BIOGRAPHY - Page 4
On a Christmas Eve, the X-Men were sought out by Gladiator, strongman of the Shi’Ar Imperial Guard which led to a misunderstanding and a battle between Gladiator and Cannonball. Quite surprisingly, Sam acquitted himself quite well, actually winning their scuffle. Nevertheless, he had to stay behind when Gladiator teleported several of his teammates onto the Shi’ar royal cruiser, as the Shi’Ar found it without honor to place a youth like Sam in such a danger that was ahead for his teammates. [Uncanny X-Men (1st series) #341]
After an adventure in Japan, Cannonball and a group of X-Men were captured and imprisoned by Operation Zero Tolerance. After quite a while, they escaped with the help of Jubilee and managed to demolish the Prime Sentinel factory. A squadron of SHIELD agents then arrived and shut down Bastion, the ringleader of the operation. However, while in Bastion's clutches, Cyclops had been implanted with a nano-tech bomb. When Sam and the others returned to the mansion, it took the combination of all the old and new X-Men to save Cyclops and fend off the Juggernaut, who, with Xavier absent, claimed the mansion for himself. [X-Men (2nd series) #65-70, Wolverine (2nd series) #115-118]
Sam was no longer the rookie, as there were now three newer members among the team. Sam grew more self-confident in his role as an X-Man and confronted team leader Storm over the harsh way she and Wolverine chose to deal with their problem member, Marrow, a former Morlock and terrorist. Sam tried to befriend the young woman rather and, in turn, she started to develop a crush on him. [X-Men (2nd series) #72-78]
Sam took a vacation to visit his old teammates in X-Force after receiving a letter from Tabitha telling him how much she missed him. Sam met the others at a festival in Arizona and helped them to thwart one of Selene's evil plans.
However, his stay with his old pals was cut short when he found out that his best friend, Sunspot, and his girlfriend, Boomer, now called Meltdown, had secretly begun a relationship in his absence. Sam angrily returned to the X-Men after he found out. [X-Force (1st series) # 75-76]
Sam didn’t stay long with the X-Men, though, as he had to go home to Kentucky to take care of his sick mother, much to Marrow’s disappointment. [X-Men (2nd series) #79] His mother told him that the disease she was suffering from was treatable, but that she’d move the family to Lexington, where she would receive treatment.
That night, Sam encountered a pair of renegades: a Deviant named Ulysses and his young charge, an immensely powerful girl named Arcadia. They were being hunted by a group of Deviant assassins known as the Sword. Cannonball helped Ulysses battle the Sword and Arcadia reached into Sam's mind to find help, teleporting his former teammates in X-Force from San Francisco. After defeating the Deviants, Cannonball returned to California with X-Force. [X-Force (1st series) #83-84]
A little later, X-Force was called to Genosha, the mutant state under Magneto’s rule, by former Excalibur member and former black-ops agent, Pete Wisdom, who asked them to help him retrieve a revolutionary satellite with a sub-space engine before it fell into Magneto’s hands. X-Force had to confront Quicksilver and Magneto himself on the way, before they managed to pull this caper off. This left Sam impressed with Wisdom and - thanks to Delphi, an acquaintance of Wisdom’s who dealt in memories - with a vague memory of the Deviant incident in his childhood, causing him to search out his uncle and learn the rest. [X-Force (1st series) #94-96]
Several weeks later, Cannonball decided that X-Force had lost its purpose and so he and Bedlam contacted Pete Wisdom to train them in the style of a Black Ops secret agent. Domino and 
Moonstar were against the idea and broke ties with the team. Under the combined tutelage of Wisdom and Cannonball, X-Force reformed into a strike force to eliminate threats caused by dangerous Black Ops experiments. The former Black Air agent had trained Sam and the others in new strategies and aspects of their mutant powers. Wisdom acted to co-ordinate X-Force's efforts, while Cannonball remained field leader. During that time Sam and Tabitha also got back together again. [X-Force (1st series) #106-109]
In their first mission after returning to San Francisco, however, Pete was killed by the mad geneticist, Nilas Roman. [X-Force (1st series) #102-105] X-Force continued to operate without him for many months, even faking their own deaths and acting as a pro-mutant terrorism group, going so far as to kill groups and companies that abused and killed mutants. To avoid recognition, Sam dyed his hair and beard black, which led to him looking quite a lot like the late Pete Wisdom. After a disastrous encounter with Wisdom's sister, Romany, however, X- Force broke up and went their separate ways, [X-Force (1st series) #114-115] though they still got into a fight with the new media-friendly X-Force over the team’s name. [X-Force (1st series) #117]
After a while, Cannonball resurfaced as a member of X-Corporation Paris, alongside several other former members of X-Force, X-Factor and Generation X. Soon, the group found itself in the fight of their lives in the Channel Tunnel against the horrifying Weapon XII. Several bystanders, as well as X-Corpororation member Darkstar, died during that fight. [New X-Men (1st series) #128-131]
Afterwards, Sam helped with the rescue work and later left the X-Corporation, feeling burned out. Xavier understood and pointed him to a bar where Sam’s ex-girlfriend, Lila Cheney, was performing. Seeing in what bad shape Sam was, Lila took him away into space with her to recover. After a long vacation, where the two of them became a couple again, they returned to Paris. Sam found that, in spite of everything, he couldn’t remain a bystander and realized that the more integrative approach to Xavier’s dream that Storm’s team undertook was more up his alley. [X-Treme X-Men (1st series) #24]
So, he joined Storm’s group and quickly showed them that he was more than the rookie some of them remembered. During their quest to find out the mystery of Mount Haven, Sam proved that he knew when to obey orders and when to take the initiative, like while engaging Lady Deathstrike in a hand-to-hand combat and managing to hold his ground. [X-Treme X-Men (1st series) #25-29]
During their adventures, Sam also rekindled his friendship with his former teammates and current X-Corporation L.A.members Sunspot and Magma, with whom the X-Men worked on several occasions while operating out of Rogue’s house in Valle Soleada, California. [X-Treme X-Men (1st series) #34-46]