Broken Frontier

Return to one of the biggest crossovers in X-Men history in this limited series! But take a refresher course, because there's no recap before this continuation.

I don’t know about any of you, but ten years ago seems like forever ago. And when dealing with a twisting turning history that constantly rewrites and contradicts itself, it can seem even longer. So picking up Marvel’s tenth anniversary Age of Apocalypse story is going to involve some seriously complicated strolls down memory lane to figure out what’s going on. Just so you’re warned.

Ten years ago, the X-Men had one of those time-traveling-alternate-reality crises 90s X-Men writers were so terribly fond of. This time, it resulted in a world where Charles Xavier was killed very early, radically changing the familiar world of the uncanny mutants. As a sample, all the teams were reorganized, Apocalypse and his genetic experiments ran rampant, and Magneto was a good guy who was hooking up with Rogue. And they all wore different costumes.

Now it seems Marvel is intent on celebrating the ten year anniversary (The Roman numeral for ten is "X." Get it?) of the epic crossover that resulted from this by re-releasing the entire Age of Apocalypse arc along with a few new issues continuing the story. Age of Apocalypse #1 is the first of six new issues picking up where the story ended before.

Here’s the thing: it took reading the accompanying one-shot to figure out that this was taking place after the original arc. And even then, it took a lot of memory-jogging to get myself to a point where I was up-to-speed enough on who was who and what had happened in this alternate timeline that I could just enjoy the comic. You would think that after a ten year period without even mentioning the A of A, that Marvel would include some kind of "Previously in the pages of…" or "The story so far" in its new material. Although there is no substantiated proof of this, there might actually be some younger kids who weren’t old enough to read comic books ten years ago who might be trying to figure out why Magneto’s got such funky braids.

Akira Yoshida's story for the new material is good so far. Assuming you remember or have looked up what happened before, the story quickly tosses you back into the action while providing as many updates as it can on the key players from the original story.

The first issue is light on the plot, though, choosing not to reveal the big plot hook in the first issue. Instead, the first issue cliffhanger and a majority of the pages in the book are devoted to, amazement, Wolverine. I’d like to do a crossover event myself, wherein Bishop travels back in time and kills Wolverine, creating an alternate reality wherein Marvel writers are completely powerless to write any kind of story at all.

Steampunk artist Chris Bachalo's pencils look fantastic, though. It’s fun to see those Age of Apocalypse outfits trotted out again, of course, but it goes much further than that. Together with Edgar Delgado's darker, shadowy color scheme, the Age of Apocalypse feels richer and grittier than it did during the nineties candy-coated comics era; a good change. Bachalo's linework, details, and renderings of the characters also make me half wish Marvel had opted to commemorate the anniversary with a short remake instead of a continuation.

It’s too soon to tell if these new issues are going to stand the test of time. It’s also too soon to tell if this whole blitz isn’t just a disguised attempt to mine a few more bucks from the wasteland strip mine that is regular X-Men continuity. For the time being, I remain cautiously optimistic about the new Age of Apocalypse. If you were a fan the first time around, welcome back. If you’re a little hazy on the details or you missed the crossover a decade ago, I’d advise you do a little catching up on the Internet before plunging in.

- Jesse Vigil