STORY: "Operation: Zero Tolerance, prologue: First Blood" (23 pages)  Operation: Zero Tolerance capture the X-Men and storm the Mansion.

What you need to know:
This is the first part of the Operation: Zero Tolerance crossover, which wraps up Scott Lobdell's run on the X-Men.  However, the next month was Flashback Month, so it's actually two months before the follow-up.

Operation: Zero Tolerance goes public, with a remit to round up all the mutants in America and sling them into concentration camps because they're a threat.  Henry Gyrich turns up on the news to defend the idea.

With all the X-Men off on missions, OZT simply storm the Mansion and take it over.  This ultimately leads to Bastion stripping the place down, and marching off with all the furniture and equipment.  Cerebro ultimately gets turned into a killer robot and returns in Uncanny X-Men #360.  However, the data doesn't do Bastion much good because (as his prisoner Professor X points out) it's all encrypted.

Cecilia Reyes, who'll go on to join the team, debuts as one of a group of doctors watching OZT coverage on television.  She takes the easy route and pretends to agree with all the anti-mutant comments.

Iceman, who's at home looking after his father, sees the news coverage and heads off to help.  He's going to be a major character in X-Men's leg of the crossover.

Bastion has a scene where he reflects that "in a very real way, I owe my creation, my very existence, to [the X-Men] and their kind."  This broadly fits with the eventual explanation, which was that Bastion was a combination of Nimrod and the Master Mold, reincarnated after passing through the Siege Perilous in Uncanny X-Men #247.

The issue opens with Phoenix briefly slipping into the Heroes Reborn reality and meeting Iron Man.  This was a last-minute addition - the original pencil art for page 1 appears at the end of the book - and there's no apparent logic to it in plot terms.  However, at this point the Heroes Reborn period was nearing its end, so there was at least some purpose served by hyping up the return of those characters.  (Also, Scott Lobdell had written some of the Heroes Reborn Iron Man stories.)

Comments:
I rather like this one.  Okay, on one level it's just a big fight scene and a lot of people looking appalled.  But as the lead-in to a big crossover (albeit one that turned out to be dreadful), it does a great job.  After months of build-up, Operation: Zero Tolerance finally make their move, and flatten the X-Men in 23 pages before the storyline's even got started.  Of course, it's standard plotting for the heroes to get beaten up in Act 1 and make the big comeback later on, but this story works by making it look like outright annihilation.  Having Operation: Zero Tolerance just saunter in and capture the Mansion as a virtual afterthought is a lovely touch.  It's the X-Men getting hit with a steamroller for a whole issue, and that's exactly what's called for here.

Plus, it means Carlos Pacheco gets to draw a great big long aerial combat scene, and you can't complain about that.  Obviously it's tainted a little by the knowledge that the rest of the storyline was a mess, but as an issue in its own right, this is pretty good.

FEATURE CHARACTERS
Cyclops, Storm, Cannonball, Phoenix III and Wolverine

SUPPORTING CHARACTERS
Professor X (last in Onslaught: Epilogue)
Iceman (last in Wolverine vol 2 #111)
Dr Cecilia Reyes (first appearance)
William Drake (between X-Men Forever #2 and #1) [sic]

VILLAINS
Bastion and Operation: Zero Tolerance (all next in Cable #45)
Henry Gyrich (last in Uncanny X-Men #346; next behind the scenes in Cable #45)

GUEST APPEARANCES
Iron Man I (between Iron Man vol 2 #8-9)
Pepper Potts of Counter-Earth II (voice only; first appearance?; next in Heroes Reborn: Rebel)
Jubilee (behind the scenes; next in Generation X #28)

OTHER CHARACTERS
Roger Kren, Susan Okada and Richard Okada (first and only appearance for all)

Written: 10 September 2005

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