Writing: Scott Lobdell
Art: Joe Madureira
What Went Down: This issue starts out with the X-Men already in Chicago, trying to direct a mob of terrorized humans to safety; the people are terrified by the sight of Apocalypse’s probes coming to calculate the potential body count. Sunfire becomes angry and attacks the probes, causing more panic. Rogue absorbs his power to get him to calm down, but in the process she absorbs his memories of seeing Apocalypse defeating Sunfire and wiping out everyone in Japan. Sunfire is ashamed, but Rogue comforts him.
Back in Westchester County, Magneto is having a tender moment watching his son Charles sleep. Bishop comes in and insists that Charles isn’t supposed to exist, but Magneto explains that to a father it doesn’t matter. In Manhattan, Apocalypse is throwing a hissy fit because his minions haven’t detected the X-Men’s base yet. Rex gets the call with the location and Apocalypse is appeased.
In Chicago, Sabretooth tells Blink that he is going to stall Holocaust while the other X-Men evacuate the city; he also tells Blink to avenge him, since this is most likely a suicide mission. Rogue tries to stop Creed, but Blink uses her powers to knock Rogue unconscious and teleport Creed to Holocaust’s location.
Sabretooth confronts Holocaust, learns the location of his Infinite factory, and sends Wild Child to go tell the others. A fight arises with Sabretooth tearing off Holocaust’s helmet, but inevitably still failing.
How It Was: As I noted before, Astonishing X-Men’s strength is its strong personalities for its characters. Lobdell takes his cast of five and uses each issue to focus on what really drives each X-Man. Here we get an excellent flashback with Sunfire: dressed in his old uniform, surrounded by piles of corpses, and being held down by Apocalypse in a lake of the blood of innocents. In four panels, Lobdell is able to justify all of Sunfire’s erratic, impulsive, and angry attitude quirks and at the same time make us feel sympathetic for a very unlikable character.
All of the characters are equally interesting, although Sabretooth is kind of acting as a second-rate Wolverine; I say this because his relationship with Blink strongly echoes the Wolverine/Kitty or Wolverine/Jubilee dynamic. And I’m not quite sure how Blink knows where Holocaust is, and if she knows where he is, why don’t all of the X-Men just go and beat him right now? I guess we would miss out on a pretty awesome fight with Holocaust.
And while I’m on the subject, I feel like Holocaust is a wildly inappropriate name for a super villain. Yes, it’s a nitpick and I know that the word refers to any mass genocide and not a specific one, but the seriousness of the name doesn’t really fit with this basically one-dimensional villain. Marvel apparently agreed with me, because years later characters started calling him Nemesis again.
Still this is a fun book with actual overwhelming odds for the protagonists to overcome. Awesome efforts on writing and art make this really enjoyable.
A
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