Let's have a crossover!
Marvel stitches together the spurious motives for a crossover by having all of the sentient extraterrestrials in the universe side against interfering humans – a move that's nakedly meant to anger the reader, since it's mostly predicated on interventionist hijinks of the beloved X-Men and Avengers.
Story & Script
Kurt Busiek finds himself with the thankless task of fabricating a company-wide crossover from scratch in a single issue. While he's left some threads from both recent and historic Marvel arcs, he largely fabricates the beginnings of the story arc on his own by using one of Marvel's more-ridiculous creations, Ego the Living Planet.
The affair could have been more interesting given an issue or two to breathe and develop characters, but here every panel needs to get us closer to crossing over. That means Lilandra is used as a stand-in for every well-meaning politician presiding over a disaster movie, and a new alien race is invented to have a devious intent.
It doesn't entirely track – partially because Xavier is so in the right throughout the issue - preventing genocide on the small scale with Super-Skrulls and on a larger scale with the entire council planet hardly seems like a reason to get annoyed with humanity, and calling Silver Surfer an Earth-sympathizer is a stretch.
Despite the details, Buskiek does manage to cross the finish line ready for a multi-title throwdown, though it's hard to get excited since the reasons behind it are so sparse.
Artwork
Jerry Ordaway is a barely-serviceable penciler here. He manages a wide array of alien races with broad, flat, cartoonish strokes (his Skrull are awful) and persistent problems with perspective and depth. He lucks into only having to illustrate four familiar characters – Lilandra, Gladiator, Xavier, and Silver Surfer.
I suspect he was nominated for the task on the strength of his Surfer, since Xavier is similarly bald. Aside from Silver Surfer, he fares the best on the newly invented Kruul – conjuring a devious look for their race.
Bottom Line
Given the scant, unconvincing motives to kickstar Maximum Security, you'll do just fine diving into the arc without this inconsistent opener.