ASTONISHING X-MEN #2: No Exit

Sabretooth takes the fight to Holocaust!

Originally Published April 1995

We begin in Chicago, formerly the land of deep dish pizza and da Bears, now the latest site of genetic culling authorized by Apocalypse's favourite son, Holocaust.

The X-Men are here to facilitate an evacuation, but with big scary drones bearing down on the population, Sunfire can't stand anymore and lashed out in ostentatious fashion.

The sudden presence of a fearsome and powerful mutant just freaks out the rabble even more, which is extremely counterproductive. Rogue flies up to try to get him to chill out, but Shiro says no: Holocaust destroyed everyone he loved, and that has really put him in a mood. So Rogue puts him in time out in her usual way (albeit not with a kiss in this universe.)

Rogue is shocked. When Sunfire said "Holocaust killed everyone" she didn't realize that actually meant he killed everyone. Sunfire and Rogue have a little bit of a moment of healing before they return to their task.

Back in Westchester, Bishop finds Magneto sitting alone. He immediately accuses the X-Men's leader of cowardice for sending all his X-Men around the globe on various suicide missions while he sits here at home, but then realize he's taking care of little Charles, so, you know, I guess that gets a pass.

Meanwhile, in the heart of Apocalypse's empire -- where else but in swinging midtown Manhattan -- Apocalypse's just a little guy Rex has located the X-Men: at some dead guy's house upstate!

From some hill overlooking Chicago, Sabretooth surveys the carnage. He is joined by Blink, whom he asks to teleport him directly to Holocaust. Blink won't do it -- Victor has been like a father to her, and this is tantamount to suicide (like most things the X-Men do these days.)

Nevertheless, she relents -- over Rogue's protests -- and sends him off to fight.

Sabes is surprised to find himself in, of all places, Indianapolis, IN.  Holocaust is, of course, right there. The place is empty of bodies. 'Caust brags that the "surviving" humans were used as fodders to produce Infinites (the funny robots guys who act as Apocalypse's footsoldiers) and lets it slip that the processing plant is twenty miles north of the city. There's no sense in keeping it a secret, since Sabretooth won't be alive to tell anyone.

Oh, but you know who will be?

 

That's right, it's Wild Child, everyone's favourite non-verbal feral mutant boy. Somehow he'll spread the message!

With Wild Child having escaped, the fight is on. Sabretooth taunts Holocaust about old times and how he ended up in life-preserving armor.

Of course, this all goes back to Magneto, who literally tore the former Nemesis apart with his magnetic powers, for, in Holocaust's words, "Some imagined slight."

Despite sustaining internal injuries, Sabretooth tears into Holocaust -- literally, cracking his casing.

It would seem that both men fall, a pyrrhic victory for Victor...

But alas, right at the bell, the seemingly defeated Holocaust pulls himself together.

Further Thoughts:

I suppose I should take a moment to comment on the oddness of Holocaust's name. "The Holocaust" refers to a specific historic event, and it seems odd to trivialize it by invoking it with a silly comic character from the 90's. But at the time, "holocaust" was a word that came to refer generally to events of mass death: for instance, fears persisted through the cold war and into the 90's of a "nuclear holocaust" should atomic weapons ever be deployed. It was already controversial at the time, of course: the character was renamed "Dark Nemesis" for toy shelves, and that name was later adopted into comics and perhaps not wrongly. I refer to him simply as "Holocaust" here because, well, that's what he's called in this comic.

RKO outta nowhere!

One of the great things about being a longtime comic fan is that the world in which they take place is so rich: the characters have deep backstories after years, decades, of being published. The Age of Apocalypse, a universe that sprung up out of nowhere in early 1995, manages to recreate this, by giving Holocaust a backstory that affects multiple X-Men: Sunfire, Sabretooth, and Magneto, whose daughter Wanda was killed early on by then-Nemesis. You really get the sense that these characters have been at it for quite some time, building relationships and accumulating grudges the ay characters who are able to evolve in real time before our eyes do. Watching Sabretooth showdown with Holocaust actually does feel like the culmination of two characters who have meant to collide for quite some time, even though both were only introduced in this form a month earlier. You love to see it.