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X-Men: Age of Apocalypse
X-Men: Age of Apocalypse, Vol. 2: Reign
The world groans under the Darwinian conqueror Apocalypse's rule. Under his thumb, America has become a dark and dangerous dystopia where mutants rule, humankind suffers, and survival of the fittest is all! But in the shadows, the freedom fighters known as the X-Men — following a tenuously thin thread of hope — continue their dangerous and multi-pronged plan to restore the true Marvel Universe. As the X-Men battle Holocaust and the Sentinels, Nightcrawler searches for the seer Destiny, Cyclops and Havok clash in the Dark Beast's slave pens, and young Nate Grey meets his maker...literally!
Collects Astonishing X-Men (1995) #2-3, Amazing X-Men (1995) #2-3, Gambit and the X-Ternals #2, Generation Next #2, Weapon X (1995) #2, X-Calibre #2-3, Factor X #2-3, X-Man #2-3, X-Universe #1, material from X-Men: Year of the Mutants Collectors Preview
Collects Astonishing X-Men (1995) #2-3, Amazing X-Men (1995) #2-3, Gambit and the X-Ternals #2, Generation Next #2, Weapon X (1995) #2, X-Calibre #2-3, Factor X #2-3, X-Man #2-3, X-Universe #1, material from X-Men: Year of the Mutants Collectors Preview
408 pages, Paperback
First published July 28, 2015
11 people are currently reading
107 people want to read
About the author
Scott Lobdell
1,620 books230 followersScott Lobdell (born 1960) is an American comic book writer.
He is mostly known for his work throughout the 1990s on Marvel Comics' X-Men-related titles specifically Uncanny X-Men, the main title itself, and the spin-off series that he conceived with artist Chris Bachalo, Generation X. Generation X focused on a number of young mutant students who attempted to become superheroes in their own right at a separate school with the guidance of veteran X-related characters Banshee and Emma Frost. He also had writing stints on Marvel's Fantastic Four, Alpha Flight, and The Adventures of Cyclops and Phoenix mini-series with artist Gene Ha. He wrote the script to Stan Lee's Mosaic and an upcoming film from POW Entertainment featuring Ringo Starr. He also participated in the Marvel Comics and Image Comics (from Jim Lee's WildStorm) crossover mini-series WildC.A.T.s/X-Men.
He is mostly known for his work throughout the 1990s on Marvel Comics' X-Men-related titles specifically Uncanny X-Men, the main title itself, and the spin-off series that he conceived with artist Chris Bachalo, Generation X. Generation X focused on a number of young mutant students who attempted to become superheroes in their own right at a separate school with the guidance of veteran X-related characters Banshee and Emma Frost. He also had writing stints on Marvel's Fantastic Four, Alpha Flight, and The Adventures of Cyclops and Phoenix mini-series with artist Gene Ha. He wrote the script to Stan Lee's Mosaic and an upcoming film from POW Entertainment featuring Ringo Starr. He also participated in the Marvel Comics and Image Comics (from Jim Lee's WildStorm) crossover mini-series WildC.A.T.s/X-Men.
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
November 11, 2016
An astonishing accomplishment. Now I can understand why X-Men Age of Apocalypse is so wonderful. It took a bit of work on my part as a reader. Since this past summer I've been working my way through Uncanny X-men and related titles to fill in my Gap Years, those I'd never read after dropping comics as an older teen-ager/college student. Roughly spanning 1981- where we are now in 1995 with this volume.
Let me first admit, I attempted reading A of A a couple of years ago and couldn't get past dated-ness of the whole thing. And it also seemed a bit difficult to get into. What a fool I was.
X-Men: Age of Apocalypse Prelude, the book, got me over the difficult to get into thing. The dated-ness fell apart having read the preceding 14 years of the X-Universe.
And wow! What a creative explosion of talent: in a couple of senses.
It's an enormous Marvel event quite unlike anything that's come before it. It's utterly, wholly original. There's also a bevvy of new artists. Artists who are now among Marvel's upper echelon. 5 years into the decade and the 90's have finally arrived. We're finally really and truly reaping the benefit of computers in art, lettering and most of all color. There's a color explosion going on. A huge stark contrast to 80's books that seemed to want to use as few as colors as possible.
X-Men: Age of Apocalypse, the main story is told now across three trade paperback. They are lovely editions and a slight improvement on the earlier one. In the trades Dawn and Twilight you get the extras but you can skip them if you wish. Dawn has the Blink mini-series and I'd recommend it.
The main story is an epic feast that you'll want to rip through like any good page turner. I do recommend starting with the OOP X-Men: Age of Apocalypse Prelude. It's a much better beginning to the story than what you will find in either the trades or the Omnibus.
Oh, yeah. I totally loved it. Especially Blink, Creed and Morph. Now I get why the Exiles are so beloved. Well, other than being stars of a great series of their own.
Let me first admit, I attempted reading A of A a couple of years ago and couldn't get past dated-ness of the whole thing. And it also seemed a bit difficult to get into. What a fool I was.
X-Men: Age of Apocalypse Prelude, the book, got me over the difficult to get into thing. The dated-ness fell apart having read the preceding 14 years of the X-Universe.
And wow! What a creative explosion of talent: in a couple of senses.
It's an enormous Marvel event quite unlike anything that's come before it. It's utterly, wholly original. There's also a bevvy of new artists. Artists who are now among Marvel's upper echelon. 5 years into the decade and the 90's have finally arrived. We're finally really and truly reaping the benefit of computers in art, lettering and most of all color. There's a color explosion going on. A huge stark contrast to 80's books that seemed to want to use as few as colors as possible.
X-Men: Age of Apocalypse, the main story is told now across three trade paperback. They are lovely editions and a slight improvement on the earlier one. In the trades Dawn and Twilight you get the extras but you can skip them if you wish. Dawn has the Blink mini-series and I'd recommend it.
The main story is an epic feast that you'll want to rip through like any good page turner. I do recommend starting with the OOP X-Men: Age of Apocalypse Prelude. It's a much better beginning to the story than what you will find in either the trades or the Omnibus.
Oh, yeah. I totally loved it. Especially Blink, Creed and Morph. Now I get why the Exiles are so beloved. Well, other than being stars of a great series of their own.
August 30, 2018
The Age Of Apocalypse rages on, as Magneto and his bands of X-Men attempt a multi-faceted plan with one major goal – take down Apocalypse, and restore the Marvel Universe to the state it’s meant to be in. But of course, Apocalypse won’t go easy into that good night, and with the entire world against them, saving all of existence isn’t going to be easy.
Unlike the first volume, there’s no unifying storyline to start or end this volume; instead we get the next few issues of each of the AOA ongoing series as their own stories progress, intertwining with each other along the way. I mentioned in the review for volume 1 that there was a good feeling of interconnectivity between each title, and that continues here as the volume winds its way through events that ripple throughout the world. You don’t need to read every title, but doing so enhances the overall experience a lot, which is exactly how an event of this size should work.
We get issues 2 and 3 of some series, and only issue 2 of others, which means that the plot kind of crawls in those we only get one issue of. For example, Generation NeXt barely moves in terms of plot, with the characters deciding to do something and then not much else afterwards, while Weapon X’s story seems kind of superfluous since the characters also appear in Factor-X and Amazing X-Men and have more story there than they do in their own title. Meanwhile other titles progress almost to their conclusion.
The event becomes a bit of a mess, in a way. Nearly all of the titles are important to the event, but reading them like this, all over the place, one after the other, muddies the waters slightly. This is one of the rare times when I think it might have been easier to read this series in monthly format, since you’d get issues in release order and spaced out; having them all one on top of the other in rapid succession isn’t quite as easy a reading experience, especially since they jump all over the place with no particular reason – there’s an issue of Factor-X, then something else, then right back to Factor-X again, which is peculiar.
That’s not to say it’s not enjoyable; each book still feels very individual and different, and while the jumping about of the narrative does begin to grate a little, it does impress a sense of urgency and disjointedness that the world of the Age Of Apocalypse is no doubt rife with. I do wonder how Magneto manages to be in so many places at once, though.
The only new series here is X-Universe, which is an expanded flashback issue that reveals the fate of the Scarlet Witch, as well as answering some questions regarding the other non-X-Men related heroes and their fates in the Age Of Apocalypse. Also, like the first book, there’s a previously uncollected issue that’s mostly just interviews and promotional material surrounding the event; again, nice to have, but hardly necessary to include.
The same art critique from the first volume remains consistent here – it’s typical 90s art, over the top and out of proportion a lot of the time but oddly charming and very of-its-time. No one particularly stands out as overly bad or good, which again amuses me since most of the artists here are relatively big names in the present day.
Age Of Apocalypse’s middle act is a bit messy, but it’s very good at building on the world that the first volume established. Some series are still better than others, and the way this volume is collected sometimes works against it, but I can still see why this is known as one of the classic X-Men storylines. I hope the final volume lives up to expectations.
Unlike the first volume, there’s no unifying storyline to start or end this volume; instead we get the next few issues of each of the AOA ongoing series as their own stories progress, intertwining with each other along the way. I mentioned in the review for volume 1 that there was a good feeling of interconnectivity between each title, and that continues here as the volume winds its way through events that ripple throughout the world. You don’t need to read every title, but doing so enhances the overall experience a lot, which is exactly how an event of this size should work.
We get issues 2 and 3 of some series, and only issue 2 of others, which means that the plot kind of crawls in those we only get one issue of. For example, Generation NeXt barely moves in terms of plot, with the characters deciding to do something and then not much else afterwards, while Weapon X’s story seems kind of superfluous since the characters also appear in Factor-X and Amazing X-Men and have more story there than they do in their own title. Meanwhile other titles progress almost to their conclusion.
The event becomes a bit of a mess, in a way. Nearly all of the titles are important to the event, but reading them like this, all over the place, one after the other, muddies the waters slightly. This is one of the rare times when I think it might have been easier to read this series in monthly format, since you’d get issues in release order and spaced out; having them all one on top of the other in rapid succession isn’t quite as easy a reading experience, especially since they jump all over the place with no particular reason – there’s an issue of Factor-X, then something else, then right back to Factor-X again, which is peculiar.
That’s not to say it’s not enjoyable; each book still feels very individual and different, and while the jumping about of the narrative does begin to grate a little, it does impress a sense of urgency and disjointedness that the world of the Age Of Apocalypse is no doubt rife with. I do wonder how Magneto manages to be in so many places at once, though.
The only new series here is X-Universe, which is an expanded flashback issue that reveals the fate of the Scarlet Witch, as well as answering some questions regarding the other non-X-Men related heroes and their fates in the Age Of Apocalypse. Also, like the first book, there’s a previously uncollected issue that’s mostly just interviews and promotional material surrounding the event; again, nice to have, but hardly necessary to include.
The same art critique from the first volume remains consistent here – it’s typical 90s art, over the top and out of proportion a lot of the time but oddly charming and very of-its-time. No one particularly stands out as overly bad or good, which again amuses me since most of the artists here are relatively big names in the present day.
Age Of Apocalypse’s middle act is a bit messy, but it’s very good at building on the world that the first volume established. Some series are still better than others, and the way this volume is collected sometimes works against it, but I can still see why this is known as one of the classic X-Men storylines. I hope the final volume lives up to expectations.
March 19, 2023
Still very engaging. This almost post apocalyptic (no pun intended) world is pretty great. This nightcrawler is easily one of my favorites, Jean and Cyclops are so different yet still at the core of things work, and magneto is great. Really just digging this.
April 3, 2020
Dipped my toe into a Marvel comic. I think to this day I have still never read a full Marvel graphic novel cover to cover. I think their concepts are much more interesting than the execution. Skimmed this collection, which is about if the X-Men lived in an alternate universe where evil mutants were in charge and some of the X-Men were trying to save humans. The X-Men characters are great, but almost every page just feels like an action scene.
March 7, 2020
as things really start to heat up the storytelling pushes forward more and i can tell the writers are having more fun with building out the world. i can feel the stakes rising
April 14, 2020
I can't stress what an across the board achievment Age of Apocalypse is. It's so, so good and still feels super vibrant.
Read
May 4, 2021Read
January 29, 2022
Man, there's just too much going on here for me to get a lot out of it. Each storyline could stand to lose one or two characters. There's simply too many.
June 28, 2023
The “updated reading order” has made vol 2 a little more manic than the previous, but it’s starting to come back together.
January 1, 2021
Great Art/Messy Portrayal/Average Story
The dumpster fire of this series in layout is just terrible. It is all over the shop... 2 out of 5 stars
The dumpster fire of this series in layout is just terrible. It is all over the shop... 2 out of 5 stars
November 29, 2022
The Age of Apocalypse storyline is an interesting one and the context of how huge it was in the 90s is impressive. It was ambitious and its scope was huge. I don't think I enjoyed this collection as much as the first, but I still really liked it.
I'll be honest, I probably should have re-read the first book since this is a series of second issues from the different AoA comics, but I still remembered the majority of it all. Many of the issues themselves are pretty good. I still enjoyed the main A0A story and the Astonishing X-Men comic (Joe Madureira's art really helps with that) and was surprised by how much I enjoyed others (like the X-Universe book with Sue Storm and Tony Stark).
However there were a couple that I just did not care about, like X-Man. So, they're not all hits, but that's to be expected with something like this. And also, the Magneto/Rogue romance is gross and to be honest, I'm not much a fan of Wolverine and Jean, either.
One other thing that I really loved about this book is all of the extra things at the end. I love seeing the concept art and everything, but it's also cool to see the promo material that they made back in the 90s. Part of the reason I collect comics is because they are like mini time-capsules of what was going on in that exact month when the comic was released. I love seeing old ads and promos because the people who made them had to be very creative with them.
Anyways, this was a fun read. I'm excited to get the next one and finish this off!
I'll be honest, I probably should have re-read the first book since this is a series of second issues from the different AoA comics, but I still remembered the majority of it all. Many of the issues themselves are pretty good. I still enjoyed the main A0A story and the Astonishing X-Men comic (Joe Madureira's art really helps with that) and was surprised by how much I enjoyed others (like the X-Universe book with Sue Storm and Tony Stark).
However there were a couple that I just did not care about, like X-Man. So, they're not all hits, but that's to be expected with something like this. And also, the Magneto/Rogue romance is gross and to be honest, I'm not much a fan of Wolverine and Jean, either.
One other thing that I really loved about this book is all of the extra things at the end. I love seeing the concept art and everything, but it's also cool to see the promo material that they made back in the 90s. Part of the reason I collect comics is because they are like mini time-capsules of what was going on in that exact month when the comic was released. I love seeing old ads and promos because the people who made them had to be very creative with them.
Anyways, this was a fun read. I'm excited to get the next one and finish this off!
May 18, 2016
The saga of a world without Charles Xavier continues. Magneto has taken his place as head of the X-Men and is leading a desperate fight against Apocalypse, a mutant who has taken over most of the Western hemisphere. Apocalypse is either recruiting or destroying all the mutants in the Americas. What regular humans are left he uses as slaves or as genetic fodder for creating more mutants. Or he just "culls" them. One mutant, Bishop, is from the normal timeline where Xavier didn't die and he is helping Magneto craft a plan to restore history. So some X-Men are seeking out a special telepath while Nightcrawler is headed to the hidden refuge Avalon (which is apparently the Antarctic Savage Land from the normal timeline). Jean Grey and Wolverine work with the European humans to make a plan to contain or defeat Apocalypse. The Europeans' solution is to nuke Manhattan (Apocalypse's headquarters). Jean wants to warn whoever's left, but can she get there in time? Can the humans' plan come off? These questions and what happened with the rest of the non-X-Men heroes are looked at in this issue. Age of Apocalypse runs for another two books, so nothing is resolved yet, but the plot is still intriguing enough to keep me reading.
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews