This was actually another very very early comic my parents got for me for my birthday, both parts, so I have a soft spot for it. It was amazing reading Claremonte's X-Men run years ago and seeing all these old old faces from my childhood suddenly popping up from the Starjammers to the Emperial Guard.

Raza isn't upset because he had a vendetta against Zenith, he's upset because Zenith was his brother.
As we'll see in Avengers 350-351, Raza does have a thing for Carol.
Kitty can phase all of Excalibur? That's a lot of weight. We're not up to Kitty phasing space bullets yet, so at the time it seemed impressive to me.
It's very difficult to place this issue chronologically. On the one hand, Brian and Meggan are in their old costumes, and Ship is flying around, not stationary in New York as Excalibur's headquarters. OTOH, Widget is completely functional. Plus Xavier's illness during X-Factor 50 seems to be intended to take place during the first issue.
That also raises the question about the Thanos worshippers- are they working for the resurrected Thanos or acting on contingency plans Thanos gave his followers before his death? ("In the event I am defeated by Earth's heroes, here is how you should destroy Earth".)

The story seems to say he's called Black Light, not Night? Or is it the story that has the typo?

I cannot believe I actually own this. And, indeed, never read it ☺

Given Kavanagh is scripter, I expect the character he introduced in his Moon Knight run, Seth Phalkon, was connected to the Phalkon here. He was founder of the Templars, who in conspiracy history were claimed to be guarding some secret treasure. Did Kavanagh intend that treasure to be the Phalkon energy?

Interesting Cockrum factoid for you all. In Comics Journal #50, Chris Claremont revealed Dave Cockrum and he intended Raza to be D'Ken's brother who had been almost assassinated, and resurrected as a cyborg.

@Michael, as i read it, Zenith killed his brother, and Raza is upset that Binary ruined his chance at vengeance. See page 24 of issue #2, if interested.

Regarding placement. That scene in X-Factor probably was intended to be part of this, but it's actually pretty different in what it's actually showing, with a bedridden Xavier suffering from "madnes" and growing weak, whereas in this he's in a coma the entire time after getting injured and until he's merged with Waldo. I think it's safe to assume that was a separate incident. And i assume X-Factor's ship-building can still fly when it wants to. And regarding the costumes, as you say, since Widget is fully functional it probably has to take place after the Cross Time Caper.

I don't know what's going on with the Thanos people, and it's possible that they are just worshippers that aren't acting on his orders specifically. It seems like most of Thanos' followers either went to Nebula or just dispersed until Thanos called them back after his resurrection. But those are all mercenaries. These guys seem more like a religious cult.

@PeterA, you're right, it's Light, not Night. See, i didn't read it either. ;-) I've fixed it, though.

Fnord, I am looking at that page, and I read Raza as saying that Zenith WAS his brother, not that Zenith killed his brother.

Oh i guess you're right. Period placement is important! "And killed. My brother". Not "And killed my brother." I thought he was using staggered speech because he was upset. Either way, he clearly had a vendetta against him because his next line is "And the privilege of slaying him was mine by right."

I have now officially spent way too much time looking at anything in these issues. ;-)

I've tried to read this before and failed, so my condolences. Flipping through and enjoying the Cockrum art is my recommendation also.

It's even sadder because, to my knowledge, this turkey is the last time Dave Cockrum drew a comic with the Starjammers and Nightcrawler before he died.

I was a long-time fan of Dave Cockrum's work, which is why I got this minsieries, although I didn't get around to buying it for a couple of years due to the then-expensive $4.50 per issue price (and I now have to laugh at that because nowadays that's only slightly more than the $3.99 that Marvel charges for their regular 22 page comics).

I thought that Cockrum's penciling was fantastic... but, like everyone else, I was confused by Terry Kavanagh's writing. In the late 1990s I got this autographed by Cockrum, and he told me that he didn't like the story, and that Kavanagh didn't understand the characters. It's a pity that Marvel didn't have Cockrum write this himself.

Of course, it's a pity that Marvel didn't have Cockrum do a great many things. He was available to do work throughout the 1990s and was sadly neglected by Marvel editorial & management. I would rather have seen Cockrum pencil one of the innumerable X-books that were churned out during that decade instead of yet another Liefeld / Lee / Manga imitator who had graduated from art school less than a month ago.

Aside from a few specials, fill-ins and annuals, Cockrum wasn't really hired to do anything for Marvel (or for DC, either) in the 1990s. His most significant body of work during the decade was penciling Soulsearchers and Company, a supernatural comedy series written by Peter David and published by Claypool Comics (which, admittedly, was a better book than a lot of what either Marvel or DC were doing at the time).

In any case, this wasn't the last time Cockrum had the opportunity to draw the X-Men and related characters. He penciled a fill-in story written by Roger Stern that recapped much of the team's history up to the start of X-Men volume 2. Unfortunately it wasn't published until after Cockrum's death. I'm sure fnord will cover it at some point. There's only a narrow window where it can fit into continuity since it features the X-Men's old FBI liaison Fred Duncan very prominently. So it has to be set somewhere between X-Men volume 2 #3 which came out at the end of 1991 and Uncanny X-Men Annual #17 which came out Summer 1993 since that story indicated Duncan had died some time before.

@Ben: Given Dave told you himself he didn't like Kavanagh's scripting, someone should the entire dialogue for the issue a complete rewrite:)

@Ben Herman:

The fill-in you're talking about was called X-men: Odd Men Out. It included the Roger Stern inventory story and one other one.

I don't remember if Nightcrawler or any of Dave Cockrum's cosmic characters had a cameo in it, though. Been a while since I looked at it. I think both stories only had the X-men Blue Team/Gold Team line-ups from 1991.

While trying to figure out who was whom in that Imperial Guard arrives picture, I noticed that Electron, Magique, and Mentor were not tagged. (As if there weren't enough characters appearing already...)

Thanks Erik.

I hope Tempest and Electron have learned since this to stop attacking the same target at the same time. Both Scanner the Spaceknight and Shadowcat have caught them with essentially the same trick.

I dug out my copy of X-Men: Odd Men Out. Nightcrawler, Storm, Colossus, Phoenix and the Starjammes do have cameos in the flashback. There's also a few pages where Xavier recounts his times living with Lilandra in Shi'Ar space.

I located a 2008 interview with Roger Stern where he explained how he originally came to write this story back in 1991. When Stern plotted it, he says he had no idea who the artist was going to be...

"And when the pages showed up for me to script, I was jazzed to discover that the penciler was Dave Cockrum. I only wish I'd known in advance that Dave was going to draw the story; I would have figured out some way to include scenes of Nightcrawler having a sword fight … Dave always loved stuff like that."

Here is a link to the entire interview...

http://www.newsarama.com/207-roger-stern-working-with-dave-cockrum-one-last-time.html

@Michael Back in Uncanny X-Men #195, Kitty phased Wolverine, Rogue, Rachel Summers, and Katie Power at the same time when they were going down to the Morlock tunnels. This issue's Captain Britain, Nightcrawler, Meggan, Widget, and Lockheed isn't that much more weight-wise.

Interesting theory that this was originally meant for MCP—that would definitely explain why it was all the short stories focused on the individuals/pairs. Though, I suppose they used to do the same thing a lot in Avengers Annuals, so who knows.

Agree this is wholly incomprehensible. I picked it up, as I've become a Carol Danvers completist, and it does actually help set up her return to earth fairly well, but the actual plot makes no sense. When I read it, I spent a while looking up what was happening in X-Men at the time to see if I had completely missed something that would help it make sense, but no. Oh well, at least I got it cheap.

Given that the Starjammers are about to come slamming back into X-Men, it's surprising that they would put out this story that seems to have nothing to do with the upcoming storyline. It's just like all the Wolverine appearances that could be completely ignored and not have any effect on what you're reading in X-Men.

And Xavier with a sash is just, oh so bad.

No-one else but Cockrum (R.I.P.) draws Ch'od with that vaguely froggy-with-fangs face. At the hands of other artists he looks more purely reptillian, or (worse) Abomination-lite.

As for Terry Kavanagh's script, the pantomime stuff with Cr'reee is the best part, if you know what I mean.

Bald Phoenix looks a little like Grant Morrison. Just saying.

And Cockrum could draw some cute Hepzibah. She looked interesting, not like a generic catwoman later pencillers turned her into.

As for the story, this thing looks crazy. Which is... surprising, in a good. I didn't know Kavanagh was capable to do that kind of crazy... even if not intentionally.

The Cr'reee bit is like the Star Wars Holiday special.