Credits: Written by Fabian Nicieza, pencilled by Andy Kubert, inked by Matt Ryan and edited by Bob Harras.
Cast: Lucas Bishop, Earth 295 versions of Jamie Madrox, Ororo ‘Storm’ Munroe, Sean ‘Banshee’ Cassiday, Pietro ‘Quicksilver’ Lenscherr, Victor ‘Sabretooth’ Creed, Wildchild, Rogue, Morph, Clarice ‘Blink’ Ferguson, Piotr ‘Colossus’ Rasputin, Ilyana Rasputin, Kitty ‘Shadowcat’ Rasputin, Paris ‘Exodus’ Bennett, Alison ‘Dazzler’ Blaire, Jubilation Lee, Lila Chaney, Remy ‘Gambit’ LeBeau, Kurt ‘Nightcrawler’ Darkholme. and Irene ‘Destiny’ Adler.
Plot: Quebec, or what was Quebec, north of Apocalypse’s America and the Madri, priests of Apocalypse are torturing Bishop, before they can complete this ritualised murder, Bishop is freed by Storm. Nearby Banshee and Quicksilver are elsewhere looking for the source of the identical Madri, shown to be the duplicates of Jamie Madrox. In Westchester, Rogue’s X-Men team arrive back and are greeted by Colossus, who along with Shadowcat has brought his sister Ilyana as needed by Magneto. Everyone is distraught after learning the fate of Colossus’ students.
Rogue, Sabretooth and Wildchild head down to the Morlock tunnels, looking for Dazzler and Exodus who went looking for Magneto and baby Charles a while back.. They find Gambit, Lila and Jubliee and learn that Apocalypse has both Charles and the M;Kraan crystal, a fact that Rogue takes violent exception with Gambit about.
In Quebec, Storm and Bishop hold off the Madri as Banshee and Quicksilver debate what to do about Madrox. Before anything is decided, Abyss attacks. Abyss taunts Quicksilver with the long odds against Storm and Bishop, Banshee tells him to go and he’ll face Abyss alone. Unleashing his powers like never before, the traumatised Banshee destroys himself, Abyss and the building they are in as Quicksilver races Madrox away. But this is all too much for Madrox, who allows the strain of being the source of the Madri to get the better of him and he slips away, dying in Quicksilver’s arm. This has the effect of killing all of the Madri at once, freeing Bishop and Storm from their battle.
Back at Westchester, Nightcrawler and Destiny arrive, now all of the missions are over and now all that is left is to face Apocalypse, rescue Charles and Magneto and end the Age of Apocalypse.
Notes: This is the penultimate comic released in the Age of Apocalypse event. It has a few things to do, resolve the four issues of Amazing X-Men’s plot, get everything into place to start the final issue and tell a good and coherent story. Well like the song says, 2 out of 3 ain’t bad. The plots from X-Calibre, Generation Next and Gambit & the X-Ternals all converge here and bring all the X-Men together along with Bishop to end up where the final issue starts. It does that, but I feel falls short with the rest. The rescue of Bishop is all well and good, but the inclusion of a returned Abyss feels tacked on and lacks any emotional context, which makes it hard to actually care about that part of the issue, or the sudden sacrifice of the up until now blank slate Banshee. The fight seemed tacked on to add to the page number, which hasn’t been the case with a lot of these But it has brought all the pieces where they need to be for the final act of this event.
Verdict: Writing – 2 out of 5: Lacklustre, but competent writing, the story moves to where it needs to go, but honestly this could have been done so much better. The one thing I did like was that the Madri ended up being dupes of Jamie Madrox, one of my favourite X-characters.#
Art: 3 out of 5 – More solid work from a Kubert, Andy being the one who does weird poses and melodramatic postioning. It makes the art work, but it’s really just window dressing on a comic that it less than it really should be.
Overall: 5 out of 10 – This was the last of the 8 minis and after this I am ready to see this event end, hoping that it in fact, ends with a bang.
Next Time: A retro looking Spider-Man
My Marvel Life 