This issue continues events in Hong Kong. Wolverine arrives in Hong Kong and it's here that we start to see the boundaries between his own series and this one break down, with an impact on the wider chronology.
Uncanny X-Men #257
Writer: Chris Claremont
Penciler: Jim Lee
Inker: Josef Rubinstein
Letterers: All Available
Colourist: Glynis Oliver
Editor: Bob Harras
Editor-in-Chief: Tom DeFalco
The
Wolverine solo title had launched during the period when the X-Men were presumed dead and in fact operating out of a ghost town in the Australian outback. Rather boldly the series did not simply copy the set-up but instead established Wolverine as having another home in Madripoor, a fictional city state in east Asia with a strong touch of Singapore about it. The early issues also saw Wolverine avoiding his conventional costume, instead using a mostly black jump suit, and disguising himself with an eye-patch, a feature much mocked by readers but subsequently explained away as "When somebody with claws and a temper wants to believe he's fooling people, well... no one wants to be the one to say, 'Hey, Wolvie what's with the stupid eyepatch?'" These arrangements lasted while Claremont was writing the solo title but then were clawed away a bit under Peter David before Archie Goodwin moved the series onwards, as seen in the relevant crossover chapters in
Wolverine #19 and #20. But one side effect of the arrangements is that Wolverine's own chronology in the period requires a good chunk of his solo adventures to be slotted into gaps in the
X-Men run. Multi-part stories can drag things out and a consequence is that his own title's contribution to the saga must take place before a lot of events that led to the scattering of the X-Men that these issues only begin to undo.
Bringing Wolverine to the Far East to go around with an eye-patch, meet up with contacts from Landau, Luckman, & Lake, wear the black suit and fight ninjas suggests that Claremont was still working off ideas from the other series rather than merely marking time to work through an awkwardly timed wider crossover. But the result allows for some exploration of culture clashes, particularly with the young mutant Jubilee who is of Chinese descent but was born and grew up in the states. Such is her level of Americanisation (even sporting a colour scheme clearly based on the Robin costume) that a street gang call her a "Yankee banana" - yellow skinned but white inside. Then she gets kidnapped and is subsequently seen under mind control. Meanwhile Psylocke has now been sent into the field as "Lady Mandarin", an enforcer for the Mandarin's takeover of the Hong Kong underworld, steadily establishing her reputation as she enhances her training. Finally she attacks Wolverine, who has been suffering from both a weakened healing factor and illusions of past comrades, leading to a brief battle in which he discovers her identity and new power, a psychic knife.
This is a fairly straightforward middle part of a storyline, but it continues to suffer from an excessive use of continuity from other series at precisely the moment a load of non-regular readers are expected. The visuals are also a little off, with the splash page of Psylocke introducing herself seemingly giving her only one arm, whilst the colour of her armour varies slightly between its two appearances and is notably rather different on the cover. And other than a reference to the absent Mandarin "gallivanting across the globe, picking gratuitous fights with American super heroes" there's still no real connection to the wider event beyond happening to use one of the villains. Again this is a good X-Men issue but less so a good crossover chapter.
Uncanny X-Men #257 has been reprinted in:
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