X-Men: Age of Apocalypse Omnibus by Scott LobdellMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
Age of Apocalypse has been on my list forever - or at least, since I was introduced to the X-Men. Apocalypse is scary; having read his introduction in the early X-Factor comics and the ensuing havoc he wreaked, I was looking forward to delving into this insane alternate universe.
To start of, the entirety of AoA is created by one act of greed and another of sacrifice. [SPOILER ALERT] In the Legion Quest mini-series that sets up this parallel timeline, Xavier's son David decides he must destroy Magneto if this world is ever to find peace; and if he is to be with his father. Now, Legion had a bad case of multiple personality disorder (from what I recall), which was exacerbated by his psychic abilities. (This was the 80s). In Legion Quest, Mystique is intent on killing comatose Legion, who abruptly wakes up and causes havoc (there's a lot of that going on in these comics). He then comes up with a plan, which, for some reason, involves having a chat with some X-Men, who then get pulled in with him to the past. The rest of the X-Men then spend the rest of the issues of this 6-part series standing about moping about the end which is nigh. Oh, and there's a galactic crystal thrown into the mix that will be affected by Legion's plan. I... sometimes don't get comics.
Legion goes 20 years into the past, in an effort to stop Eric Lehnsherr from becoming Magneto; aka, he plans to kill him. However, he makes a pit-stop to say hi to his mum. Does this make sense? Wait for it... He takes the time out to disguise himself - psychically I suppose - as Xavier and do... something with his mum. I haven't a clue what went down or what they were aiming for - I don't want to think about it. Gaby (his mum) doesn't allude to anything, instead mentioning that he's spoken to her about being her son.
Anyway, Legion then battles the X-Men who were dragged into the past with him, while beating the crap out of Eric, who is now showing off his powers. And then, when Legion is about to deal the killing blow, Charles gets in the way, and dies. This causes a paradox and voila, AoA begins in the next issue. Not before we have a couple of pages of dramatic monologue from the writers. So dramatic!
The thing is, Eric and Charles have a great connection, and the two of them bond over a short period of time. More than once, I felt that Eric may allude to feeling something stronger for Charles, despite the heteronormative inclusion of Gaby as Charles' love interest (and former patient). But no... Even now Marvel and DC can't bring themselves to make any of their main male characters even hint at any affection for another male character, forget go all out gay, how can anyone expect any better in the 90s. Heck, Charles has one on one astral plane conversations with Eric even when they're at war with each other - their friendship is not ordinary in the least. [END SPOILER]
The trouble with the series is that it felt overlong because the central conceit was so simple. Go back in time with Bishop's help and fix this. But, in this 'verse, the good guys don't know Bish, and Bish has memory issues for story reasons. So we see the characters in action, as we traverse this world. The issue is when Bishop finally reveals the truth, they don't just take it on board and attempt to enable his temporal trip - which is what would happen in 99.995% of the time in most comics. No, Magneto proceeds to split his team up so that one lot head to find the pre-cog Destiny so she can corroborate what Bishop is saying. Another team has to extract the M'Kraan crystal - the doohickey from space whose importance honestly escaped me. Another lot have to rescue the only other living being with temporal powers, Illyana Rasputin, and others have various duties like... save humans?
It's a prolonged, unnecessary distraction from the main plot, especially given that the reader already knows Bishop is telling the truth, and I'm sure even in the 90s, the readers knew everything would go back to normal soon enough.
What they should have done - and yes, I'm saying this 20 years after the fact - was not introduce any acknowledgement that this world was wrong. By starting off with Bishop's mad rants, we know that the status quo will be reached. How would the readers have reacted had they felt they would be stuck with this insane world? It would have been interesting had we traversed the Age of Apocalypse on a day to day basis with these transformed characters, not knowing how long this aberration would continue. The pace would certainly not have mattered when daily survival was of urgency every issue. Imagine the adventures then!
When I started reading AoA, the first several pages felt all too familiar - almost as if I'd read them before. Well, I had, in the form of X-Men: Days of Future Past, except in AoA, mutants are hunting humans, and neither side is completely safe. But the X-Men still exist and are continuing the good work.
I love Cyclops, everyone else hates him - I obviously haven't read enough X-Men to come to the same conclusion. Cyclops is a high-standing prelate in Apocalypse's, working directly under Mister Sinister. He isn't written as evil, we meet him at the start of his redemption arc, which is bizarre - almost as if the writers didn't want to push the limits with this character. With Havok, however, they do everything to make him a petulant and jealous fool. He's blinded by his brother's excellence and is given no character personality beyond that.
[SPOILER ALERT] And there's this bizarre subplot of their father turning up and them being angry with Sinister for hiding him, only for the dad to turn into a Shi'ar. It's so painful to think of this simplistic approach to things. What were the writers thinking? [END SPOILER]
The decision to make Beast a beast seemed cliched at best. Hank is now an evil scientist, experimenting on humans and mutants alike, torturing people to such an extent that he is often ordered to tone it down by Sinister and Cyke. So weird.
Some of the good guys are also different - for one, old bag Magneto has super-young Rogue as his wife. Gambit is still in love with said wife. This love triangle is played out in a cliched fashion: Gambit's all set to profess his love, but just as he's about to do so, Magneto reveals to Rogue that he can manipulate the magnetic fields so they can be with each other. Gambit goes bats*** and no one asks Rogue who she'd actually like to be with. Crikey!
Jean is with Logan, but throughout, I felt like Jean wasn't all that keen on the relationship; just stuck around because Logan got her out of the breeding pens and lost a limb in the bargain. Not great.
Colossus was another weird one - he's almost always in his metal form, and has serious anger issues. He's unlikeable to the max. He abandons his team, leading to their ultimate deaths, so that he can rescue his sister. Great! Job, well done. Was actually happy when he got killed.
Angel is shunted to the sidelines - made a passive collaborator who, in the real world, would be reviled by all for not choosing a side and benefiting from the situation. He's so superfluous to the main story, I don't get why they didn't just add in the above angle to make him more interesting.
I equal parts liked and disliked Nate Grey (or whatever his full name is in this 'verse). He's charismatic and extremely loving - his love for his foster father Forge is clearly mapped out, but he borders on suffering from the Neo 'I'm the chosen one' egotism that writers burden characters with. He is ever so petulant and naive as well, constantly disobeying orders and generally making a hash of things. I don't know why he quickly got romantically paired off with a random woman his team rescues - but it's a comic book and the writers are stupid. I've not read much else of Nate, but he could be interesting if he wasn't so full of it. He gets better over the course of the series, though.
Sugarman is a character that gave me the heebie jeebies when I first came across him in my X-Men video game. I was expecting scary things from this dude, but the writers just wrote him as another Mojo rip-off. Also, all the bads have and use high fandangled biotech to experiment on people (how or what is not explained), making none of them very realistically frightening. Same goes for Sugarman.
Apocalypse and Sinister, the two people who run chills down our spines, are hardly on panel, especially Sinister. There's just not enough showing of what they're doing to make this world atrocious. Everything relies on these big machines with people trapped in them, instead of some tangible danger for the characters or humanity.
What I did like is the Avengers versions in this age. Their storyline was compact, with a credible arc. It still could have been laid out better, but it was one of the brighter sparks in this sometimes underwhelming saga. I don't know the reason for randomly choosing Gwen Stacy of all people to be included with the Avengers. She doesn't do much, and when she does, it ends up being implied and not shown.
There are several other characters - but to remember the significance of them all would be too taxing.
The comic is from the 90s, and has some particularly glaring issues with it because of that. For one, Legion's multiple personality disorder is interchangeable with his autism - I don't think the writers understood autism.
Most of the main players are the white characters - Storm's role is negligible and I'm not sure if Forge is of colour or not, it was hard to make out. What really frustrated me - and this cropped up in Legion Quest more than in the main AoA storyline - was everyone's surrpise that Psylocke was an Asian woman with a British accent. Like what? Had the writers actually thought that sentiment through before pencilling it in? I just can't even...
Another aggravating factor, and a big reason why I read comics in fits and bursts usually, is the art. Seems like none of the female characters had a straight spine, they all walked about in the most awkward manner. I understand this can be referred to as the Rob Liefeld school of art - the man knew zilch about anatomy (or skeletal structure for that matter) and the artists working on all the AoA comics certainly follow his style. It gets really annoying to see these caricatures of female characters on each page. It makes me wonder, when these artists draw (using the present tense, as comics and gaming artists have not outgrown their adolescent fantasies) these abnormalities, do they ever sit back and think 'man, is my desperation showing?' Not only are the female characters' proportions stupid, so are most of their outfits (there is no way in hell Blink can move an inch without being arrested for public indecency) and some of the angles of the camera on these characters.
AoA is an entertaining read, but muddled and confused. The art and text is jumbled, haphazard and not detailed - more often than not it felt like I'd missed a page or a panel. There were typos; characters answered their own questions while attributing the same to someone else. It felt distinctly non-Marvel-esque.
[SPOILER ALERT] Here's something that kept bothering me about AoA - the central premise is that the other world is better, but it isn't. The relationships between many of the characters are worse in the real world. The situation of many are even more so; some are dead, for example. Mags is a baddie and Charles lives with rose-tinted glasses, how is this a better world? [END SPOILER]
The tendency is to be a bit harsher after the fact - I feel like three stars for this epic is too low, but most of that is in lieu of my ever rising blood pressure thanks to the artists. Also, the meandering plot which should have been tighter and more packed with dire world building. It remains an important and iconic read for any X-Men fan, however. And I'd recommend everyone go out and grab a copy of the X-Men: Rise of Apocalypse game after reading this - now that is actually epic.
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