STORY: "Hours and Minutes" (23 pages)
Credits: Steve Seagle (writer), Ed Benes (artist), Richard Starkings, Kolja Fuchs (letterers), Chris Sotomayor (colourist), Mark Powers (associate editor, editor), Bob Harras (editor-in-chief)

Cecilia Reyes tries to return to her hospital job, but finds that everyone hates her now that they know she's a mutant. When she inadvetantly lets Pyro escape the hospital, she gets fired and returns to the X-Men.

What you need to know:

• Well, the key point is that Cecilia fails to return to her normal life and ends up stuck with the X-Men (thought she doesn't officially join the team for a little while yet). Obviously.
• Pyro turns up in the hospital, with his powers out of control due to the Legacy Virus, and having been shot in the stomach. He claims he was robbing a bank to pay for a scientist who said he could take away mutant genes. That's the first reference to Dr Aubrey Agee, the focus of a later Seagle storyline. Anyhow, being a villain, Pyro betrays Cecilia and escapes, torpedoing her chances of keeping her job.
• Daredevil puts in a guest appearance to give Cecilia a pep talk. Oddly enough, this is the first time Daredevil's appeared in costume in Uncanny X-Men (though he appeared way back in the sixties as Matt Murdock). His meeting with Cecilia also appears briefly in Daredevil #371, though it'd be stretching a point to call this a crossover. At this point, Daredevil was written by Joe Kelly, who was also writing X-Men Vol 2.
• Scott and Jean take a leave of absence from the team and are seen on a plane to Anchorage, which is the closest thing there is to a Summers family home (Scott's paternal grandparents live there, and he lived there with Madelyne). The chronology of this seems decidedly screwy, since Cecilia says it's only been a few days since Operation: Zero Tolerance ended - how did Scott and Jean get a furnished home in Anchorage so quickly?
• There's an evil murderous thingie in a box on board the aircraft, which Jean detects telepathically. That's a set-up for next issue.
• The issue also features the first appearance of Staci and Chris Miller, who are Scott and Jean's neighbours in Anchorage.
• Sauron arrives from the Savage Land in a crate belonging to Kevin Plunder. Presumably he stowed away. Sauron was meant to be dead at this point, but his return is explained (sort of) in a flashback in issue #354. For those who don't know, Kevin Plunder is Ka-Zar, and the "hot redheaded babe" who picked up one of the earlier shipments is presumably his wife Shanna. At this point, the Plunders were moving to New York in preparation for a short-lived Ka-Zar series.

Comments: This is technically the first solo issue of the Steven Seagle run, but at the time Seagle said that he regarded issue #353 as the real beginning of his run. Issues #351-352 are fill-in stories with fill-in artists, which advance the plot a little, but are basically just getting some of the set-up out of the way.

This is a much-needed character piece for Cecilia Reyes, who spent most of Operation: Zero Tolerance running around whining about how upset she was about the whole thing. She desperately needed a chance to show some other personality traits, and this issue gives her that opportunity. After the hopeless excess of OZT, it's a refreshing change to see Seagle taking a much more down-to-earth approach to the mutant prejudice concept. Despite the fact that Cecilia isn't accepted back at her job, Seagle at least does include some sympathetic co-workers, which is a start.

Having said that, it's a fairly obvious story designed to give Cecilia a rationale to remain with the X-Men when she didn't really have one, and it's also hampered by highly inappropriate art from Ed Benes. Although he's a competent enough storyteller, Benes has obviously swallowed wholesale the school of thought that says female characters should always be drawn with an arched back to enhance their sex appeal. This is all very well if you're drawing T&A material (if you must), but wholly imappropriate for a downbeat character piece like this one.

Feature characters: Wolverine, Storm (next in issue #353; both last in X-Men Vol 2 #71)

Supporting characters: Cecilia Reyes (appears in Daredevil Vol 1 #371 between pages), Cyclops, Phoenix III (all last in X-Men Vol 2 #71); Staci Murphy Miller, Chris Miller (first appearance for both)

Villains: Pyro (between X-Factor #130 and Quicksilver #6); Sauron (between panels of issue #354 f/b)

Guest appearance: Daredevil (between Daredevil Vol 1 #370-371)

STORY: "In Sin Air" (23 pages)
Credits: Steve Seagle (writer), Cully Hamner, ... Edwards, ... Banks, Terry Dodson, JH Williams III, John Cassady (pencillers), ... Martin, ... Edwards, Jon Holdredge, Rachel Dodson, Mick Gray and John Cassady (inkers); Richard Starkings, Albert Deschesne (letterers), Steve Oliff (colourist), Mark Powers (editor), Bob Harras (editor-in-chief)

Scott and Jean's plane is boarded by AIM, who are trying to steal an alien held prisoner in the cargo hold.

What you need to know:

• Well, it's more filler, isn't it? Quite a few minor points worth noting, though, since Seagle was planning ahead.
• Jean kicks off the issue by telepathically searching for Professor X, still missing after Operation: Zero Tolerance. She can't find him because of "static on the psi-plane" which is impairing her, and she "had to conceal herself as a bird" to search at all, whatever that's meant to mean. Birds are a recurring motif in the Seagle stories, but we'll come back to that. The static on the psi-plane is might be intended as foreshadowing for the Psi-War, a storyline which was upcoming over in X-Men Vol 2, or it might just be something to do with the entity.
• AIM aren't regular X-Men characters and they're really just here to provide a story. Basically, their gimmick is that they're extremist meritocrats who believe that the world should be ruled by the best scientists (ie, them). The agents who turn up in this story name themselves after famous historical scientists - Kepler, Planck and Copernicus.
• We're not told much about the entity in the box, other than that it was hijacked from another dimension against its will by a group of generic villains (one's named as Dr Sibelius), and AIM would like it. It seems to have some kind of psychic powers. It ultimately ends up staying in its box to avoid destroying the aircraft, and then gets handed over to the Canadian government's Department H - major villains in Seagle's Alpha Flight series, which was running at the same time. Possibly Seagle was setting up a storyline for that book, but it never turned up before the series was cancelled.
• Archangel finally shows up at the X-Men Mansion, having travelled straight home with Psylocke after issue #350. This may well be an attempt to cover for a glaring continuity error - namely, why Archangel and Psylocke weren't among the X-Men who teleported in from the Antarctic in X-Men Vol 2 #71 - but it creates some tension between him and the rest of the team, and gives Marrow an excuse to sympathise with him as a fellow outsider (setting up some stories for the Joe Kelly run on X-Men Vol 2 in the process).
• Maggott turns up to establish that he's living in the mansion now, although no particular reason is given. We'll worry about him when we get onto X-Men Vol 2, where most of his stories turn up.
• The X-Men get a letter from the Department of Education, which is the first mention of a storyline that hovers around in the background for a few issues before being aborted without explanation.
• Cannonball gets a letter from Meltdown - his nominal girlfriend from X-Force - inviting him to the Colossal Man Gathering in Texas (a reference to the Burning Man festival). He duly goes over to meet her in X-Force #75, leading to their official break-up.
• The cover says that this issue features "possibly the most artists ever on one title." It's not, but it does just beat the previous record for this title, which was held by issue #273.

Comments: Well, it's a fill-in. A vaguely rousing tale of an abused entity which chooses not to lash out at mankind, and some subplots being shuffled into place. Nothing terribly interesting in its own right, and it definitely shows its roots as a time-marking exercise until the proper storyline begins (along with the full-time arrival of penciller Chris Bachalo) in issue #353.

The art is a bizarre mixture of pencillers and inkers whose styles clash horribly at times. Some of the artists went on to more prominent things later on. Terry and Rachel Dodson moved on to Generation X and Harley Quinn among others. JH Williams III and Mick Gray worked with Alan Moore on Promethea. And John Cassaday developed a growing reputation before finally landing up with Warren Ellis on Planetary. As for the other three pencillers, Cully Hamner is a perfectly good artist who has never found a niche, Edwards (whoever he is) goes for a rather scratchy approach which doesn't suit the material, and Banks (again, not a name that means much to me) is rather below par.

Feature characters: Wolverine (next in Kitty Pryde, Agent of SHIELD #1-3, then in Wolverine #119-122, then in Wolverine '97), Archangel (last in issue #350), the Beast (next in X-Men Vol 2 #72, then in Avengers Vol 3 #1-3, then in X-Men Vol 2 #73-76, then in Avengers Vol 3 #4, then in Excalibur #121, then in issue #356), Cannonball II (next in X-Force #75-76), Joseph, Rogue (the latter four last in X-Men Vol 2 #71)

Supporting characters: Cyclops, Phoenix III; Staci Miller, Chris Miller (both next in issue #356); Marrow, Maggott, Eeny, Meany (the latter two next in issue #354; all four last in X-Men Vol 2 #71)

Villains: AIM (last in ...; next in Iron Man Vol 3 #1); Department H, Epsilon Flight (both between Alpha Flight Vol 2 #7-8)

Guest appearance: Meltdown II (the letter she wrote in X-Force #73 arrives in this issue)

STORY: "Blackbirds" (23 pages)
Credits: Steve Seagle (writer), Chris Bachalo (penciller), Tim Townsend (inker), Richard Starkings, Kolja Fuchs (letterers), Steve Buccellato (colourist), Mark Powers (editor), Bob Harras (editor-in-chief)

Rogue has dreams in which she is compelled to absorb people's minds against their will. When Wolverine is found unconscious on the grounds, the X-Men believe Rogue has turned on them, and she flees in tears, only for the team to find that Sauron was responsible.

What you need to know:

• Rogue's dreams are apparently triggered by stress over the loss of Gambit in the Antarctic, which is attributed here to her acting under the influence of Gambit's own personality.
• In an initial dream scene, Rogue imagines absorbing Wolverine's mind and learning that he has a son. This is probably just a dream, although it's now entirely impossible that it was intended as a reference to the child he fathered in the long-forgotten one-shot Wolverine: The Jungle Adventure.
• Rogue tries to persuade Joseph to let her absorb his memories in order to try and find out his history. Joseph refuses, on the basis that this is just an ulterior motive to give her the excuse to use her powers. He's probably right.
• Joseph has a fit for unexplained reasons, though he shouts that "He is near." This is presumably a reference to Sauron, but quite why Sauron's presence would cause Joseph to have a fit is unclear.
• A bird motif keeps appearing throughout the artwork, continuing the running theme of the Seagle run.
• Jubilee and Iceman are visiting the mansion, for no particular reason.
• Department of Education inspector Margaret Stone comes to see the X-Men's school and is naturally appalled by the conditions. This subplot rears its head again in issue #355 before being completely forgotten about.
• The X-Men find their abandoned Blackbird in a pond in the grounds. Of course they do.
• Subplot 1: Psylocke tries to persuade Archangel to leave the X-Men, in a rather melodramatic manner which he obviously finds off-putting. This is yet another one for the "aborted Kelly/Seagle plots" file.
• Subplot 2: We get to briefly see Bishop and Deathbird on their spacecraft, the first time we've seen them since the other X-Men made it back to Earth. Deathbird has got Bishop trussed up in some kind of medical equipment, is making protestations of love to him, and is claiming that they're going to go back and reclaim her empire together.
• Subplot 3: Scott and Jean arrive at their new home in Alaska to find that it's completely covered in snow. Jean uses her powers to clear the snow, leaving a cleared area in the shape of the Phoenix emblem. This is foreshadowing for yet another aborted plot.

Comments: Even with a Rogue storyline kicking off, there's still a hell of a lot of this issue devoted to slowly advancing the subplots. After Kelly and Seagle were bounced from the titles, X-Men fandom retroactively decided that they were slighted geniuses and that their run had been magnificent. That's not my recollection of the reaction at around this period, when people were mainly just grumbling about the slow pace.

There's some pretty good character material for Rogue here, but other than that it's difficult to view most of this period as representing anything more than fragments of stories we never got to see. The ideas are there, but they never went anywhere before Marvel took fright and went back to playing it ultra-safe for another few years. On that point, at least, the conventional wisdom is right.

Chris Bachalo's real debut as the regular artist comes in this issue, and it's immediately obvious in the presence of the recurring bird motifs throughout the artwork. Nonetheless, he starts fairly slowly, with pretty conventional art here for the most part. A drastic change in the appearance of Cannonball leaps out at you, as Bachalo reverts to the original character design which hadn't been used in a decade, but for the most part this is conservative material by Bachalo's standards.

Feature characters: Storm (last in issue #351), Wolverine (last in Wolverine '97), Rogue (the latter two both in flashback in issue #354 between pages), Cannonball II (last in X-Force #76), Iceman (last in X-Men Vol 2 #71), Joseph; Archangel (next in X-Men Unlimited #17, then in Iron Man Vol 3 #1, then in X-Men Vol 2 #73-74, then in issue #356); Psylocke (last in issue #350; next in Iron Man Vol 3 #1, then in X-Men Vol 2 #73, then in Wolverine #125-126, then in X-Men Vol 2 #77-78, then in Excalibur #125, then leaves the X-Men)

Guest star: Jubilee (last in Generation X '97)

Supporting characters: Maggott, Marrow (both next in X-Men Vol 2 #72); Bishop (last in issue #348); Cyclops, Phoenix III

Villains: Sauron (last in issue #354 f/b); Deathbird (last in issue #348); Dr Aubrey Agee (first appearance; last in issue #359 f/b; next in issue #355)

Other characters: Margaret Stone (a school inspector; first appearance; next in issue #355)

STORY: "Prehistory" (22 pages)
Credits: Steve Seagle (writer), Chris Bachalo (penciller), Tim Townsend (inker), Richard Starkings, Albert Deschesne (letterers), Steve Buccellat (colourist), Mark Powers (editor), Bob Harras (editor-in-chief)

While Rogue runs away to Manhattan, the other X-Men defeat Sauron.

What you need to know:

• There's really not much to say about the fight with Sauron. The X-Men win.
• A flashback confirms that Sauron came to New York by stowing away in Ka-Zar's shipment of his possessions to New York, which happened at the beginning of his failed mid-nineties series. Prior to this storyline, Sauron was meant to be dead; the flashback doesn't offer any explanation of his survival other than to tell us that "Sauron's ability to cheat eternity is nothing short of legendary", which is somewhat uninformative.
• Before leaving the campus, Rogue finds Joseph lying unconscious in the Mansion and not breathing. She gives him the kiss of life, and Marrow walks in halfway through for a Hilarious Misunderstanding. Oddly, Joseph wakes up almost immediately afterwards, despite a fairly lengthy period of skin-to-skin contact that should have kept him out for ages - that's probably an error on Seagle's part.
• Afterwards, Rogue heads to Manhattan to find the Agee Institute. That's the place that was advertised on TV in earlier issues, which claims to have the ability to remove mutant powers.
• There's another subplot scene with Bishop and Deathbird. Deathbird has told Bishop that he was paralysed in the explosion of their spaceship and that she wasn't able to save the other X-Men, both of which he's rightly sceptical about. At the end of the scene, their new spacecraft is shot down by unidentified aliens, in a lead-in to issue #357's story.
• Up in Ptarmigan Creek, Jean Grey turns up wearing a Phoenix costume. It's the green version from when the character was sane. More of this subplot in later issues.

Comments: This is another issue which falls rather short of being satisfactory. The point of this whole storyline, as near as I can make out, is to give Rogue the impetus to head off to New York and appear in the Agee Institute storyline, which is all very well. Unfortunately, having brought Sauron into the plot in order to play off his energy-absorbing powers, Seagle has nothing else to say about him and ends up delivering a straightforward fight issue desperately pretending to be something else.

Throughout the entire issue, the narrator rambles on in a rather incoherent way about the word "why", with occasional digressions into the nature of gravity as a force of nature. None of this has anything whatsoever to do with the story it's meant to be narrating, nor does it work as some kind of counterpoint. The upshot is that is comes across as rather pretentious, unfortunately.

Feature characters: Storm, Wolverine, Rogue, Cannonball II; Iceman (next in issue #356); Joseph (next in X-Men Vol 2 #72-73, where he leaves the X-Men)

Guest star: Jubilee (next in Generation X Underground)

Supporting characters: Marrow (next in X-Men Unlimited #17/2); Maggott, Eeny, Meany (the latter two last in issue #352); Bishop (next in issue #357); Cyclops, Phoenix III

Villains: Sauron (also in f/b following Ka-Zar of the Savage Land 1997 one-shot and preceding issue #353; appears in issue #351 between panels of that f/b); Deathbird (next in issue #357); the Chnitt (first appearance; next in issue #357)

Guest appearances: Ka-Zar, Shanna the She-Devil, Zabu (all in f/b; continuities unknown)

STORY: "North And South" (23 pages)
Credits: Steve Seagle (writer), Chris Bachalo (penciller), Tim Townsend, ... Beatty, ... Smith (inkers), Richard Starkings, Emerson Miranda (letterers), Steve Buccellato (colourist), Mark Powers (editor), Bob Harras (editor-in-chief)

Alpha Flight come to New York to kidnap Wolverine, and the X-Men fend them off.

What you need to know:

• This issue is a crossover with Alpha Flight vol 2 #9, also written by Steve Seagle. Somewhat oddly, given that the whole point of the exercise is to boost sales on Alpha Flight, nowhere in this issue is there a note explaining this to the readers.
• Another thing that this issue doesn't explain is quite what Alpha Flight are up to, which is a shame since it's necessary to understand the story. At this point in their own book, Alpha Flight were basically a bunch of confused brainwashed drones working for a highly corrupt incarnation of the Canadian government's Department H. The gimmick was that every time they got close to working out what was going on, they'd be zapped and taken away for reprogramming, and they'd be back to square one. A government paranoia story, basically. In this issue, Alpha Flight have been packed off to retrieve Wolverine, who their employers still view as a renegade Canadian government agent, on the ostensible basis that he murdered former Alpha Flight member Madison Jeffries. As Wolverine points out, normally Alpha Flight wouldn't have believed that accusation, but just at the moment they don't have any choice.
• Wolverine's comment that Mac (Guardian) "smells funny - he's him but he ain't him" is a reference to an ongoing Alpha Flight subplot. At this point, the character was simply a teenage incarnation of the original Guardian whose presence had been explained by a somewhat implausible tale of rejuvenation in a flashback that was obviously not entirely reliable. The adult Guardian showed up later in the series, and Seagle deliberately avoided explaining which one was genuine. A subsequent Wolverine storyline finally resolved this plot, confirming that the Guardian seen in this issue is a robot impostor (although he doesn't know it yet).
• Much the same applies to Sasquatch, who actually is a sasquatch on this version of the team - hence Wolverine's rather confused reaction to him, since he's expecting a man called Walter who turns into a sasquatch as a superpower.
• Alpha Flight start doubting the situation when Wolverine reveals that he doesn't have adamantium claws at this point - Department H had claimed that they were using his adamantium skeleton to track him, so this immediately proves that Department H were lying, even to the befuddled Alpha Flight. They still carry on trying to arrest him until Cannonball and Flex compare notes and work out that the murder was supposedly carried out during Operation: Zero Tolerance, at which point Wolverine was already imprisoned by Bastion. By this point, Alpha Flight are getting very suspicious of the whole thing, and they turn around and go home.
• As the issue starts, rather oddly, Wolverine is trying to take Sauron into the city to hand over to the authorities - by chaining him up inside a sack and getting him to sit on the side of his motorbike. This doesn't seem to me like a very sensible means of transport for a captive supervillain.
• Dr Agee appears in person for the first time, as Rogue meets with him to ask for advice on how to be cured from her mutant powers. She claims she's asking for a friend, but he sees through that. He takes a DNA sample from her, and claims that he successfully "cured" his sister of her mutant powers. As we'll see in a couple of issues time, either Agee is lying about this, or he's delusional.
• Scott is understandably a bit worried that Jean has suddenly decided to parade around in the costume of a copy of her that went on to become a genocidal murderer, and that she's apparently not bothered about using her powers in a way that will draw attention to them. Frankly, my sympathy is with Scott here. This triggers an explanation from Jean that she is acting to empower himself and that she's tired of suppressing her abilities because she's afraid that it would upset Scott, which still doesn't really explain why she'd want to wear such a loaded costume. At the end of the issue, Scott phones the X-Men to express his concerns about all this.
• Margaret Stone from the Department of Education phones to say that a woman from their department called Marta Walz is coming to stay at the Mansion. This never happens, because it's a dropped plot. Presumably the X-Men bribed them to make them go away, or something along those lines.

Comments: This is one of the more curious crossovers in X-Men history. The other half of the story, in theory, is in Alpha Flight #9, but in fact that issue just carries Alpha Flight's perspective on the same events. The story helps drive things along for Alpha Flight, by increasing their suspicions about what they're being told, but quite what it's doing in this issue remains something of a mystery, since it has nothing at all to do with the X-Men.

It's fairly interesting if you're a fan of Seagle's Alpha Flight, since you'll get to see the characters being illustrated in Bachalo's style, and looking fairly good on it. Otherwise, it's a bit of a wasted issue, and coming after such a lengthy set-up for the Agee storyline, they really could have done without it.

Feature characters: Wolverine (next in X-Men Unlimited #17, then in X-Men Vol 2 #72, then in Wolverine #123-130, then in X-Men Vol 2 #74-76), Rogue (next in X-Men Vol 2 #73, then in Wolverine Vol 2 #125-126, then in X-Men Vol 2 #75), Storm, Cannonball II (both next in X-Men Vol 2 #75-78, then in Annual '98; all four concurrently in Alpha Flight Vol 2 #9)

Guest stars: Guardian III, Vindicator II, Sasquatch II, Puck, Murmur, Radius, Flex, Manbot (as Alpha Flight; all concurrent with Alpha Flight Vol 2 #9)

Supporting characters: Cyclops, Phoenix III (both next in Cable/Machine Man '98); Maggott, Eeny, Meany (all concurrently in Alpha Flight Vol 2 #9)

Villains: Sauron; Department H (b/s concurrent with Alpha Flight Vol 2 #9); Aubrey Agee (last in issue #353)

Guest appearance: Nightcrawler (voice only; between Excalibur #120-121)

Other character: Margaret Stone (last in issue #353; no further appearances)