Credits: Written by Fabian Nicieza, pencilled by Andy Kubert, inked by Mark Pennington and edited by Bob Harras.
Plot: At Stryfe’s base, Bishop, Wolverine and Cable arrive and are immediately involved in a firefight with the Dark Riders and the rest of Stryfe’s soldiers. Cable tries to out gun everyone, Bishop is more disciplined in his response, while Wolverine leaps into the fray claws out. Bishop thinks Wolverine has gone berserk, but he’s just not being chatty. As the tide turns against them, Apocalypse and the X-Men (Storm, Havok, Psylocke, Polaris, Iceman, Cannonball and Archangel) burst in, all dramatic poses and declamation. Elsewhere, Stryfe waits, watching all of this revelling in his plans coming to fruition.
Stryfe sees that his army is failing him, but confident in the outcome, takes Scott ‘Cyclops’ Summers and Jean Grey out into the moon’s surface. Back on Earth, in the Westchester home of Charles Xavier, Dr Henry ‘Beast’ McCoy is pleased that Charles is beginning to heal from his recent ordeal. For a brief moment Charles wakes up and talks about the connections between Cable, Stryfe, Apocalypse, Scott, Jean and Sinister. He points out that there links are love, hate and blood.
With the tide turned and the Dark Riders on the run, Apocalypse chooses to go after the Riders, rather than join the assembled X-Men’s hunt for Stryfe and their kidnapped members. After some bickering, Iceman, Archangel and BIshop follow Apocalypse’s trail, while the rest head after Stryfe, splitting into two teams with Storm, Wolverine and Pyslocke heading one way and Havok, Polaris, Cannonball and Cable heading another. Storm’s team lose track of Scott and Jean at an airlock, almost getting themselves pulled outside while looking. Havok’s team heads to the ship that brought them after Cable shuts down Cannonball’s suggestion that they bodyslide.
In a corridor on the moonbase, the Dark Rider’s find the weakening Apocalypse and challenge him, expecting a quick victory, but En Sabah Nur has no intention of lying down, roaring that this is survival of the fittest and this battle is to the death.
Above the Moon, Cable flies the ship with Cannonball, Havok and Polaris with him. Cable points out that he’s familiar with Apocalypse’s tech and this causes Cannonball to challenge Cable again and demand the answers he feels he’s owed. As this mentor/student conflict increases Havok notices they’ve found something. As they all turn, they see a large alien looking structure. Stryfe is there, Scott and Jean are transfixed in front of him and there are images of the X-Men’s history appearing in the space behind them. The final act is about to begin.
Notes: This is the 15 minutes before the last 10 minutes of the film and all of the plotlines have converged. The X-teams are back together, Stryfe is ready to begin his endgame and Apocalypse looks ready to go out in a blaze of glory. Weirdly that’s not the stuff that I enjoyed most. It was the character stuff that really held up, from Psylocke and Wolverine tracking only the half of the missing couple they are interested in, to Apocalypse wanting a blazing glory exit against his former soldiers and Bishop’s observations on the ongoing conflicts. But the group that made me smile most was Havok, Polaris, Cannonball and Cable. Sam (Cannonball) trying to have it all out with Cable after Cable abandoned his team a while back. Cable on the other hand is trying to stop Stryfe and save the missing X-Men and it’s a very “Are we there yet?” sort of moment. So many times we get a “not right now” response from Cable, who became my favourite character in this crossover a while back. There’s more dramatic Stryfe and a perspective on his relationship with Zero who I see now as a sci-fi Lurch from Addams Family. The whole thing has been a lot of fun re-reading and I’ll be sorry when we are all done. The only thing is that weird mis-colouring of the X-Men in the background.
Verdict: Writing 4 out of 5 – From the pacing, to the dialogue, the writing is pretty good, balancing humour and drama and shows that despite the superstar artists that have pencilled these books, it’s been the writing that has kept people coming back for decade after decade. It is a bit arch and a bit 90’s, but it works.
Art: 3 out of 5- I’m still not the greatest fan of Andy Kubert, but his work here is consistent and moves the story along as well as it can. The colours work really well and the inks are light, so Kubert can do more with what he has and he delivers a great issue that has a great cliff-hanger.
Overall: 7 out of 5 – Solid work bringing it all to a head and all that’s left is the finale. I didn’t expect this to be a better overall read than the Age of Apocalypse, but I think this had all of the parts needed to be a success and then made it into one.
Next Time: We finish another of the Scarlet Spider series.
My Marvel Life 