STORY: "Close Call" (21 pages)
Credits: Jim Lee (co-plotter), Whilce Portacio (co-plotter, penciller), Scott Lobdell (scripter), Art Thibert (inker), "Task Force X" (Tom Orzechowski and others; letterers), Joe Rosas (colourist), Bob Harras (editor), Tom DeFalco (editor-in-chief)

The X-Men and Sunfire side with the Posse Comitatus against the Triumvirate. They also persuade Mikhail to give them a hand (he's upset about what happened the last time he used his powers, and doesn't really want to). Afterwards, Mikhail returns to Earth with Sunfire and the X-Men.

What you need to know:

• Mikhail Rasputin turns out to have superhuman powers (hardly surprising given that both his siblings did). He's one of those annoying people with vaguely defined energy manipulating powers who can do pretty much whatever the plot calls for.
• Mikhail reveals that he explored a previous appearance of the void on the Sakhalin Islands, and was pulled through. He was taken in by the Avatar (the present Queen's father) and married his other daughter. On discovering Avatar was a villain, Mikhail joined the Posse Comitatus. He used his powers in the war, and inadvertantly killed the Avatar, his wife and a fair number of his own people. None of which is actually really that important, but that's his origin story.
• And as I said, Mikhail comes back to Earth.

Comments: Pretty generic stuff, really. Superheroes in a fantasy world; Mikhail as the retired gunfighter convinced to take up arms once more in a just cause... You've seen it before. Again, not so much bad as very derivative - not to mention utterly inconsequential. The art's not much cop either; Portacio's mind seems to have been drifting onto other things by this point, but I'll come to that in a couple of issues.

Feature characters: Professor X, Forge (both last in issue #284), Storm, Jean Grey (all next in Wolverine #51, then Professor X and Jean Grey in Wolverine #63, then Professor X and Forge in X-Men Annual Vol 2 #1); Iceman, Archangel, Colossus

Supporting characters: Sunfire (next in Wolverine #55); Mikhail Rasputin (next in issue #290; also in f/b preceding issue #285)

Villains: Avatar II (Sha-Har-A-Zath), the Triumvirate (no further appearances for all)

Guest appearances: Nick Fury (between Nick Fury, Agent of SHIELD Vol 3 #32 and Wolverine #53); Henry Pym (between Avengers Vol 1 #338 and #345); Mr Fantastic (between Fantastic Four Vol 1 #361-362)

Other characters: Primate, Adjunct, the Posse Comitatus (no further appearances for all); Avatar I (real name unrevealed; Avatar II's father), Tra-Mai-a-Zath (Avatar II's elder sister; first appearance of both; both in f/b; both die)

STORY: "Bishop to King's Five" (23 pages)
Credits: Jim Lee (plotter), Scott Lobdell (scripter), John Romita, Jr (penciller), Scott Williams, Chris Ivy, Bill Sienkiewicz, Dan Panosian, Bob Wiacek (inkers), Tom Orzechowski (letterer), Gina Going, Joe Rosas (colourists), Bob Harras (editor), Tom DeFalco (editor-in-chief)

Bishop, Malcolm and Randall get into an enormous fight with some of the criminals they're tracking, and Malcolm and Randall get killed. (Well, there's a surprise.) The X-Men find Bishop and take him in. Professor X invites him to join the team.

What you need to know:

• Obviously, Malcolm and Randall die, and Bishop joins the X-Men.
• But that's not the important bit. The important bit is that this is the issue that starts off the notorious X-Traitor plot, which is finally resolved years later in Onslaught: X-Men. Bishop reveals that in his timeline the X-Men are believed to have been killed by one of their allies, and that he stumbled across a video recording of a call for help by Jean Grey. Who is the X-Traitor? Well, it turns out to be a bit of a copout, but the plot hovers over the book for years to come.
• That flashback also contains our first glimpse of Bishop's timeline (which is grim, as you might expect from an alternate future in an X-Men story). And it reveals how Bishop, Malcolm and Randall ended up in the present. Basically, they followed the escaping criminals through the portals Fitzroy created in issue #282.
• And also in this all-important flashback is the first appearance of the Witness, later identified as an alternate future version of Gambit. The Witness never does anything terribly important, although he does at least do something in the XSE miniseries. But we assume he must be important somehow.

Comments: With the Posse Comitatus out of the way, the book gets back to the much more interesting Bishop storyline - but without any of its regular creative team. Portacio doesn't contribute to this issue at all, leaving his co-writer from the other X-Men title, Jim Lee, to provide the plot. Everything else is left to fill-in creators, with John Romita Jr doing a generally excellent job on the artwork. More importantly, Scott Lobdell starts scripting this issue. Byrne had been complaining of unrealistically short deadlines in which to script entire issues, and allegedly Lobdell scripted the entire issue in one night. It has to be said that it doesn't read like it. Although there's some pretty shameless attempts to mimic Claremont's style, the issue actually reads very well, striking an effective balance between showing Bishop as a violent zealot and a genuine hero. It's actually one of the strongest issues of the period, for all its rushed origins.

Feature characters: Professor X, Forge (both last in X-Men Annual Vol 2 #1), Storm (last in Wolverine #51), Jean Grey (last in Wolverine #63), Bishop (joins the X-Men; also in f/b following XSE #4 f/b and preceding issue #282; all next in X-Men Vol 2 #8, then Storm and Bishop in Annual #16/3), Iceman, Archangel, Colossus (after the above, all next in Annual #16/1)

Supporting characters: Malcolm, Randall (both die; both also in f/b following XSE #3 f/b and preceding issue #282)

Villains: Trevor Fitzroy (in f/b; last in XSE #3 f/b; next in issue #281); Styglut (also in f/b following XSE #3 f/b and preceding issue #282 b/s); Mountjoy (b/s in f/b; last in XSE #4; next in issue #282 b/s); Eye-Beam, Bantam I (last in X-Factor #140 f/b), Burke, Stylles (all b/s in f/b preceding issue #282)

Other character: The Witness (Gambit of Bishop's timeline; first appearance; in f/b; last in XSE #4 f/b; no further appearances); Jean Grey (of Bishop's timeline; on video; first and only appearance); Shackle (real name unrevealed; first appearance; in f/b; last in XSE #4 f/b; no further appearances)

FIRST STORY: "The Masters of Inevitability" (35 pages)
Credits: Fabian Nicieza (writer), Jae Lee (penciller), Jan Harps, Joe Rubinstein (inkers), Tom Orzechowski, Lois Buhalis (letterers), Joe Rosas (colourist), Bob Harras (editor), Tom DeFalco (editor-in-chief)

SHATTERSHOT, Part 2 The rebel leader on Mojoworld sends the Death Sponsors to Earth to capture Arize, who has taken refuge with the X-Men. Not surprisingly, they don't succeed.

What you need to know:

• Absolutely nothing, really. It's the first and only appearance of the Death Sponsors, if obscure TV-themed novelty villains are your thing.

Comments: The ever-reliable Fabian Nicieza and Jae Lee do their best to jazz it up, but the crossover storyline gives them nothing to work with. Since absolutely nothing of significance happens in this issue (Arize leaves the X-Men's mansion at the end of the story, and that's about all that needs to be achieved), the story is filled out with a thoroughly pointless fight between the X-Men and some awful novelty villains. When the Mojoverse was first introduced by Ann Nocenti, the media theme was only a part of it; the point was that it was a universe run by a madman. Over time, and mainly through the stories of Chris Claremont, the place got turned into a warped media parody. The effect was to reduce the Mojoworld and its characters so that they just didn't work any more except in slapstick comedy stories, and this is what you get as a result. There's a flash of interest with Nicieza giving a Bishop a chance to be worryingly extreme, but other than that, forget it.

Incidentally, the Shattershot crossover as a whole is dreadful. It goes badly wrong in the last part, when all the narrative tension built up is completely junked in favour of a story set in an alternate future. But that's another story.

Feature characters: Professor X (last in X-Men Vol 2 #8), Storm, Bishop (both last in the third story), Iceman, Colossus (both last in issue #287; all next in issue #288); Archangel (last in issue #287), Jean Grey (last in X-Men Vol 2 #8; both next in the second story)

Guest star: Arize (between X-Men Annual Vol 2 #1 and X-Factor Annual #7)

Villains: Mojo, Major Domo (both b/s between X-Men Annual Vol 2 #1 and X-Factor Annual #7); Mojo II - The Sequel (last in X-Men Annual Vol 2 #1; next in X-Men Vol 2 #10); Sweepzweak, Deadair, Lead-In, Cancellator, Timeslot (as the Death Sponsors; first and only appearance of all; real names unrevealed)

Following this story there is a pin-up of Strong Guy and Colossus by Dale Keown.

STORY: "Time And Place" (22 pages)
Credits: Jim Lee, Whilce Portacio (plotters), John Byrne, Scott Lobdell (scripters), Andy Kubert (penciller), Bill Sienkiewicz (inker), Richard Starkings (letterer), Joe Rosas (colourist), Bob Harras (editor), Tom DeFalco (editor-in-chief)

The X-Men take Bishop into New York to recuperate and by sheer blinding luck he stumbles across one of the criminals from his own time. They have a big destructive fight and Bishop realises things are rather different in this time.

What you need to know:

• Bishop claims that since coming to this time, he's killed 92 escaped criminals. This issue, he makes it 93 by bumping off somebody called Styglut.
• The story is a major turning point for Bishop's character, since this is the point where realises just how out of step with reality he is and begins doing something about it.
• Iceman's girlfriend, Opal Tanaka, is writing letters to somebody in Japanese. We'll come to this next issue.

Comments: More fill-in art, this time from the highly unlikely combination of Andy Kubert and Bill Sienkiewicz. A lot of the time it works; on several pages it looks absolutely atrocious. In an era when X-Men fans were used to the relatively clean styles of Lee and Portacio, god alone knows what they made of this. It's also John Byrne's last contribution to the series, not that Marvel bothered to inform him at the time. They just stopped sending him pages to dialogue and gave the book to Scott Lobdell.

The story is perhaps a bit on the obvious side, and it does rest on a very clunky sequence where Bishop blunders across his opponent by sheer blinding luck. But there's some good character moments, at least, and Bishop gets some good material - there's a particularly good bit where he suggests that it just never occurred to him that there would be bystanders around for a fight because he's used to them running away from him on sight.

Feature characters: Professor X, Storm, Iceman, Bishop, Colossus (next in issue #290; all last in Annual #16); Jubilee (last in Ghost Rider Vol 3 #27), Cyclops, the Beast (the latter two next in the Infinity War crossover, then Jubilee in Wolverine #58-59, then all in X-Men Vol 2 #10-13, then Jubilee in Wolverine #65, then all in Excalibur #57-58, then Jubilee and Cyclops in issue #294, after which the Beast appears in X-Factor #84, then in X-Men Vol 2 #14, then in X-Force #16, then in issue #295), Archangel, Jean Grey (the latter four last in Annual #16/2); Forge (last in X-Men Vol 2 #8)

Supporting character: Opal Tanaka (last in X-Factor #65); Charlotte Jones (b/s; last in X-Factor #68; next in issue #294)

Villain: Styglut (dies)

STORY: "Knots" (22 pages)
Credits: Scott Lobdell (writer), Whilce Portacio (penciller), Scott Williams (inker), Tom Orzechowski (letterer), Joe Rosas (colourist), Bob Harras (editor), Tom DeFalco (editor-in-chief)

Forge asks Storm to marry him. Meanwhile, Iceman goes for dinner with Opal and his parents. His enemy Hiro interrupts, but it turns out that he has come to defend them against his own teammates.

What you need to know:

• Forge asks Storm to marry him.
• Mystique is living with the X-Men in this story after helping Wolverine defeat Mojo in Wolverine #52.
• Bobby's father turns out to be a racist, a subplot which rears its ahead again several years later.
• The Cyburai have been dispatched to kill Iceman's parents in one of these silly Japanese Honour plots that Marvel keep inflicting on us. Hiro has left the team to stop them, obviously having a tighter grip on reality than most Japanese characters in the Marvel Universe.

Comments: And this is the real beginning of the Scott Lobdell era - from this point on he's writing the plot as well. Issues #289 and #290 are a two-part story which seem to serve mainly to get unwanted supporting characters out of the way, as well as provide some much needed angst.

Half the storyline is concerned with getting rid of Forge, and breaking off his relationship with Storm. It's not entirely successful because Forge's emotions seem to leap all over the place - one minute he's proposing marriage, the next he's concluded that their relationship is doomed to failure and storms off in a huff without even having a proper conversation with her. Hardly the actions of a stable individual, and you have to wonder why the X-Men allow him to take the supposedly insane Mystique with him. But Lobdell makes the story work with a powerful final scene (in which Storm reveals that she was going to marry him after all, if only he'd stopped to listen) and a very interesting sequence in which Jean Grey seems to be implying that Storm doesn't really love Forge, even though she thinks she does. It's an interesting, if unexpected, take on their relationship, and the only real problem with it is that it's all bulldozed through so fast that Forge's actions seem downright implausible.

The other half brings back Hiro and the Cyburai, a bunch of Japanese cyborg samurai who fought X-Factor a year or so before. The main purpose of this half of the plot is to get rid of Iceman's girlfriend Opal Tanaka by setting her up to trot off with Hiro instead (which she duly does in a few issues time). While Hiro comes out of the story quite well, and Bobby's father is also made a more interesting character by setting him up as a racist, I'm really not nearly as keen on this half. The Cyburai were never strong characters in the first place, as they fall victim to Marvel's infuriating habit of writing everybody from Japan as if they were totally obsessed with antiquated honour codes. The problem is that the more outrageously silly the characters' actions become, the more obvious it gets that their "honour code" isn't a cultural things at all, it's just a poor substitute for a proper motivation. Though Hiro is well written (his "honour" routine at least seems to be on the same planet as normal human psychology), the rest of the Cyburai come off very badly. The attempts to set Opal up with him also result in her suddenly becoming implausibly enamoured of all this "honour" stuff, which doesn't work at all given that she spent most of the previous Cyburai storyline complaining about how silly it all was.

A mixed bag, but not a bad start at all. Worth having for the Storm material.

Feature characters: Professor X, Archangel (both next in the Infinity War crossover, then Professor X in Excalibur #52, then in Wolverine #58, then in X-Men Vol 2 #10-11, then both in issue #291), Storm, Iceman, Jean Grey, Forge, Bishop

Supporting characters: William Drake, Madeline Drake (both last in ...); Opal Tanaka; Hiro (last in X-Factor #64)

Villains: The Cyburai (last in X-Factor #64); Mystique (last in Wolverine #52)

STORY: "Frayed" (22 pages)
Credits: Scott Lobdell (writer), Whilce Portacio (penciller), Scott Williams (inker), Lois Buhalis (letterer), Kevin Tinsley (colourist), Bob Harras (editor), Tom DeFalco (editor-in-chief)

Hiro defends Iceman, Opal and the Drakes. Opal is decidedly more impressed by him than by Iceman. Meanwhile, Forge becomes convinced that Storm does not truly love him, and leaves her and the X-Men.

What you need to know:

• Opal is pretty obviously becoming more attracted to Hiro than to Iceman. This is a set-up for her to dump him in a few issues, though really it would work better if she dumped him now and the Forge and Storm plot was delayed.
• Mikhail Rasputin has gone mad and starts killing people with his powers.
• The story suggests very strongly indeed that Storm doesn't really love Forge, even though she thinks she does. Very odd.
• Mystique's going mad. Well, maybe. This certainly seemed to be the idea at the time, though later stories suggest she was faking.
• Forge dumps Storm and goes off with Mystique, thereby satisfying the prophecy made by Destiny in issue #255. Since nothing really comes of it, though, the prophecy rears its head again when they both serve as members of X-Factor some years later.

Comments: This is the last issue that Whilce Portacio worked on. It's at this point that Portacio, along with six other popular artists of the time, decided to leave Marvel and set up their own publisher - which, of course, became Image. This naturally left a bit of a gulf in the X-books' creative team, since Portacio and fellow Image founder Jim Lee had until recently been writing and drawing both the X-Men titles. On top of that, the ever-controversial X-Force plotter and artist Rob Liefeld was among the leavers too. And only four months down the line, there's a massive big crossover. From having some of the most popular creators in the industry, Uncanny X-Men went in a few months to having the relatively untried Scott Lobdell, then best known to X-Men fans for his string of, um, variable fill-in stories for Excalibur. Not surprisingly, there was a certain degree of scepticism.

As for Whilce Portacio, things didn't quite work out as planned. He'd intended to launch his own series, Wetworks, but due to problems in his personal life it all became rather derailed. Eventually he sold his share in Image. Wetworks would finally appear, two years later, through Jim Lee's WildStorm imprint. It did alright, but the speculator boom and the megabucks had passed. Poor Whilce.

Feature characters: Iceman, Colossus (last in issue #288), Storm, Jean Grey, Bishop (all next in the Infinity War crossover, then Jean Grey in Excalibur #52); Forge (leaves the X-Men and appears next in issue #299)

Supporting characters: William Drake, Madeline Drake (both next in issue #308); Opal Tanaka (next in issue #301); Hiro (no further appearances)

Villains: Mikhail Rasputin (last in issue #286); Mystique (next in issue #301); the Cyburai (next in X-Factor #112)