This issue introduces Pete Wisdom, a mutant who works for Black Air, the British paranormal investigative unit that replaced the Weird Happenings Organization.
After we’re told that Wisdom wiped out a city, we see Wisdom and two other Black Air agents, Michele Scicluna and Threadgold, visiting Excalibur. They are investigation munitions sales and manufacturing that led to killings in Genosha. Black Air believe Captain Britain’s Braddock Corporation is responsible.
The team go to Genosha to investigate.
Along the way, it is suggested that Pete Wisdom, in at least one timeline, becomes the villain Ahab–but he doesn’t want to and is trying to change his own destiny.
This story looks interesting. But it ends, rapidly, with the crystal storm from Legion Quest, while the team are flying to Genosha.
I’m counting that as a plane crash and tagging it accordingly.
Issue #87 comes out four months later and picks up right where this left off. They’re in a plane, and it’s crashing.
But where #86 seemed to promise a cool, complex story, issue #87 wraps everything up quickly to get to a different story arc. The only significance of the story ends up being that the Genosha mutates are actually real mutants (so it’s not clear what Dr. Moreau’s work was actually doing).
Wisdom and Scicluna scowl menacingly at the reader in the end, but the next story is a completely new arc, despite the “to be continued” tag. Although I guess it is continued in the sense that Black Air will return later.
I guess I get it–Warren Ellis was probably interested in writing this story months ago, but the line-wide X-events took the wind out of his sails.