Operation: Zero Tolerance includes no shortage on ancillary tie-in issues. Like so many expansive and nebulous comic book events, they are of varying quality and dubious justification. Generation X’s batch of issues, though very weak, at least grew out of the Jubilee story arc. As a result there was a connection to the larger event when it began. Less connected are X-Force, Cable, and X-Man——three series that approach the event in very different ways. Additionally, an issue of X-Men Unlimited seemingly takes place during Operation: Zero Tolerance despite being completely out of continuity. Finally, the flagship series Uncanny X-Men, which has been off telling an independent story for months, steps away from its titular team entirely to deliver the event’s most important issue.
The following includes spoilers for Cable #45-47, Uncanny X-Men #346, X-Force #67-70, X-Man #30, and X-Men Unlimited #16.
Revenge
Like Generation X, X-Force's involvement with Operation: Zero Tolerance is on the periphery. Nothing in the two tie-in issues (though the story arc plays through a total of four) impact the main story or deals with Bastion. But unlike James Robinson's fill-in work on Generation X, X-Force writer John Moore successfully uses Operation: Zero Tolerance to further ongoing subplots and character development within the series.
X-Force #66 ends with G.W. Bridge asking Domino to save Dani Moonstar (who the team thought had gone rogue but was actually an undercover agent for S.H.I.E.L.D.) from getting pulled up in a Zero Tolerance operation. X-Force’s Operation: Zero Tolerance arc begins here. The M.L.F. takes hostages at the Wakeman Oncological Research Center, believing that they're engineering their own version of the Legacy Virus. Local police surround the center but are relieved by Zero Tolerance's forces under the command of Ekatarina Grayaznova.
Domino, Sunspot, and Siryn talk their way into the facility while Meltdown, Shatterstar, and Rictor watch from inside a nearby van. Unfortunately, most of the hostages held inside are prime sentinels. Additionally, Grayaznova isn’t fooled by X-Force’s disguises. In the ensuing conflict, she captures Shatterstar, Rictor, Meltdown, and Domino while Dani, Sunspot, and Siryn escape.
Grayaznova reveals that she and Domino have a shared history. Years earlier, when Domino was on a mission in El Salvador, she damaged a remote piloted robot which put its operator, Ekatarina Grayaznova, in a coma. Grayaznova wants revenge against Domino and she hopes discover how her luck powers work. But she's also beholden to the clandestine unit that positioned her to be “recruited” into Bastion’s prime sentinel program and thus heal her. Grayaznova intends to deliver Shatterstar, Rictor, and Meltdown to this clandestine group.
Domino is ultimately dropped by the side of the road. But the delay in transportation lets the rest of X-Force catch up, free the other prisoners, and incapacitate Grayaznova. X-Force escapes, finds Domino, and reunites with Cable who was off on his own mission. But when Cable’s answer to Zero Tolerance is to go underground and hide, the team collectively abandons him and sets out on their own.
Grayaznova didn't volunteer for the program. She was rehabilitated while she was in a coma and positioned to be recruited as a Prime Sentinel. Unlike the sleeper agents, Grayaznova knows what she is, and she’s ambivalent about it. She muses that she doesn’t know if she is more human or more machine.
The Zero Tolerance commander is serving three masters. First and most important to her is taking revenge on Domino. Next is what she owes to the people who repaired the damage from that fight. And finally she is responsible for carrying out her duties as instructed by Bastion (while keeping everything else hidden from him).
Grayaznova is not the only character to be conscripted, but she’s the only one that has autonomy. It’s unclear if she cares about mutants in a general sense. And she certainly doesn’t like the people who rebuilt her. But she’s in a position to get everything she wants so she puts up with everything that’s distasteful about her situation. It’s an ugly symbiosis. For an effectively one-and-done villain (X-Force defeats her in X-Force #70-71 before she reappears and dies in X-Force #82), Grayaznova is compelling and effective. In fact, she is the only fully fleshed out villain in the entire event.
X-Force writer John Moore uses these tie-in issues as a way to advance character stories such as with Dani Moonstar, who makes a return in a big way, and Domino with whom he creates a personal connection the Zero Tolerance commander. Most importantly, the events featured in the pages of X-Force leave a lasting impact on the series.
The art in these issues stands out among the various chapters of Operation: Zero Tolerance. Adam Pollina's pencils stand out in all his X-Force issues (which include these tie-ins). His style is reminiscent of the 90s MTV cartoon Aeon Flux. Most of Pollina's characters tend to be long and lean. His work on X-Force #67 and #69-70 might be the most visually interesting of the event. Unfortunately Pollina doesn’t last long on X-Force. He didn't stop doing comics, but he greatly diversified his work which significantly reduced the time he devoted to the medium.
The Secret Files
The Cable issues in Operation: Zero Tolerance spin out of X-Force #67 and sees the titular character sneak back into the occupied X Mansion to recover or destroy all of Xavier’s files before Bastion can decrypt them. Cable #45-47 is largely a big action set piece. Cable fights his way through the Zero Tolerance troops occupying the mansion until he reaches the computer room where he discovers that Bastion was able to download a small number of files.
Among those files is data on Jean Grey’s family. Cable telepathically contacts Nate Grey and tasks him with defending them. This unfolds in X-Man #30 (an issue that is not branded as an Operation: Zero Tolerance tie-in). The story is a detour for Nate as his title is largely divorced from the rest of the X books. Nate is overpowered by the Prime Sentinels and ultimately chooses to fake his and the Grey’s deaths.
Cable’s story is resolved via a standoff with Bastion where Bastion tries to force Cable to turn over the files and help him decrypt them and Cable predictably says no. He then uses his telepathy to force the Zero Tolerance troops to leave the mansion. The effort knocks him unconscious, but Bastion inexplicably leaves him alive.
The Cable and X-Man issues are largely perfunctory and superficial plot driven exercises. X-Force gave Zero Tolerance a face in the form of the complicated Ekatarina Grayaznova and used her advance a character’s arc. None of that complexity is here, and ultimately they add nothing to individual series or the larger event.
Naming Names
As for those much ballyhooed secret files, they finally pay off in Uncanny X-Men #346, the series’ sole contribution to Operation: Zero Tolerance. Bastion takes what information he has——the identities of some of the X-Men and their families——to J. Jonah Jameson and pushes him to publish it, outing everyone Bastion has identified.
Jameson made sporadic appearances in the X books during the Graydon Creed campaign storyline, and Lobdell gave him good material. He was a champion for truth and suspicious of Creed’s rhetoric and Bastion’s growing influence. He stood up to them more than once.
His appearance here is more of the same. Bastion is offering him a huge story at no charge. All Jameson has to do is print it. This is another dark moment in an event full of them. Bastion wants Jameson, for all intents and purposes, to publish a list of dangerous people——or at the very least undesirable. He wants them exposed, presumably so that ordinary citizens can do some of his dirty work for him.
The history that informs this scene is significant. Political prisoners in oppressive regimes, religious minorities in theocratic countries, women and minorities working in behind the scenes jobs during times of less equality, homosexuals throughout history——there have always been people whose lives and livelihoods depended on secrecy. What is now referred to as McCarthyism came about from a time in this country when people were hauled before congress and “encouraged” to name names of communists or risk having their lives destroyed as a result. And those who were named fared no better.
This is what Bastion is asking of Jameson. And Lobdell gives Jameson one of his stand up moments when he refuses to sell the Daily Bugle’s soul or his own for the story Bastion is trying to give him. Jameson recognizes that the power of the printed word (journalism in its entirety, really) is derived from the truth and mustn’t be bent or manipulated to serve someone’s private goal.
This is a powerful idea at any time, and it is a significant story point in Operation: Zero Tolerance. But this line of dialogue Lobdell wrote feels almost prophetic now. 26 years later our media is fractious and nakedly biased. News is about ratings and not truth. Does anyone doubt that if a real world equivalent of Bastion was shopping some kind of incendiary list, he wouldn’t find a network, newspaper, or website to publish it so long as it supported their narrative?
Operation: Zero Tolerance stands out because of its blunt parallels (and direct comparisons in-story) to real world periods of oppression and even genocide. But perhaps this smaller idea, tucked away in a tie-in that doesn’t even feature the X-Men, is what should be remembered. The ability to shape the truth——to invent the truth——might be the greatest power there is.
Operation: Zero Tolerance’s opening issues are exciting. They pull no punches, and they set the X-Men back on their heels in a way that even Onslaught’s opening didn’t. The Flashback month is an unfortunate hiccup in the momentum generated by Generation X #27 and X-Men #65, and it reinforces that Operation: Zero Tolerance didn’t have the best planning.
Part 7: ->
Return to the Introduction here. Follow along with an issue-by-issue commentary at @theronscomics #XMenOZT.
Interested in following this series as new entries release? Manage your subscription below. New entries will be synced with issue commentary threads and likely be posted every two weeks.
What is good, everybody?
Thanks for reading!
Interested in supporting all this wonderful comic content? Please consider subscribing to these reviews or other posts.
If you really enjoy the content, you can also share it with others who enjoy comics!
And if you think you’ll be coming back often and want to help this grow, please consider donating.
Thank you to everyone for your support.
If you like my comic content and are into video games, I do walkthroughs with detailed story analysis at Theron Plays Games.
Find my content all over the internet.