STORY: "Operation: Zero Tolerance - The End of Days" (23 pages)  On the run from Operation: Zero Tolerance, Iceman and Cecilia Reyes take sanctuary with Charlotte Jones - but it's a trap.

What you need to know:
Marrow joins the regular cast, hanging around in the background and keeping an eye on Bobby and Cecilia.  Although it isn't referenced, she's here because her mentor Callisto asked her to help the X-Men in Uncanny X-Men #347.

Charlotte Jones also turns up, offering Iceman and Cecilia help.  Actually, she's been blackmailed by OZT, who have kidnapped her son Timmy, and she's leading them into a trap.  Timmy, by the way, was a recurring character in Louise Simonson's X-Factor run but, aside from this arc, has been ignored ever since.

Cecilia doesn't trust the police.

Sabra, the Israeli national superhero, has started digging into Operation: Zero Tolerance herself.  Evidently a highly efficient organisation of evil, OZT promptly turn up at her office to kill her.  Naturally, she beats them and gets away with information about  OZT.  (Reading this issue you'd get the distinct impression that Israel is involved in OZT, but Sabra assures us in issue #69 that they refused to participate.)

Xavier and Bastion spend another two pages talking to one another about nothing in particular.  Bastion is rather hurt by the suggestion that he isn't entirely human.

Technically, this is the first issue of X-Men not to feature any active X-Men at all.  Professor X hadn't been an active member since Onslaught, and at this stage Iceman is a reservist helping out in an emergency.

Comments:
Perfectly okay.  It's basically an issue of Bobby and Cecilia trying the obvious sources of help and getting nowhere, before being suckered in by Charlotte.  The tension's built up well enough, and the twist of Charlotte working for OZT comes off nicely.  She's such a nice character that you genuinely don't see it coming.

Marrow joins the cast with this issue.  This was an editorial mandate, and something Scott Lobdell wasn't very happy about.  Aside from anything else, he couldn't see how the X-Men could possibly work with a character who had been established as a mass murderer and terrorist.  Since it was his final arc anyway, he dodged the question and put Marrow with Iceman and Cecilia Reyes - two characters who had never met her before, and therefore might just about be able to work with her. 

After that, it would be the next writer's problem.  Apparently, later writers were equally stumped, since in the end they just swept Marrow's history under the carpet and repositioned her as merely troubled.

FEATURE CHARACTERS
None

GUEST STAR
Sabra (last in New Warriors vol 1 #66)

SUPPORTING CHARACTERS
Iceman and Cecilia Reyes
Professor X (next in Wolverine vol 2 #115)
Marrow (last in Uncanny X-Men #347)
Charlotte Jones (last in X-Force vol 1 #59)
Timothy Jones (behind the scenes; last in X-Factor vol 1 #59)

VILLAINS
Bastion (between Wolverine vol 2 #115 and Generation X #31) and Operation: Zero Tolerance (various agents, concurrently with other crossover stories)

Written: 28 December 2005

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