Writer Chris Claremont

Pencils Thomas Derenick

Inks Rick Ketcham & Norm Rapmund

Colors Liquid!

Letters RS & Comicraft’s Saida T!

Cover dated February 2001, also this is a 100 Page Monster, so there are three reprints in the back of this issue.

We join several X-Men as they are having a snowball fight with some local children in Salem Center.

Neal Shaara, the latest mutant to take the codename, Thunderbird.  With Neal, is Nightcrawler and Iceman.  Opposing them is Colossus, Archangel and Psylocke.

Neal jumps at Warren and Betsy blocks him.  They roll in the snow and have quite the moment that makes Warren jealous.  Betsy states she is a grown woman, and if she wants to flirt, she going to get her flirt on.

Rogue and Gambit show up and this at the time when Rogue has access to every power she has ever absorbed, she just can’t control which power will kick in, or the power itself.  Except, if she wants to pop some claws, then that works whenever she wants.

This is also pre-X-Treme X-Men, in fact, this entire issue feels like it should end with a giant advertisement and a “follow the story here” tag.  Storm wants to find Destiny’s Diaries and keep those books and the knowledge of them away from Xavier.  As far as I know, that team only ever found three of the fabled 13.

Then we get this awkward cut to the circus where we see Kurt and Cercise hanging out as Kurt does his circus act.  I had forgotten that Cercise shows up here and it is always nice to see her again.  I must have flipped between the last page with Storm and this current page with Kurt a couple times as there is no transition.

We see Colossus avoiding a giant anvil and he sees a young blonde girl and she reminds him of Illyana.  Nice that he is constantly remembering her.

We see that Warren is a big baby and breaks up with Betsy.  Just let her flirt, he should know that she is loyal and it is all in good fun.  But Warren is blue so there’s that.

We cut to Bishop helping out the police, but he calls one of them a fireman, but he is in his blue shirt and black tie.

Next is Wolverine and Viper, who is his wife at the moment.  They are paying their respects to Mariko.  Viper is there to deliver a box from Kitty, it is one of Logan’s bone claws that she apparently had.  It is her way of telling Logan that she is save.  We haven’t seen her in a few issues, last we saw, she was with one of the NEO, which that story also never got picked up either.

We see Rogue and Gambit at a Nativity scene.  Rogue gets a headache and starts shooting Cyclops’ optic blast.  She claims she can’t turn it off, but really, she should be able too.  Scott can’t control it due to a head injury he suffered as a boy.  She doesn’t have that problem, so she should be able to control the power.  I suppose one could say that in her panic, she overreacts, but I also suspect that it was an oversight.

At The Xavier Institute, presents are exchange.  In Storm’s attic, we essentially see the formation of X-Treme X-Men.  Gambit is not joining as Rogue doesn’t want him near her as she is worried of hurting him.  Logan isn’t joining as he needs to be the point of contact for Storm at the mansion.  To replace these two, Sage shows up.  Gambit and Wolverine will both eventually join X-Treme X-Men.

Issue ends with Storm being given a modified version of one of her old outfits by Xavier.

On the letters page, we get told to check out Uncanny X-Men 390 first, and come back for X-Men 110 for the aftermath.  Two awesome issues.

Issues that are reprinted are :

Uncanny X-Men 98

Uncanny X-Men 143

Uncanny X-Men 341

143 is the best of the three, heck, the four!