"Hide-'n'-Seek"
We are still in space, and the situation is still dire. But before we even get to that, we have the cover, showing Dark Phoenix, a constant shadow in our backstory, announcing, over the objections of word balloons insisting that she is dead, that she is not dead because a Phoenix is always reborn again. NB: covers with word balloons are usually a bad idea. Especially since, lets get back to...
We are still in space, and the situation is still dire. The X-Men and Starjammers are desperately trying to repair their ship, all while the clock is ticking down on the demise of the earth. On top of that, Colossus faints from the near-death injuries he sustained a few days ago. Then we are introduced to even more backstory---apparently, the loyal chancellor of the Shi'ar has been murdered by the treacherous Admiral Samedar, who is the person responsible for framing the earth for the disappearance of the Empress Lilandra. Admiral Samedar has a goatee type thing, and seems to cackle a lot, so it was pretty obvious that something was up. Then, while trying to contact Kitty Pryde and Nightcrawler, Professor X collapses.
Okay, in another example of my simplifications needing to be explained, while the main body of the X-Men have been with the Starjammers, Kitty and Nightcrawler have been aboard the Shi'ar flagship, as hostages, with Kitty trying on a sequence of ridiculous costumes, which is what you would expect a 13 year old would-be fashionista to be doing onboard an alien spaceship, or at least that is the plan, because Kitty has actually been planning to disguise herself as Phoenix, and thus the cover. Kitty imitates Phoenix, scares the Shi'ar, and by doing so, manages to reveal Admiral Samedar's treachery. There is a brief battle, order is restored, and the Starjammer ship arrives out of warp to deflect the earth shattering bolt that the treacherous Samedar had aimed at the earth. Everything is okay! Except that on the last page, it is revealed that Professor X is catatonic, due to reasons we will soon find out.
This issue continues a story, and it continues it with some of the same flourishes: just two issues ago, we learned that Colossus was dead on the final page. This is the type of thing that, if used too frequently, starts to lose its appeal. One obvious thing I should mention: even though I am reading through these much slower than I could, it is still much faster than they came out. Since the first issue I reviewed, 14 months have passed. Some of the readers would have moved from playing with model airplanes to immersing themselves in the mature world of the X-Men to discovering girls and playing bass in a band. So the fact that certain plot points and beats seem repetitive when I am reading this 40 years later, 30 times faster than the issues came out, might not have been much of a problem with readers at the time. That is also true for having the Kitty!Phoenix on the cover: perhaps it seems now that Chris Claremont was reiterating this story too frequently, but at the time, it was still dramatic. I think.