Magneto and Apocalypse face off!
Originally Published May 1995
We begin with good grief as Magneto stands over the grave of Professor Xavier, emblazoned with those famous words from Legion Quest "Any dream worth having is a dream worth fighting for," which in Charles' case meant literally getting into a bar fight. Magneto muses about how he's about to sacrifice everything he holds dear to bring his friend back and create a better world.
Interestingly enough, something we know, but Magneto and Bishop don't, is that the reason the Age of Apocalypse happened isn't because Charles died, but because the fight that killed him woke Apocalypse up twenty or so years early, meaning he got a jumpstart on his whole world domination thing and there were no X-Men (or X-Factor, as it were) to resist him. It's less a demonstration of one man's worth than it is about getting your timing right. They would need to prevent that from happening, or else we're just going to get a world where Charles Xavier has been struggling against Apocalypse for decades.
But probably not.
Bishop shows up to remind Magneto that Apocalypse is coming here, right now, so there's no time for reflective mourning, and Magneto's like "Hey man, I'm still Magneto, right?"
Some Infinites are teleported in by Prelate Vanisher, and the fight is on.
This is all just prelude to the arrival of Big A himself.
Bishop intervenes and gets his head pounded in for his troubles, with Apocalypse mocking his use of a gun as a "crutch," which is rich coming from a guy who uses every technological advantage he can to augment his mutant big fist power.
Magneto says that he has reconfigured Bishop's plasma rifle to explode and leave the three of them as smoldering ashes. 'Poc laughs, like you would really do it? Leave your baby son to fend for himself?
Apocalypse calls Magneto's bluff. He also helpfully elaborates on some of their backstory: Magneto came close to defeating Apocalypse years ago, but it cost him a huge portion of his magnetic powers, and Apocalypse survived anyway (obviously.) That's pretty cool, although we haven't seen much indication that Magneto's powers are in any way limited.
Oh well.
Down in the Morlock Tunnels, Vanisher pursues Nanny and baby Charles, only to find that, well, she's kind of prepared for that.
The X-Men return from Maine, too late to do anything. They find the dead Infinites and Magneto's helmet; Exodus is in tears but Quicksilver is sure that his father must still be alive somewhere.
Iceman finds Vanisher's corpse, and they determine pretty quickly that this was Nanny's work, meaning Charles is still alive down there. Pietro sends Dazzler and Exodus to go find him, while he runs off to question the one man who knows everything around here, Warren Worthington.
Things have been going a little sideways for Warry, who usually plays a neutral, collaborator-lite role in the mutant conflict. But his pal Karma has been abducted (sold out by Sebastian Shaw) and his gal Scarlett was also arrested. Things are looking grim, so although there is no love lost between himself and the X-Men, he readily spills everything he knows: Apocalypse took Bishop and Magneto himself. Magneto is here at the Citadel in Manhattan, but Bishop was sent to the Madri in Quebec for torture and interrogation.
There's no way to go after both, and Bishop is, ultimately, more important to the plan than Magneto.
The Madri, those crazy culty Multiple Mans, call upon the Shadow King to go into Bishop's mind and see what's what. When he gets there, he sees the visions of the world that was -- the whole history of the X-Men that never happened, all because of Charles Xavier ("I know that guy, but he's dead!")
Bishop actually manages to expunge the Shadow King from his mind -- maybe being a time traveler with memories of a separate timeline does that to a guy, I dunno -- and the big boss Abyss, who survived being eaten by his own tummy, makes it clear that whatever the X-Men are up to, he's here to put a stop to it.
Quicksilver makes the hard decision: The X-Men are going to Quebec to find Bishop and end this thing once and for all.
Storm questions how Quicksilver is able to turn off his personal feelings and put the "plan" and the mystery man ahead of his own father, but such is the life of an X-Man in the Age of Apocalypse.
Further Thoughts:
Simple and effective. It was great to see the first face-off between Magneto and Apocalypse, with the X-Men's plans being complicated by their enemies' power, and Quicksilver having to make a difficult but correct choice. This whole Age of Apocalypse fable has made for focused and enjoyable comics that are exciting and provocative in a way that comics set in "our world" don't always get to be (although there's not as much stopping them as you'd think.)
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