AMAZING X-MEN #1: The Crossing Guards

The X-Men fight... alongside the Sentinels??

Originally Published March 1995

We begin with the long march to freedom, as the humans of the East coast evacuate toward Maine. One mysterious individual can't help talking up how great Europe is going to be to a curious and eager youngster who has only known war and death in their lifetime. Television, music, a sufficient supply of food and medicine... Europe has it all!

Unfortunately, as this person meanders away, she removes her hood to reveal... Vanessa Carlysle, aka Copycat... who we are meant to suppose is a villain as she has a rendezvous with the sinister-looking Madri (aka dudes in big dark hoods.)

I always wanted one of those hoods that somehow blacked out my entire face.

Why Copycat, whose power is to look like other people, uses "a large coat" as her disguise of choice is a question for the philosophers.

Back at what remains of the X-Mansion, the team is having a training exercise with a borrowed Sentinel.

Normally in our universe, the Sentinels and the X-Men are enemies, and the same holds true here -- the Sentinels are programmed, as always, to fight mutants -- but the fickle hand of fate has put the X-Men and the Sentinels on the same side, as our heroes work to help the giant killer robots ferry the hu-mons across the ocean. To accomplish this, they're going to need Quicksilver's speed to insert the disk that will reprogram the Sentinels to specifically not see the X-Men as enemies: a plan elegant in its simplicty.

Bishop arrives -- bizarrely being permitted to hold little Charles despte being a maniac stranger who believes the world shouldn't exist -- and there is some more discussion about whether his ramblings about a "different, (possibly better) world" have any merit. Magneto confirms that he's working on that -- with a multi-pronged approach that you, dear reader, can follow in the pages of Astonishing X-Men, X-Calibre, Generation Next and Gambit and the X-Ternals -- but for now they have to also keep their eye on the ball with Apocalypse.

Next point of discussion: How are we going to get to Maine? Amtrak ceased to exist many years ago, after all. Apparently Iceman can do one weird trick with moisture inversion, but Banshee poo-poos that as being too taxing for everyone. He prefers to fly under his own power, but Magneto shoots it down: that's too draining as well.

Magneto's plan: for their newest member, Exodus, to teleport everyone over.

Exodus protests: He doesn't have the power to teleport people. Magneto disagrees: sure you do.

Nobody, including Exodus, knows what Exodus' powers actually are

Sure enough, it actually works and in an instant the X-Men are at the refugee camp awaiting the arrival of Sentinels.

As Storm clears the way for them from Apocalypse's defenses, the sweet kid from earlier gets caught up (and possibly eaten) by Apocalypse's horseman, Abyss.

The plan goes a little sideways but the X-Men pull it off, distracting the Sentinels with a Dazzler-created mirage of Logan and Jean Grey.

For a moment it appears that everything has worked out and the Sentinels and X-Men are suddenly friends, but we find out that not to be the case when a Sentinel blows Iceman to smithereens (but don't worry, he'll pull himself back together in due time.)

The question is, if it's not the X-Men that the Sentinels are seeing as allies, then which mutants have they buddied up with?

Holy shit it's... whoever these guys are!!!

Further Thoughts:

The Age of Apocalypse has provided a great opportunity for creators to toy with expectations and what is already known about the X-Men. That includes moving characters known as villains in the main universe, like Sabretooth and Exodus, onto the good side (and in turn, flipping Cyclops, Havok and Beast among others.) It also brings back, in Astonishing, the recently dead Blink and the long-dead Changeling/Morph (who was a popular figure from the X-Men cartoon's early episodes.) This extends to the Sentinels, who are uncomplicatedly villainous figures in the mainstream universe, but now they are kind of benevolent figures to the persecuted human class and therefore allies -- albeit in a complicated way -- to the X-Men. 

I often grouse about relying on continuity deep cuts and bringing up old baggage that doesn't need to be mentioned, but here the X-Men's storied history is an asset far more than a burden. Perhaps it's because I knew a lot about the X-Men from their animated adventures, but as a young reader -- I went back and re-read this story a little while after it's publication -- I found this alternate universe and all its differences irresistible rather than alienating. Logically, as an adult, it would seem like a story so built upon heavy continuity would be a barrier to entry, but as I've long noted, kids of an impressionable age are usually more apt to be intrigued by something they don't fully understand and want to know more about it, rather than put off, meaning the Age of Apocalypse was a gateway for a lot of readers. It's only later, when we reach an age where we assume we should have mastery of things, that we see it as a bad thing to need to do work. I invite you all to try never to lose that.

One thing to like about Age of Apocalypse is that it presents a robustly lived-in alternate universe. Normally, the heroes of our comics are fighting to preserve the status quo out of deference for the fact that a comic world can't look too much better than our own. The X-Men have toyed with this storytelling trope by showing us a handful of dystopian futures (Rachel's, Bishop's, Cable's,) but now we have a post-apocalyptic present: a world to fight for that is already several degrees worse off than our own, a situation that is normally unthinkable in superhero comics. It's high concept, you love to see it.