Summary
- Crazed from the alien's influence, Willow attacks the members of Bloodhawk's underground team. Nostro uses his technopathy to purge the alien's influence from her, but then winds up cocooning himself on the bottom of the lagoon.
- The Wild Boyz taunt Uproar for refusing to kill someone in the arena. He's thrown into the arena again, but this time he has to face Wulff, who's regressed to full dog-form. Uproar yells at him until Wulff recognizes him and the two join forces to attack the Wild Boyz. Fiona appears and tells them that she disabled their power-dampening collars. She tries to get them to flee, but Wulff decides to go after the Big Boss.
- The X-Men (Cerebra, Krystalin, Eddie/"Metalhead," and Xi'an) face an angry mob of humans that blames them for the departure of the Fantastic Four. A human with a bionic arm named Victor Ten Eagles arrives and calms the crowd, telling them that they have to work together. Later, Xi'an tells Victor that he's giving up hope, wanting to be left to himself, but Victor says that he doesn't believe that he's given up the fight. Xi'an complains that humanity still hates mutantkind despite the total destruction of civilization and Morphine Somers arrives to offer Victor a position as liaison to the humans when homo superior takes control. Victor tells him to leave, but a figure in the shadows sprints to town to warn the humans that the "muties" are plotting against them.
- Inside Reed Richards' lab, Cerebra finds a little girl hiding there. She had been spying on Reed last issue and now leads Cerebra to "Franklin," the machine that Reed created as the repository of all human knowledge. Cerebra discovers that Franklin is a mutant, but then Franklin does something to her mind and she loses consciousness.
- Doom holds Miguel hostage, telling him that he's working with the Phalanx to get access to its techno-organic code and find a way to defeat it. When Miguel refuses to help him, he produces the Green Goblin's mask, telling him that he'll kill Gabe if Miguel doesn't help. Miguel helps and discovers that Xina has found a way to shield humanity from the virus. However, Xina is surprised when Miguel reveals that the objective is to control it, sparking a transformation of a nearby "old cyber-deck" into Magus, the leader of the Phalanx. He says that he knew Doom's plans and that his people are making first contact with the Scout.
- On Mars, the X-Nation kids try to enlist the aid of the colonists, saying that the Takers have taken (heh) Twilight. When they refuse to help, December and Smith decide to rescue her on their own. Dr. Isaacs, one of the colonists, agrees to help them, inspired by the memory of the son that she left on Earth who she realizes is likely dead. They shortly run into the Takers.
- Underground, Umi helps guide Strange into fighting Mole Men, encouraging her to use a spell of gentle persuasion to calm them. They head through the maze to encounter a rock form of Chimera, who accuses Strange of abandoning her when she needed her. Umi warns her that she's being goaded into the fight, but she falls for it, much to the delight of Garrok, the rock figure from last issue.
The Review
This series continues to be a weird amalgram of stories, with no real sense of cohesion or time for actual characterization. I'm still not sure the point of the Bloodhawk or Strange stories and the Cerebra and Xi'an stories (a.k.a. the Last Refuge stories) aren't much better. I don't mind the Wild Boyz story, since Uproar and Wulff are the only remotely likable characters in this series, but I again don't see its connection to the plot. We also continue to see secondary and tertiary characters from the preceding series awkwardly shoe-horned into the book as a sort of status update, like the revelation that Doom has Gabe. It's all just a mess.
The Good
OK, I do have one good item here, namely that we do get some clarity on some points. For example, Kelly and Raab make it clear that Doom is working with the Phalanx to gather information about the techno-organic virus to defeat it. That makes sense and makes the Doom-related plot the most intriguing one going. Moreover, I had thought that we had dropped the Big Boss plot, but Wulff deciding to go after him makes it clear that we'll likely get some resolution on the issue.
The Unknown
We learn hear that the Phalanx planetoid is actually orbiting the Earth and didn't crash into it. I thought that it had crashed, creating the contamination zone. So, if it didn't crash into the Earth, then what caused the contamination zone? Also, again, is the contamination zone linked to the mist from where the Mistdweller emerged? Also, who exactly was the Mistdweller?
The Bad
1) So, Doom not only conveniently plucked Xina from her roadtrip somewhere, but he also managed to get Gabe from the ruins of New York? How resourceful he is.
2) Doom seems to delight in the revelation of Miguel's identity, but, to be honest, Miguel hasn't really done much to hide it since "Spider-Man 2099" #46 and "Fantastic Four 2099" #8. I really wish that we could spend time with Miguel where he wasn't just a pawn that Kelly and Raab was moving across the board and get a sense of how he feels about his identity being widely known.
3) I was truthfully disgusted by the gross sexual overtone of December’s offer to help Smith "relax" as they face wetworker droids seeking to kill them. He's stressed because they're facing killer robots and she's basically offering him her body as a tool to relax? Jesus. This issue was written in 1996, not 1956.
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