//=time() ?>
...to the team following her long absence in the wake of her depowering. She isn't just proving the validity of her leadership to Scott, but to the entire X-Men. She may have lost her powers, but she's no less capable a warrior than she ever was.
Madelyne's wish for Scott's...
...especially Logan that's Scott's heart truly isn't in this fight, almost suggesting he knows the right thing to do even if he's currently resisting that duty.
More than just deciding the leadership of the team, Ororo's participation in the fight is her reintroduction...
...for satiating his intense ego (itself ironically masking his complete lack of central identity beyond the X-Men), more than anything else.
Ororo interrupts, and perhaps out of guilt after Maddie's earlier barb that her giving birth alone was in part her fault, challenges...
...game to help us get our bearings back.
In Ororo's loft, Scott tries to impress the importance of his return onto Madelyne, but the woman is rightfully having none of it.
In a single panel, Madelyne reiterates a decade's worth of character work for Scott, calling him out...
...the foreseeable future, Charles will be making no returns to Salem Center.
As much of a jerk as he may be, Charles also isn't without the guilt of abandoning his duties to his mutant wards and is doubtful of the successor he's chosen to teach in his place.
It's a decision...
...a retrospective read through, made it hard for me to leave what might have been a beautiful moment with a sense of dread and the grief of broken promises.
The issue briefly interludes to Shi'ar space, where Claremont takes a few pages to make clear that, at least for...
...when his big sister takes the baby into her arms for the first time, the moment still reads as tragic more than optimistic.
Scott's reluctance hangs like a grey cloud over everyone's joy and foreknowledge of everything that awaits the Summers-Grey-Pryor clan, the danger of...
...case for Scott's removal from the team–the case for his freedom to have a happy life–only to have that argument so quickly dismantled by editorial mandate.
Even when their newborn child is written outside of the purpose of duty, intended instead as a symbol of hope...
...of everything he's ever known. Scott and Madelyne's baby represents hope for a better world–as we'll later see with Rachel–but Kitty's nervous cradling of the newborn points toward his role as a symbol of "duty"–not just what we're responsible for, but to whom as well.