STORY: "Tooth and Claw" (20 pages)  Bishop joins the team, and has immediate tension with Gambit.  After a visit from his estranged wife Bella Donna Boudreaux, Gambit takes the Blue Team to New Orleans to try and restore peace between the Thieves and Assassins Guilds.

What you need to know:
This is the first part of an untitled crossover.  Part 2 is in Ghost Rider vol 3 #26; part 3 is in the next issue; and part 4 is in Ghost Rider vol 3 #27.

Bishop arrives at the Mansion, after being taken in by the Gold Team in Uncanny X-Men.  At this point, the character is still decidedly overzealous and in awe of the X-Men, whom he knows as legendary figures from his own timeline.

According to Bishop, in his timeline Forge went on to become Genesis.  This never really heads anywhere.

Bishop describes Jubilee as "the last X-Man."  Nobody ever seemed very clear what that was supposed to mean, and later stories bluntly acknowledged that even Bishop wasn't entirely sure.

Bishop says that in his timeline, there's "very little written" about Gambit.  However, on seeing him, Bishop immediately identifies him as a younger version of the Witness - the elderly mutant from his own timeline who raised him, and who was supposed to be the last person to see the X-Men alive before they were betrayed and killed.  Not unreasonably, Bishop promptly concludes that Gambit is probably the X-traitor.  Since the X-traitor eventually turned out to be Onslaught, presumably Gambit just escaped through some slightly dodgy means and decided not to admit to it.

Nobody takes Bishop's claims particularly seriously, much to his irritation.  Bishop and Gambit get into a short fight about it.

By the way, this is the first time Gambit's real name (Remy LeBeau) is given.

Bella Donna Boudreaux, Gambit's estranged wife, makes her debut.  We're told that Gambit and Bella Donna are members of the rival Thieves and Assassins' Guilds of New Orleans.  They married in an attempt to bring peace to the rival Guilds.  The marriage largely worked, until Gambit had to kill his brother-in-law (an Assassin) in self-defence.  (The circumstances are left vague, but the implication is that the Assassin was trying a grab for power.)  After that, Gambit was kicked out of town in an attempt to keep the peace.  This is the first mention of either Guild.  Next issue, we find out that Gambit left town on his wedding night.

After meeting Maverick in the previous storyline, Wolverine's started researching his past again.  He turns up the name "Barrington."  Presumably this was going to feed into a proposed Jim Lee storyline.  In the event, Barrington turned out to be the handler of Team X.  He never did anything all that significant, and was eventually killed off in early issues of Maverick.

Psylocke starts to seduce Cyclops, in a storyline which rambled on for ages.  It was eventually explained as a consequence of Kwannon's influence on Psylocke's mind (in an extraordinarily convoluted storyline which would take way too much time to go into here).

There's tension between Forge and Storm, although Storm ignores it.  This feeds into an ongoing subplot in Uncanny X-Men which leads to their break-up.

Ghost Rider pops his head round the door at the end of the issue in a brief page showing him heading to New Orleans.

In Ghost Rider vol 3 #26, the Blue Team arrive in New Orleans.  They discover that the Brood are using Guild members as host bodies.  The X-Men fight the Brood, and are then attacked by Ghost Rider, who is halfway through his own Brood transformation.

Comments:
A crossover between Jim Lee's X-Men and Howard Mackie's Ghost Rider may sound faintly bizarre today.  But it made perfect sense at the time - Ghost Rider was in the middle of a huge surge in popularity at this time.  Whatever else one says about Howard Mackie's output, he scored an undeniable hit with that book.

The crossover really just plugs the poor Ghost Rider into an X-Men story, so the ongoing storyline barrels happily onwards.  There's an awful lot going on in this issue - Bishop turns up, the X-traitor subplot is advanced, Gambit's name and history are filled out.  Granted, the Thieves Guild never really worked, at least until Fabian Nicieza tinkered with the concept in the first ongoing Gambit solo book.

The scenes with Bishop and Gambit come off very well, though, and Bella Donna makes a nice spanner in the works for Rogue and Gambit's relationship.  The Guilds may not have been the best idea in the world, but at least they took Gambit out of his previous role as "somewhat generic mystery man" - with Wolverine around, the X-Men really didn't need another one in the regular cast.

FEATURE CHARACTERS
The Beast, Psylocke, Rogue (all last in X-Men Annual vol 2 #1), Cyclops (last in X-Factor vol 1 #78) and Wolverine (last in the second story in X-Men Annual vol 2 #1; all next in Ghost Rider vol 3 #26)
Gambit (last in X-Men Annual vol 2 #1; next in Ghost Rider vol 3 #26; also in flashback following the flashback at page 17 panel 5 of Gambit vol 3 #1, and preceding the flashback in Wolverine/Gambit: Victims #3)
Professor X (last in X-Factor vol 1 #78; next in Excalibur vol 1 #52, then in Uncanny X-Men #288-289, then in issue #10)
Bishop (last in Uncanny X-Men #287; next in the third story in Uncanny X-Men Annual #16, then in the first story in Uncanny X-Men Annual #16, then in Uncanny X-Men #288-294, then in X-Factor vol 1 #84, then in issue #14)
Forge (last in Uncanny X-Men #287; next in Uncanny X-Men #288-290, then leaves the X-Men)
Jean Grey (last in Uncanny X-Men #288; next behind the scenes in Excalibur vol 1 #51, then in Excalibur vol 1 #52, then again in Uncanny X-Men #288, then in the second story in Uncanny X-Men Annual #16, then in Uncanny X-Men #289-290, then in Infinity War #1, then in Fantastic Four #367, then in Infinity War #2, then concurrently in Infinity War #2 and Moon Knight vol 3 #41, then again in Infinity War #2, then concurrently in Wonder Man vol 2 #13 and Infinity War #3, then in Fantastic Four #368, then again in Wonder Man vol 2 #13, then in New Warriors vol 1 #27, then concurrently in Quasar #38 and Infinity War #3, then again in Fantastic Four #368, then again in Wonder Man vol 2 #13, then in Infinity War #3, then concurrently in Infinity War #3 and Warlock & The Infinity Watch #8, then again in Quasar #38, then in Infinity War #4, then concurrently in Infinity War #4 and Wonder Man vol 2 #14, then again in Wonder Man vol 2 #14, then again in Infinity War #4, then again in Wonder Man vol 2 #14, then concurrently in Quasar #39 and Infinity War #4, then again in Quasar #39, then behind the scenes in Sleepwalker #17, then in Sleepwalker #18, then in Infinity War #5, then in Doctor Strange vol 3 #46, then in Quasar #40, then in Fantastic Four #369, then in Infinity War #6, then concurrently in Infinity War #6 and Fantastic Four #370, then again in Infinity War #6, then again in Fantastic Four #370, then again in Infinity War #6, then in Uncanny X-Men #291-294, then in X-Factor vol 1 #84, then in issue #14)
Storm (last in Uncanny X-Men #287; next in the third story in Uncanny X-Men Annual #16, then in the first story in Uncanny X-Men Annual #16, then in Uncanny X-Men #288-290, then in Infinity War #1-2, then concurrently in Fantastic Four #367 and Infinity War #2, then again in Infinity War #2, then in Moon Knight vol 3 #41, then again in Infinity War #2, then in New Warriors vol 1 #27, then in Infinity War #3, then concurrently in Quasar #38 and Infinity War #3, then in Fantastic Four #368, then in Wonder Man vol 2 #13, then again in Fantastic Four #368, then again in Quasar #38, then again in Infinity War #3, then concurrently in Infinity War #3, Quasar #38 and Warlock & The Infinity Watch #8, then in Fantastic Four #369, then in Infinity War #4, then in Wonder Man vol 2 #14, then again in Infinity War #4, then again in Wonder Man vol 2 #14, then again in Infinity War #4, then in Quasar #39, then in Infinity War #5, then again in Fantastic Four #369, then again in Infinity War #5, then concurrently in Infinity War #5 and Fantastic Four #369, then in Wonder Man vol 2 #15, then in Infinity War #5-6, then in Fantastic Four #370, then again in Infinity War #6, then in Uncanny X-Men #291-294, then in X-Factor vol 1 #84, then in issue #14)

SUPPORTING CHARACTERS
Jubilee (last in the second story in X-Men Annual vol 2 #1; next in Ghost Rider vol 3 #26)
Bella Donna Boudreaux (first appearance; chronologically last in flashback in Gambit vol 3 #5; next in Ghost Rider vol 3 #26; also in flashback between the flashbacks in Gambit vol 3 #1 and Gambit vol 3 #19)

GUEST APPEARANCE
The Ghost Rider II (between Ghost Rider vol 3 #25-26)

OTHER CHARACTERS
Julien Boudreaux (Bella Donna's brother; first appearance; apparently dies in flashback; possibly next in Ghost Rider vol 3 #26, where he is implied to be the Assassin working for the Brood)
Various Guild members (in flashback)

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