STORY: "The Resurrection and the Flesh" (22 pages)  Matsuo Tsurayaba and Fenris revive Omega Red, hoping to use him to win the Upstarts' competition.  Omega Red and the Hand kidnap several X-Men, including Wolverine.

What you need to know:
It's the debut of Omega Red, who's woken by the Hand after thirty years in confinement.  We saw them picking him There's a lot of hint-dropping in this issue, but it's probably easier just to explain the plot here, since everything gets revealed in drips over the next few months.

Omega Red - Arkady Russovitch - was a Russian mutant with a "death factor".  In practice, that apparently means he releases spores which let him absorb people's life force.  It's called a "death factor" to try and make him a kind of loose analogue to Wolverine.

Arkady was a subject of the Russian equivalent of the Weapon X project.  They gave him tentacles made out of a new metal called carbonadium, the idea being that he could use them to focus his powers (and just generally have them as weapons).  But, as we see over the next few issues, Team X (the future Wolverine, Sabretooth and Maverick) stormed the building at that point and made off with the all-important carbonadium generator.  Without it, Arkady's powers can't be stabilised and he needs to kill people in order to sustain himself.  That's why he's been in suspended animation for thirty years, and that's why he's bitter about Wolverine.  Clear?

Omega Red is revived by Matsuo Tsurayaba's faction of the Hand.  Tsurayaba has struck a deal with the twins Andrea and Andreas Strucker (longtime villains, but not particularly prominent in the X-books before now - they're the children of the Nick Fury villain Baron Strucker).  They're going to form an alliance to win the Upstarts' competition - a storyline developing over in Uncanny X-Men where various younger supervillains compete for an unspecified prize in a tournament mastermined by the Gamesmaster and the Black Queen.  Fenris seem to think the prize involves immortality of some sort.

Quite how Omega Red is going to help them win the Upstarts' competition is never really made clear.  Presumably he's just going to kill a load of people, since that's what the Upstarts came down to at the end of the day.

The X-Men have started playing basketball, rather than Claremont's favoured baseball match.  This became the new standard for a while.

Moira MacTaggert is still having nightmares because she feels guilty about the events of issues #1-3 (even though it's still entirely unclear why any of it is supposed to be her fault).  Ultimately, she leaves to spend some time on her own.  None of this really leads anywhere - it may be a plot that got lost in the shuffle when Jim Lee left to found Image.

Gambit and Rogue nearly go on their first date, with several of the other X-Men looking over their shoulder (largely to annoy Gambit).  They all get kidnapped by the Hand, so it never happens.

Comments:
With Claremont gone, Jim Lee becomes sole plotter, and John Byrne takes over as scripter.  He was already scripting Uncanny X-Men, which made him a natural choice.  Unfortunately, he was also having tremendous problems over on that book, not least because pages were reaching him at the last moment, frequently with only a vague explanation of the story he was meant to be scripting.  As a result, he quit fairly quickly, and only stayed around for issues #4-5 of this title.

Issues #4-7 are mainly significant for introducing Omega Red, a character who went on to be a fairly common recurring villain throughout the 1990s.  He's certainly got a good character design, but the story is a bit lacking.  Lee was an inexperienced plotter, and rather than keep things simple, he ends up with something a little overambitious.  This is a story which dripfeeds information, involves a number of important non-linear flashbacks, and features an awful lot of running around corridors.  It's not always easy to follow, especially in the later parts, and it gets tied up in knots which distract from the story.  It doesn't help that the plot of this storyline revolves entirely around trying to recover the C-synthesiser for the benefit of Omega Red - Matsuo and Fenris stand around looking villainous for the whole story, but it's never really clear what they're getting out of the deal.

That said, there's a good rapport between the characters at the mansion, and the basketball scene is good fun.  Lee's art is starting to slip a little, as deadlines were no doubt catching up with him (multiple inkers show up next issue, with Lee's contribution reduced to breakdowns on issues #6-7).  But there are still good scenes and some solid action sequences.

FEATURE CHARACTERS
Professor X, Cyclops, Wolverine (all last in Wolverine vol 2 #50), the Beast, Gambit (both last in the fourth story in Marvel Comics Presents #89), Rogue (last in Wolverine vol 2 #54), Forge (behind the scenes; last in flashback in Wolverine vol 2 #50) and the Banshee

SUPPORTING CHARACTERS
Moira MacTaggert
Jubilee (last in Wolverine vol 2 #50)

VILLAINS
Omega Red (Arkady Russovitch; first appearance; a mutant with a "death factor" and metal tentacles; last behind the scenes in issue #2)
Matsuo Tsurayaba and the Hand (all last in issue #2)
Fenris: Andrea Strucker and Andreas Strucker (both last in Uncanny X-Men #268)

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