 The "Wanna Get Absorbed"
ROSSMANEditor's note: This review only covers the original and real issues of The Age of Apocalypse (like Generation Next and The Amazing X-Men), and NOT the shitty spin offs like Tales From the Age of Apocalypse and the 4 issue long Blink miniseries. The spin offs were written long after the original story was, and either completely fuck up the continuity that the original narrative took great pains to set up, or they just sucked. Now on to the review.
A long
long time ago, a man with a fetish for teenagers in tights
created one of the greatest superhero teams of all time:
The Uncanny X-Men. And things were good (if a bit lame) for
a while. These teenagers with special powers born into them
(i.e. mutants) faced ridiculous villain after retardedly
ridiculous villain for a few years until even their own teacher/mentor/telepathic-sugardaddy
called it quits. The X-Men took a little hiatus, but came
back bigger and badder than ever with the help of a new writer,
Chris Claremont.
Claremont
was soon to become a god in the world of comic books. He
had visions of plotlines that built up for years with payoffs
that would make even the most jaded mutant-hater jizz his
or her pants in astonishment. His opus would always be the
Dark Phoenix Saga (I don't feel like going
into it here, but if you have any questions and a few hours
of free time
just visit your local comic book store and ask the hairy
tub of lard behind the counter what it was all about... Then
you too will jizz with glee). The amount of work that went
into building that whole story arc up is beyond impressive.
But I digress. Sure, the Fall of the Mutants was
pretty decent, and I still enjoyed the whole Cable thing
(from the very
beginning, with Maddie Pryor even), but when Claremont left
Marvel in the early 1990s he would always
be remembered
for what he put poor Scott Summers and Jean Grey through
at the end of tDPS (he was so good that
people chose to forget that he basically ruined the whole Phoenix
Saga by
making up some
crap about
how the Phoenix actually wasn't really who people thought
she was, and who they thought she was was really just asleep
at the bottom of a bay... but that's neither here nor there).
So Chris
Claremont was gone, and nobody was really sure what direction
he was planning to go in with some of the plotlines he had
left hanging (and there were a lot left hanging...
imagine the Vienna Boys Choir hitting puberty on the exact
same note).
Everyone was afraid that the best of Marvel Entertainment's
mutant wonders was behind them... And then somebody asked
himself the greatest question anybody could have ever
asked himself if he were in the position that the askee
was in the media corporation and could afford to think outside
of the box like he just had: "What if Professor Charles
Xavier never created the X-Men?" Instead of just making
a shitty little one-issue side story, the Marvel crew made
it a half
a year alternate vision of the entire Marvel continuity time-line.
In a word, it was "impressive". In a few words,
it was "fuck
my ass that's good story telling gravy boat titty-fuck spanktastictude!"
AFTER
XAVIER
 The
whole Age of Apocalypse storyline (as
it was to be called) revolved around one key event that was
never meant to happen:
Professor Xavier was killed twenty years in the past before
he could start herding young, impressionable mutants into
his lair and mind-warping them to kill his old enemies and
fly his jet. How could something like this happen, you ponder?
Well, Xavier's psychotic, schizo and powerful son, Legion,
thought that he could make his father's dream of mutant and
human
co-existence come true by time traveling (he had a shitload of
powers) to the past in order to kill Magneto (Xavier's old
friend turned mortal enemy) before Magneto killed Xavier's
dream and made a menace of himself that the X-Men still fight
to this day. But, Legion kinda goofed. In the past, he fought
Magneto on live worldwide TV, and then, as he was about to
deliver the killing blow, fried his dad's brain instead
of the Master of Magnetism's. Then the shit hit the fan.
With
Charles Xavier dead, Legion, and the X-Men who followed him
back 20 years to stop him, disappeared, and Magneto was left
to carry on the idealistic dream that his now deceased friend
had wanted to imploy himself... That dream would be getting
humans and mutants to live together in peace and harmony
with lots of kittens.
Unfortunately
for Magneto, however, his battle with Legion was seen by
the long-lived uber-mutant known as Apocalypse (aka En Sabah
Nur, also aka "That Clownish-looking Blue Dude").
Apocalypse had been waiting hundreds of years for the right
time to
take
control
of the
world. He wanted to put his megalomaniacal plan into effect
only when he was sure that the evolutionary age of mutants
(i.e. homo sapien superior) was in full swing. In the original
timeline, he waited a few more decades before he made his
move, but in this Professor X-less world, he felt that
the Legion vs. Magneto fight meant that his plans could be
stepped up a bit. And so we enter....
THE AGE
OF APOCALYPSE
We are then dropped off 20 years after the timeline took
a major detour. Apocalypse has taken control of North America.
South America is pretty much destroyed. Japan is a wasteland.
The only place that's really safe for humans anymore is Eurasia.
Seems the big A is pretty keen on Darwin's thoughts of "survival
of the fittest", and he's been culling the entire human
population under his rule in order to thin out the herd.
All of the
mutants that we'd gotten to know and love (or hate) in over
300-odd issues of the original comic have completely different
lives in this AoA. The Summers brothers
(Scott and Alex) work for Apocalypse's number one gene-splicer,
Mr. Sinister. Logan and Jean Grey are solo mercs fighting
against the genetically created Infinite armies of the big
A, and Magneto leads the X-Men with his wife Rogue and his
right
hand man, Sabretooth. Lots of bad guys are now good, and
plenty of old-universe good guys are bad. It's all topsy
turvy and outside in, but that's the way it goes.... Or does
it (play loud, crescendo, mystery music)?!?!
See, after
the whole Legion assassination thing, one X-Man was able
to continue existing from the original timeline: Bishop.
Bishop
was a
time anomaly
in the real timeline, so he is still able to subsist in Apocalypse's
world.... Don't think about it too hard. It'll hurt. Anyway,
Bish finally tracks down Magneto and gets him to understand
that the world that they live in is wrong and that Xavier
was never meant to die, and that hugs and puppies were supposed
to rule the earth instead of shapeshifting super mutants
who like to bathe in blood. So Magneto sends out his X-Men
on a bunch of missions to either collect some nifty things
(like a mutant precog, a shard of an eternal space crystal,
and a hyper-teleporting Russian girl), or to save some humans
from the big A's latest mass killings.
Thus we
had a 4 month period where in all the Marvel mutant books
took place in the new Age of Apocalypse. The Uncanny
X-Men became The Amazing
X-Men,
Generation X changed to Generation
NeXt, X-Factor to Factor
X... etc. etc. The greatest thing
of all
in regards to the AoA was that nothing was sacred. People
who were classic heroes in the original universe became total
asshole nazi bastards under Apocalypse's reign. Mutants whom
we grew to love died horrible horrible deaths. People who
had died in the real world were still alive and kicking in
the hell world. And guys who got the girl in Xavier's time
missed out humongously in the new dark time.
It was
so totally amazing to see just how detailed the writers were
with everything! They pretty much covered every single mutant
and how he/she now lived in this alternate reality. Most
tales were sad, some had me cheering, and some were just
brutal. The writers would often pit Xavier-era lovers against
each other in order to piss off a lot of the fat-fuck fanboys
out there just for kicks. Brilliant! And the best thing of
all the best things was the treatment of Colossus in the
AoA. See, I always hated the big steel-man in the normal
reality. For some reason his creepy infatuation with 14 year-old
Kitty
Pryde scared the hell out of me. But in the AoA, Colossus
is in charge of the young group of mutants known as Generation
NeXt. Yeah, he's still a big old organic metal-man, but he's
such an incredible pussy too. Even though his teen team is
headed by the coolest character in all of the new timeline,
Paige Guthrie, Colossus whines, bitches and moans his way
through the entire miniseries. He fucks things up so bad
that there can never be any redemption for him in my eyes
ever again... Not that I was ever planning on liking him,
it's just that now I had great reason to hate his shiny metal
ass. Fucker.
Anyway,
before the Age of Apocalypse storyline, it had been something
like 3 years since I picked up a mutant comic book. I just
lost interest.
It was the same old recycled shiznit for the longest while.
The Australian Outback saga was a decent change of pace,
but it led to the disappearance of my all time X-World mutant
hottie, Rogue. Bummer that. I was then depressed to hear
that Claremont was leaving the whole Marvel thing behind
him. That was pretty much the final straw. The AoA was such
a blast of fresh air... A shot in the arm, if you will. It
was the perfect way to revitalize the stagnant X-Line. It
was a once in a lifetime event too. There's no way they could
do something like that again for at least another thirty
years. The use of three decades of warped history was unprecedented
and so perfectly done. In fact the only thing that kept the
AoA from beating the Dark Phoenix Saga as the greatest comic
book storyline ever was the fact that it didn't take 4-5
years to build up to, and you knew while reading it that
when it was over it wouldn't amount to a hill of beans in
the real world again. Sure, they brought over some crappy
AoA characters to the real world once things settled back
to normal, but that was just a pathetic try at keeping the
freshness alive for way too long (like laminating a half
eaten apple in order to preserve it forever).
After
AoA, I thought that maybe Marvel still had the magic in it.
I thought that maybe they could continue to make storylines
that blew their readers away with every panel... surprises
around every page! But then the Onslaught Saga happened.
Marvel never recovered from that shitfest. It was like handing
a 6 year-old child beer and some frozen peas for lunch when
all he wanted was PB&J and a Capri Sun. Jacktards...
All of them.
What did
I think of the Marvel epic crossover event, The Age of Apocalypse?
I find that I have to give it a 356 out of 367
Points of Rossman Childhood Reminiscences. It was fun to re-read
all of my old Age of Apocalypse graphic novels again and
all that, but it gets a couple of points off for making me
feel like a lonely comic book loser who actually had time
to re-read his entire Age of Apocalypse graphic novels again.
Oh
yeah, and of course all the Mego Toy images are straight
from Twisted Toyfare Theater. There, I plugged them. Now
they can't sue!
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