All right, here we go: the official Age Of Apocalypse FAQ (last updated 5/26/95). Let the fun begin. Q. Age of who? A. Apocalypse. He's one of the many major villains in the X-Books who's been killed a lot lately, so he hasn't had many recent appearances in the X-Books. He originated in X-Factor early in the series, and played a major part in their branch of the Fall of the Mutants crossover. He's an External, meaning an immortal mutant who's immortality manifested at the point of his mortal death, a la Highlander. He's been alive for literally centuries, and will (according to the Adventures of Cyclops and Phoenix limited series) be around for quite a few more. His dogma is "survival of the fittest," as applied to human/mutant relations. In other words, he actively encourages mutants to go out and try to kill other humans and mutants, in order to weed the weak from the strong. Naturally, he places himself on top of this pile, and those mutants who enjoy using his rationale as an excuse to kill lots of innocents usually don't question his authority or power. His powers, besides his immortality, include Generic Power Blasts (tm) and shape-shifting his body into other quasi-mechanical forms, although it is speculated that this last power is not a mutant ability at all, but a result of Apocalypse's infection with a techno-organic virus similar to that used by Warlock and Douglock. Q. So what happened with this guy? A. If you haven't read the LegionQuest storyline from Uncanny X-Men #320-321 and X-Men #40-41, here's what happened. This gets rather complicated. Follow closely. Charles Xavier had a son by a patient-turned-girlfriend of his from a long time ago, Gabrielle Haller, named David Haller, or Legion because he was originally written as a multiple-personality mutant, with each of four major personalities controlling a different psionic power. When the Shadow King had taken over Muir Island some time ago, he possessed Legion and helped complete the unification of his mind and powers, but when the X-Men defeated the Shadow King, Legion was left in a mindless coma. He was assumed to be brain-dead, even by Xavier himself. Apparently, though, everyone was wrong. He spent some time on the astral plane with the mental image of another woman named Destiny, whom Legion had killed long ago while under the Shadow King's influence and who was Mystique's friend and (possibly) lover. When Mystique came to kill Legion in revenge, he emerged from his vegetative state, delivered a message from Destiny to Mystique, and took off for some work of his own. He had, while in his vegetative state, come to the conclusion that because Magneto and his father had spent so much time fighting each other over the last fifteen years, Xavier and his dream (and therefore, himself) would have been much better off if Magneto had never been around to oppose Xavier's X-Men. Tapping into another power he'd discovered while wandering the astral plane, namely time-travel, he set himself up in the Israeli Negev desert, warmed up a bit, and went back in time twenty years to when Xavier and Magnus were still good friends. Fortunately, the X-Men were called in to stop him before he could take off. Bishop, Iceman, Psylocke, and Storm were caught in his time-travel field and got sucked back with him, to the time Xavier and Magnus were spending together in Israel just after Xavier had finished helping Gabrielle and had started developing a relationship with her. Unfortunately, everyone involved, including Legion, landed with their memories wiped. Psylocke helped the X-Men remember who they were and what their powers were, but not what they were doing in this time and place. Legion, on the other hand, was found on the docks by Magnus and Xavier with no clue of who he was or what he was doing. When he finally started to remember, he took off from his hospital room and started a fight with Magnus in the middle of the city. The X-Men had their memories restored by the time-travelling astral image of Cable, and came into the middle of the fight. Unfortunately, though, Legion had the pure power advantage, and he almost killed Magnus with a variation on Psylocke's psychic knife before Xavier jumped in the way and got killed intead. Legion and the X-Men disappeared into the resultant time paradox, but somehow Bishop's being a time-traveller from the future already allowed him to remain in the past with a slightly-damaged memory. Q. But how's Apocalypse figure into this? A. Well, apparently he was monitoring the fight as it was being broadcast over every news network in the area, and decided that a magnetic mutant fighting a psi a couple hundred feet over the city of Hafia was evidence enough that mutants were on the rise, earlier than he'd originally expected to. So, a few years after the fight ended, Apocalypse took his Ship (a former Celestial monitoring device sent to Earth centuries ago that he'd acquired for his own ends) and launched his own little genetic war against humanity, which in the original timeline he hadn't started until about five years ago (Marvel time) in the Fall of the Mutants. Q. Did he win this time? A. Yep. By the time Magneto had firmly established the X-Men at Mount Wundagore, which was about when Xavier's X-Men battled Krakoa in our timeline in Giant-Sized X-Men #1, Apocalypse and his Horsemen had been staging minor strikes all around the world. Q. So when did this whole crossover start? A. The Age of Apocalypse, also refered to as Alternate X or Alter-X by the newsgroup, started after the LegionQuest story, when a special issue entitled X-Men Alpha was released introducing most of the major characters in this timeline's X-Men universe. It eventually ended after four months with X-Men Omega, and X-Men Prime was another special re-introducing the normal timeline. The rest of the ongoing titles were suspended for the four-month duration of the crossover, and were replaced by: Uncanny X-Men -- Astonishing X-Men Cable -- X-Man X-Factor -- Factor-X Generation X -- Generation Next Wolverine -- Weapon X Excalibur -- X-Calibre X-Men -- Amazing X-Men X-Force -- Gambit and the X-ternals X-Men Unlimited -- X-Men Chronicles There was also a two-issue limited series entitled "X-Universe", covering the plight of the humans in Europe against the horseman Mikhail, which involved most of the major non-mutant heroes of the normal Marvel Universe, as well as a one-shot called "Age of Apocalypse: Chosen", which was simply a glimpse into Apocalypse's files on various characters from the crossover. Neither of these is terribly integral to the crossover, though. Q. "Gambit and the X-ternals"?? A. Hey, it was almost named "X-Posse". Be grateful. Q. So who was in what books now? A. This gets long again, so be patient. When Alpha introduced us to this timeline, Bishop was wandering the streets of Seattle before he was found by Magneto's X-Men, composed of Rogue, Blink, Iceman, Nightcrawler, Storm, Morph, Quicksilver, Sabretooth, and Wild Child, who were fighting against hopeless odds to keep Apocalypse from totally overwhelming North America, where he already ruled with all but absolute power. Beast, was a genetic scientist in the employ of Mr. Sinister, who was in turn one of Apocalypse's Horsemen. The other three Horsemen were Holocaust, Abyss, and Mikhail Rasputin. Cyclops and Havok were prelates in charge of Apocalypse's breeding pens, and had been raised by Sinister. Angel ran a nightclub called Heaven in what remained of Manhattan, with Scarlett (from the "Meltdown" limited series") as his singer. Gambit was a rogue, formerly an X-Man. Logan (now known as Weapon X) was also independent with Jean Grey, and appeared in London delivering information from Sinister to Moira and Bolivar Trask there. Astonishing and Amazing X-Men featured Magneto's own X-Men team, with Astonishing centering around Rogue, Morph, Blink, Sunfire, Sabretooth, and Wild Child attempting to stop Holocaust's cullings of the humans in the Midwest. Amazing featured the remaining X-Men under Quicksilver's command -- Iceman, Exodus, Dazzler, Storm, and Banshee. X-Calibre followed Nightcrawler on a mission to locate Destiny to verify Bishop's stories about our timeline. Generation Next featured Husk, Chamber, Vincente, Mondo, and Skin, led by Colossus and his wife Shadowcat, on a mission to recover Illyana from Apocalypse's slave pits. Gambit and the X-ternals -- Jubilee, Guido, Lila Cheney, and Sunspot -- were selected by Magneto to steal the M'Krann Crystal. Weapon X featured Logan and Jean Grey leading the Human High Council in Europe on a nuclear strike against Apocalypse' North America. X-Man centered around Nathan Summers, who turned out to be the product of Mr. Sinister mixing Jean Grey's and Cyclops' DNA in a growth accelerator, and his protector Forge, along with Brute, Soaron, Mastermind, and Theresa "Sonique" Cassidy. Finally, X-Men Chronicles followed two of the pivotal stories of Magneto's X-Men previous to X-Men Alpha, including Apocalypse's first attack on Wundagore and the love triangle that forced Gambit to leave the X-Men over Rogue and Magneto. Q. Wait, who're Holocaust and Brute and Rex and Damask and... A. If you don't recognize the names, ninety-nine to one it's a new character. The prominent exceptions to this rule are Wild Child in Astonishing X-Men, who appeared in our timeline's Alpha Flight; Brute in X-Man, who may be the counterpart of the Morlock of the same name killed by Cable in New Mutants #100; Morph in Astonishing X-Men, who's a variation on the Changeling character who was killed back in the Uncanny X-Men double-digit issues; and Scarlett in Factor-X, who appeared in the Havok/Wolverine: Meltdown limited series some time ago. The X-Writers retained most every character's code name from our own timeline to avoid confusion. Q. What order should I read the books in? A. Normally, it would simply be in order of publication. Unfortunately, the first and last months of the crossover contained a number of cross-references to each other, and you have to read carefully to get them in order. Here's broadly how the Alter-X chronology looks, according to the numerous cross-references each issue had to the others: X-Men Chronicles #1 X-Men Chronicles #2 X-Men Alpha Gambit and the X-ternals #1 Generation Next #1 Astonishing X-Men #1 X-Calibre #1 Weapon X #1 Amazing X-Men #1 Factor-X #1 X-Man #1 Amazing X-Men #2 Factor-X #2 Weapon X #2 Gambit and the X-ternals #2 X-Calibre #2 Astonishing X-Men #2 Generation Next #2 X-Man #2 Age of Apocalyse: Chosen Astonishing X-Men #3 Factor-X #3 Amazing X-Men #3 X-Calibre #3 Weapon X #3 Gambit and the X-ternals #3 X-Universe #1 Generation Next #3 X-Man #3 Astonishing X-Men #4 Generation Next #4 X-Calibre #4 X-Man #4 Factor-X #4 Gambit and the X-ternals #4 Amazing X-Men #4 Weapon X #4 X-Men Omega X-Universe #2 X-Men Prime Q. Can we assume I've read all the relevant books now, so that we can get into some tougher questions? A. By all means. -- Continued in Part 2 --