Uncanny X-Men #6-10 – “Apocalypse Wars”
For the second part of the “Apocalypse Wars” trilogy, Uncanny X-Men has a problem. The idea of this event is past, present and future – one story dealing with each. Uncanny gets the present. But Apocalypse isn’t around in the present. That’s kind of the point of Evan, who may or may not be his reincarnation. So Cullen Bunn and Ken Lashley end up giving us an Apocalypse story without Apocalypse.
What we have instead is… well. There’s a lot going on in these five issues; there’s a lot of stuff trying to build to some kind of climax; there are changes of status quo for both Warren and Monet; and Fantomex and Mystique are drawn into contact with the rest of the cast. So it’s certainly trying to pay stuff off.
But.
In the main storyline, Magneto and Psylocke (and, unknown to her, Fantomex and Mystique) investigate a small town where a second Warren seems to have shown up as some sort of preacher. Naturally, it turns out that he’s actually under the control of a bunch of Apocalypse cultists led by the big guy’s easily forgotten son Genocide.
There’s also a B-plot, in which Monet and Sabretooth visit the latest incarnation of the Morlocks – now a mixture of humans and mutants, with the mutants hiding underground to get away from the Terrigen Mists. The mutants are dying of something else instead, which turns out to be Monet’s personal archenemy Emplate trying to lure her in as a food source.
What do these two stories have to do with one another? It’s hard to see. There’s no plot connection whatsoever. If there’s meant to be a thematic link, it’s at best obscure. This is not a promising start.
Genocide is nobody’s idea of a great character. What he brings to the table is the fact that he’s already established as the son of Apocalypse, and an endearingly over the top character design – a big see-through containment suit holding a burning skeleton. Beyond that, he’s precisely what you’d expect from the son of Apocalypse: a second-rate Apocalypse. Rick Remender got some mileage out of that in X-Force by playing Genocide as a bit of a loser desperately trying to convince people that he was Apocalypse’s legitimate heir. The name “Genocide” – which is simply dreadful – actually works when the idea is that the character is trying a bit too hard.
But here he’s played more or less straight, as an Apocalypse stand-in. Granted, it’s hard to imagine Cullen Bunn writing dialogue about “a world where the blood of the pitiful weak will rain from the sky in a torrent and murder-priests will make sacrifice of the unworthy” without tongue firmly in cheek, but the story still seems to want us to take him more or less at face value.
The plot appears to go something like this. At some point before the series began, Angel somehow got separated into two bodies – the drone Archangel from previous issues, and a purified human-looking Warren. Quite how or why that happened is not desperately clear but I suppose we’re meant to take it that the cultists had something to do with it. Genocide is keeping the easily-manipulated Warren around by offering to keep him pure by cutting out his wings as they try to grow back. Warren is repeatedly shown with bloody marks on his back through his clothing which, given that he’s also shown as a charismatic smalltown preacher, is presumably intended as some sort of stigmata imagery.
The extracted wings are apparently being implanted into other cultists, who are already deformed through prolonged exposure to Genocide’s radiation. I think. The dialogue strongly indicates that they’re meant to be distorted, but once the “Death-Flight” get released and start attacking everyone, they all just look exactly like Warren. Apparently Genocide needs the original Archangel drone to show up in order to activate his Death-Flight, though quite why is unclear. So his plan is apparently to scare Psylocke into summoning him. He doesn’t actually seem to have done anything to lure Psylocke in to start with, he’s just taking advantage of her showing up on his doorstep. (So what was his original plan?)
Psylocke, despite being unambiguously warned about this plan, summons Archangel anyway. Why? I have no idea, but the plot requires it, so she does it anyway. The Death-Flight then go off on a killing spree in the aforementioned small town (where everyone was apparently brainwashed in some way, in a plot thread that never really comes to anything), until the X-Men regroup to fight them. Finally, preacher Warren merges with drone Archangel (how?) to restore the complete Archangel personality, and the Death-Flight… I don’t know. Disappear or something? Get defeated ambiguously in one page?
This is a total mess. On a pure plot level, we’ve got a villainous scheme that makes no real sense, which is held up as some sort of potential end of the world scenario, and then appears to get beaten in a couple of pages. On a thematic level the story is obviously interested in religion – Angel and Apocalypse both have fairly heavy religious overtones to start with, there’s the whole thread about religious small town America – but without any real focus behind it all. The idea of Warren submitting to the physical removal of his unwanted mutant body parts is linked to Matthew 5:29 (“if thine eye offends thee” etc), but quite where that takes us is unclear, since there’s never any coherent sense of Warren as an actual believer in Clan Akkaba, or anything else very specific.
Magneto, we’re told, stumbled upon drone Archangel somewhere and was motivated to renew his fight for mutants by Archangel’s babbling about ensuring mutant survival, which turns out to have actually been babble about Apocalypse. There’s some attempt to suggest that he’s formed this team on the basis of what he saw as a sign from God, and which he now realises was a sham. That’s potentially interesting, I guess – and it’s consistent with the theme that Magneto sees himself as a great man waiting to play his role in history – but it’s fairly peripheral to the rest of the story.
Lashley is perfectly competent and a big step up from Greg Land – in fact, his Genocide is pretty solid – but as a story this is just a bunch of unresolved ideas hurled into a blender and fighting for space. And that’s before we even get on to M and Sabretooth, though by virtue of their story being infinitely simpler, it’s at least more coherent. Mind you, its main function is to set up a problem for M to deal with in future.
There are some decent character points scattered throughout this arc. Magneto’s realisation that he’s completely mis-read the situation has something, Psylocke is more concerned with trying to re-construct Warren than anything else, and Fantomex is completely sidetracked by wanting revenge on her for stuff that happened a while back in X-Force. The relationship between Monet and Sabretooth is starting to feel organic. All these are promising enough. But when it comes to the big picture, either this arc is going over my head, or it’s just chaotic.
There’s still mileage in Angel as a character, if not as an active X-Man. He doesn’t have destructive powers, he’s handsome and rich and inoffensive. He could be the public face of mutants, appear on talk shows and basically be good PR. He could fund pro-mutant public outreach programs, lobby politicians to pass pro-mutant laws, maybe even become a politician himself and campaign for equal rights for mutants (maybe even for Inhumans and aliens, who knows?), etc. At the very least he could campaign on getting rid of Sentinels. But they can’t really do that with the current setup if there’s a giant roaming mutant-killing cloud floating around, you know?
Also, we already know what happens if Angel loses his wings. He becomes massively depressed, loses his sense of self-identity and commits suicide. The only reason he’s not dead is because Apocalypse kidnapped him right before he died and gave him razor shooting murder-wings.
@HR
I think you pretty much validated what Puzzled said re “There are no bad characters, only bad writers.”
Which mean, let PAD starting writing a series featuring Warren 😉
I don’t know. I think PAD might disagree with the “no bad characters” thing. Back when he was writing Captain Marvel, I asked him on Alvaro’s Comicboards if he’d consider having Mantis (a character I liked) appear. His response to me was: “No, she annoys me.”
I have no clue how PAD feels about Warren, but presumably he’d have to hold him in higher regard than he does Mantis in order to begin to have anything interesting to say about him.
And even if he likes Warren well enough, that doesn’t guarantee an interesting take. He certainly escalated my opinions of Madrox, Guido, Rahne, Pietro and Monet, but nothing PAD did with either Havok or Polaris raised my opinion of them higher than “meh.”
So… maybe?
Finding a character annoying isn’t necessarily the same as them being bad. I mean, PAD used Moondragon, and I find her extremely annoying but also interesting at the same time. A lot of it depends on the person reading, I guess. A good writer, assuming they have an interest in the character, could at least get some good stories out of that character.
For sure. The “no bad characters, only bad writers” argument is fairly meaningless anyway. When you use this in defense of a character, you’re basically suggesting, however inadvertently, that every (or almost every) writer that’s touched that character is a “bad” writer. It’s an indictment of the writing. I’m not certain that’s the point Puzzled actually wanted to make. And delivering Warren into the hands of a “good” writer such as PAD isn’t necessarily going to fix things (as he may not care for Warren for all we know).
Context is important, and I see that as Warren’s big problem. Paul has actually touched on this before in his review of Ultimate X-Men 40:
“There’s a fundamental problem with the Angel, which has vexed most creators over the past few decades. He’s the sort of character who would really be better off outside the Marvel Universe. Flight is meant to be one of the powers everyone dreams of having. But in the context of the Marvel Universe, it’s utterly nondescript. Where he ought to seem impressive, he usually just seems surplus to requirements. When you’ve got Phoenix around, there’s not much call for a bloke with wings. This is one of the main reasons why we end up with weirdness like blue skin and razor wings.”
Couldn’t agree more with that. Warren exists in a context that doesn’t do him any favors.
HR, do you get paid by the word? You’ve sure done your level best to staunch any idea that Angel might be worthwhile. We get it. Angel can fly, so what. Nevermind the Archangel stuff. Flying is boring in a world of fliers.
I don’t think you would like any Angel story, then, if you’ve read every single one except DAS and still find the character “bad.” And I like the Quicksilver ATM scene as much as anybody but I don’t see how it could make someone who didn’t previously like the character suddenly do a u-turn. But, different strokes for different folks. Maybe Mantis fans are a different breed of comics fans (or maybe she’s just that amazing a character.)
I also love X-Factor but PAD is unique in that he’s really deft with making c-listers interesting, but then those same characters go back to being uninteresting the panel he stops writing them. Look at Bunn’s Monet for the latest proof of that.
Anyway, today the Internet happened. No one’s minds were changed, you read your Mantis stories, I’ll read Warren Worthington stories.
“Also, we already know what happens if Angel loses his wings. He becomes massively depressed, loses his sense of self-identity and commits suicide. The only reason he’s not dead is because Apocalypse kidnapped him right before he died and gave him razor shooting murder-wings.”
It’s been awhile, but IIRC he didn’t attempt suicide; it turns out that Cameron Hodge blew up the plane.
Uh, who would be paying me to smear Warren?
“And I like the Quicksilver ATM scene as much as anybody but I don’t see how it could make someone who didn’t previously like the character suddenly do a u-turn.”
Well, it did. Doesn’t matter if you don’t see how it could. It’s what the issue is notable for. Notice I didn’t even say the words “ATM scene” or even specify any particular story when I said “PAD made me like him” and yet you knew *exactly* what I was referring to.
“Anyway, today the Internet happened. No one’s minds were changed.”
I see. So, uh, why did you type “There’s no reason Bunn couldn’t tell a good Angel story…” earlier? Just to kill time? Or, were you attempting to make a point? If it’s the latter, then why would you even bother if you regard the Internet community as immovable? No one was going to agree with that anyway, right?
Also, Puzzled, I’m neither foolish nor arrogant enough to believe anything I say could possibly make someone suddenly dislike a character that they already like. I do happen to believe that his appeal has more to do with him being a comfortable shoe than anything else, but never mind. At the end of the day we’re only discussing a fictional character. Nonetheless, I’m sorry if I upset you.
@Dave Phelps
True, they later revealed Hodge pulled the trigger, but Angel is absolutely suicidal in X-Factor #15.
Without his wings, he considered himself “destroyed;” he says he would have rather died than lose his wings, without his wings he’s less than nothing, and if he weren’t alive anymore things would be better. He grabs an airplane to fly “one last time,” and as he’s taking off he thinks to himself he should have ended it all before they took his wings away. He’s obviously suicidal, and then his plane explodes.
To be fair, though, he’s happy he was able to save Artie in the Morlock tunnels even though it cost him his wings, so he’s still heroic at least.
Yes, he’s also concerned about an upcoming trial that could make things difficult for his friends, and if he were dead there would be no trial, but X-Factor #15 pretty squarely puts his suicidal thoughts on the loss of his wings and his resulting loss of sense of identity.
On top of that, when Angel wakes up in X-Factor #18, he asks Apocalypse why he didn’t just let him die, NOT why his plane exploded, you know? That just reinforces that he was planning to die in #15.
What I’m not sure about is, was the Hodge revelation a retcon? Did they feel the need to dial back the suicide thing, or was that the plan all along?
FWIW, I was thinking that depowering Warren offered more benefits than just doing stories about Warren being suicidal. For starters, it would have had the benefit of helping to sell M-Day by depowering someone more prominent than Polaris and Chamber. If it set Warren onto a new path, it also helps the change stick.
It also would solve one of the biggest problems with M-Day – that nobody tried to do anything about it right away. Let Warren use his fortune to finance a squad of, say, the Beast, Forge, Havok, Dazzler, Nightcrawler, Iceman, Karma, and Husk. Beast and Forge focus on research, the rest of the squad does the adventuring. Warren meanwhile moves into the Professor X role, leading from behind the lines. Would he be good at it? Probably not, but that just sets up tension with the rest of the team (especially Husk).
If Sunspot is also going to be doing the corporate superhero thing, set him up more as a rival for Warren without sending him into villain territory.
And none of this means Warren can’t be traumatized by losing his wings. Depression doesn’t always come with suicidal tendencies, but it can lead to impaired judgment and irrational behavior. If Warren is going to be leading this team (and the rest of his business empire), that becomes a problem for the other characters to deal with.
As Adam mentioned earlier, Angel was the only original X-Man who didn’t need any motivation to do heroic things. I don’t think Angel needs to be mutilated to be motivated. I *would* like to see him be more proactive, though, instead of just reacting to things happening to him. I’d like to see him be reset to his original state – the rich, handsome guy with wings – and go from there.
There’s enough grim n’ gritty stuff around, and Angel/Archangel’s been mired in that for almost 30 years now. He doesn’t need murder wings, he doesn’t need healing powers, he doesn’t need extra stuff added on. Let him be one of the happy guys again and let the angsty characters be angsty, you know?
Finance his own X-Team and/or make him the new boss/Professor A/whatever? Sure, I’d read that. Make him a supporting character and turn him into a politician? Sure, I’d go for that.
Of course, again, they can’t really do any of that with the current status quo. Maybe after Inhumans vs. X-Men things will get “better”? Or maybe Angel could finance a research team to figure out the Terrigenesis problem? Or is Sunspot already doing that, too?
Huh. I haven’t given Angel this much thought in… years, probably. Fun! 🙂
I love this Col Fury guy
I like the idea of Angel, with his wings intact, deciding to give up adventuring and stay in the boardroom. He realizes he’s not that special anymore, what with everybody flying these days, and is of better service to mutantkind by acting as a symbol while financing solutions to M-Day, Terrigenesis, whatever Marvel is doing these days to overcorrect Grant Morrison’s run. Those wings would really impress/intimidate/freak people out, I think. Subversive!
I also like the idea of him desperately scrambling to get his wings back, though, and forming an X-Team to “help the mutant species” while making frantic decisions that seem to only help himself. Maybe put his through the wringer first, then let him be truly altruistic.
P.S. @Taibak: That’s a great X-Team you’ve put together, by the way. I’d totally read that book as written by Mike Carey, maybe?
I hadn’t even considered the meta aspect of Angel being proactive. He’s one of he originals that remembers the “good old days” and whenever a line-wide mandate comes down (No More Mutants!) (Terrigenesis is killing your entire species!) he could do what he can to rail against it. Hee hee!
I’ve been lurking around here for years, but never really got into the conversation before. I’ll have to make a habit of this. 🙂
Lots of Angel discussion here, but what of Psylocke?
I’ve found her increasingly interesting over the last few years and generally gaining in prominence since the awful 90s. I’m liking the weird tension between her and magneto (which refreshingly doesn’t even hint at sexual tension). It’s interesting as I think Psylocke is one of the characters with fewest on page interactions with professor X. How much did she subscribe to the “dream”, really? (Does anyone even mention mutant/human cohabitation anymore??).
Did this story serve her much more than beyond being the girlfriend? The dark angel saga was less about archangel, more about Psylocke I thought. Lots of steely eyed determination there, and fighting becoming a killer like wolverine and deadpool. And failing! Excellent stuff.
Warren can be heroic AND self-interested at the same time. As far as he’d be concerned, reversing M-Day or Terregenesis or whatever the latest big event is will benefit mutants as a whole.
If he also benefits, so much the better.
As for Psylocke, is there really a point to the character any more? Her bad girl ninja routine is pretty dated, her backstory is ridiculously convoluted, and the fact that she’s a white person in an Asian body raises all sorts of uncomfortable questions. Even her willingness to kill isn’t all that special with Magneto around and with 40+ years of Wolverine.
” (Does anyone even mention mutant/human cohabitation anymore??).”
I think the cohabitation thing took a major hit during Decimation and never recovered, and the current Terrigen Mist situation isn’t helping–arguably, the X-Men have never been so isolationist and inaccessible. (Well, maybe in the Australian days.)
The sense is that mutant numbers are slightly better now, but it’s hard to argue cohabitation is an issue when there aren’t enough mutants to fill a decent sized comic convention.
Psylocke = blackface with Asian in place of black.
“Warren can be heroic AND self-interested at the same time.”
Sure, but we’re looking for interesting stories to place him in. It creates more tension if his interests and the interests of the mutant species in general don’t always coincide. I don’t know the specifics of how that would work, exactly, but the general idea has some legs, I think.
I tend to agree that Angel, as originally conceived, is really too vanilla to be interesting in the current Marvel Universe. IMO, he’d work best as the X-Men’s retired wealthy colleague who helps keep the group funded and pops up briefly as a supporting character once or twice a year.
But, that’d mean letting an X-Man retire peacefully, and we can’t have that. Ever.
His original character arc was finished before the end of the 60s. His deconstruction/reconstruction arc as Death/Archangel was finished by Lobdell in the mid-90s. Everything since has been increasingly absurd and repetitive.
In retrospect, they should’ve married him off to Candy Southern and called it a day.
On a separate note…
HR: Psylocke = blackface with Asian in place of black.
I concur. Here, here.
Remember when Iceman retired, got a girlfriend, only occasionally guest-starred, and then went back to retirement?
Then he joined the Champions.
Then he joined the Defenders.
Then he joined X-Factor.
Then he joined X-Men Gold Strike Force
Then he got M-Dayed….
Then…. ah…. gay?
Havok retired
Havok re-joined the X-Men
Havok became an amensiac Genoshan soldier
Havok founded the new X-Facot
Havok joined the Brotherhood
Havok got dumped into a parallel universe as Mutant X
Havok came back
Havok joined the Chuck Austen X-Men
Havok joined the Avengers
what did I miss?
I’m not even touching Cyclops’ retirement…
Thom H.: You assume that Warren would know what’s best for mutants as a whole. The tension comes from him having different ideas on the subject than, say, Sunspot or Cyclops.
And if we’re going to have multiple X-teams, it’d probably help to make them ideologically distinct.
Incidentally: you also assume that everyone on the team agrees with Warren’s ideas about what’s good for mutants. While I can see, say, Havok, Beast, and Karma going along with him, it seems like Nightcrawler and, especially, Husk would be willing to raise serious ethical concerns.
Chris: Then…. ah…. gay?
Don’t get me started. That was horribly executed, perpetuating a number of bad, unhelpful stereotypes: that being a bachelor over a certain age means one is gay, that having a series of failed heterosexual relationships means one is gay, and that being an immature adult means one is gay…oy.
Not to mention that it was a blatant, massively inconsistent retcon. All the stories centering on Iceman’s relationship with Opal Tanaka and the torches he carried for Polaris and Darkstar are now nonsensical and invalid.
There’s a well-executed, emotionally resonant story to be told about Iceman realizing he’s gay or bisexual. That wasn’t it.
what did I miss?
The love of his life being possessed by an evil spirit.
Being seduced by his demonically corrupted sister-in-law.
Returning from the parallel universe to get engaged to said love of his life, who turns out to be inexplicably emotionally unstable and schizophrenic, only to leave her for a woman he barely knew but just happened to be the story writer’s Mary Sue based on the story writer’s wife.
Also, IIRC, Havok is now evil due to a quirk in the ending of a company-wide crossover.
If you’re trying to make a larger point that retirements don’t stick, that’s not an inherent aspect of the characters. Rather, that’s due to the editors and creators’ 1) inability to recognize when a character’s story has been sufficiently told and leave well enough alone, 2) instinct to retcon/modify an existing character rather than create a new one, and 3) slavish devotion to the idea that the “superheroes shouldn’t age”/illusion of change trope is a necessary and essential element of the genre.
Taibak: Sorry, I didn’t explain my story proposal very well before. The idea I was trying to get across was:
— if Warren was depowered, along with a bunch of other mutants (M-Day, etc.)
— there were a couple of possible plans for trying to get those mutants’ powers back
— only one of those plans guaranteed Warren got his powers back
— so he would only fund that one, even though for some reason or another it wasn’t the best idea for everyone else
I just thought that it would be interesting to see his heroism tested by his self-interest. And I think you’re totally right — a lot of other characters wouldn’t go along with his plan, which would make the story even more interesting.
Maybe Warren’s favorite plan for getting repowered originated with a character of dubious morals, which heightens the tension even more. Warren has inner conflict about working with this person, his peers are concerned about him, and in the end he does the right thing proving that he is basically a hero. Even though he doesn’t get his wings back, which also teaches him that he has more to offer than being beautifully be-winged. Ta da!
I like your idea of pitting him against Sunspot or Cyclops ideologically, too, though. I think we’re just pitching two different stories. Neither of which is going to get made in the end (unless Marvel is monitoring this board…), so no big. 🙂