THE PHOENIX RESURRECTION #0 – March 1996

Red Shift

Credits:  Ian Edginton (writer), J. Royle, Paul Pelletier, C. Wojtkiewicz, Randy Green, B. Murray, & Rob Haynes (pencilers), P. Moy, S. Moncuse, Mark Farmer, Terry Austin, G. Martin (inkers), P. Owsley & V. Williams (letterers), Rob Alvord & Malibu (colors)

Summary:  Barriers between the Ultraverse and Marvel Universe weaken.  Prime spots Gateway in a crowd and is annoyed that he isn’t cheering with the rest of Prime’s fans.  When he flies over to confront Gateway, Prime discovers only a painting of the Phoenix in the dirt.  Night Man looks into a puddle and sees inside Damion Hellstrom’s home.  Whizzer of the Squadron Supreme contacts the Beast (when other heroes won’t answer) and discusses the rise in dimensional anomalies.  Mantra, in her civilian identity, is briefly visited by Gateway.  A member of the Exiles worries that she might again become the vessel for a cosmic force.  Rune falls through a dimensional rift and briefly stands outside of the X-Men’s mansion.  Ultraforce accidentally sends a villain into the Marvel Universe, where he briefly encounters Spider-Man and Thor.  

Continuity Notes:  

• This Malibu/Marvel crossover represents continuity circa late 1995, which means Spider-Man is Ben Reilly and Wolverine has bone claws -- but also a nose, since he hasn’t gone fully “feral” yet.  
• Due to previous attempts to incorporate Marvel characters into Malibu’s Ultraverse, Black Knight is a member of Ultraforce and the Exiles team has Juggernaut, Reaper, and Sienna Blaze as members.
• Based on a flashback in the Exiles chapter of this story, the Malibu miniseries Break-Thru has already teased the arrival of the Phoenix Force in the Ultraverse.

Review:  In 1995-1996, publishers were legally required to have a zero issue.  Don’t question it.  The Phoenix Resurrection #0 is a one-shot published after the conclusion of the miniseries.  It’s a reprint of a series of back-up teasers that ran in Malibu’s superhero comics for a month, followed by a new story starring Jubilee.  Five pages of new Jubilee content cost you $1.95 in the early days of 1996; surely this was the golden age of X-completist gouging.

I doubt you’ll find an Ultraverse fan today who looks back with any nostalgia on the Marvel crossover days.  Marvel seemed to have an attitude that teaming their heroes with the Ultraverse characters would somehow legitimize the Ultras, but Marvel fans never seemed to care and Malibu fans always resented the intrusion.  Had this stunt been pulled four years earlier, it’s possible that diehard Marvel Zombies would’ve bought the hype and embraced characters like Rune and Prime with open arms.  By 1996, everyone was just burned out on these stunts.  If the Ultraverse characters had any shot at all of surviving the Marvel takeover, they probably should’ve been incorporated into the actual Marvel Universe.  Running two superhero universes simultaneously has historically not ended well, with the younger universe always paying the price.  Ending the Ultraverse and giving three or four of the heroes their own titles in the Marvel Universe, and actually treating them as authentic heroes within the Marvel Universe, was probably the best bet for getting Marvel fans to pay attention.  That’s assuming that the higher-ups at Marvel really wanted the Malibu characters to succeed, of course.  For years, the fan press reported that Marvel bought Malibu for its computer coloring department.  Now, we know that Malibu was purchased mainly to prevent DC from buying the company and taking a larger percentage of the marketplace.  Supposedly, Marvel didn’t even discover Malibu had a full-time computer coloring department until after the deal was finalized.

It’s hard to judge any of these shorts as stories, since every one is a brief scene that teases the idea of the Marvel Universe and the Ultraverse colliding.  Some of these shorts are more fun than I was expecting.  The Night Man piece has him inadvertently gaining access to Hellstorm’s bedroom, while he’s entertaining a “silver-tongued devil.”  The Whizzer back-up is about as interesting as a dry “two worlds are colliding” exposition piece can be.  (And notice that the major companies still can’t let go of the Conflicting Continuities Converge concept.)  I do feel sorry for Siren, though, whoever she is.  She isn’t even the star of her own back-up; Whizzer takes her place, in a short that doesn’t feature any Ultraverse characters.  Some of the pieces are borderline incomprehensible, such as the Ultraforce back-up, but overall the shorts set up the Phoenix event rather painlessly.  The art is the mixed bag I would expect any mid-‘90s superhero jam comic to be, with Paul Pelletier and Mark Farmer turning in the strongest piece, while B. Murray delivers a job worthy of Extreme Studios.  (Is this the Brian Murray who worked on Supreme?)  The cover also exhibits some of Bryan Hitch’s strengths and weaknesses during this era.  It’s a dynamic drawing, and the figures are well-constructed.  Those faces, though…why do Wolverine and Prime both have freakishly deformed left eyes?!

Generation X - Red Shift

Credits:  Ian Edginton (plot), Dan Abnett (script), Robert Stotz (penciler), Steve Moncuse (inker), Edd fear (letterer), Moose Baumann (colorist)

Summary:  Jubilee reflects in her school’s terrarium, questioning why Gateway included her in the group of mutants sent to defend the Ultraverse.  She discovers an emblem shaped like the Phoenix and wonders if it has any significance.  Nearby, Gateway smiles.

Review:  So, in the same comic, we get the prologues and an epilogue, which makes the reading order slightly annoying for anyone following this event with the zero issue first.  Calling this a “story” is a bit generous, with the narrative only offering the vaguest hint that Jubilee’s found something that might be important someday.  It isn’t, of course, since the Ultraverse characters were dismissed by Marvel not long after this event concluded.  Also, including new material in a reprint special is always a questionable move in my opinion.  If there are any Jubilee completists out there today, hopefully you can find this in a quarter box somewhere.

UNCANNY X-MEN & FANTASTIC FOUR ‘98 - September 1998

Thresholds

Credits: Joe Casey (writer), Paul Pelletier & Leo Fernandez (pencilers), Andrew Pepoy, Keith Champagne, Rob Leigh, & Ray McCarthy (inks), Richard Starkings & Comicraft (letters), Serrano/Ramos/Soto/Smith/Schigel (colors)

Summary: Mr. Fantastic and Invisible Woman go out for a night at the opera, a performance also attended by Beast and Cecilia Reyes. Meanwhile, Wolverine forces Cannonball to join him in a poker game with the Thing and Human Torch. Unbeknownst to Mr. Fantastic, his new miniaturizer device is identical to one developed by Stark-Fujikawa scientist, Bradley Beynon. When Beynon is fired for copying Mr. Fantastic’s design, he raids Stark-Fujikawa’s vault and discovers a Psycho-Man robot and an Emotion-Stimulator Box. Beynon sends the robot to the FF’s headquarters and attacks the opera with the Box. The heroes defeat Beynon, but must soon protect him for an enraged Psycho-Man. During the battle, Beynon targets Mr. Fantastic with his miniaturizing device, but accidently sends himself and Psycho-Man to the Microverse.

Continuity Notes: Cannonball is portrayed as a novice poker player who has to be forced into the game, although he outplays everyone and consistently has winning hands. This is virtually identical to the story in X-Men #48, which also featured the Thing and was only a few years old at the time. The only difference is that Scott Lobdell heavily implied that Cannonball was pretending not to know how to play, while Joe Casey treats him as a genuine novice. Perhaps Lobdell should’ve looted a scientific vault and launched an attack on Casey for stealing his idea.

“Huh?” Moment: When Wolverine and Thing race out of Pier-4 to respond to Mr. Fantastic’s signal flare, Wolverine discovers Thing has somehow crushed his motorcycle with the FF’s “flying bathtub.” How exactly this happened isn’t explained at all.

Review: Team-ups were the gimmick for the 1998 annuals, which sounds fine on paper, but I seem to recall almost all of them getting bad reviews. This one certainly isn’t a stellar entry. The “humorous” character subplot is an unintentional rerun of a recent story, the villain has a shaky motive, and for some unexplained reason, the reader has to accept that Stark-Fujikawa keeps a Psycho-Man robot and accompanying device in its closet. It’s no secret by now that Casey has more of an affinity for the Fantastic Four than the X-Men, but the only real highlights in this issue come when he riffs on Joe Kelly’s concurrent X-Men run. While his characterizations of the Fantastic Four don’t go much deeper than a few catchphrases, his portrayal of Beast and Cecilia’s budding romance (a subplot dropped from the main books just as this annual went to press) brings some life to the story. Casey’s depiction of Cecilia’s response to her first brush with mind control -- she’s furious and wants to kill the guy -- also adds a nice touch of reality to the story. The rest of the issue is easily forgettable. Even the art, by the usually reliable Paul Pelletier and Leo Fernandez, is obscured by the rushed inking job.

THE BEAST #1-#3, May - July 1997

Bad Karma

Credits: Keith Giffen (writer), Cedric Nocon (penciler), Jaime Mendoza & Hackshack Studios (inkers), Marie Javins & Digital Chameleon (colors), Comicraft (letters)

I wonder, has Keith Giffen ever publically stated his thoughts on the X-titles? His fill-in on Excalibur hinted at some affection for the more obscure areas of X-continuity, and now we have a story that features Gateway, Viper, Spiral, Karma, and her little siblings, Coy Leong and Coy Nga. There’s even a flashback here I’m not familiar with -- the Australian-era X-Men, with Nightcrawler for some reason, facing an adult Leong and Nga (perhaps it's from New Mutants annual #2 ?). Maybe he’s just an old school pro who did a lot of research before delving into the X-universe, but it seems like you have to be a pretty hardcore fan to even think about Karma’s siblings.

The story opens with Spiral using Gateway to bring her Viper, her new partner in crime. Spiral has Leong and Nga, which comes as a surprise to Karma, who thinks the Hellfire Club is keeping them captive. After possessing Beast and forcing him into a pointless fight with Hellfire security, Karma calms down and agrees to let Beast and Cannonball help her in her search (the throwaway explanation for why the X-Men never looked for her siblings is that Karma never "gave (them) an opportunity”). Beast can’t find them with Cerebro (which allows Giffen to explain that non-telepaths can also use it, telepaths are just better with it), but that’s okay. Spiral conveniently shows up at X-Men’s door and kidnaps Karma, apparently because she needs all of the Coy siblings together.

As Spiral teleports away, Beast and Cannonball are brought along for the ride. And, yeah, this has precious little to do with the Beast. I honestly wonder if Karma and Beast have ever even appeared in the same comic before this. Giffen does build up enough intrigue for the first issue though, and with the exception of a comically exaggerated Cannonball, he does have a nice grasp on the characters. Cedric Nocon’s flat, two-dimensional Jim Lee impression is the biggest problem with the issue.

Body Shopping

Credits: Keith Giffen (plot), Terry Kavanagh (script), Cedric Nocon (penciler), Jaime Mendoza & Hackshack Studios (inkers), Ariane Lenshoek (colors), Comicraft (letters)

Giffen’s already halfway out of the door, and the drop in quality is noticeable. After arriving at Spiral’s Body Shoppe, the heroes learn that Karma’s siblings have been transformed into adult cyborgs. For reasons that aren’t clear yet, Viper and Spiral have brainwashed the siblings and unleashed them on the mutants. Aside from just being unpleasant to look at, Nocon’s art really drops the ball during the fight scene. Apparently, Nga bursts out of her “adult” shell, but she now resembles Karma and can duplicate her possession powers. It’s entirely possible that Kavanagh’s script isn’t conveying what exactly Giffen intended, but the art just makes things muddier. It’s hard to tell if Nga is supposed to resemble Karma if both characters barely look human. Plus, the art is so unclear, I can’t tell if Nga is supposed to be a kid again or not (the next issue clarifies that she’s still stuck in an adult body, but it’s unclear at this point). The style isn’t even consistent, as the art goes from a Jim Lee pastiche to a Joe Mad one over the course of a few pages. As for the Beast, he has a quickie flashback to the day he experimented on himself and turned blue and furry. I’m not entirely sure that even accurately represents the original story, and it’s a stretch to connect his transformation to what Spiral does in the Body Shoppe.

Closing Shop

Credits: Terry Kavanagh (writer), Cedric Nocon, Paul Pelletier, & Hector Collazo (penciler), Jaime Mendoza & Hackshack Studios, Harry Candelario (inkers), Ariane Lenshoek (colors), Comicraft (letters)

I’ve never read Karma’s first appearance in Marvel Team-Up #100, but apparently it introduced, and killed off, a twin brother I didn’t know about. Tran Coy Manh, Karma’s twin brother with the same powers, is dredged out of the past and becomes a major plot point. Viper wants to kill the Coy family because Tran forced her into some sort of Comics Code Approved white slavery in his sole appearance. As we abruptly learn this issue, Tran never really died, and a part of his consciousness resides inside Karma. This creates a conflict between Viper and Spiral, since Viper wants to take Karma back and use her as a means to torture Tran, while Spiral apparently wants to keep her for experimentation. Meanwhile, Leong and Nga are still grown-up, brainwashed cyborgs providing the token fight scenes. Spiral throws a tantrum, things blow up, and Beast, Cannonball, and Karma escape with the Coy siblings. What does Beast have to do? He un-brainwashes the siblings, but tells Karma that their new forms are permanent. (Are they still supposed to be cyborg adults? I know Claremont established that Karma was still taking care of them, but I don’t know if they’ve appeared “on-camera” since this mini.)

I’m glad someone out there had a great story that spoke to the Beast’s character and didn’t rely on a large cast of unrelated characters to work, don’t you? Seriously, who possibly thought this could be sold as a Beast miniseries? The Beast has served with the Avengers and the Defenders. He’s best friends with Wonder Man and has various connections throughout the Marvel Universe. He has an evil twin out there in continuity. So, of course his miniseries is a follow-up to a forgotten New Mutants subplot. And how is it that a three-issue miniseries can’t even keep a consistent creative team?

X-MEN PRIME – July 1995

Racing the Night

Credits: Scott Lobdell & Fabian Nicieza (writers), Bryan Hitch, Jeff Matsuda, Gary Frank, Mike McKone, Terry Dodson, Ben Herrera, & Paul Pelletier (pencilers), Milgom/Russell/Smith/Farmer/McKenna/Palmer/Townsend/Collazo (inkers), Richard Starkings & Comicraft (lettering), Steve Buccellato & Electric Crayon (colors)

Summary

Jean Grey tries to speak to Wolverine in the woods outside the mansion, but he refuses to go inside until Sabretooth is gone. Xavier attempts to counsel Bishop, who still has flashes of memories of the Age of Apocalypse. Later, while Cyclops and Beast are preparing food for the comatose Gambit, a disoriented Bishop briefly attacks them before coming to his senses. Meanwhile, reporter Trish Tilby goes on air and reveals the existence of the Legacy Virus to the public. She also reveals that the virus has spread to at least one human. While watching the broadcast, Xavier and Psylocke suddenly feel a rush of psychic energy, indicating X-Man’s arrival in this reality. Elsewhere, a young mutant looking for the X-Men named Dennis Hogan stops at a bar while on his way to Salem Center. When news of the Legacy Virus comes on the television screen, he runs away in a panic. The suspicious bar patrons follow him.

In Wyoming, X-Factor and Val Cooper chase down Mystique. She’s attacked by a shadowy figure, which helps the team apprehend her. Forge speculates that whoever attacked Mystique wasn’t trying to kill her, but make a statement instead. Suddenly, Havok’s powers go haywire and explode, destroying the nearby dam. In Genosha, Excalibur tries to get information from the first Mutate, but he abruptly explodes. The Sugar Man watches the events on a monitor and declares that no one will learn the secrets of Genosha. Inside X-Force’s new headquarters, a holographic image of Arcade appears. He chastises the team for taking his home and sets a timer to blow it up. Warpath risks his life to save Sunspot from the explosion, surprising Siryn, who still doesn’t trust him. Cyclops appears with a message for Cable.

In Florida, Iceman and Rogue are partying at a bar when news of the Legacy Virus appears on the television. Inside the Morlock Tunnels, a homeless man is murdered by Marrow. She performs the Morlock’s Ceremony of Light, and to her surprise the Dark Beast appears. She tells him that there are more of his children who are tired of hiding. In England, Emplate visits a young woman in a wheelchair named Gayle Edgerton. He tells her that they have a mutual friend, Chamber. Outside of Avalon, the Acolytes discover a giant chunk of ice with a body inside.

As the bar patrons chase down Dennis, he loses his concentration and lets his mutant reptilian form show. Disgusted by his appearance, and fearful that he’s spreading the Legacy Virus, they begin to beat him mercilessly. Xavier senses his pain, and has Storm fly him to the location as the X-Men follow. Xavier sends his mind out of his body to connect with Dennis, feeling every blow he receives. As Dennis dies, he realizes that he’s too late. Dennis’ attackers flee from the scene, and the X-Men arrive a few minutes later to find his body. A despondent Xavier tells the team that they have to fight for a better future.

Gimmicks

This issue has a wraparound foil acetate cover, and is 48 pages without any interior ads (there are in-house ads on the inside covers, though). The overlay cover resembles the gimmick used for the painted Marvels series, bringing the price up to a whopping $4.95. This format is almost identical to the Alpha and Omega specials, which cost a dollar less.

Continuity Notes

This story picks up two weeks after the events of the “Legion Quest” storyline. Gambit has been in a coma ever since kissing Rogue, which seems excessive since she used to kiss villains all the time in order to steal their powers, and they never ended up in comas.

The shadowy figure who attacks Mystique is supposed to be Onslaught, making his first of many meaningless cameos. I vaguely remember that the figure was retconned into being someone else (after Marvel figured out who Onslaught actually was), but it was supposed to be him at this point.

Future Cable supporting cast member Blaquesmith makes a brief cameo for the first time, witnessing X-Man’s arrival through a video screen. Marrow (in her original ugly balding look) makes her first full appearance, after making a cameo as a child in Cable #15. According to the narrative captions, over twenty years have passed for her since then. This is the first issue to hint at the idea that the Dark Beast created the Morlocks, which doesn’t seem to fit with their initial appearances. Later on in the issue, Douglock refers to a Mutate as a Morlock, which is a mistake (how dare Marvel mix up their subcategories of mutants?!?).

How exactly Bishop still has memories of the AoA doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. Since the older Bishop stopped Legion from killing Xavier, the AoA never happened. That means that the Bishop who lived through the AoA should’ve disappeared with everything else. “Our” Bishop never actually experienced that timeline.

Review

This is a five-dollar comic book. That blows my mind to this day. Marvel charged five dollars for this thing. Considering the fact that Marvel was still only charging $1.50 for its regular line of titles less than a year before this comic was released, it’s even more astounding. I was still in my early teens, struggling financially to keep up with the expanding X-line when this issue came out. I refused to pay the full cover price for it, and rationalized my purchase by combining my order for this book with over a dozen titles in order to get an overall discount from East Coast Comics. I would occasionally do this when I knew there were too many books coming out for me to afford, even though I knew I ran the risk of ECC running out of stock (I missed out on that Alan Moore Spawn miniseries that way; a hole in my collection that honestly used to bother me). The only real story in this issue is the death of Dennis Hogan, as the rest of the issue consists of brief set-ups for upcoming storylines in the various titles. This reinforces the “family” feel amongst the titles, an illusion that became harder and harder to maintain as the line continued to bloat. Marvel could’ve used this as an opportunity to promote the entire line and bring in any curious new readers by releasing this issue as a low-price special, but why bother? The X-books were already on top of the food chain, and if the fans were willing to pay $5 to see the return of the “real” X-Men, why not take their money from them? It’s not hard to see how this type of thinking lead the already declining comics industry to eventually bust.

Most of the previews for the upcoming storylines are so brief they can’t generate any real interest. A two-page subplot scene in the middle of a normal issue is a nice way to build suspense for an upcoming storyline, but a myriad of them pasted together with conflicting art styles just feels like a mess. Ben Herrera’s art should not be bumping up against Gary Frank’s under any reasonable circumstance. Probably the most significant of the cutaway scenes is the X-Force section, which casually reintroduces Sunspot to the team and destroys their new headquarters. Not only is it rushed and suspense-less, but it undermines the work Nicieza was setting up in the previous issues of that series. The editorial staff is in such a hurry to get X-Force out of their headquarters, they just go for the quickest, most obvious thing they could do, even if it doesn’t make a lot of sense (surely the team checked to see if the psychopath Arcade left any explosives lying around before taking over his headquarters). The abrupt shift in direction is annoying, and it’s the type of thing that eventually drove me away from X-completism.

The strongest part of the issue is the X-Men section drawn by Bryan Hitch. It introduces a suitable amount of mystery about what happened to some of the characters since we last saw them without going overboard (unfortunately, the more we learn about the mysteries, the lamer they become). The story of Dennis Hogan grounds the book in a grim reality, as the heroes arrive too late to save the innocent mutant. He’s not murdered by supervillains or giant robots, or even a mob with pitchforks and torches. It’s a group of people his own age, using their own fists and a baseball bat to beat him until he can’t move. It was pretty disturbing to me when I first read it, and it’s made even more unsettling given real life events that have happened since this comic was published. Allowing Xavier to feel every broken bone Dennis receives heightens the impact, and Lobdell’s narration helps to convey the gruesomeness of the attack. Unfortunately, he goes overboard with Xavier’s response, which has him give a blindingly obvious speech about hatred and the fear of those who are different killing the boy. The scene is already dramatic enough; it needs subtlety more than a theatrical speech.

If I’m going to nitpick this story, I’ll also point out that the premise is a little shoddy. Why is this kid following rumors and searching out the X-Men in the first place? Isn’t it actually the X-Men’s job to search out and find mutants? Doesn’t Xavier have an elaborate computer system he uses to find mutants? The story brings up one of the flaws in the X-Men’s premise that’s usually glossed over. Shouldn’t Xavier be using Cerebro on a regular basis to find new mutants? Unless there’s something wrong with it, the X-Men should theoretically never be surprised when the latest mystery mutant comes on the scene. Even after the teenage cast of Generation X was introduced, the idea of the X-Men searching out new mutants continued to be ignored. Not only did the X-Men fail to rescue Dennis, they didn’t even fulfill their basic mission statement and search him out when his powers surfaced. It’s a flaw that the story could’ve easily covered with a few lines of dialogue, too. Xavier could’ve offered him a place in the school earlier, and now Dennis is traveling to Salem Center to take him up on the offer. (The idea that there are rumors that the X-Men live around Salem Center also bothered me when I first read this, but thinking about it now I can see it working. Considering the number of mutants that have passed through the school over the years, it does make sense that word would’ve spread outside of their immediate family and friends.) Despite my gripes, this section of the issue hits the right emotional notes and at least works as an X-Men story. The rest of the comic is choppy and inconsistent, and even adjusting for inflation, there’s still no way it’s worth five dollars.

X-FORCE #37 – August 1994

The Young and the Restless

Credits: Fabian Nicieza (writer), Paul Pelletier (penciler), Harry Candelario, Scott Hanna, & Charles Barnett (inkers), Chris Eliopoulos (letterer), Monica Bennett (colorist)

Summary

Saul, Gideon, and Absalom visit Cannonball and Boomer in Kentucky. Saul tells of the time he met Apocalypse in the twelfth century. Apocalypse, still called En Sabah Nur, traveled to Mongolia to see if Saul was indeed immortal. When Saul showed him the alien spacecraft his tribe discovered fifty years earlier, En Sabah Nur stabbed him in the back and took control of the craft. Absalom tells Cannonball of his past in Wyoming in the late 1800s. When he was hanged for murder, his mutant powers surfaced. He was shot down by the frightened townspeople, but awoke two days later inside a coffin. He vowed not to become the person he once was, but tells Cannonball that he’s never lived up to who he would like to be. He’s now dying of the Legacy Virus and is searching for a meaning to life. Gideon tells the story of his arrival in America. He was a deckhand on the Pinta as Christopher Columbus sailed to America. Gideon died of scurvy on the boat, but awoke the next day. He arrived in the New World and vowed to make the most of his opportunities. These three immortals have come to Kentucky because their fellow External, Burke, used his precognitive powers to see that Cannonball is in some way connected to a cure for the Legacy Virus. Cannonball tells them that he doesn’t know what they’re talking about, and chides them for behaving like frightened children now that death might be coming for them. Angered, Absalom’s powers flare. Gideon assumes that the Legacy Virus is finally killing him, but Absalom holds on to life. Cannonball tells the Externals that they should make their remaining moments matter, regardless of how much time they have left. They leave peacefully, and Cannonball tells Boomer that they’ll live day by day from now on.

Continuity Notes

Absalom lists Selene as one of the Externals, which is the first time she was connected to the group, I believe. He also says that both Nicodemus and Burke have recently died of the Legacy Virus. The alien ship Apocalypse stole from Saul turns out to be Celestial starship X-Factor later used as a base.

Cannonball says that he is twenty, which would make at least one X-Force member no longer a teenager. I wonder if this was done to make the upcoming Generation X characters seem younger. The idea that Cannonball somehow has the key to the cure of the Legacy Virus was never resolved, but I wonder if it was intended to coincide with the Zero storyline going on in Excalibur.

Review

With one issue to kill before the Phalanx crossover, Nicieza decides to go back to the Externals storyline, which already seemed forgotten at this point. Reading any story with the Externals is strange, knowing that Marvel will completely toss out the plotline in a few months. It’s hard not to read these issues and get the feeling that it’s all pointless. The Externals are given an interesting dilemma, facing death for the first time at the hands of the Legacy Virus, even if none of their flashback scenes are that exciting. I do like the fact that Nicieza doesn’t portray them as one-dimensional villains and leaves open the possibility that they could change. Cannonball receives a nice portrayal here, but hearing him talk about the importance of making today matter over and over again gets old. This probably would’ve worked better as a subplot, because it doesn’t feel like there’s enough material to be the main story of the issue. Paul Pelletier does a fine job on the fill-in art, making me wish that more traditional artists like him were used more often in these days.