Age of Apocalypse

The Age of Apocalypse was a comic book storyline. It was a major event in the Marvel Universe, mostly affecting mutant titles like the X-Men.

Missing image
Ageofapocalypse-handbook.jpg
Cover to Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe: Age of Apocalypse 2005. Art by Mark Brooks.
Contents

Storyline

Legion (David Haller), an extremely powerful psionic mutant and the son of Professor Charles Xavier and Israeli diplomat Gabrielle Haller, traveled back in time with the intention of killing Magneto, who was once Xavier's best friend but had become the greatest nemesis of the X-Men. However, when Legion was on the point of killing Magneto, Xavier interspaced himself between the two of them, and Legion killed Xavier instead. Consequently, Legion ceased to exist, since his father, Xavier, died before Legion was fathered. Because of Xavier's sacrifice, Magneto came to believe in his dead friend's dream of peaceful co-existence between humans and mutants. However, Apocalypse, a mutant alive for centuries who believed in "survival of the fittest," monitored the fight between Legion, Magneto, and Xavier and began his genetic war ten years before he did so in the real timeline. Thus, by the time that Magneto founded the X-Men in this timeline, Apocalypse had already established himself as a major power. Apocalypse would come to rule all of North America; New York City was renamed Apocalypse Island and the Statue of Liberty was replaced by a statue of Apocalypse. He also initiated a worldwide genocidal campaign of "cullings" in which millions of humans died; the surviving humans lived on in the parts of Europe and Africa which weren't devastated by nuclear weapons. Meanwhile, the disturbance of the timeline has led to a crystallization wave of the M'Kraan Crystal that is heading toward Earth...


Characters and affiliations

Mutant heroes

Other anti-Apocalypse forces

Apocalypse's agents

Neutrals

The only major mutant character missing in the original Age of Apocalypse was Psylocke. Fans speculated that she was likely either killed in one of Apocalypse's cullings or one of the members of the Brain Trust keeping control over the pens. However, when the Age of Apocalypse was revisited a decade later, she appeared in X-Men Age of Apocalypse #4 (May 2005). Her origin story remains unknown, however, and there is no explanation of what exactly she was doing during the original Age of Apocalypse.

At the end of the Age of Apocalypse story arc, Bishop traveled backwards in time to prevent the Age of Apocalypse from ever occurring. This occurred simultaneously with a nuclear exchange between the Human High Council and Apocalypse. Most characters were killed by the nukes, but the fate of the remaining survivors is unclear: presumably, they were erased from existence. However, some characters escaped the Age of Apocalypse into the Earth 616 continuity. Nate Grey (an alternate version of Cable), Holocaust (one of Apocalypse's horsemen), Beast, Sugar Man, and Blink surivived. Nate Grey joined the X-Men for several years but later "died" by disseminating into every life on the planet, and Holocaust remains at large. Beast and Sugar Man, however, were sent 20 years into Earth 616's past. This allowed for major retconning that explained that Beast had a hand in the creation of the Morlocks and why Mr. Sinister initiated the Mutant Massacre. Sugar Man gave genetic technology secrets to the Genegineer of Genosha, allowing this small nation to become powerful by enslaving mutants.

Blink escaped into the multiverse itself: she joined and leads the reality-hopping team of heros known as the Exiles. Her counterpart on Earth 616 has been dead since the Phalanx Covenant story arc.

Tenth-year anniversary

In 2005, Marvel published an Age of Apocalypse one-shot and mini-series to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the popular event.

The one-shot features stories set before the events of the crossover, similar in focus to the Chronicles of the Age of Apocalypse issues: the one-shot contains the story of how Colossus and Shadowcat left the X-Men to train Generation Next, how Sabretooth met Wild Child, the first appearance of the Silver Samurai, and that the world survived the Human High Council's nuclear attack.

See Age of Apocalypse (limited series) for details of the mini-series.

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