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Back to the Age of Apocalypse, and a book
which we're calling X-Men: Age of Apocalypse one-shot.
This is somehow supposed to distinguish it from the X-Men:
Age of Apocalypse miniseries, although you'd have thought
that the same end could have been more effectively achieved by
the simple expedient of calling it something else.
It's a collection of four 8-page stories
and a few pin-ups. One of them is quite good, the rest
are completely missable, and the package is certainly not
worth $3.99 by any stretch of the imagination.
Scott Lobdell and Alvin Lee's "Talking
About My Generation" was solicited as "the origin of
Generation Next", which is over-reaching a bit, to put it
mildly. It starts off well enough, with Colossus having
a crisis of confidence in the middle of a battle and deciding
that he just can't be bothered any more. So Magneto asks
him if he'd like to be a trainer instead. That's the
last panel, so they just put up a caption saying "And so
Generation Next was born!" A half-decent idea in
desperate search of a plot.
Tony Bedard and Paco Medina's "Man Bites
Dog" is the good one. It's the first meeting of
Sabretooth and Wild Child, and establishes their relationship.
It's nothing that you can't live without, but it uses the
eight pages well - it fills in a gap that readers of the
original story might genuinely be interested in, and it
manages to feel like a turning point for Sabretooth's
character at the same time. Good.
"Shinjuku Incident" by Larry Hama and
Talent Caldwell doesn't really have anything to do with the
Age of Apocalypse, because it takes place way back before
Apocalypse rose to power. It's Wolverine meeting teenage
rebel Mariko Yashida in Japan, and the Silver Samurai dropping
by to say how annoyed he is. Nothing really happens, and
the point is less than clear. I can only assume that
it's trying to establish some back story for Yoshida to play
with in the Age of Apocalypse miniseries.
Finally, Akira Yoshida and Mark Brooks'
"Beginning at the End", which was solicited as "And you won't
believe how the AoA world survived the nuclear holocaust that
threatened it." Indeed you won't, because the story
doesn't tell us. The nuclear bombs are stopped by
something-or-other, Magneto kind of claims credit, but it's
made clear that something else is actually responsible.
And that plot's evidently being left for the miniseries.
So if you shelled out $3.99 in the expectation that this issue
contained an essential plot point... well, more fool you.
Come to think of it, how does stopping the
bombs justify the survival of the planet anyway? Wasn't
the whole point of X-Men Omega that they reversed the
disruption to the timeline, so the whole world never existed
in the first place?
To be fair, "Beginning at the End" isn't
bad for what it is, which is a trailer for the miniseries.
Together with Bedard's story, it at least raises the issue to
the level of "readable." The other half of the issue is
just pointless, and the anthology doesn't come close to
justifying its price tag.
Rating: C+
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