STORY: "The Boy Who Saw Tomorrow" (22 pages)
Credits: Scott Lobdell (writer), Bryan Hitch (penciller), Paul Neary (inker), Richard Starkings, Comicraft (letterers), Steve Buccellato (colourist), Mark Powers (associate editor), Bob Harras (editor, editor-in-chief)

Rachel Summers travels back from the Askani timeline to three years before the X-Men's debut, in order to stop Sanctity from altering history. However, she does not stop Sanctity from planting the identity of the Twelve in the original Master Mold.

What you need to know:

• Ah yes. Issue minus 1. As most of you will probably know, this is part of Flashback Month, in which Marvel ran an entire month almost entirely composed of stories set before the Fantastic Four debuted, and done vaguely in the style of the Silver Age. Somebody obviously thought this would be a great promotional gimmick. Actually, retailers cut their orders back for almost the entire line (aside from a couple of really low selling titles whose orders rose). What were Marvel thinking of? Well, see Comments below...
• Sanctity, a mad Askani leader who pops up occasionally in Cable's stories, is revealed in this issue to be Tanya Trask, the daughter of Bolivar Trask (creator the Sentinels) and the sister of Larry Trask (who also led the Sentinels for a while). Like Larry, she's a mutant with time-related powers, but she got lost in the timestream and was eventually rescued by Rachel Summers. According to this story, they were close friends until Sanctity went mad.
• The captions tells us that Rachel rescued Sanctity shortly after Excalibur #75, but that doesn't really fit with the later X-Men: Phoenix miniseries. Presumably Rachel rescued Sanctity at some later point, after the formation of the Askani sisterhood.
• Larry Trask is a precognitive mutant, although he won't find that out until some time later on in the Silver Age run. Bolivar Trask knew about it all along and gave him the medallion he wears all the time, which controlled his powers. The full story can be found in issue #59 (yes, #59). Of course, back in the sixties, the polo neck and medallion look didn't seem quite as stupid.
• In this issue, without Larry's knowledge, he's recording Larry's unconscious precognitive ramblings. The irony, of course, is that while Bolivar thinks he's basing his doomsday predictions of mutant domination on Larry's visions, Larry's actually talking about the assassination of Robert Kelly by the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants. That was foiled by the X-Men in issues #141-142, but in the alternate Days of Future Past timeline, it was the key event that triggered the Sentinel domination of America - the exact reverse of Bolivar's fears that led him to create the Sentinels in the first place.
• The Twelve plot was originally introduced in X-Factor when the second Master Mold suddenly turned out to know about twelve particularly important mutants that it wanted to destroy. That Master Mold had a copy of the mind of Steven Lang (its creator), who in turn had access to the records of the Trasks' Sentinel project - which is presumably how he found out about the Twelve.
• According to Sanctity, "humanity waited so long for the Twelve" and "they sorely disappointed us." To put it mildly, it's hard to see how she can possibly be referring to the same Twelve whose identity was eventually revealed in 1999. The Master Mold's (and therefore Sanctity's) Twelve don't match the Twelve eventually revealed in certain respects, so either Sanctity got it wrong or Sanctity deliberately misled the Master Mold. One thing that does make sense, however, is that Sanctity presumably wants the Master Mold to kill the Twelve. That would have prevented Apocalypse performing his ritual to absorb their powers, and therefore have prevented him ascending to godhood and dominating her timeline.

Comments: As I mentioned above, Flashback Month was not a commercial success, to put it mildly. An entire month of Silver Age pastiches deviating almost entirely from the ongoing plots tested readers' patience unlike anything since the notorious Assistant Editors Month (basically, an entire month of comedy issues, if you're not familiar). Yet to start with, it was such a good idea.

Scott Lobdell had e-mailed me a few months before this issue. He was thinking of doing something with the Twelve in that year's summer crossover, which eventually went to Operation: Zero Tolerance. I seemed to be pretty up on my continuity. Did I have any thoughts on the subject? Well, at this point the Twelve plot hinged almost entirely on some cryptic comments of the Master Mold, and I wrote back with some suggestions on how the Master Mold might have come into possession of such a list in the first place. Scott didn't use any of them, although I did suggest that Larry Trask might have identified the Twelve in his precognitive visions (thus explaining how the Sentinels knew about the Twelve).

However his mind got onto this track, Scott came up with the idea of a two-part story featuring Rachel Summers, Sanctity and the Trasks. It would run through Uncanny X-Men and X-Men and be set in the past. Not unreasonably, he thought the fans might like it. It would be a self-contained story, it would advance the Twelve plot (which fans never seemed to shut up about even though it never went anywhere), and it would have the popular Rachel Summers in it. And it would take up the X-Men books for a month. Hey, wouldn't it be great if they made it something across the whole X-Men line?

Well, that's what it sounded like when I first heard of it, and I thought it was a great idea. It would fulfil the X-books' requirement for an obligatory major event without being a crossover. It would be an interesting change of pace. And it was supposed to be setting up plots for the future, or at least exploring interesting areas of characters' histories.

What it most certainly was not, at that stage, was a month-long sprawling concoction of mostly irrelevant and unimportant Silver Age pastiches and novelty stories. Some of them were actually alright, but a whole month was going to test anyone's patience. It certainly seemed a commercial loser, and given the order figures for that month, retailers seemed to agree.

Anyhow. Irritating Stan Lee framing sequence aside, this is the sort of story Flashback Month was originally meant to have in it - nice little character pieces, advancing plots. Perhaps if Lobdell had ever got to do his version of the Twelve story (and before the e-mails start, no, I don't know what it was going to be) this pleasant little story might be more fondly remembered. As opposed to being completely forgotten about, like the rest of the Flashback Month issues.

Art, incidentally, comes from a pre-fame Bryan Hitch, and it's great. The cover is Jose Ladronn in full Kirby mode, as you might expect given the retro design sense.

Feature character: Rachel Summers (last in X-Men: Phoenix #4; next in Adventures of Cyclops and Phoenix #1 f/b)

Supporting characters: Jean Grey (last in Bizarre Adventures #27/2 f/b; next in issue #273 f/b); John Grey (last in Bizarre Adventures #27/2 f/b; next in issue #5)

Villains: Sanctity (real name revealed; chronologically earliest appearance; next in Askani'Son #1); Bolivar Trask, Larry Trask (both between issue #58 f/b and issue #57 f/b)

STORY: "The Story Of The Year!" (23 pages)
Credits: Scott Lobdell (writer), Joe Madureira (penciller), Tim Townsend (inker), Humberto Ramos (art assist), Comicraft (letterers), Steve Buccellato (colourist), Mark Powers (associate editor), Bob Harras (editor, editor-in-chief)

As Operation: Zero Tolerance spreads, J Jonah Jameson refuses to help Bastion. Meanwhile, Spider-Man prevents Callisto and Marrow from assassinating government agent Henry Gyrich, although Callisto is injured in the fight.

What you need to know:

• This is Uncanny X-Men's token contribution to the Operation: Zero Tolerance crossover, which was busily dragging down the quality of all the other X-books at this point. It has virtually nothing to do with the title's ongoing plotlines and in fact, the only X-Man to appear is Gambit in a one-page subplot. But hell, let's pretend this issue matters and go through the motions.
• Callisto and Marrow try to murder Henry Peter Gyrich in protest at his association with Operation: Zero Tolerance. This follows up on Cable #42, which set up their new status as terrorists. Lobdell seems to be suggesting, however, that Callisto is actually trying to work Marrow through her mental problems in some way. Seems a bit harsh on poor old Gyrich, doesn't it?
• Gyrich's bodyguards, Boyd and Mathers, are revealed to be Prime Sentinels (brainwashed cyborgs, basically). They're also the bodyguards who were on duty when Graydon Creed was assassinated, which is a fairly obvious hint as to who killed Creed.
• Gambit is shown drinking water from a pool in a wasteland described simply as "somewhere far away." He is met by a character resembling a horse with a mohekan, pretty obviously intended as a Kymellian (the alien race in Power Pack's origin). However, because the creators are making this stuff up as they go along, next issue the horse will be identified as Grovel - a character who looks not the slightest bit similar - and the location will later be given as a frozen wasteland in Antarctica. (So why isn't the pool frozen over?)
• Grovel makes his debut here. Do you really care?
• Bastion tries to get J Jonah Jameson on side by offering him information stolen from the X-Men's computers (having already captured the mansion in another part of the crossover). Jameson refuses, on the grounds that he doesn't hate mutants and the real story is Bastion himself. A nice sequence, giving Jameson the positive spin he only really gets outside the Spider-Man books.

Comments: It's an annoying detour from the plot, but it could be worse. While Bastion is still a one-dimensional villain, Lobdell does manage to get some personality into Jameson, Gyrich, Marrow and Callisto. The guest starring Spider-Man is a character well suited to Joe Madureira's style, and if nothing else, it's reasonably entertaining. At this point the Operation: Zero Tolerance crossover was looking as if it might actually be okay (it later fizzled out horribly), and this issue, with its hints of political manouevring that were never properly followed up, is a big part of that. At the end of the day, though, OZT collapsed at the end with a hopeless ending, and it's difficult to look back very fondly on any of the individual issues.

Effective from this issue, Marrow is suddenly pretty. This is a redesign of the character carried out by Joe Madureira, presumably with a view to the fact that it had been decided by this point to put her on the team after Operation: Zero Tolerance. And while the message of the book is supposed to be tolerance, inclusiveness and so forth, we couldn't have ugly people on the team, now could we? Marrow later gets even more prettified under Alan Davis's plotting, but the change is nowhere near as jarring as this one.

Incidentally, it should probably be noted that Scott Lobdell apparently strenuously objected to the idea of putting Marrow on the team, what with her being a murderous lunatic. That's why the storyline is structured to keep Marrow away from characters who knew about all that. The idea was to deal with it later, but of course Lobdell wasn't around to do that.

Feature character: Gambit

Guest stars: Spider-Man I, J Jonah Jameson (continuities unknown)

Supporting characters: Callisto, Marrow (both last in Cable #42)

Villains: Bastion, Operation: Zero Tolerance (both next in Cable #45); Henry Peter Gyrich (between X-Men Vol 2 #65 and #68); Agent Boyd, Agent Mathers (both between X-Factor #130 and X-Men Vol 2 #67); Grovel (first appearance); Spat, Landscape (both b/s; chronologically earliest appearance for both); Magneto (b/s; last in X-Men Vol 2 #42)

Guest appearances: Robbie Robertson, Ben Urich (b/s; continuities unknown)

STORY: "Big Night" (22 pages)
Credits: Scott Lobdell (writer), Joe Madureira (breakdown penciller), Tim Townsend, Eric Cannon, Al Milgrom (finishers), Comicraft (letterers), Steve Buccellato (colourist), Mark Powers (associate editor), Bob Harras (editor, editor-in-chief)

Gambit, the Beast, Rogue, Joseph and Trish Tilby have been scattered around an alien landscape which is actually an illusion created by the supervillain Landscape. (No, really.) Gambit is captured by bounty hunters Spat and Grovel, whom he has betrayed in the past. Joseph is approached by a Nanny robot.

What you need to know:

• We see Grovel in full for the first time, and this time he's a giant reptile rather than a horse. Oh, and the landscape which was barren and empty last issue is now a jungle. And people wonder why nobody cared about this storyline.
• We also see for the first time Grovel's partner Spat. Spat and Grovel were former allies of Gambit, but he apparently somehow betrayed them in Madagascar, leading to Spat taking a shot that was meant for Gambit, and aging in reverse from then on. God alone knows what the point of all this was meant to be. I understand this plot thread was later picked up on in the Gambit cybercomic, but I could never find the damn thing on Marvel's website. Anybody reading this who knows the plot, mail me.
• Anyhow, there's a price on Gambit's head. Spat and Grovel have been sent to capture him. According to Gambit, "It doesn't take a genius to know why you've been hired." Naturally, this is never adequately explained. Some of the dialogue here may suggest that Spat and Grovel were aware of Gambit's involvement in the Morlock Massacre (as finally confirmed in issue #350).
• The Beast promptly passes out on arriving on Earth, for no apparent reason. Maybe he just landed awkwardly.
• Although none of the characters comment on it (because they aren't together to realise), Bishop doesn't arrive on Earth with the other X-Men. This is because he's still in outer space with Deathbird, as revealed in a few issues time.
• The Nanny robot that approaches Joseph in this story is probably most recognisable to today's readers as the robot aide that looked after Magneto and Rogue's baby in the Age of Apocalypse stories, but it's actually the robot that Magneto used to hold the X-Men prisoner way back in issues #112-113. That robot was seemingly destroyed in Magneto's Antarctic base, which of course is where this story is taking place. So maybe Lobdell was thinking some of this stuff through after all.
• Marrow's hero turn continues, as Callisto convinces her to go out and help the X-Men against Operation: Zero Tolerance (a plot thread picked up in X-Men Vol 2 #67). However, Marrow refuses to promise not to use lethal force.
• A brief flashback establishes that as a small girl (remember, her origin story involves several years in another dimension with accelerated time), Marrow saw Archangel nailed to the tunnel walls during the Morlock Massacre and thought that he was beautiful. This is later picked up by Joe Kelly in several of his X-Men issues.
• Maggott continues tracing Magneto, visiting the town of Pine Bluff, North Carolina. That's where Joseph and Rogue fought Humanity's Last Stand in X-Men Unlimited #11. He nearly gets lynched, but beats off the locals with his giant maggotts. You know, you can see why everybody said he was a stupid idea, can't you?

Comments: Yes, well. Lobdell's run is drawing to a close, and this is a bizarre mix of ideas adding up to what's generally a mess. Presumably there was a story to Spat and Grovel, but Lobdell never got around to doing it, and they never really become particularly interesting characters. Landscape, a character contrived purely for plot purposes who doesn't even appear in subsequent parts of this storyline, is another strange idea sitting around without going anywhere. On the other hand, Callisto and Marrow's scene is pretty good at setting up Marrow's implausible reformation as a hero, and the final sequence with the Nanny robot turning up out of the blue is a nice scene for longtime readers who get the reference.

Joe Madureira seems to be on autopilot this issue, with some really weak pages as the issue goes on. Callisto and Marrow's scene survives his uninspired work, but the art is notably poor, to the point where the writers had to resort to captions to tell us that Marrow had left the room. The Maggott sequence is clunky and seems rushed, and Landscape's costume, a blue-green thing covered in multicoloured splotches of paint, is the single ugliest thing you've ever seen.

This is a period of the title for completists only. Things pick up in a bit, honest.

Feature characters: Gambit, the Beast, Rogue, Joseph (the latter three last in issue #345); the Angel (in f/b; last in Annual #16/2 f/b; next in Thor Vol 1 #374)

Supporting characters: Trish Tilby (last in issue #345); Marrow (next in X-Men Vol 2 #67; also in f/b following issue #350 f/b and preceding Cable #15 f/b); Maggott, Eeny, Meany (all between issues #345 and #349)

Villains: Grovel, Spat (real name unrevealed), Landscape (Brett --; first appearance for the latter two); Magneto (b/s)

STORY: "Because, I Said So" (22 pages)
Credits: Scott Lobdell (writer), Joe Madureira (penciller), Tim Townsend, Jon Holdredge, Al Vey (inkers), Richard Starkings, Kolja Fuchs (letterers), Digital Chameleon (colourists), Mark Powers (associate editor), Bob Harras (editor, editor-in-chief)

Gambit, Rogue and Joseph are held prisoner in Antarctica, with their powers neutered. Rogue hallucinates about the Morlock Massacre, and Rogue and Gambit spend the night together. Yes, THAT one.

What you need to know:

• Nanny gives away a plot point from issue #350 straight off the bat by openly telling us on page three that they're in "the lair of Magneto." Hey, maybe they really did plan this stuff out after all.
• Magneto's lair has cyborg bats flying around. Which is never explained. Hey, maybe I was right the first time round. The bat gets screen time suggesting that it was going to be a plot point, but it's never referenced again.
• With her powers turned off, Rogue begins to be taken over by memories she's absorbed in the past, and re-enacting them for us all to enjoy. There's some precedent for this (Carol Danvers' personality re-emerged when her powers were cancelled in Genosha back in the late eighties, for example), but it's basically something pulled out of the ether so that she can foreshadow the big revelation in issue #350 about Gambit's involvement in the Morlock Massacre.
• Specifically, Rogue re-enacts one of Gambit's memories, by impersonating Sabretooth, which is rather bizarre. Of some slight interest is that Sabretooth refers to Mr Sinister under his real name, implying (a) that he knows what it is, and (b) that Gambit knows what it is too, since Sabretooth said it to him.
• Rogue's other fit has her re-enacting Gambit rescuing Marrow from the Morlock Massacre, which we get to see in a flashback next issue.
• The Beast spends a page drawing our attention to the impossibility of the plot, which is normally a sign that the writer has an explanation, but it's risky to make that kind of judgment with stories like this. The Beast points out (a) that the complex they're in was supposedly destroyed in a volcanic eruption, and (b) that it's absurdly coincidental that they should have crashlanded at Magneto's base. Oddly, the Beast talks as if Magneto's out there somewhere, even though he's meant to think that Joseph is Magneto.
• Oh, and because they don't have their powers, Gambit and Rogue take the opportunity to have sex. Pretty heavily implied in this issue, more or less confirmed in the next (which uses the euphemism "fully express their love"). Unbelievably stupid, and there's enough leeway that future writers have the freedom to ignore it.
• Over on the other side of the galaxy, Deathbird is holding Bishop in a supposed medical treatment machine, telling him that he has been "crippled" in trying to save all the other X-Men, and that only the two of them survived. Deathbird claims that Bishop belongs with her and that together, "the two of us will rule an empire." Bishop seems less than convinced.
• Psylocke and Archangel arrive back from the not-awfully-good Psylocke & Archangel: Crimson Dawn miniseries to find their apartment smashed up. That happened in X-Men #67, elsewhere in the OZT crossover, where Iceman tried to use it for a safehouse and got attacked there. Psylocke is missing her facial tattoo in this scene for some reason. Anyhow, she teleports away for no reason.

Comments: One of the most annoying things about comics' obsession with having big events coming in multiples of 25 is issues like this - stories that drop a few hints but basically don't advance the plot and amount to little more than padding so that the big climax can come in issue #350.

With not much else going on, Lobdell takes the opportunity to end the issue on Rogue and Gambit heading off to take advantage of having their powers cancelled in order to go off and have sex. I have never understood the logic of this story. Rogue is a character who has serious issues about touching other people, to put it mildly. So they're chained up, they're being monitored by a supervillain, and they've never even kissed before, and Rogue decides that now is the time to get her kit off? Give me a break.

Madureira is on reasonably good form here, cranking up the melodrama to ridiculous heights as Gambit watches Rogue re-enacting the Morlock Massacre. He manages to get a fairly silly scene to look more or less touching, which is better than nothing.

Not much else to be said about this one. Filler material as we wait for the anniversary.

Feature characters: Gambit, Rogue, Joseph, the Beast; Archangel, Psylocke (both last in Psylocke and Archangel: Crimson Dawn #4)

Supporting characters: Bishop (between issues #345 and #353); Trish Tilby

Villains: Spat, Grovel; Magneto, Landscape (both b/s); Deathbird (between issues #345 and #353)

Guest appearance: Moira MacTaggert (between X-Man #26 and X-Men Unlimited #16)

STORY: "The Crawl" (23 pages)
Credits: Scott Lobdell (writer), Chris Bachalo (artist), Richard Starkings, Comicraft (letterers), Digital Chameleon, Dan Brown (colourists), Mark Powers (editor), Bob Harras (editor-in-chief)

Psylocke and Archangel attack Maggott in New York because she senses a "darkness inside him." Meanwhile, the X-Men escape capture in Antarctica, and Gambit turns himself over to Spat and Grovel.

What you need to know:

• Maggott stands on the roof of the World Trade Center and is able to mentally sense events that have taken there before (specifically, Magneto showing Rogue his machine that suppresses her powers in issue #341). This is the first and last time that Maggott does this or anything even vaguely resembling it.
• According to Maggott, until recently his life was "little more than indentured servitude." Subsequent stories establish him as a black South African, which is reasonably consistent with that comment, although I suspect Lobdell had something more specific in mind.
• According to Maggott, his two slugs have been tracking Magneto (or more accurately, Joseph). Quite how they've got this ability is entirely unclear since they don't seem to be able to do it with anyone else.
• Psylocke attacks Maggott on sight for no other reason than that she "senses a great darkness within" him. She doesn't elaborate on what that means, although she appears to think he's going to hurt the X-Men.
• Maggott's mental link with his slugs somehow prevents Psylocke's psychic knife from working on him. More or less consistent with later stories.
• Grovel identifies his people as the Klyruvians, presumably an alien race of some sort. He says he has worked with Gambit in the past.
• Rogue again has flashes of Gambit in the Morlock Massacre, kept just about vague enough to hold the revelation until next issue. Oddly, Spat refers to there being eight Marauders present. There were actually nine (Sabretooth, Scalphunter, Vertigo, Arclight, Riptide, Scrambler, Prism, Blockbuster and Harpoon).

Comments: And here ends the Scott Lobdell era, issues #289 to #349. Lobdell has declined to comment publicly on the reasons for his departure, although the general tone in which he does so suggests that it was acrimonious. He actually has some involvement in issue #350, but it doesn't really count, for reasons I'll get onto shortly.

This issue is meant to be Maggott's big introduction, leading up to his joining the team in a few issues, but the problem is that Lobdell really hasn't thought it through. According to Joe Kelly, when he took over writing the character, virtually nothing had been worked out about him. Unfortunately, then, Lobdell gets to end his run with a story that exemplifies some of the worst aspects of his writing - the tendency to shove vague hints out there and hope that a plot will emerge in due course. Given how little of this issue makes any sense in retrospect, it's a hard one to recommend.

Of some interest is that this is the first appearance on the title of Chris Bachalo, who takes over as the regular penciller in issue #353. For my money, Bachalo's best work was on Shade the Changing Man several years before this, but he does a pretty good job on this issue, combining the highly odd quirks of his personal style with a relatively conventional storytelling sensibility with effective results.

Feature characters: Rogue, Gambit (both in issue #350 f/b between pp 14-18), the Beast, Archangel, Psylocke, Joseph

Supporting characters: Maggott, Meany, Eeny (all last in issue #347)

Villains: Magneto, Spat, Grovel, Landscape (b/s)

STORY: "Trials And Errors" (36 pages)
Credits: Steve Seagle (co-plotter, scripter), Scott Lobdell (uncredited co-plotter), Joe Madureira, Andy Smith (pencillers), Tim Townsend, Vince Russell, Dan Panosian (inkers), Richard Starkings, Kiff Scholl (letterers), Steve Buccellato (colourist), Mark Powers (editor), Bob Harras (editor-in-chief)

Magneto, disguised as Erik the Red, puts Gambit on trial for his involvement in the Morlock Massacre. The X-Men escape, but Rogue abandons Gambit in the Antarctic.

What you need to know:

• Ah yes. This one. The key point of this story is that Gambit recruited the Marauders on behalf of Mr Sinister, and he showed them where the Morlocks were living. Rogue (on behalf of the X-Men) then kicks Gambit out of the team and abandons him in Antarctica when the rest of the team return home. Gambit's solo title subsequently reveals that he gets rescued by the New Son.
• Now, this causes a certain continuity problem, in that the original Morlock Massacre told us that the Marauders had simply followed some Morlocks back from the surface. This story is irreconcilable with that.
• A flashback shows us that Gambit gathered the Marauders for Sinister in exchange for a vial, the contents of which were hotly debated over the years but are now the subject of a storyline in his solo title. According to Gambit, the vial means that he will never again have to take a job he does not want.
• Gambit points out, quite correctly, that Sinister could easily have collected the Marauders himself. Sinister doesn't reply to that, although he gives us what's presumably meant to be an enigmatic smile. One possible interpretation is that Sinister didn't need Gambit to collect or lead the Marauders at all, and that it's all a set-up to frame Gambit, but quite why Sinister would want to do that is unclear.
• Something which has gone pretty much unnoticed over the years is that Gambit only takes the vial in payment for gathering the Marauders. He at first refuses Sinister's request to lead the Marauders, until Sinister offers him yet another unspecified price. Pretty much nothing has been said about what that price was.
• Spat and Grovel are revealed to be working for Magneto.
• This time around, Archangel actually presses Psylocke for an explanation of what bothers her so much about Maggott. She replies that part of him is missing, claims that she feels "compelled to discover what it is within him that attracts me so", and then teleports to Antarctica with him and Archangel for absolutely no good reason other than to get everyone into Antarctica at the same time. How helpful.
• Curiously, when Gambit is being addressed by Magneto in darkness, he claims to recognise the voice as Mr Sinister. Assuming that Gambit really does recognise Sinister's voice, this would raise the question of how Magneto knew it.
• Bizarrely, Magneto lists Prism as one of the victims of the Marauders despite the fact that he was a Marauder himself. The other victim he names, Scaleface, was a genuine bit part character from the original storyline.
• Joseph collapses when he gets near Magneto, presumably because he's overpowered by the presence of the original.
• Professor X is in jail following Operation: Zero Tolerance, and has a dream of the X-Men (in various line-ups) asking where he is and why he has left them. Gambit offers to tell the other X-Men why the Professor has left (though he doesn't get any further before the Professor wakes up), and Cyclops keeps telling Xavier that "He's here again, Professor", presumably a reference to the return of Magneto. The significance of this scene is not immediately apparent.
• Maggott recognises Joseph as Magneto and claims to view Magneto as a friend. However, when the real Magneto turns up, Maggott recognises him as well and accepts Magneto's instructions to "co-operate and you shall be free." Again, this bears little resemblance to the back story Maggott was eventually given. In any event, Maggott turns on Magneto to join the X-Men's attack on him (without any comment being made by Magneto).
• For no apparent reason, Magneto wears an Erik The Red costume to conduct Gambit's show trial. This is the costume originally used by Cyclops as a disguise back in the 1960s, and later reused as a Shi'ar supervillain identity (without any real explanation) in the 1970s. Other than the obvious fact that Magneto doesn't want the X-Men to recognise him, it's not at all clear why he's chosen this costume.
• In a subplot page reminding us of what the other half of the team are up to following Operation: Zero Tolerance (going home, basically), Cannonball is shown having doubts about his place on the team.
• For the benefit of anyone who cares, Magneto's robotic aide Ferris first appears here. Geddit? Ferris, ferrous... How we laughed.
• According to Psylocke, she has known about Gambit's involvement with the Morlocks since she read his mind in issue #330, but the memories have been locked away until now. Seems a bit unlikely.
• We're shown a flashback to the Morlock Massacre which confirms for the avoidance of doubt that Gambit rescued the young Marrow from the Marauders.
• Oddly, according to Ferris, there are two lifeforms left in the citadel after Magneto and the X-Men have all left. Since Gambit is outside the building at this point, he might conceivably be referring to Spat and Grovel.

Comments: Um...

First of all, for anyone who's wondering, I've listed Scott Lobdell as an uncredited co-writer on this story because Steve Seagle's comments on Usenet after the issue came out included the explanation that part of the issue had already been written, and indeed drawn, before he got near it. Certainly several of Lobdell's ideas did make it into the final storyline. The issue is technically the first issue for Lobdell's replacement Steve Seagle, who came as something of a surprise given that at the time he was working on an eccentric relaunch of Alpha Flight and a decidedly arthouse Vertigo title called House of Secrets. While undoubtedly an extremely talented writer, he didn't seem the obvious choice for a mainstream superhero book. This was widely viewed as a positive thing. Of course, this issue was a rush job for Seagle, and it's hardly fair to treat this as the real beginning of his run.

This is also the end of Joe Madureira's run on the book. After this he went off to join Cliffhanger, where he published issues of BattleChasers on the rare occasions that he could be bothered. Despite what they tell us about the declining state of the comics industry, showing up for work is apparently still an optional extra for the top names. In typical style, Madureira draws about half the issue, leaving the remainder to Andy Smith, a fill-in artist who crops up from time to time in books like X-Men Unlimited but would not normally be found on a flagship title.

The net effect is that this issue looked at the time, and looks in retrospect, like a bit of a rushed mess. The ending, with the X-Men dumping Gambit in the Antarctic and effectively leaving him to die, has been widely criticised as hopelessly out of character. At the time, Seagle explained that Rogue had been motivated by Gambit's own self-loathing, which she had picked up when she kissed him earlier in the issue. Problem is, Gambit's conscious at the time (so she shouldn't have his personality), and in any event, the other X-Men should step in to stop her. It's a ridiculous scene however you look at it, and it's a miracle that Fabian Nicieza managed to sledgehammer it into some kind of decent starting point for a story in Gambit's solo series.

Not so much a story as a monument to the chaos that the X-Men office was in at the time, unfortunately.

Feature characters: Gambit (expelled; next in Gambit #½ also in f/b following photograph in issue #324 and preceding Gambit #7 f/b; also in f/b between pages of issue #349); the Beast, Wolverine, Rogue (also in f/b between pages of issue #349), Cannonball II (all four next in X-Men Vol 2 #70, then Wolverine in Maverick #4, then all in X-Men Vol 2 #71, then in issue #352), Storm, Joseph (both next in X-Men Vol 2 #70-71; all except the Beast, Rogue, Gambit and Joseph last in Wolverine #118); Cyclops, Phoenix III (both last in Wolverine #118; both next in X-Men Vol 2 #70, then in Cable #50, then in Marvel Valentine Special 1997, then in X-Men Vol 2 #71, where both leave the X-Men); Archangel (next in issue #352), Psylocke (next in issue #353)

Supporting characters: Trish Tilby, Maggott, Eeny, Meany (all next in X-Men Vol 2 #70); Professor X (last in Wolverine #115; next in X-Men Vol 2 #73 b/s); Marrow (in f/b preceding Gambit #7 f/b)

Villains: Magneto (next in X-Men Vol 2 #72); Grovel, Spat, Landscape (b/s; no further appearances for all); Mr Sinister (in f/b following ... and preceding X-Factor #38 f/b b/s; also b/s in f/b following issue #215 f/b b/s and preceding issue #211 b/s); Sabretooth (last in ...), Scalphunter (last in photograph in issue #324; both next in Gambit #7 f/b), Vertigo (last in Marvel Fanfare Vol 1 #2), Arclight, Riptide, Scrambler (the latter four next in issue #210), Prism, Blockbuster (both next in X-Factor #10), Harpoon (next in X-Factor #38 f/b; chronologically earliest appearance for the latter six; all nine teamed as the Marauders; all in f/b only)

Guest appearance: Jubilee (last in Wolverine #118; next in X-Men Vol 2 #70 b/s)