Writing: Fabian Nicieza
Art: Andy Kubert
What Went Down: We start off with a prologue following a group of vagabond humans in Maine. They are traveling to a meeting where they are hoping to be transported to Eurasia, since Apocalypse has taken over the United States. A hooded figure is talking with a family about the trek. Afterwards, the stranger walks off into the woods and reveals herself to be the shapeshifter Vanessa Carlyle—Copycat in the standard universe. Vanessa informs other agents of Apocalypse—this universe’s version of the Brotherhood—about the humans’ hope to escape.
At the mansion in New York, Bishop watches while a team of X-Men performs a training exercise. This team includes leader Quicksilver, second in command Banshee, Dazzler, Iceman, Storm, and Exodus. The goal of the exercise is to get a control disk inside the Sentinel to reprogram it to recognize the X-Men as friends. The team completes the exercise, but Quicksilver’s time is a tenth of a second too slow. In actuality, the team is preparing for a real life mission where they will have to accomplish the same goal, using Dazzler’s hard-light holograms as a pseudo-Danger Room. Magneto shows up to caution his team about neglecting a fallen opponent; many members of the team show concern about the fact that Bishop is holding Magneto’s son, Charles.
Magneto takes the time to explain what is happening in all of the other AoA books, and tells the team that they need to leave. Iceman offers to invert their molecules through moisture, but there is concern that this will leave the X-Men weakened. Instead, Magneto tells Exodus to teleport the team to Maine, even though this is his first time using that power.
In the humans’ camp, the young boy and girl from the family earlier are chasing each other; the boy bumps into Quicksilver and apologizes. Out over the ocean, Storm flies through Apocalypse’s defense field to disable its sensors with electricity. Just when the tower is about to detect her, Sentinels burst through and destroy the tower. Fortunately Storm is cloaked with her electricity powers.
The next day as the group of people continues their journey, the young boy runs ahead, but he is captured by one of Apocalypse’s Horsemen named Abyss. The people reach the rendezvous point, and the Sentinels arrive to transport them to Europe. The X-Men install the disk in one of the Sentinels to reprogram all of them, but unfortunately the alternate version of Madison Jeffries has used his powers to reprogram the disk to target humans and X-Men as enemies. Iceman is blasted apart, but everyone notes that he will be able to pull himself together. A member of the Madri, Apocalypse’s cult-like soldiers, leads the AoA Brotherhood to attack the X-Men for the cliffhanger.
How It Was: All right, now we get to the adjective-less X-Men replacement. Actually, this issue follows the formula of Astonishing #1 pretty closely. Magneto shows up to explain the plot, the main players, the plots of the rest of the tie-in series, and the mission for the individual squad. Too bad this series isn’t quite as good as Astonishing, mostly due to the roster choice. Yes there are some interesting inclusions like Dazzler and Exodus, but nothing much is done with any of these characters. Exodus is still a zealot who will do anything Magneto wants, and the big twist on Dazzler’s character is that…um she smokes and acts cranky. Really that’s the only significant difference for most of the X-Men in this series; they’re the same characters, only angrier. As for the plotline of the series, the human exodus isn’t really that exciting, but that plot finishes up with issue two and then the really good action gets going.
Apocalypse’s Brotherhood also fails to inspire awe; who can say that they’d get really excited at the thought of a battle with Yeti, Copycat, Spyne, or Arclight? Nicieza is really scraping the bottom of the Marvel Universe Handbook with this book. Of course Abyss is the real antagonist, but whereas Holocaust wanted to murder hundreds of humans in Chicago, Abyss kidnaps a little boy to lure the X-Men into a trap. He’s not quite as menacing as most of the other villains in the AoA, which is a shame because to my knowledge he is one of the few original characters in this series.
There are a few good moments. I like how everyone mistrusts Bishop, and starts to question Magneto by association. Quicksilver is a much more likable character as a leader, and it’s neat to see Iceman demonstrate his full potential powers-wise. Regrettably, most of the characters don’t get a lot of room to develop, and a lot of ideas and plot points that get setup are pushed to the side or end up being forgotten about. Storm mentions that she is in love with Quicksilver, but nothing comes of it. The Sentinel redesigns look very cool, but they don’t get to do a lot either. The first half of this series does feel like a stall until we can get to the stuff with Apocalypse.
Well, the art is phenomenal with all of the redesigned costumes looking really great, except for Exodus’, which I always found kind of ordinary. Still, all the other costumes do a great job reflecting the characters' past selves while managing to maintain the darker tone. Kubert does some great work with what he’s given; the scenes with Storm and the Sentinels attacking the tower are particularly exciting. My only complaint is that Dazzler’s light blasts are rainbow-colored in this dimension, which always looked kind of silly to me. This is not a particularly gripping issue, but this book does improve over the course of the run.
C+
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