STORY: "Five Card Studs" (23 pages)  A downtime issue - the X-Men play poker, Bishop discusses his mental problems with Scott and Jean, and the Dark Beast gets a visit from Sugar Man.

What you need to know:
The issue is built around a poker game between Beast, Cannonball, Gambit, Iceman and Storm.  Cannonball turns out to be better than you'd expect, and at the end of the issue, Gambit throws a winning hand in order to let him win.  We're invited to speculate as to Gambit's motives; the implication seems to be that Gambit likes to subtly make people underestimate him.

Bishop is plagued by rather generic nightmares about the Age of Apocalypse, which he can only partially recall.  He has a chat with Scott and Jean about it; apparently, they only have similarly vague memories of their time in the future raising Cable, as shown in Adventures of Cyclops & Phoenix.  This is the first issue to suggest that they don't have full recall of that period, and it really comes far too late in the day; but at least it goes some way to explaining how their personalities were totally unaffected by a 15-year stay in the far future.

An obscure subplot from Uncanny X-Men #299 is dredged up, as Bishop again crosses paths with a waitress who seems vaguely familiar.  As we establish next issue, she's actually Fatale, an X-Factor villain, and she's working for the Dark Beast.

The Dark Beast - the Beast's counterpart from the Age of Apocalypse timeline, who escaped to earth at the end of the storyline - is monitoring Bishop.  He knows that Bishop was instrumental in bringing down Apocalypse, and so he's been looking for Bishop in the modern world.  The Dark Beast has been hanging around for 20 years, but Bishop didn't exist until he arrived in the present day, allegedly "several months ago."  We're talking about stories from four and a half years previously, but apparently it's still only several months ago...  Anyhow, this is meant to explain why the Dark Beast did nothing of significance until now, despite retroactively being around for 20 years.

The Dark Beast is established as having a reluctant alliance with the Sugar Man, the other AoA reject who's been hanging around retroactively doing nothing for two decades.  This goes nowhere, and was soon forgotten about.  In theory, their shared concern is that Bishop knows about them (from his memories of their world), and that Mr Sinister might get hold of that information.  Quite why they're so concerned about Mr Sinister is not clear -  apparently Bishop's information would resolve "mysteries which have plagued [Sinister] for the past two decades."  As the Dark Beast was retroactively inserted into the origin of the Morlocks, this might have been the beginnings of an explanation for why Sinister ordered the Morlock Massacre.

Psylocke is in the infirmary after being sliced up by Sabretooth in Uncanny X-Men #328.  There's a ludicrous subplot where Xavier concludes that Sabretooth was trying to critically wound Psylocke without killing her, in order to send a message of some sort.  This was never followed up.  Anyhow, it makes no sense; Uncanny had just devoted two issues to Archangel and Wolverine resorting to magic to save Psylocke's life because she had mortal injuries.

Iceman asks Storm to help him develop his powers.  Never really goes anywhere.

The Beast has a moment of revelation about how to make progress with the Legacy Virus.  This too goes nowhere.  See a pattern emerging?

Comments:
Unfortunately, we're now getting into that phase of mid-nineties X-Men history where general incoherence reigns, plot points are randomly scattered all over the place, and stories are randomly advanced or dropped without much logic.  This issue is full of that sort of thing, and X-Men comics from this period tend to make for a frustrating read in retrospect.  They were fairly frustrating at the time too, but looking back, it's just a cluster of half-finished, half-thought-out stories, and nothing much more.

Guest art comes from Luke Ross, one of those Brazilian artists who got a lot of fill-in work at Marvel in the 1990s.  ("Luke Ross" is an Anglicised pseudonym; his real name is Luciano Queiros.)  Ross went on to do some perfectly nice work for CrossGen, but this was early in his career, besides which he's in fill-in mode.  The result is what you'd expect - it looks rushed, it's not very good, and there's some surface imitation of regular artist Andy Kubert.  Very much the 1990s house style, and it hasn't aged at all well.

FEATURE CHARACTERS
Professor X (last in Sabretooth: In the Red Zone; next in Uncanny X-Men #330, then in Cable #29, then in Cable #31, then in X-Men vs Brood #1-2, then in X-Men Unlimited vol 1 #10, then in issue #50)
The Beast and Bishop (both last in X-Force vol 1 #51)
Cannonball II (last in X-Force vol 1 #51; next in X-Men vs Brood #1-2, then in X-Men Unlimited vol 1 #10, then behind the scenes in Cable #32, then in issue #50)
Cyclops (last in Sabretooth: In the Red Zone; next in Cable #29, then in X-Men vs Brood #1-2, then in X-Men Unlimited vol 1 #10, then in issue #50)
Gambit (last in X-Force vol 1 #51; next in Uncanny X-Men #330, then in issue #50)
Iceman (last in Sabretooth: In the Red Zone; next in X-Men vs Brood #1-2, then in X-Men Unlimited vol 1 #10, then in issue #50)
Phoenix III (last in Sabretooth: In the Red Zone; next in Archangel, then in Cable #29, then in Cable #31, then in X-Men vs Brood #1-2, then in issue #50)
Storm (last in X-Force vol 1 #51; next in Cable #29, then in X-Men vs Brood #1-2, then in issue #50)
Psylocke (last in Uncanny X-Men #328; next in Uncanny X-Men #329-330, then in Archangel, then in Cable #31, then behind the scenes in Uncanny X-Men #331, then in Uncanny X-Men #333, then behind the scenes in Excalibur vol 1 #96, then in issue #53)

VILLAINS
Fatale and the Dark Beast (both last in X-Factor vol 1 #118)
The Sugar Man (last in Cable #26)

GUEST APPEARANCE
The Thing (between Fantastic Four Unlimited #12 and Green Goblin #4)

Written: 5 January 2005

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