X-Calibre #4

Kurt asks Damask what Apocalypse was planning to send as his second line of the attack, but she says she doesn't know.  It turns out that the second wave is already here, and that wave is a one man incorporeal force called the Shadow King.  He moves from one citizen of Avalon to another, causing chaos.

Damask tries to attack him, using her psychic blades (which are similar but different to Psylocke's psychic knife.  These look more like chains).  However she only manages to damage the host.  She explains to Kurt that the Shadow King moves along another plane to move from host to host, so Kurt hatches a plan, hoping that it is the same plane he uses to teleport, as the Shadow King takes over Mystique's body.

Kurt holds hands with Switchback and Damask, and the three of them teleport together.  Switchback uses her time traveling powers to keep them in the plane longer, and then Damask is able to attack the Shadow King directly.  It works and seems to kill him.  However his influence on one of the mutants there lasts long enough for him to try to fire off a shot at Destiny, but she is saved when Doug jumps in front of her and takes the blast.

Destiny has seen enough, and now agrees to go with them to take down Apocalypse once and for all.

While there wasn't a whole lot to this particular series, I think the characters involved were enough to keep me interested. It's a nice little diversion from the storyline happening in America.

Generation Next #4

Illyana Rasputin is currently inside Mondo's belly, and he's doing his best to keep her in there but not actually digest her.  The science behind being a man made of mostly rock and earth is a mystery to me.  Two of the guards notice Illyana's hand poking out of his stomach and stop him.

The other young mutants are doing much worse however, as while Chamber lies on the ground, Sugar Man is not satisfied.  He thinks Chamber got in thanks to inside help, and he accuses Quietus before stabbing him in the gut.  Vincente and Husk are revealed, and while Husk can heal herself by pulling off her outer layer, Vincente seems to be hurt for real. Chamber uses this moment to reveal that he was only faking death thanks to his psionic powers, and then a fight breaks out between pretty much everyone.

The young mutants try to use the time to escape, but Sugar Man overhears them talking about how important Illyana is and he basically tears Mondo apart to get her.  Colossus and Shadowcat come busting through, and Colossus grabs Illyana and starts making a run for it.  He ditches all his students while Illyana narrates that her brother is big and strong and brave and wonderful and will totally save them all, just you wait. 

Shadowcat wants to go back for the students, but Peter refuses to lose his wife or his sister.  He says he will go back for them, but a large iron door slams shut, trapping them in with all the mutant guards and rampaging humans.  It's too damn bad they didn't have a mutant around who could have phased through that and pulled all of the students out, right?

I remembered hating this series, and now I've reached the end and I still hate it.  This version of Colossus is needlessly cruel.  He's too cruel for this version of the X-men, I'm not even talking about the main timeline.  I'll admit  the juxtaposition of how Illyana sees him versus how he fails here gives an emotional impact, I just don't like that it exists at all.  Kitty looks cool with her Wolverine claws attached to her wrists, and it's nice to see a Chamber who doesn't have half his face blown off, and that's pretty much all the positive I can say about it.  If there's any of the AoA comics you can skip, it's this one.

Astonishing X-men #4

Blink squares off against Holocaust, and while he doesn't take her seriously at all, she actually holds her own quite well against him.  He's near impossible to kill, but she makes a valiant attempt.  Morph shows up to aid her, but surprise, it's actually Rogue having absorbed Morph's powers in order to get close to Holocaust and do him some damage.  It's through this that we find that Rogue is just as capable of making bad jokes as he is.  Holocaust still knocks her cold though and only Morph changing into young Charles is enough to awake her and make her get back up.

In New York, Apocalypse shows a captured Magneto this footage of Rogue to aid in his torture of him.  Magneto tells him that he and his X-men will never give up as long as they are alive.

Apparently Apocalypse's followers aren't so brave, as Holocaust prepares to teleport away when Rogue gets the upper hand against him in the fight.  He tries to take her with him but she is pulled back at the last minute, to find both an alive Sabretooth and Iceman standing there.  An angry Rogue declares that the age of Apocalypse is over.

This series was a nice treat for Rogue fans such as myself, getting to see her go through a whole range of emotions and also be an amazing leader.  This issue is also a good solid lead in to X-men: Omega.

X-Man #3

Domino, Grizzly, and Caliban have arrived to either offer Nate a job with Apocalypse or to kill him, and they don't have a problem with killing the other heroes who stand in their way.  Forge drops a flash grenade to buy them some time.  He realizes that they don't yet realize what Nate looks like, and so he sets it up to make Domino think that Mastermind is their telepath.

Generation Next #3

Chamber and Skin are inside the slave labor compound and they witness the mutant guards treating the human slaves horribly.  A man and his daughter are killed simply because they stopped working for a moment when the dad offered his child some food he had left over.  These actions infuriate our two young mutants but Skin says they need to hold back and wait until they have a decent chance of winning.  Nearby, Mondo is making his way through by absorbing matter around him and hiding in the rocks.  After taking out one of the guards he saves Illyana's young friend who was thrown and sent to her death.  However when he sees Illyana, he leaves the other girl to get her.  He promises he will come back for her, but for now he takes Illyana and starts making his way out.

Husk and Vincente are hiding inside Quietus' skin, literally, impersonating him as their way of trying to make their way through here.  They run into a bit of trouble when the Sugar Man shows up and tries to get Quietus to look for any possible spies in the place.  They find Skin and Chamber, but have to pretend to be Quietus still and capture them and bring them to the Sugar Man, who demands they be executed.

Shadowcat and Colossus are just outside the compound, when Know-it-all contacts them and let's them know everything that's happening inside.  While she informs them that all of the students are in serious danger, Peter insists that rescuing Illyana is the only thing that matters.  They go to find Mondo while Husk in Quietus' guise fires at Chamber.

I continue to not really care for the overly gritty style of this particular comic.  I'll be happy to put this series behind me.

X-Universe #1

While I don't think there's anything there in the title to clue you in on it, the purpose of the 2 issue X-Universe series was to answer the question of what all of Marvel's other heroes were doing in the Age of Apocalypse.  When I first read this I knew very little of the other heroes beyond their origins, and I don't think this interested me very much, enough that I didn't bother purchasing the second issue at the time.  Now with all the Marvel movies teaching me a lot more about at least some of these heroes, I'm curious to see if it will have a greater impression on me.

Gwen Stacy is an agent for the Human High Council, currently serving in Wakanda with Dr. Donald Blake attempting to take care of the poor and sick who live there. They depend desperately on the supplies that the Human High Council flies in to them, supplies that the Marauders are here to steal.  In this reality, the Marauders are not mutants but humans, specifically Norman Osbourne, Wilson Fisk, Arcade, and the Owl.  Gwen Stacy holds her ground against them, but her weapon isn't strong enough to take them all down.  Fortunately, a huge spider-shaped ship is coming, piloted by Hawkeye and carrying Anthony Stark along with him.  They take out the Marauders and then land, providing the needed supplies to Wakanda and telling Blake (who walks with a cane) that he needs to come with them.

They are heading back to London, where Mikhail has brought an armada of ships with him to negotiate peace on behalf of Apocalypse.  Sue Storm and Ben Grimm don't trust him one bit, and they shouldn't because someone just blew up the base where they were about to land.  They survive the attack and search through the rubble to find a grey Hulk.  Sue (who is a normal human, as is Ben) chops off the Hulk's ear and he transforms back into Bruce Banner, who they were originally coming here to meet.  They realize he doesn't realize what the monster inside him just did, so they take him along with them to meet up with Mikhail along with the other heroes we've seen previously.

We get a glimpse onto Mikhail's ship first, where we get a confirmation that Apocalypse has no intention of making peace.  We also see that he's been modifying humans with enhancements in exchange for them working for him, and among them is Matt Murdock.

Mikhail descends out of his ship and meets up with the human representative Victor Von Doom, who is scarred on one cheek but not wearing an iron mask, and Mikhail gives a rousing speech meant to inspire hope in the humans, and it works as they begin to chant his name.  Our collection of heroes is escorted onto Mikhail's ship, where they find out that the people are so willing to believe him because he's hooked up the mutant Empath to a machine and is manipulating their emotions with him.

On the following page we get a look at the Human High Council files, a quick way to tell us the status of some other Marvel heroes:

T'Challa - killed when Apocalypse showed up in Wakanda to take the vibranium
Frank Castle - Went to a monastery after his wife and children were killed by Apocalypse, but died there with the monks.
Peter Parker - Was supposed to be a contact for Gwen Stacy to meet up with, but was killed before that could happen.
Reed Richards & Johnny Storm - Died during an attempt to help some human refugees escape America.
Namor - Apocalypse also destroyed Atlantis and he died in that attack.

I think I understand why I didn't originally continue with this series.  Their efforts to shove as many characters as possible into this one very brief series leave it cluttered and confusing.  With the exception of Gwen, Sue, and Ben, most of them have so brief a role that they don't really contribute all that much.  Yes, it's neat to see Dr. Doom on the side of good here, but that's not really enough to make it interesting.  I have since purchased the second issue though, so we'll see how they wrap this one up and if it gets any better.

Gambit and the X-ternals #3

The Starjammers have brought Gambit and his crew to the location of the M'Kraan crystal.  It's up to Guido, Jubilee, and Sunspot to hold off D'Ken's guards while Deathbird, Gambit, and Lila steal a bit of the crystal.  Instead, they end up going inside it, and both Deathbird and Lila are hit by a beam that freezes them in place, right beside D'Ken. A short silly looking alien with purple skin introduces himself as Jahf.  He's the guardian of the crystal and being so allows him to see all versions of reality.

Weapon X #3

Weapon X is making his way through an icy landscape when he is spotted by two of the Reavers, Mangle and Dead Eye.  They go to attack him, but they're of course no match for him, and he slices one in half and chops the head off the other.  He has now made it to his destination, Wundagore Mountain, the former home of the X-men we saw back in X-Men Chronicles #1.

X-Calibre #3

We get a quick shot of Callisto's dead body floating in the water before we cut to Mystique doting on her son.  She shows the same care for him here that she's known to show Rogue in the main universe, and it's a striking difference from the way she tends to feel about him in the main reality.


The mother and son are being tailed by Damask and Dead Man Wade.  Mystique and Nightcrawler bicker with each other a bit while they make their way to the passage that leads to Avalon.  Nightcrawler confronts his mother about the rumors that she robs the refugees blind before leading them here.  She tries to justify it, but he's not interested.  He says that must be why she won't enter Avalon, because she's not worthy.  She yells at him to shut up, and says that some people simply don't deserve peace, and that it is not her fault.

Regardless, Kurt tells her she has to come with him.  They meet Cain at the gates and he guides them the rest of the way.  He talks about how he used to be an awful person, and while he walked away from that life, he's still haunted by the people he killed.  He guides them to Destiny, and they find her with her adopted son, Doug Ramsey (aka Cypher).

Unfortunately, Damask and Wade have also made it to Avalon.  They are both surprised to find how lush, green, and beautiful this place is.  But while Damask sees this as a source of hope, a reason to not be the awful person she has been up until now, Wade just wants to destroy it all.

Raven tells Destiny all about Magneto's plan, but Destiny is hesitant to leave because she fears her departure could bring destruction to Avalon.  But they don't have to wait that long, because Wade is already attacking.  He launches a grenade that goes off in the middle of where they are standing.  Kurt begs Cain to join the fight, but he says he won't.  Kurt pleads further, telling him that everyone he cares about will burn, and apparently the stress of the decision is enough to make Cain have an aneurism.  He falls over suddenly and whispers "Charles" before he dies.

Lucky for our heroes, Raven snuck a whole lot of firepower in with them, so the fight isn't over yet.  Also to their advantage, Damask turns on Wade, because she's suddenly found something worth fighting for.  Her defection is enough to distract Wade for Kurt to teleport in, grab his head, and then teleport away.  Apparently even Wade can't heal from that.  With Switchback also on their side, this team is going to escort Destiny out of Avalon to try to right the timeline and take down Apocalypse.

While this issue is pretty dialogue heavy, there's also a lot of action going on, so there's a pretty good balance here.  The characters are so different from their mainstream counterparts, but for the most part the way they are acting makes sense given the circumstances.  It's also nice to see an almost entirely female team, with Nightcrawler being the only exception to that.

Amazing X-men #3

Magneto kneels before the grave of Charles Xavier and ponders again how one man could have made such a difference in the world, and if giving up everyone he knows and loves to change reality is truly worth it.  Bishop tells him he's wasting their time, and I can't help but agree.  How many times do we have to hear this?

Thankfully, some Infinites, Vanisher, and then finally Apocalypse show up to start a fight.