{"id":3493,"date":"2016-07-30T21:29:47","date_gmt":"2016-07-30T20:29:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=3493"},"modified":"2016-07-30T21:29:47","modified_gmt":"2016-07-30T20:29:47","slug":"uncanny-x-men-6-10-apocalypse-wars","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=3493","title":{"rendered":"Uncanny X-Men #6-10 – “Apocalypse Wars”"},"content":{"rendered":"

For the second part of the\u00a0“Apocalypse Wars” trilogy,\u00a0Uncanny X-Men<\/em>\u00a0has a problem. \u00a0The idea of this event\u00a0is past, present and future – one story dealing with each. \u00a0Uncanny<\/em> gets the present. \u00a0But Apocalypse isn’t around in the present. \u00a0That’s kind of the point of Evan, who may or may not be his reincarnation. \u00a0So\u00a0Cullen Bunn and Ken Lashley end up giving us an\u00a0Apocalypse story without\u00a0Apocalypse.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

What we\u00a0have instead is… well. \u00a0There’s a lot going on in these five issues; there’s a lot of stuff trying to build to some kind of climax;\u00a0there are changes of status quo for both Warren and Monet; and Fantomex and Mystique are drawn into\u00a0contact with the rest of the cast. \u00a0So it’s\u00a0certainly trying to pay stuff off.<\/p>\n

But.<\/p>\n

In the main storyline, Magneto and Psylocke (and, unknown to her, Fantomex and Mystique) investigate a small town where a second\u00a0Warren seems to have shown up as some sort of preacher. \u00a0Naturally, it turns out that he’s actually under the control of a bunch of Apocalypse cultists led by\u00a0the big guy’s easily\u00a0forgotten son Genocide.<\/p>\n

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. \u00a0The 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.<\/p>\n

What do these two stories have to do with one another? \u00a0It’s hard to see. \u00a0There’s no plot connection whatsoever. \u00a0If there’s meant to be a thematic link, it’s at best obscure. \u00a0This is not a promising start.<\/p>\n

Genocide is nobody’s idea of a great\u00a0character. \u00a0What 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\u00a0burning skeleton. \u00a0Beyond that, he’s precisely what you’d expect from the son of Apocalypse: a second-rate Apocalypse. \u00a0Rick Remender got some mileage out of that in\u00a0X-Force<\/em> by playing Genocide as a bit of a loser\u00a0desperately trying to convince people that he was Apocalypse’s legitimate heir. \u00a0The name “Genocide” – which is simply dreadful – actually works\u00a0when the idea is that the character is trying a bit too hard.<\/p>\n

But here he’s played more or less straight, as an Apocalypse stand-in. \u00a0Granted, it’s hard to imagine Cullen Bunn writing\u00a0dialogue 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\u00a0tongue firmly in cheek, but the story still seems to want us to take him more or less at face value.<\/p>\n

The plot appears to go something like this. \u00a0At some point before the series began,\u00a0Angel somehow got\u00a0separated into two bodies – the drone Archangel\u00a0from\u00a0previous issues, and a\u00a0purified human-looking Warren. \u00a0Quite how\u00a0or 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. \u00a0Genocide is keeping the easily-manipulated Warren around by\u00a0offering to keep him pure by\u00a0cutting out his wings as they try to grow back. \u00a0Warren is repeatedly shown with bloody marks on his back through his clothing which, given that he’s also shown as a charismatic\u00a0smalltown preacher, is presumably intended as some sort of stigmata imagery.<\/p>\n

The extracted wings are apparently\u00a0being implanted into\u00a0other cultists, who are already deformed through\u00a0prolonged exposure to Genocide’s radiation. \u00a0I think. \u00a0The dialogue\u00a0strongly indicates that they’re meant to be distorted, but once the “Death-Flight”\u00a0get released and start attacking everyone, they all just look exactly like Warren. \u00a0Apparently Genocide needs the original Archangel drone to show up\u00a0in order to activate his Death-Flight, though\u00a0quite why is unclear. \u00a0So his plan is\u00a0apparently to scare\u00a0Psylocke into summoning him. \u00a0He 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. \u00a0(So what was his original plan?)<\/p>\n

Psylocke, despite being\u00a0unambiguously warned about this plan, summons Archangel\u00a0anyway. \u00a0Why? \u00a0I have no idea, but the plot requires it, so she does it anyway. \u00a0The Death-Flight then go off\u00a0on a killing spree in the\u00a0aforementioned small town (where everyone was apparently brainwashed in some way,\u00a0in a plot thread that never really comes to anything), until the X-Men regroup to fight them. \u00a0Finally, preacher Warren merges with drone Archangel (how?) to restore the complete Archangel personality, and the Death-Flight… I don’t know. \u00a0Disappear or something? \u00a0Get defeated\u00a0ambiguously in one page?<\/p>\n

This is a\u00a0total mess. \u00a0On 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. \u00a0On a thematic level the story is obviously interested in\u00a0religion –\u00a0Angel and Apocalypse both have fairly heavy religious overtones to start with, there’s the whole thread about\u00a0religious small town America\u00a0– but without any real focus behind it all. \u00a0The idea of Warren submitting to the physical removal of his unwanted mutant body parts is linked to Matthew 5:29 (“if\u00a0thine eye offends thee” etc), but quite where that takes us is unclear, since\u00a0there’s never any coherent sense of Warren as an actual believer in Clan Akkaba, or anything\u00a0else very specific.<\/p>\n

Magneto, we’re told, stumbled upon\u00a0drone Archangel\u00a0somewhere and was motivated to renew his fight for mutants by\u00a0Archangel’s babbling about ensuring mutant survival, which turns out to have actually been babble about Apocalypse. \u00a0There’s some attempt to suggest that\u00a0he’s formed this team on the basis of what he saw as a sign from God, and which he now realises was a sham. \u00a0That’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 –\u00a0but it’s fairly peripheral to the rest of the story.<\/p>\n

Lashley is\u00a0perfectly competent and a big\u00a0step up from\u00a0Greg Land – in fact, his Genocide is pretty solid – but\u00a0as a story this is just a bunch of unresolved ideas hurled into a blender and fighting for space. \u00a0And 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. \u00a0Mind\u00a0you, its main\u00a0function is to set up a problem for M to deal with in future.<\/p>\n

There are\u00a0some decent character points scattered throughout this arc. \u00a0Magneto’s realisation that he’s completely mis-read the situation\u00a0has something,\u00a0Psylocke is\u00a0more concerned with trying to re-construct Warren than anything else, and Fantomex is completely sidetracked by wanting revenge\u00a0on her for stuff that happened\u00a0a while back in\u00a0X-Force<\/em>. \u00a0The relationship between Monet and Sabretooth is starting to\u00a0feel organic. \u00a0All these are promising enough. \u00a0But\u00a0when it comes to the big picture, either this arc is\u00a0going over my head, or it’s\u00a0just chaotic.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For the second part of the\u00a0“Apocalypse Wars” trilogy,\u00a0Uncanny X-Men\u00a0has a problem. \u00a0The idea of this event\u00a0is past, present and future – one story dealing with each. \u00a0Uncanny gets the present. \u00a0But Apocalypse isn’t around in the present. \u00a0That’s kind of the point of Evan, who may or may not be his reincarnation. \u00a0So\u00a0Cullen Bunn and […]<\/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-3493","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\/3493","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=3493"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3493\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3494,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3493\/revisions\/3494"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3493"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3493"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3493"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}