Emma Frost’s sister, Adrienne, is now the headmistress of the Gen X school, and the student body now includes normal kids. I love this idea. But we don’t have much time to explore it because Dark Beast kidnaps the team-members. And he uses his Gene Nation minions to do it.
Membrane takes Monet and Synch.
Fever Pitch takes Chamber and Skin.
While this is going on, Emma Frost is assessing whether to try to enroll Nate Grey on to the Generation X team. Question: Isn’t he a little too old for a high school team? Is he really supposed to be 15 or 16? Anyway, during the psychic exchange, Nate senses a connection between Emma and Dark Beast, so he attacks her.
But of course they figure out they should be pals, and X-Man and the uncaptured Generation X members go after the Gene Nation, who are hiding in the Morlock tunnels.
To escape, Dark Beast floods the tunnels. (This seems to happen a lot. You’d think the heroes would have Danger Room-ed that scenario a few times.)
In the end, Nate decides that unless Emma will tell him what her connection is to Dark Beast, he can’t trust her enough to work with her.
Then the team heads out to save Banshee, who was kidnapped by Hunter Brawn, the father of one of the new students, as shown in a side-story during the “war.”
They get new costumes to do it.
I’m jamming this fifty-first issue into this post because it wraps up “War” stuff and there’s not much more in it than that.
Similarly, this post covers X-Man #51-52, because that story starts during the war. It ALSO involves a kidnapping. (We gotta work on these plot devices, guys. There are three different kidnappings in these issues.) Ness is taken by Psi-Ops and Gauntlet 4, X-Man goes to rescue him but Ness is killed during the battle.
For reasons that aren’t clear to me (and probably aren’t clear to most readers), Ness’ death prompts this (fake?) Maddie Pryor to leave X-Man alone for a while. Ness seemed to exist only to create prophecies that never came true, and Madelyne seemed to be around just to have a creepy mother/son sexual thing. So it’s good to have both of them gone. Looking forward to what it means for X-Man’s book, which has been good overall but frustratingly uneven.
Two issues doesn’t seem like enough for a “war” event, and this is called the War of the Mutants but the issues are both double-sized. It’s fun to have two series hit the 50th milestone and celebrate together.