Synopsis & Review by Cihndar:
Synopsis: Longshot faces the villains. Sinister does not feel the X-Man is a threat. He blasts Longshot and tells the X-Man that he's studied him. With a white glow in his eye, Longshot realizes that he can't let N'astirh make him gun-shy. He throws his bandoleer and it wraps around Malice's legs.

Beast tells Longshot to get clear as he dives at Sinister. The warning is a mistake, for Sinister turns and shoots energy at Beast.

Malice makes ready to crush Cyclops but it turns out he's playing possum and hits her with an optic blast. Scott tells Sinister to let Jean go, but can't seem to fire at Essex. Sinister calls Scott a "sissy" and Scott reacts much as a child would. As Sinister strikes Cyclops, the X-Man wonders why he was bickering with Sinister.

Psylocke and Rogue recover. Psylocke blasts Sinister, but is caught by a counterattack. Rogue tries to absorb Sinister, but he ends up taking control of her body. It is then that Cyclops remembers that it was Sinister who put him in a coma for a year right after his powers manifested. Sinister talks of how he found Scott because of the parachute incident, how he took Scott and Alex into his orphanage, and how Xavier tempered with his plans by taking in Scott. Sinister restrains Cyclops and his powers. Alex blasts Sinister, but to no avail. Malice wraps Alex in shrapnel and begins to crush him. Colossus tries to come to the rescue, but Malice lifts him from the ground.

Cyclops suffers from a headache similar to the ones he used to have back at the orphanage. Sinister tells of how he tried to control Cyclops's power, but it was no good. Wolverine crawls over to Storm and rouses her. Storm wakes Betsy and the telepath links the minds of the two teams. Together they realize that Sinister has ignored them, but went out of his way to disable Cyclops. Sinister must fear Cyclops' optic blast.

Archangel attacks, but Sinister mocks his effort. It is then that Sinister sees that Warren's real target was Malice. Rogue, Colossus, and Wolverine rush Sinister, and Storm sweeps Jean away. Ororo wakes Jean with a rain storm. Iceman uses the storm to freeze Sinister.

Wolverine starts to cut Havok free, but then smells Sabertooth. Dazzler begins to cut the metal around Alex and Beast rips the shell open. They turn around to see Sabertooth taken care of.

Alex taunts Scott and blasts his brother with plasma. Cyclops knows that the blast will only make him stronger, but tells Havok to turn the attack on Sinister.

Sinister breaks free from the ice and the teams attack him. Longshot's eye glows black as he throws a dagger. The attack only succeeded in drawing Sinister's attention. Jean gets in the way of Sinister's next attack. Essex thanks Longshot as he catches the once again stunned Jean. Alex taunts Cyclops as Sinister kisses Jean. Cyclops lets out a yell. Beast bounces by and grabs Jean just before Cyclops lets loose on Sinister. Essex explodes into a skeleton.

The X-Men prepare to leave, for there is nothing left for them at the remains of the mansion. Cyclops thanks Alex and the two have a quick good-bye hug. Cyclops asks Storm about Xavier's dream, and Storm says that the two teams have different roles in the same dream. The X-Men teleport away. Cyclops reflects on what Sinister did to him. Jean comforts him by saying that he could have given in to Sinister's manipulations, but didn't.

Review: I had heard about how Sinister faked his death by transforming into a skeleton at the end of Inferno. When I finally got a copy of this book, one of the first things I did was look for that picture. It's awesome. The picture itself is almost worth the price of the whole book.

I don't have a whole lot to say about this one because it was mainly just fighting. Still the teams came up with a good plan and worked together to pull it off, so kudos.

I don't really get Alex and Scott. How come they reconciled so fast? Alex seemed pretty upset with Scott at the end of X-Factor 38, but they seemed on good speaking terms at the end of this one. Was it because of Sinister? Is there still a grudge there, Alex just doesn't want it to ruin the relationship he has with his brother?

My biggest gripe is the ending. After twelve issues (the book I have didn't include the X-Terminators or Excalibur, so Inferno was even longer than that) I was disappointed that the last line in the book is Warren saying: let's make the most of the world. The Dark Phoenix Saga had a wonderful ending, it was a little preachy, true, but it was well written. So I guess by holding this up to those standards, I was just let down.