The X-Men became the most popular team in the comic industry in the ’80s, writer Chris Claremont building the book into something special over the late ’70s issues of Uncanny X-Men. One of the most important stories of the early Claremont run is “Days of Future Past”, a story that took readers to a dark alternate future. Fans loved these kinds of stories and in the mid ’90s, Marvel decided to give them an entire line of books based on a dark world, replacing the X-Men books: “Age of Apocalypse”. The story spun out of “Legion Quest”, which ended with Xavier’s son Legion accidentally killing his father, leading to a world where Apocalypse has formed a terrifying mutant empire and Magneto fights against with his own X-Men.
Fans love “Age of Apocalypse” and remember it fondly. Telling its story over two bookend issues, nine four-issue miniseries, and two two-issue miniseries, it took readers to an all-new Marvel Universe full of death and destruction, a surefire fan favorite. Nowadays, the story is looked at as a monumental achievement – and there are definitely some amazing parts of the story – but it’s time to be real: the story, overall, has always been kind of mid. Fans have built up this legend for it in their head, looking at it as some amazing moment in time. The reality, however, is more complicated than that. “Age of Apocalypse” is pure ’90s X-Men, with all of the strengths and weaknesses of the era.
“Age of Apocalypse” Is Basically Half-Amazing, Half-Blah
Let’s get this out of the way – there are some truly awesome “Age of Apocalypse” books. Astonishing X-Men, Weapon X, Generation Next, and Factor X are outstanding, books that take the ideas of a dark world ruled by Apocalypse and make it sing. Generation Next is especially great, a series that keeps getting darker and darker until it ends in tragedy, the entire AoA in microcosm. However, once you get past these books, things get less enjoyable.
Amazing X-Men, X-Man, X-Calibre, Gambit and the X-Ternals, Universe X, and X-Men Chronicles are all on varying levels of quality and remind you that this is the ’90s X-Men. Writing was not super important during this period in the team’s history; the decade had been defined by superstar artists and the writing took a back seat. Every “Age of Apocalypse” book looked fantastic, but the writing was always sort of okay, at best. For every Generation Next and Weapon X, there’s an Amazing X-Men or Gambit and the X-Ternals, fine books that never reach the level of great and that’s before we get to the books that aren’t good, like X-Calibre.
I think two things play a role in the continued praise for the “Age of Apocalypse”: nostalgia and that most fans haven’t actually read it. I was 14 when the story started and I remember thinking it was the greatest thing I had ever read. It was so different from everything else and it fit the edgier days of the ’90s. X-Men books in the ’90s were popular, but going back and re-reading those books can be rather difficult because as much as I remember loving them, they are actually not all that good, beyond the art. “Age of Apocalypse” suffers from this.
A lot of older fans look back on the story as if it’s some flawless masterpiece, but no one ever thought that even back in the day. It reminds them of when they were young, before they’d seen a million different versions of this story. As far as it goes, Marvel also hasn’t made finding old “Age of Apocalypse” series easy without spending a lot of money to buy the massive collected editions and most fans seem to just be aping what older fans say. They rarely talk about the various miniseries, mostly just saying that it’s the best thing ever. The story is in no way bad, but it’s never been as amazing as modern fans want you to think.
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