STORY: "Smoke and Mirrors" (22 pages)  A downtime issue following various X-Men in brief scenes at the Mansion.  Notably, Gambit confronts Sabretooth.

What you need to know:
The Mansion is officially renamed the Xavier Institute for Higher Learning.  This was another consequence of the launch of Generation X, who moved into the former Massachusetts Academy and renamed it Professor Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters.  You'd have thought somebody would have noticed that nobody at the Xavier Institute was actually undertaking any higher learning, but apparently not.

Rogue and Iceman get a scene together where they're both acting insecure.  Presumably this was intended to set up for Rogue and Iceman's road trip after the Age of Apocalypse storyline, over in Uncanny X-Men.

Psylocke finally gets around to apologising to Phoenix for flirting with Cyclops.  They smooth things over, and the whole storyline is finally laid to rest.

Sabretooth and Gambit have a brief fight, the upshot being that Gambit decides to take the moral high ground and not kill Sabretooth.  Sabretooth drops the first hints of Gambit having a connection with Mr Sinister.  Ultimately this leads to the revelation that Gambit was involved peripherally in the Morlock Massacre.

Legion wakes from a coma after being visited in a dream by the ghost of Destiny.  Or possibly he's just dreaming about her - but since Destiny and Legion's ghosts turned up together in Fantastic Four several years down the line, I'm assuming that it's meant to be a genuine appearance by her ghost.  Legion, of course, killed Destiny years earlier in Uncanny X-Men.  The dream has a theme of crystal statues, which plays off some scenes in Uncanny where Destiny had similar visions.

If you care about such things, Psylocke has cut her hair short.

And now, a trip to the Well of Lost Plots, as a string of storylines are set up and promptly ignored.  First, the Beast discovers that the Legacy Virus has mutated into three strains.  This apparently somehow means that the Legacy Virus now has the potential to kill humans.  (Which is baffling, because Legacy was supposed to work by driving superhuman powers out of control.  How is that going to kill humans?)  Anyhow, none of this goes anywhere.

X-Treme, a character created by Nicieza over in X-Force, turns up in a subplot, looking for "Milbury" - presumably Nathan Milbury, a cover identity for Mr Sinister.  He visits Carter Ryking from issues #12-13 in jail, apparently because Ryking's father "briefly knew" Milbury "a long, long time ago."  Carter points X-Treme towards Xavier, and the whole storyline is promptly forgotten about.

Professor X considers enlisting minor supervillain Commcast to try and retrieve the data destroyed when the Phalanx took over the Mansion.  Nothing comes of it.

Comments:
Issues #38-39 are a bit of a water-treading exercise.  Just to give you an idea of how this fits in, let's look at the issues either side.  Issue #35: pre-crossover time-killer.  Issues #36-37: crossover not featuring the regular cast.  Issues #40-41: crossover.  Next four months: crossover.  And after that, there's a token number of Fabian Nicieza issues before he leaves.  So basically, we've got two issues here, in which Nicieza can't do much, but tries to set up some future stories, only to leave the book before he can do anything with them. 

This is the sort of issue they don't do any more - a sort of bridging issue between storylines where a whole load of storylines are juggled.  In retrospect, it reads oddly, because a lot of these stories went nowhere.  But there's some good character moments in here, and enough of the storylines proceeded to stop it being completely hobbled.

FEATURE CHARACTERS
Professor X (last behind the scenes in X-Factor vol 1 #108; next in X-Force vol 1 #40, then in Uncanny X-Men #319-320, then in issue #40)
Cyclops (last in Uncanny X-Men #318) and Phoenix III (last in X-Men Unlimited vol 1 #7)
The Beast (last in Bishop #4; next in X-Force vol 1 #40, then in Uncanny X-Men #319, then in the second story in Force Works #10)
Bishop (last in Excalibur vol 1 #83; next in Uncanny X-Men #320, then behind the scenes in Marvel Holiday Special 1994, then in issue #40)
Gambit (last in Bishop #4; next in Rogue vol 1 #1-4, then behind the scenes in Marvel Holiday Special 1994, then in issue #40)
Iceman (last in Secret Defenders #19; next in Uncanny X-Men #319, then in Marvel Holiday Special 1994, then in Uncanny X-Men #320, then in issue #40)
Psylocke (last in Bishop #4; next in Uncanny X-Men #319-320, then in issue #40)
Rogue (last in X-Factor vol 1 #108; next in Uncanny X-Men #319, then in Rogue vol 1 #1-4, then in Marvel Holiday Special 1994, then in issue #40)

SUPPORTING CHARACTERS
Carter Ryking (last in issue #13; next in Gambit vol 3 #4)
Destiny II (as a ghost; last in X-Men Forever #2)

VILLAINS
Sabretooth (next in Wolverine vol 2 #89)
Legion (last in X-Force vol 1 #39; next in X-Factor vol 1 #108)

GUEST APPEARANCE
X-Treme (last in X-Force vol 1 #30)

Written: 21 November 2004

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