By any measure, the X-Men have been a wildly popular franchise. My first introduction to them was when my roommate in college bought the New X-Men Omnibus, which amazing to hold, impossible to read because of its weight (just like Simonson’s Thor Omnibus). The downside of reading Morrison’s run first is that it completely ruins just about any X-Men story I would ever read afterwards (Yes, including The Dark Phoenix Saga and Days of Future Past).
One villain who had never appeared in the X-Men comics that I’ve read is Apocalypse. I’ve tried to find stories with him in it, but my library just has the Age of Apocalypse, which is an alternate reality that I really have no interest in. Finally, I found X-Men vs. Apocalypse: The Twelve, and got to find out how good of a villain Apocalypse is!
Turns out, he’s not that great. That’s actually pretty unfair to say because this collection really doesn’t focus on him. Instead, it’s focus is mostly on Cable and, to a lesser extent, Wolverine. It’s a collection in every sense of the word because The Twelve storyline exists across multiple X-Men comics, meaning that any scene within a book could be going on before, during, or after, scenes in a book you’ve already read. This makes reading the collection miserable.
I realize that crossover stories sell much better than books that exist on their own. However, when the books get collected in trades and read by people years afterwards, the crossover just about cripples the story. It also discourages me from buying the runs of these comics because I know that half the story is occurring elsewhere. Of course, I probably wouldn’t buy this run of X-Men, but the statement stands (For a more practical example, I have every story in Bruce Jones’ run on The Incredible Hulk (#34-76) and I own Planet Hulk, which starts at issue 92. That means there are 16 issues that I could pick up and bridge the gap, but I really don’t care to because I know a fair number of them are tie-ins to House of M. Those are sales that Marvel is missing out on).
Anyway, returning to The Twelve, the story begins with the X-Men realizing that Apocalypse has brainwashed Wolverine into being Death, one of his four horsemen. The first issue establishes that Wolverine actually submitted to the brainwashing because he knew that he would at least be able to fight it, unlike Sabertooth, who was the other candidate for the position. Of course, we then spend about seven issues of comics seeing Wolverine totally wreck everyone’s shit with a giant sword or his adamantium claws (Apocalypse had regrafted adamantium onto his skeleton). So, good call there Wolverine, way to fight the urge.
Again, I’m being a bit unfair to Wolverine because there’s a scene where he holds back when fighting the Hulk for the millionth time. Seriously, fights we don’t need to see anymore: Wolverine v. Sabertooth, Wolverine v. Hulk. Yet, we get BOTH of those in this collection. Argh.
Turning to Cable, there are a lot of issues with this character. He’s Cyclops’ son who was sent into the future so he could be cured of some disease. Cyclops and Jean Grey go into the future to help raise him for awhile. He is then sent back through time to stop Apocalypse from ever gaining power. So, we have created a temporal paradox where, if he stops Apocalypse, he won’t have any reason to come back in the future, which would allow Apocalypse to win, and then force him to come back again. AHHHHHHHH! This is a stupid character!
This is not helped by the fact that there is also a young version of Cable running around named Nathan Grey, who has also come back in time. Cable is a stupid character, so they decided to make it worse by sending ANOTHER one of him back? Maybe I’m wrong about Nathan’s backstory, but I don’t particularly care because it’s not explained in this book, which is what I’m trying to review.
I will say though, this book leans heavily on events that happened in the “Morlock Tunnels.” Now, I haven’t really read a ton of X-Men, so that name means nothing. However, they discuss the fact that it was here that Angel lost his wings, which led to him becoming Apocalypse’s Death the first time Apocalypse appeared. It was at this point that I realized that I had read about these tunnels before: in the Thor Omnibus.
And that brings me to the difference between a crossover and general universe interaction. When I read those Thor stories, I figured that something major was going on in the X-Men universe at the time. But, the stories tied in nicely with what was going on in Thor’s world. His presence in the tunnels made sense within the context of his character and motivations and wasn’t just “Oh, hey, and now here’s Thor!”
I’m over 800 words into this thing and haven’t really accounted for the over-arching story. Basically, Apocalypse wants to collect The Twelve so that he can absorb their powers and become superpowerful. It’s a pretty basic premise and I guess it works on that level, but the fact that the authors had to figure out some way to tie-in four different books (Cable, Wolverine, X-Man, X-Men) and what seems to be about 50 different characters, just turns this thing into a mess.
One of the worst things about a collection like this is how the art changes from issue to issue. Obviously, no one artist could draw all the issues in a story like this since multiple books are coming out a month, but it is just incredibly jarring to go from a rather realistic art style to a style that I would describe as cartoony, which happens frequently. Now, continuous series are susceptible to this as well (Morrison’s run on New X-Men was plagued by this), but the every-other-issue nature of this collection really detracts from it.
Recommendation: Worth reading only if you can’t get enough X-Men. I wouldn’t recommend buying it and I really don’t even think it was worth reading given the other options out there.
Everyone Look Busy! 