fun with this issue, if nothing else. 

Mind you, there's a couple of really odd choices, where you have to wonder if he's joking - most artists, asked to produce an establishing shot of San Francisco, would not give you the X-Men standing in front of three windmills.  The script seems equally bemused.  ("Wolverine?  Did you accidentally fly us to Holland?")  They're meant to be the Golden Gate Park Windmills, which were constructed in the first decade of the 20th century to irrigate the park.  But there's actually only two of them.  Anyhow, there's a restoration project, so click the link above if you'd like to support the windmills.

Where was I?  Oh yes, the story.  This is generic superhero stuff, really - everyone runs around, two groups who are on the same side have a misunderstanding and fight, and then they all unite against Cerebrite Beta (Cerebro's robot agent) when it turns up.  It's quite a nice twist to have Xavier's team as a bunch of established third-tier villains, so that the misunderstanding makes sense.  However, like the rest of this storyline, this is efficient but uninspiring.

FEATURE CHARACTERS
Marrow, Nightcrawler, Shadowcat and Wolverine (all next in X-Men vol 2 #83)

SUPPORTING CHARACTERS
Professor X (next in X-Men vol 2 #83)

VILLAINS
Cerebrite Beta (next in X-Men vol 2 #83)
Cerebro (between pages 8 and 9 of X-Men vol 2 #83)
The Brotherhood of Mutants: The Blob (last in Maverick #5), Mimic (last in Excalibur #125), Post (last in Avengers vol 1 #402) and the Toad (all next in X-Men vol 2 #83)

OTHER CHARACTERS
Black Crane (real name unrevealed; first appearance; next in Deadpool #27)
Maria Muradyan (first and only appearance)
Area 52 guards

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