STORY: "Devil in the House" (22 pages)  Jean Grey confronts Sabretooth, recently arrived as a prisoner in the Mansion.

What you need to know:
Sabretooth came to live at the X-Men Mansion in X-Men Unlimited vol 1 #3, where Professor X took him in with a view to treating his mental health problems.  The big idea here is that with Wolverine gone, he's been replaced by his opposite number, locked up in the basement.  Jubilee and Jean Grey, the characters with the closest ties to Wolverine, react appropriately - Jubilee's terrified, and Jean just brushes Sabretooth aside as a blustering irrelevance who isn't nearly powerful enough to cause her any concern.

Hank, Jean, Scott and Ororo meet up to discuss whether Xavier has crossed the line by inviting Sabretooth into the Mansion.  The arguments are the ones you'd expect - the X-Men have taken in criminals before, but Sabretooth is a mentally ill killer.  Cyclops, naturally, takes the liberal standpoint and sides with the Professor.  The others are getting worried about Xavier's judgment recently.  In retrospect, this can be handily attributed to the recent origin of Onslaught in issue #25, although that certainly wasn't the plan at the time.

Sabretooth keeps going on about "the glow", an idea which had been established in several previous storylines.  The idea was that his aide Birdy had used her telepathic powers as some kind of drug, and he had become addicted.  After Birdy's death, Sabretooth had gone into withdrawal and gone off the rails (even more so than usual).

According to Sabretooth, Psylocke is incapable of giving him "the glow" because of her own fractured mental condition.  He doesn't put this theory to the test.  Jean refuses to indulge Sabretooth.

Sabretooth threatens to tell Rogue some anecdote involving Gambit in Paris.  The implication is that she won't like what she hears.  We come back to this in issue #33.

Revanche announces her plans to leave the Mansion and "die as I have lived."

Scott and Jean are now engaged, following Uncanny X-Men #308.

Comments:
The Sabretooth storyline enters the core titles, after being set up in X-Men Unlimited vol 1 #3.  Sabretooth remained as a prisoner in the mansion for some time to come, in a storyline which would ramble its way through this book, Wolverine, X-Force and Uncanny X-Men, before they seemingly abandoned the whole idea and just had him escape.  The early bits, which seriously raised the possibility of Sabretooth reforming, were infinitely superior.

This one's quite good.  It's basically just characters reacting to Sabretooth's presence in the mansion, and establishing the ripples that causes.  Nicieza plays nicely off the idea of Sabretooth as the dark mirror of Wolverine by having Jean and Jubilee as the focus - Jean seems to treat this as an opportunity to finally disavow her attraction to Wolverine in preparation for her upcoming marriage to Scott.

FEATURE CHARACTERS
Professor X (last in X-Men Unlimited vol 1 #3) and Jean Grey (last in Uncanny X-Men #308; both next in Uncanny X-Men #309)
Cyclops, Psylocke (both last in Uncanny X-Men #308) and the Beast (last in X-Men Unlimited vol 1 #3)
Rogue (last in X-Men Unlimited vol 1 #3; next in issue #30)
Storm (next in X-Men: The Wedding Album, then in pages 1-2 of What If? vol 2 #60, then in issue #30)
Gambit (last in X-Men Unlimited vol 1 #3; next in Uncanny X-Men #310, then in issue #30)

SUPPORTING CHARACTERS
The Banshee (between Uncanny X-Men #308 and #310)
Jubilee (last in Uncanny X-Men #308)
Moira MacTaggert (last in Uncanny X-Men #308; next in Excalibur vol 1 #72)
Revanche (next in issue #31)

VILLAIN
Sabretooth (last in X-Men Unlimited vol 2 #3)

Written: 7 October 2004

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