Issue(s): Uncanny X-Men #333
Cover Date: Jun 96
Title: "The other shoe..."
Credits:
Scott Lobdell - Writer
Pascual Ferry - Penciler
Tim Townsend, Robert Hunter, Mark Morales, & David Hunt - Inker
Ben Raab - Assistant Editor
Bob Harras - Editor

Review/plot:
Digital review warning.

Senator Robert Kelly has reached out to Cyclops to warn him about a new anti-mutant group. It's kind of cool to see Cyclops as a mysterious mutant that Kelly had to find by talking to various members of Xavier's so-called mutant underground.

Graydon Creed and his people listen in on this conversation, and attack when Kelly comes close to giving away too much info.

Meanwhile, the X-Men infiltrate the Pentagon to investigate Operation: Zero Tolerance, a new anti-mutant program head up by Bastion.

It turns out Bastion is investigating Onslaught, and seems to know more about it him than the X-Men, or at least more than Professor X has told the X-Men.

In fact, the Professor is acting downright shady.

Gambit and Jean are spotted at Bastion's meeting. But they are rescued by... well, it's Onslaught, but we don't know that yet.

Also in this issue, a mysterious shape interrupts Archangel and Psylocke's training session.

We're about to get into Onslaught, so here's some quick thoughts on this title since Age of Apocalypse. I didn't collect this stuff in realtime, and even now i'm only reviewing them from my GIT PDFs. But a lot of the events in these issues for the past year have always seemed important, like i've been missing out. I mean that both in terms of references to these events and also in fan discussions. You've got the Onslaught's famous Juggernaut punch, the introduction of Gene Nation, Cannonball joining the team, the introduction of Joseph, a lot going on with Sabretooth, Psylocke's injury and Crimson Dawn, the semi-famous Iceman/White Queen confrontation, Dark Beast, Dog-Faced Wolverine, Ozymandias, and now Operation Zero Tolerance. When i list it out like that, it seems like a lot! But as i was going through the actual issues, it always felt like nothing was happening. Real empty calorie stuff. And i think a secret to the X-Books' relative success (compared to all the books that get cancelled during the bankruptcy/Heroes Reborn, even though Bob Harras' Avengers followed this model to an extent) is that they were really good at introducing new concepts and stringing things along so that it always seemed like something big was coming, and just literally repeating that without going back to develop the older concepts further. In addition to what i listed above, we've got the Legacy Virus, Graydon Creed's presidential campaign, and now hints about Onslaught to keep us picking up the books. This is a format that has arguably been in place since Claremont's days, but while Claremont definitely also strung us along with dangling subplots, the books at that time also delivered substantial monthly stories (at least until the Jim Lee era). Now it's all just... superficial.

Quality Rating: C

Historical Significance Rating: 3 - first Operation: Zero Tolerance

Chronological Placement Considerations: The Juggernaut plot continues directly in X-Men #53 (and Onslaught will pick up the conversation with Jean there, too). For what it's worth, Juggernaut may be arriving her from the Malibu-verse. Cyclops' fate will be seen in X-Force #55.

References:

• While breaking into the Pentagon, Cannonball says that it's really something that Cable and X-Force are suited for, while Iceman wonders why the government sponsored X-Factor can't help. A footnote points to "recent issues" of X-Factor to explain why they don't.
  
• The same footnote says that Wolverine's feral state is also explained by "recent issues" of Wolverine.
  
• Iceman says that Beast hasn't been the same since he trashed his lab in Uncanny X-Men #331, and that's because he was replaced by the Dark Beast in X-Men Unlimited #10.
  
• Archangel is still recovering from injuries received in the 1995 Sabretooth special and Psylocke similarly is recovering from the Crimson Dawn experience in Uncanny X-Men #329-330.
  
• Kelly tells Cyclops about the disappearance of technicians from a Sentinel research fability, which was seen in X-Men #46.
  
• Jean previously saw Onslaught in X-Men #50.

Crossover: N/A

Continuity Insert? N

My Reprint: N/A