Age of Apocalypse

Marvel United: Multiverse enters the Age of Apocalypse! (plus, predicting the 10 most-likely expansion boxes)

January 25, 2023 by krisis

Yesterday, CMON’s Marvel United: Multiverse Kickstarter campaign announced a second new expansion box bringing more heroes and villains to the game… and they’re all more mutants! That’s right, CMON has dipped into one of Marvel’s most-popular alternate timelines to announce Marvel United Multiverse Age of Apocalypse box!

There’s no question that Age of Apocalypse is Marvel’s most-popular and well-known excursion into an alternate timeline parallel to 616 other than the expansive Ultimate Universe. Based on that, it’s no surprise to see the box pop up here – especially since it checks off four unique X-characters we were missing.

(See my Guide to Marvel Universe Events – Age of Apocalypse for details on how to read the entire event.)

Am I pleased? Not entirely. I think this box brings both good choices and questionable choices with it.

The good choices are very good choices: we get playable heroes of Nate Grey and Morph, and some seriously scary villains in the form of AOA Apocalypse, Holocaust / Nemesis, and Dark Beast.

That’s five key mutants we were missing from the massive list of possibilities in my prior post on the campaign.

It’s the other pair of choices that I question, plus one conspicuous absence. [Read more…] about Marvel United: Multiverse enters the Age of Apocalypse! (plus, predicting the 10 most-likely expansion boxes)

Crushing Comics S01E056 – Learning Vocabulary from Claremont + X-Men: Age of Apocalypse Companion Omnibus

January 8, 2018 by krisis

Coming off of two episodes of unwrapping intense Claremont X-Men books, I talk a little bit about how reading classic comics built my vocabulary and how the loss of narration boxes has really limited the narrative power of comics. Then, I unwrap the Age of Apocalypse Companion and sift through its material to explain what is and isn’t essential in this tag-along book.

Want to start from the beginning of this season of videos? Here’s the complete Season 1 playlist of Crushing Comics.

Episode 65 features the X-Men: Age of Apocalypse Companion Omnibus. For more on Age of Apocalypse, visit the Guide to Marvel Events.

Crushing Comics S01E044 – X-Men: Age of Apocalypse Omnibus (and harrowing tales of left-side driving)

December 21, 2017 by krisis

Have you ever driven on the opposite side of the road? I open this episode with tales of my challenges navigating Wellington’s left-side driving, then open one of the best self-contained X-Men epics of all time (and one of my most re-read stories of all-time) – Age of Apocalypse!

Want to start from the beginning of this season of videos? Here’s the complete Season 1 playlist of Crushing Comics.

Episode 44 features the X-Men: Age of Apocalypse omnibus. Learn more in the Marvel Events Guide.

Collecting Marvel Universe Events as graphic novels

A comprehensive guide to line-wide Marvel Events – including story overviews, characters, issue lists, and how they can be read via omnibuses, hardcovers, and trade paperbacks. Part of Crushing Krisis’s Crushing Comics. Last updated May 2024 with titles scheduled for release through December 2024.

Secret Wars. Inferno. Age of Apocalypse. Civil War. Secret Invasion. Avengers vs. X-Men. When it comes to epic-sized comic book events, Marvel Comics is the all-time champion.

These line-wide Marvel Events are overarching stories that can involve dozens of Marvel heroes – if not all of them, all at once! Events occur as either or both of direct crossovers between ongoing titles and special limited-series.

That can make them hard to keep track of, especially at the current rate of one or more events each year. It’s also hard to track down every issue or graphic novel. It’s easy to miss issues or buy the same comic in overlapping collections.

That’s why I created this page – it includes summaries, issue lists, and collection info for every major Marvel event, ever.

Click the links below to leap down the page to the corresponding section. I have omitted most line-specific crossovers with only one or two cross-line spinoffs, such as X-Men’s Mutant Massacre and Fall of the Hulks. [Read more…] about Collecting Marvel Universe Events as graphic novels

Uncanny X-Men in the 90s – Definitive Collecting Guide to Uncanny X-Men #281-393

The definitive issue-by-issue comic book collecting guide and trade reading order for the 1990s crossover era of Uncanny X-Men comic books from 1991 to 2001 in omnibus, hardcover, and trade paperback collections – including X-Cutioner’s Song, Fatal Attractions, Phalanx Covenant, Age of Apocalypse, Onslaught, and more! Part of Crushing Krisis’s Crushing Comics. Last updated August 2024 with titles scheduled for release through June 2025.

Uncanny X-Men (1963) #281 – 393: The Crossover Era (1991 – 2001)

Chris Claremont departed Uncanny X-Men with issue #280 in 1991, leaving massive shoes to fill both in talent and in his unprecedented longevity on the franchise.

In his wake, the X-Men franchise spent a decade and over a hundred issues filled with many writers, even more crossovers, and ultimately a unclear direction for what had become comics’ biggest franchise.

After some creative shuffling in the six months after Claremont’s departure that saw John Byrne writing dialogue for fully plotted and drawn issues from Whilce Portacio, writer and former stand-up comedian Scott Lobdell took over Uncanny X-Men. Lobdell wrote almost every issue from #286-350! This 65-issue run makes him the second-longest-running author of Uncanny.

Though Uncanny X-Men featured a handful of crossovers in the #199-280 range, it was during Lobdell’s run that the X-Men expanded to a truly multi-faceted, multi-title enterprise covering six ongoing titles (including a second flagship).

This ten-year run included more then 20 different events, direct crossovers, or runs with informal crossovers with X-Men (1991). At one point there are five major crossovers in under two years – X-Cutioner’s Song, Fatal Attractions, BloodTies, Phalanx Covenant, and LegionQuest leading into Age of Apocalypse!

After the resolution of Onslaught in 1996 with issue #337, the massive, multi-part crossovers eased. However, the idea of an almost constantly-running crossover between each month’s Uncanny X-Men and X-Men continued until Grant Morrison took over the latter title with New X-Men in 2001.

The reigns of the title changed hands several times in that post-Onslaught period, including a well-loved 16-issue run by Steven T. Seagle, Alan Davis taking over scripting duties, and a return by Lobdell to close out the era. Even Claremont himself makes a brief, disastrous return to the title!

This era began with the “Gold Team” of Storm, Jean Grey, Iceman, Archangel, and Colossus, soon joined by Bishop. However, the team lines begin to evaporate around issue #300. The following forty issues prominently featured that group, plus Wolverine, Banshee, Gambit, Rogue, Psylocke, Cannonball, and even Sabretooth. After the end of Onslaught in issue #337, the cast became even more variable – at one point featuring the original X-Men.