Age of Apocalypse 10th Anniversary: Amazing X-Men Retro Review

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Reviewer: James Hatton

Written by: Fabian Nicieza
Penciled by: Andy Kubert
Inked by: Matt Ryan
Colored by: Kevin Somers
Lettered by: Richard Starkings
Publisher: Marvel Comics

Now out of all of the books that came out of Age of Apocalypse, Amazing X-men was one of the most useful to the story, and useless to it’s own self. Now that sounds a bit confusing, but hear me out here.

All of the books had their own point and storyline. Gambit & The X-Ternals were off doing their misssion about the M’Kraan Crystal, and Generation Next is off trying to save Illyana Rasputin from the slave pits. Everyone of the books seems to have a central focus — except Amazing. It starts off with ouor team, consisting of Quicksilver, Storm, Banshee, Dazzler, Iceman, and Exodus working on disabling a sentinal in the hopes to allow humans safe transit across the sea to Eurasia.

From there though, the book becomes an amalgamation of all of the stories that will link together in the final moments of X-Men: Omega. In issue #3, Magneto fights Apocalypse and we see Bishop get caught by Apocalypse and tortured by the Shadow King & Abyss. All of these things are important to the story itself of the Age of Apocalypse, but unlike the other titles – they are not stories that are self enclosed.

To understand Amazing, you must have read the entire crossover – now, to understand any of these stories, you must read MOST of the crossover… but with Amazing it’s imperative. That doesn’t stop it from being a kickass showdown of asskickery, though.

The key important issue of Amazing is issue #4. This is why they even bothered to put these characters together. As I mentioned earlier, Bishop had been captured – well guess what, it’s up to our team to save him, and along the way meet Jamie Madrox and discover the secret of the Madri (which, if you think about it – is genius. If you don’t get it, I’m not going to explain it.)

The other factor is the character of Abyss. A new creation for the Age of Apocalypse – he’s got a mouth like Wade Wilson, and a powerset like ‘Flatman’ has his final showdown with Banshee. Abyss, for the record, is one of Apocalypse’s horseman (Note: It is mentioned that he replaced ‘Bastion’ as one of the Horsemen. This was quite a few years before Operation: Zero Tolerance ever happened, so for someone who wants to believe that kind of thing – it’s neat foreshadowing)

So, for two issues of filler, one issue of set-up, and one issue of high impact connectivity – it isn’t a bad read, just not as great as Astonishing or some of the others.