Writing: Scott Lobdell and Mark Waid
Art: Roger Cruz
What Went Down: The first glimpse of the Age of Apocalypse we get is a hooded man climbing a pile of human corpses. It seems that Apocalypse’s world is not a very happy place, as his soldiers carry out purges on all who are considered unfit. A little girl bumps into the mystery person, begging for help after having watched her parents die. The A of A version of Unus the Untouchable is leading the soldiers of Apocalypse, known as Infinites, on a purge and the little girl is their last target. The mystery man absorbs Unus’ power, so the villain orders the soldiers to kill the man. Luckily the X-Men show up, now led by Magneto. A big fight ensues, and we discover that this version of the team has no problem with killing enemies. Iceman even goes as far as freezing and shattering Unus. We learn that in this reality Sabretooth is a genuine good guy, and he has a paternal relationship with Blink, whom you might remember as the girl who died during the Phalanx Covenant. Also Morph, an alternate version of sixties character Changeling, is a member of the team.
After the victory, Magneto stops to contemplate how he failed to stop Apocalypse’s ascension, and how he feels responsible for the deaths of so many humans. Then the stranger, who turns out to be Bishop of course, attacks Magneto, blaming him for changing the present. He rants about Legion killing Xavier until Magneto slows the bloodflow to his brain, causing him to pass out.
Elsewhere, a twisted version of the Beast is experimenting on the alternate version of the Blob. The Blob escapes and almost kills Beast; Havok steps in to take care of the situation, but it is Cyclops that ends up ultimately saving both of them. Havok resents being saved, and Mr. Sinister shows up to talk to Cyclops. In this reality Sinister is the boys’ foster father and one of Apocalypse’s Horsemen. Sinister tells Scott that he wishes the brothers would get along and that he is leaving for a while.
At a club named Heaven, Angel has created a haven for mutants and humans alike. Karma is his assistant, and she brings a message that Gambit is there to see him. Gambit wants to know where Magneto is, and while they are talking Sebastian Shaw spies on them both.
At the decimated site of the Xavier mansion, we find Rogue visiting her and Magneto’s son, Charles. The child is in the charge of Nanny, who fans might remember as Magneto’s robot from a story in the late seventies. Later Magneto tries to get Bishop to give him more information; he determines that Rogue must use her powers to extract the information. At another location, the Horsemen of Apocalypse meet to discuss the purging of the remaining humans in America, breaching a recent peace pact between Apocalypse and the remaining human governments.
In London, Wolverine, now called Weapon X in this reality, and Jean Grey are delivering a package to the human council that includes Moira Mactaggert, her husband the x-villain Bolivar Trask, a lobotomized Emma Frost, and Brian Braddock. Also, Weapon X and Jean are a couple in this universe.
Rogue absorbs Bishop’s memories, and for some reason Magneto is able to see the memories as well. They include many flashes of the regular versions of the X-Men and Magneto. Gambit shows up and pushes Rogue off of Bishop, causing Sabretooth to attack him. Magneto calms everybody down and tells Nightcrawler to seek out his mother Mystique. Back with Apocalypse, we learn that Sinister has also disappeared. Rogue and Magneto end the issue talking about Bishop’s memories. Rogue thinks they are made up, but Magneto knows that they are real. Then we get some scenes of the Earth from space surrounded by crystal.
How It Was: Welcome to the Age of Apocalypse, one of the most beloved and highest quality X-crossovers ever. And while we all knew at the time that it was getting undone in four months, it was still exciting to see all of the interesting changes the X-staff made when they were allowed to do whatever they wanted. This issue marked the beginning of a pretty big trend at Marvel that continues to this day: the crossover one-shot. From this point on instead of having plot points occur through the natural process of the ongoing titles, this began the tradition of starting and occasionally ending these grand series with an extra comic or two. Sound marketing strategy, but later this would become an enormous hassle for comic collectors, especially for those using mail subscriptions and those with limited incomes. Still this issue is not too bad since it does a really great job of teasing out all the upcoming titles in an exciting way, and there are no advertisements.
The first thing that hits you with this issue is the super dark tone; there are mountains of corpses in the streets of Manhattan and the X-Men are content to kill anyone who opposes their ideals. It’s impressive to see the amount of narrative risks that the staff took when designing this story. Even the fact that main characters like Cyclops, Wolverine, Gambit, and Beast were all appearing in non-X-Men books across the crossover was pretty groundbreaking, although once again it could’ve just been sound marketing tactics. In the end, this is still a really fun story to read.
Really this issue isn’t so much a story as it is a glimpse of all the main characters in each of the re-titled books with Bishop serving as a plot device to get everyone on their various missions. That being said, it’s still a really good setup. One complaint that may come up from time to time is Magneto’s tendency to over indulge in praising Charles Xavier, but even though this aspect is repetitive, it doesn’t affect the rest of the issues that much. Magneto's reaction to Rogue's power absorption also feels a little too plot convenient, but it's easy to get past. Plus there is a constant barrage of neat twists on regular characters. Wolverine has one hand! Sabretooth is a nice guy! Blink is alive! Rogue has a kid! It’s obvious that the writers had a lot of fun playing with the characters and basically doing whatever they wanted with them. All in all this a great start off to a wonderful series that doesn’t have a huge impact on the regular books, but is still really well constructed.
B+
