Issue(s): New Warriors #46
Cover Date: Apr 94
Title: "United they fall"
Credits:
Fabian Nicieza - Writer
Darick Robertson - Penciler
Larry Mahlstedt, Dan Bulanadi, & Ian Akin - Inker
Rob Tokar - Editor

Review/plot:
All of the Upstarts except Siena Blaze have been dealt with, so this issue has X-Force and the New Warriors teaming up to go after the Gamesmaster directly. They arrive at the Gamesmaster's base separately but eschew convention and team-up without a Misunderstanding Fight.

The Gamesmaster releases the mutants that have already been captured. They have been brainwashed to fight for him. Siena Blaze is also still around.

This is the first time that the Gamesmaster has used his telepathic powers to control people (instead of just monitoring) and he finds it to be "kind of fun, actually". The narration tells us that the Gamesmaster is envious of the teen super-heroes he's fighting against because "they haven't been hurt like he has, lost like he has -- left alone to drift aimlessly without a cause to believe in or a passion for life". Cry us a river, Gamesmaster. You're already a boring character, but filling out your personality with some angsty pathos is just going to make us like you less.

Seina Blaze nearly kills a group of heroes, but Speedball is able to extend his kinetic field to block her blast. It still knocks him (and the other targets) out, though. It's also said that Speedball is one of the few people that the Gamesmaster can't telepathically read, for whatever that's worth.

The tide almost turns thanks to Cable developing his own telepathic ability.

But then Gamesmaster just causes everyone to pass out. The one exception is Paige Guthrie...

...but she's captured when she reverts to human form.

But she manages some sort of bargain with the Gamesmaster.

I, uh, don't really get it, but that's apparently the end of the story. I guess that's the Gamesmaster in civilian garb at the end?

With the ending pivoting on Paige and the talk about the fight for the next generation of mutants, it almost seems like this is setting up Gamesmaster as a villain for Generation X, which would make this ending make a little more sense to me, but that doesn't seem to happen (and honestly, thank god for that). As it is, it's just a very weird and anticlimactic conclusion.

It's also interesting that developments for Cable and Paige/Husk (the first clear use of her powers) happen in a New Warriors issue.

There's a brief cameo when the teams contact X-Factor to warn them that Fenris may be going after Wolfsbane, but the warning turns out to not be needed.

Quality Rating: D

Historical Significance Rating: 2 - Cable's telepathy revealed. Development for Husk.

Chronological Placement Considerations: This is the fourth and final part of Child's Play. As Austin notes in the Comments, Polaris is wearing her red costume, not the team uniform that she begins wearing in X-Factor #93. But X-Factor #93 takes place during Fatal Attractions, and X-Force definitely appears here after Fatal Attractions (and concurrent with X-Men #29, a few days before Cyclops and Jean Grey's wedding). So Polaris' new costume must be in the wash.

References:

• Continues from X-Force #33.
  
• The New Warriors and X-Force teamed-up previously (and fought first) in New Mutants annual #7 and New Warriors annual #1.
  
• Namorita and Nova jokingly mock the heroes who are being mind controlled, saying that the Warriors would never get mind controlled except all the times that they were, including:
  • By the Puppet Master in Fantastic Four #356.
    
  • "All them Infinity things", probably especially referring to Infinity Crusade.
    
  • The "Darkforce Dimension stuff" in New Warriors #32-34.
    
  • The Novaforce incident in New Warriors #40-42.

Crossover: Child's Play

Continuity Insert? N

My Reprint: N/A

Your surmise is correct, Fnord (why do I feel like a super villain saying that?), this was originally meant to be the launching point for Generation X. Nicieza has spoken about it before: I think the plan had changed even as these issues were being published, which is why they weren’t changed.

This is effectively the end of the Upstarts storyline after three years. Lee originally wanted them to be kewl new killer villains, but as you’ve noted, there aren’t really that many characters Marvel was prepared to sacrifice. When Lee left, the storyline should have been aborted, but Harras let it keep bubbling under instead. This storyline would have given the Upstarts, or at least GM, a new purpose, but editorial decided to promote the Phalanx instead, which seemed to be an idea Harras was more invested in: his own kewl new post-Claremont foes. And of course, they turned out to be just as lame as the Upstarts, a cut-rate Technarchy instead of a cut-rate Hellfire Club.

This issue came out three weeks late.
Speedball's being immune to telepathy (which seems to contradict Kings of Pain) was supposed to be a clue that Speedball wasn't human. Nicieza's idea was that Robbie Baldwin was killed in the lab accident, the lab workers hid his body and a creature from the kinetic dimension assumed Robbie's memories and form and became Speedball. It's a good thing that never saw print. Robbie's immunity to telepathy is later referenced, for example, in a Warren Ellis Thunderbolts story.
Note that Cable and Domino are both surprised when Cable uses his telepathy. The implication was that Cable either never had telepathy before or somehow lost the ability before he met the Six Pack. Unfortunately, later flashbacks make it clear Cable had his telepathy when he was the Six Pack, and the New Mutants/ early X-Force, making Cable's and Domino's confusion inexplicable.
I always assumed it was the Gamesmaster at the end and the people in the picture were his lost wife and child- his motivation for villainy.

"It's a good thing that never saw print. "

Because it's a direct lift from "The Anatomy Lesson"?

That aborted idea about Speedball... oh, come on!

Has it ever been revealed what happened to Gamesmaster? I suppose it's not his final story? What about Sienna Blaze and Fitzroy?

Gamesmaster appears again during Loeb's X Force run in about a year. He becomes involved in Loeb's Shatterstar origin story- the less said of that, the better. After that, he appears in an issue of X-Men Unlimited and an issue of X-23.
Trevor Fitzroy is brought back in two years at the start of Terry Kavanagh's run on X-Man. He's the main antagonist in Bishop's 1999-2000 series, at the end of which he dies.
Sienna Blaze is shipped off to the Ultraverse in 1996. She vanishes after she returns and shows up years later in the Weapon X series, where she's killed.

@Fnord - you say X-Factor's appearance is context free, but Polaris is wearing her "risque" costume, which was replaced with a more standardized "X-Factor" version in X-FACTOR #93, so their appearance presumably takes place before that, and thus, smack dab in "Fatal Attractions" (she was also wearing the older costume in UNCANNY #304), which probably complicates things relative to the X-Force appearances, so maybe you're just assuming she toggled between costumes on occasion, or just wore the "sanctioned" version on official missions or something, for ease of chronology?

@Michael, Piort
A younger Fitzroy also pops up late in Peter David's second X-FACTOR, in his native timeline, as David chronicles the Summers Rebellion Bishop name-checked periodically, in the process developing Fitzroy's character a bit.

Yes, thanks Austin. I've updated the Considerations.