X-MEN #97: The End of the World As We Know It Part Two

The Twelve Fight Back!

Originally Published February 2000

We begin at the ancient and mysterious site of the Great Pyramids of Egypt...

Or as it's known to locals, "across the street from the good Chipotle."

Here at this hallowed location, the X-Men duke it out with their longtime enemies, The Skrulls and their natural allies, A Bunch Of Weirdos Dressed as Ancient Egyptians.

Meanwhile, within this particular UNESCO World Heritage Site, Apocalypse's millennia-old plan, to focus the powers of twelve specific mutants he just always knew would be born, nears completion. But what, you may be asking, does this have to do with the world's sexiest mutant Nate Grey, aka X-Man? (As you may wonder about every comic you read only to be met with disappointment.)

That's right, Apocalypse wants Nate's body wants to be inside of Nate wants to steal Nate's physical form for his own. This is actually not at all without precedent -- we learned way back in the Adventures of Cyclops and Phoenix that part of 'Poc's longevity is periodic bodyhopping, as well as drinking 8 glasses of water and always removing makeup before sleep. 

What, you wonder, would Apocalypse's plan have been if Nate Grey had never hopped from the alternate universe of his birth to ours a few short years back? Here's an answer for you: Mind your own f**king business!

Outside, the superstar character find of the year 2000, Fiz, introduces his fellow mutant Skrulls to the joys of fighting back against your oppressor!

Inside, Apocalypse's body transfer gets off to a rough start -- although he has been manipulating twelve mutants from birth into being in Cairo on that day so that they could be kidnapped and pressed into service inside snot bubbles of destiny, he is unaware that Magneto's powers are on the wane, and that he requires frequent top-ups from his stan Fabian Cortez.

Perhaps he should have made it the Thirteen

Apocalypse says fugg it, we'll do it live and proceeds anyway, but the whole scheme just goes further off the rails when key player The Living Monolith gets high on his supply of cosmic energy and starts thrashing about like a maniac.

 

With the Mutant Skrulls turning face to fend off the baddies, the remaining X-Men scamper into the temple, in case they can be of any use!

The now-freed Twelve go to give Apocalypse whatfor, but are blocked by the Horsemen: War (Deathbird), Pestilence (Caliban) and Famine, who is identified as Ahab for the first time, answering a question honestly nobody was asking in a manner that frankly nobody cares about.

AHAB: All Horsemen are Bastards

Luckily, Mikhail is on hand to use his dimension-warping powers to send all three of them to pocketworld, sacrificing himself along with them. And in case you're thinking "But Moira specifically said he no longer had the ability to do that," this comic kindly reminds you to mind your own f**king business.

The choice between a barren, lifeless parallel dimension and continuing to be in this comic really isn't a choice for Mikhail 

Jean, Scott, Cable and Charles make their way to the Apocalypse Body-Transference Chamber where En Sabah Nur is 68% done taking over Nate Grey's body (but really, it's been doing that little circular thing for a while so who knows.) Back in the snowglobe room, the rest of the Twelve contend with the Living Monolith, who is Monolithing all over the place. They start ganging up on him with their various powers, including a combo-magnetic attack from Magneto and Polaris. But the real hero is Bishop who uses his powers of energy absorption to d̵̖͉͘o̷̤̞̥̅̕ ̸͎̓w̵͚̍h̸̪̿a̸̜̍͊̂t̵͎̟̏̕ę̴̖͍̆v̵̜̰̜̆̈́̓e̷̗͐r̴̝̓ ̷̲͛j̵͎̼̒͘ű̵̪͇̓̃s̶̰͗t̴̫̼̯̃̊̍ ̴͓̗̱̾̔̒t̶͉̜̗͂ô̶̧̘̍͛ ̸̠̰̗̀́͠g̵̢͔̮̒̀͠e̵̋̿̚͜ẗ̶̨̯̌ ̴̧̼̲̇t̷͖̏̈h̴̺͎̪̓ȋ̵̖͉̺̅s̶̝̣̈́͂͜ ̴̘̀̂ỡ̵͝ͅv̷͖̈́͊̒ȇ̵̦̣̓̍r̴͈͊̎ ̵̯̲̇w̴͎̯͂̃͆i̷̻̽ẗ̶̫́͝͝h̶͔͚͎͗ which has the inexplicable result of sending him back to his own timeline, or worse -- his own series.

Unfortunately, nobody will ever know what became of him, because that would mean reading Bishop: The Last X-Man

Elsewhere, Apocalypse uses Cyclops' optic blasts to jumpstart his Freaky Friday thing, completely draining Scott of his powers. Jean declares this a big mistake -- huge -- and unleashes her own telekinetic attack.

This has the net effect of cracking Apocalypse's candy shell and revealing that inside, he looks like the Toxic Avenger. But who cares? Soon he will be a sexy young Nate Grey, and he might even re-grow Nate's floppy hair. Maybe even add a soul patch.

He waylays Jean and gets back to his task. 

Fresh out of options, Scott makes a last ditch effort to stop Apocalypse from successfully paying the troll toll to get into that boy's soul -- taking it for himself.

Even though it was taking seemingly an hour for Apocalypse to merge with Nate, the transfer with Cyclops is instantaneous (possibly because Scott gave permission.) The comic makes a desperate attempt to underline the momentousness of this sacrifice by exhuming the narration from the Fate of the Phoenix all those years ago.

In the end, Cyclops is no more. Neither is Apocalypse. Together they are only... Cyclopalypse! Apocaclops! Cyclapocalypsclops! Eh, we'll workshop the portmanteau name.

Further Thoughts:

The Twelve is meant as this big sweeping story, and it certainly has the veneer of that, but man, the closer you look at it, the stupider it gets. It really is just a bunch of random stuff crashing into each other on the page until the reader is just exhausted.

It's dumb, dumb, dumb. Apocalypse's big plot doesn't make any sense, nor does the heroes' way of fighting back. The big plan was to maneuver a bunch of completely unpredictable elements together to combine their resources to power a machine that gives Apocalypse Nate Grey's body -- again, a thing that did not exist in this universe until a little while ago. What's the endgame here? If it had worked and Apocalypse had merged with X-Man, how is that an instant win condition for taking over the world? Doesn't he still have to, you know, launch some kind of world-conquering campaign? Why does the merged Apocalypse and Cyclops have a visor for a face?

Yes, it certainly does get worse the more you think about it, and thinking too much is kind of what we do here at Uncanny X-Cerpts, but on some level, it is big dumb fun. Unlike the X-Men comics of the previous few years which were dumb without the fun and kind of a slog to read much of the time (looking at you, issue where they fight birds) there's at least some promise of excitement and fun and paradigm-changing shifts in the status quo. These are not great X-Men comics, they're nobody's favourite X-Men comics, they're not comics that will be remembered for the right reasons after their time has gone, but my goodness, if you have to be stupid, then yes, please, be this flagrantly stupid. Thanks.