{"id":3241,"date":"2015-10-25T12:40:40","date_gmt":"2015-10-25T12:40:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=3241"},"modified":"2015-10-25T20:23:17","modified_gmt":"2015-10-25T20:23:17","slug":"age-of-apocalypse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=3241","title":{"rendered":"Age of Apocalypse"},"content":{"rendered":"

We still have one more\u00a0Secret Wars<\/em> X-books to go –\u00a0House of M<\/em> – but\u00a0Age of Apocalypse<\/em> completes our tour of the X-books’ outright dystopias. \u00a0As with\u00a0most of the throwback minis, this isn’t actually the original Age of Apocalypse world, but a\u00a0new one of the same general ilk. \u00a0And it pretty much pays\u00a0lip service to\u00a0the Battleworld gimmick (in fact, both the prologue and the ending don’t really work in Battleworld terms). \u00a0What we have here, then, is a nineties nostalgia mini.<\/p>\n

This one commits rather more fully\u00a0to the nostalgia angle, bringing back Fabian Nicieza,\u00a0one of the writers of the original crossover. \u00a0Nicieza hasn’t done any work for\u00a0Marvel in a while, but is obviously well placed to echo the tone of his own original story.<\/p>\n

Plainly, the budget for a series like this doesn’t run to Joe Madureira or Andy Kubert, so instead we have Gerardo Sandoval on art – for the first three issues, at any rate. \u00a0Sandoval\u00a0seems to be in full-on nineties pastiche\u00a0mode,\u00a0loosely\u00a0going for an emulation of\u00a0Madureira’s style, though with something of the jaggedness of a Humberto Ramos.<\/p>\n

It’s ugly as sin, with bulky, over-muscled, over-pointy figures filling the page and obscuring anything much in the way of atmosphere or storytelling. \u00a0Asked to do a two-page sequence in Angel’s glamorous\u00a0penthouse nightclub – something that most artists would have embraced as an opportunity for a change of tone \u00a0– Sandoval just fills the page with\u00a0the same angry, bloated figures as he does everywhere else. \u00a0Comparison with\u00a0New Avengers<\/em> #1 shows that Sandoval doesn’t always draw like this,\u00a0though even there his work is\u00a0pretty unimpressive. \u00a0The overall impression is of a mediocre artist trying to parody a worse one. \u00a0Things improve when Iban Coello turns up for the last couple of issues,\u00a0since\u00a0although he’s stuck with the tone that’s been established, at least\u00a0his basic storytelling is sound.<\/p>\n

The plot\u00a0starts off with both the X-Men and Apocalypse’s forces hunting for Cypher, who is apparently going to be very important. \u00a0Cypher is all over this series, since he’s the narrator, and once he’s around to explain what’s happening,\u00a0we move into the actual plot. \u00a0This\u00a0involves the human resistance having got their hands on\u00a0a version of the Legacy Virus,\u00a0which they intend to use as a bargaining chip against Apocalypse. \u00a0This doesn’t\u00a0go according to the plan, for precisely the reason you’d expect – Apocalypse is a raving lunatic, who thinks that anything likely to cause mass extinction is simply wonderful. \u00a0He’s also blithely confident that it can’t hurt him, since he’s so awesome.<\/p>\n

There are some neat\u00a0ideas along the way, but many of them remain underdeveloped. \u00a0Cypher is written, in line with his most recent appearances, as somebody who\u00a0doesn’t just translate languages, but sees the hidden meaning in all things. \u00a0He’s nicely\u00a0ambivalent about the X-Men, who he regards as an obvious improvement over Apocalypse, but still essentially a bunch of already-defeated losers hanging out in a basement. \u00a0And of course he’s right, since\u00a0the X-Men have already lost, and lost big-time, by the mere fact of any version of the Age of\u00a0Apocalypse coming to pass.<\/p>\n

There are some odd gestures in the\u00a0direction of everyday life in the Age of\u00a0Apocalypse, with a suggestion that the general mutant population is living in relative comfort,\u00a0though it’s something we never actually see – unless you count Angel’s club, which, as I say, Sandoval\u00a0doesn’t really\u00a0draw. \u00a0Cypher talks about being taught Apocalypse’s philosophy at school, so apparently there’s an education system out there. \u00a0And of course, one of the stronger ideas of the Age of Apocalypse was always the fact that characters like Scott and Alex, raised in this society, had pretty much internalised it as their culture. \u00a0So while Scott is plainly more sympathetic to individual humans than anyone else on Apocalypse’s side, he’s still a guy who’s doing pretty well in this society and whose idea of reform is a bit of tinkering around the edges.<\/p>\n

There’s also a cute subplot with a mystery new X-Man called Burner, whose mainstream counterpart is hinted at over the first few issues until being indicated more or less directly\u00a0in the final one. \u00a0He’s Adam X, the X-Treme, arguably the most nineties character imaginable, and thus\u00a0a perfect choice for this book. \u00a0This story also runs with the idea of him being the long-lost third Summers brother, an aborted plot which was genuinely considered back in the day. \u00a0This is all pretty obscure\u00a0continuity these days,\u00a0but anyone who’s in the market for a nineties nostalgia trip in the first place is rather more likely to get the reference.<\/p>\n

But it’s not a very satisfying read. \u00a0Even aside from the dodgy artwork, the plot of Cypher’s\u00a0supposed importance\u00a0doesn’t seem to come to anything – there’s some suggestion that his communication powers were meant to make him\u00a0particularly well placed to foment a revolution, but that isn’t the plot. \u00a0And\u00a0the\u00a0decision to defeat Apocalypse in issue #4 before having a big finale against Dr Nemesis, of all people, seems curious – surely\u00a0if you’re going to do a story which actually brings down the\u00a0regime, it’s Apocalypse who ought to be the main event.<\/p>\n

There are bits in here that do succeed in recapturing the original story – the use of Cyclops and the Adam X gag, most obviously. \u00a0But\u00a0as a whole, it’s\u00a0got a lot of problems.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We still have one more\u00a0Secret Wars X-books to go –\u00a0House of M – but\u00a0Age of Apocalypse completes our tour of the X-books’ outright dystopias. \u00a0As with\u00a0most of the throwback minis, this isn’t actually the original Age of Apocalypse world, but a\u00a0new one of the same general ilk. \u00a0And it pretty much pays\u00a0lip service to\u00a0the Battleworld […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3241","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-x-axis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3241","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3241"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3241\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3243,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3241\/revisions\/3243"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3241"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3241"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3241"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}