The X-Men fight for Bishop and plans come together!
Originally Published June 1995
We begin in la belle province as the malevolent midnight mass known as the Madri prepare to do the last rites on Bishop, which involves pouring his own blood back into his body via open wounds which seems unsanitary at the very least.
Storm arrives to wreck the Madri with some weather work, then frees Bishop with the use of her lockpicks -- Bishop is pleased to see that some things have not changed in this alternate reality (after all, she was already a child thief on the streets of Cairo when Xavier died.)
Banshee and Quicksilver are the only other X-Men along for the ride, as their forces are spread somewhat thin -- Iceman caught up with the Astonishign crew in Indianapolis, and Dazzler and Exodus are looking for Charles in the Morlock tunnels. Personally, if I had to perform a search and rescue I would have assigned the guy who runs really fast but I'm not the leader of the X-Men.
Sean and Pietro breeze past a lone guard in charge of an Obviously Very Important Door, behind which they find...
Jamie Madrox Prime! In full Forsaken Child of Omelas mode. Apparently Sinister and Beast unnaturally enhanced his replicating ability so that his duplicates could go ahead and start their own cult in the name of Apocalypse, leaving their progenitor as a drooling husk.
Back in Westchester, the Astonishing team returns from their mission, as does the Generation Next-- well, what's left of them.
As for Colossus' and Shadowcat's students, they, um... they didn't make it. You can pitch a buck or two into my Ko-Fi and get more info about that.
Blink is aghast, feeling that she should have been there with (what I assume are) her former classmates -- a nod by the creators to the fact that in another universe, she was the one who had to make the sacrifice to save pretty much all of them.
And, you know, in most situations having a teleporter present would be pretty damn helpful.
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| Also, where does Kate keep getting these ciggies? |
The team head down into the tunnels to search for Charles, but find someone else instead: Gambit and his X-Ternals, who unfortunately let a traitorous Strong Guy walk off with both Charles and the shard of the M'kraan Crystal they were supposed to bring back from space.
His ex-girlfriend Rogue is, to say the least, a little miffed.
Back in Quebec, Quicksilver and Banshee debate what to do about this Madrox situation. It's that only debate of "would you kill one innocent life if it meant that all of his nefarious and culty duplicates would instantly blink out of existence?"
Adding pressure to the situation is Abyss, who is patently not dead, as we know, and ready for another round.
Abyss crowd about the certain victory for his side, but Banshee, who is just fed right up to here with all this Age of Apocalypse cac, lets himself get engulfed in Abyss' tendrils and then screams his heart out like he's at a Taylor Swift concert and Tay just launched into "Love Story."
Outside, Jamie reminds Pietro that the only way to stop this is for him to die. Quick is like "No, I won't do it," and Jamie is like "Ya gotta."
They return to the remains of the X-Mansion, mission successful despite the loss of one of their own. With Nightcrawler also having successfully brought in Destiny, many aspects of the big plan are in play as we head toward the big conclusion. Don't miss it!
Further Thoughts:
I liked Amazing X-Men. I didn't so much as a kid because of how it was outshined by the flashier and funnier Astonishing. And in fact Astonishing still has my heart, but I do appreciate this. Banshee's sacrifice very much echoes his role in the original Claremont run where he basically used up his power to defeat the villain. And this being the Age of Apocalypse we get an appropriately twisted take on Madrox the Multiple Man, who is being help captive and abused by his own dupes so they can do their culty business. You don't usually get to see characters so degraded in mainstream comics, but this was the right venue for it and it was interesting.
A while back on Twitter (back when it was still called that, and generally inhabitable) writer Fabian Nicieza dismissed the idea that the Age of Apocalypse storyline was "well thought out." If they didn't know where they were ending up when they started, they sure could have fooled me, since the story began with Magneto saying "Here's four things that need to happen," and then the various books -- Astonishing, Amazing, Generation Next, Gambit and the X-Ternals and X-Calibre -- went and depicted those things, which collide at the end of this issue. It just goes to show that we are not privy to the creative process behind our favourite comics: some become legendary debacles (looking at you, X-Factor #1) and some remain shrounded in mystery.
So perhaps we can't say that this is a great feat of grand design, but it doesn't matter because it does feel that way, which is perhaps the greater skill: to give yourself a set-up and then do your best to play it out in a satisfying way across four issues. Of all the AOA titles I've read for this project, Amazing feels the most cobbled and improvised, about the X-Men simply going around and doing things within the world of Age of Apocalyse, doing two issues about the Sentinel attack and two about the kidnapping and rescue of Bishop (and baby Charles) with Abyss as a recurring foe. But that doesn't mean that the others weren't similarly tossed together as they went along.
Ultimately, all comics and all fiction are assembled over time, especially those that are produced in installments rather than released as a whole. Once one comic comes out you don't have a chance to revise it, you need to simply proceed. It's great to have something unified, where you come into it from the beginning saying "Here's the story we are going to tell," but the reality is that mainstream superhero comics -- certainly in the past -- rarely afforded such luxuries, and were published every month sometimes by the skin of their teeth due to a need to make deadlines and figure out how it all fits together later. The fact that we often think it must have been ordained from the start is a testament to those who have this very necessary skill of adaptation and improvisation, and I think being able to Scheherazade your way through years of story is a vital and underappreciated-by-readers skill.
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