by Josh Powell, Editor-at-Large

Official Description:
A millennium ago, Apocalypse ruled over the ancient mutant land, Okkara, along with his wife, Genesis. Together, they defended Okkara and lead the mutants against the Amenthi horde who besieged them. To end that war, Genesis made a deal with the dark elder god of Amenth, Annihilation, donning the Annihilation helm to take control of the horde and ultimately splitting Okkara into two parts: Krakoa and Arakko, and separating Genesis and Apocalypse from one another. During the Tournament of Swords, Genesis and Apocalypse faced one another again on opposite sides of a battlefield, and Apocalypse was able to remove the Annihilation helm from Genesis, freeing her of its influence and forcing back an encroaching force of Amenthi bent on Krakoa’s destruction. Saturnyne was able to convert the Annihilation helm into a staff to limit its corrupting influence over Genesis. In the aftermath of the battle, Genesis demanded that Apocalypse return to Amenth as a show of good faith between Krakoa and Arakko. But peace can only last for so long — and the Arakkii are made for war.

I’m sorry about that earlier madness.  ComicsOnline readers, I formally apologize if you had the misfortune of trying to grind through the egregiously lengthy and discursive reviews I turned in for the latest centenary issue of Fantastic Four (#700), the everything-in-a-nutshell relaunch of Fury (#1), or the just-a-regular-damn-issue of Amazing Spider-Man (which we have agreed to call #26).  It was uncalled for, and won’t happen again.

[lying cat]

But LET ME JUST SAY, in passing, since The Heralds of Apocalypse/X-Men Before The Fall/destiny_of_x #1 deals with a character canonically older than civilization so a little backstory is justified even for the most ardent comic heads. It was OVER a millennium ago, 1986 ’twas, that the X-Men were roaring along so hard under Chris Claremont that Marvel decided to dip into the well again and break off the original X-Men (Cyclops, Angel, Beast, etc.) into a new team book of their own and leave the new kids of Storm and Wolverine and everybody to play by themselves.

The new book, X-Factor, did not take off like gangbusters and editor Bob Harras decided that it was because they needed some kind of awesome, unifying villain to give the team an impressive foil.  They had been faffing about with the Alliance of Evil in the early days (back when villains were still considered to think of themselves as evil), but nobody cared.  (Although I think Nitro was in there, who would very briefly become relevant much later when his powers were editorially allowed to have the effect they actually would have one time, thereby kicking off the superhero Civil War and making Speedball feel terribly bad.)

So Harras took writer Bob Layton aside and said, “Fellow Bob, where is our Magneto, our Dr. Doom, our raison d’être, if you will, for this squad of olde schoole mutants to battle that no one else could?”

“I see where you’re going with this, senior Bob,” said Layton.  “And I’m way ahead of you.  Turns out there is a shadowy figure behind the AoE.  He brought them all together for nefarious purposes of his own, to toy with our guys, so he can get on with his real plans unimpeded.”  

“Oh?”  

“Yes.”  

“I like it!  And who is this string-pulling fearsome mastermind?”

“How about- The Owl!”

“The… Owl?”

“Yeah.”

“The… sort of half-assed crime boss with the trench coat and Marvel hair and clip-on claws that the Kingpin tolerates out of sentimentality, and who Spider-Man will sometimes kick in the head as he swings by to go fight, I don’t know, the Enforcers or somebody, just so he won’t feel neglected?”

“Well… yeah.  He hasn’t shown up in a while…”

“There’s a reason for that.  How about no?”

“You don’t understand my vision!  If you don’t like it, why don’t you get Simonson or somebody to write your crappy book?”

“He’s doing Thor.”

“I meant Louise!”

“She’s doing Power Pack.”

“Well, you better get somebody because I am through!”

And so Louise Simonson came on and had Jackson “Don’t call me Butch” Guice trace over the Owl’s shadowy outline with someone much thicker, who became our boy Apocalypse in issue #6.  He had vague powers and a weird look but he was always perfectly clear that weaklings sucked and only the strong survived and it was his holy mission to make everybody in the MU stop being such a creampuff as illustrated when he overwrote Angel’s DNA to turn him blue and turn his feathers into knives which he could, like, shoot from his wings and start calling himself the Angel… of Death! and join a metal band with Apocalypse’s other henchmen of War, Pestilence, and Famine.  The Four Horsemen, see?  Of the… yeah, you get it!

It was later revealed that Apocalypse was not just a mutant, he was the FIRST mutant, and had been around so long he witnessed one of the previous Celestial Hosts, which scared the bejeebers out of him and made him focused on toughening everybody up before they come back and kill us all.  AND incidentally netted him a lot of cool crap which they had tossed casually aside in a cave in Egypt which he used to beef up his own powers (of, among other things, “total control over every atom in his own body”, which he uses mainly to be yoked as hell and never die) and do things like upgrading Angel to be a more Apocalyptic version of himself.

And then • –|Å|– • got killed anyway and came back as a child, and then re-came back as his usual self and eventually we made it up to the events in the summary as told in the Dawn of X storyline in Immortal X-Men, wherein at some point in the mists of pre-history, he decided that maybe he had let the whole Celestial thing unsettle him too much, and one couldn’t spend an entire indefinitely extended lifespan being ripped and swole and killing the weak, and maybe he should just relax.  So he married this chick named Genesis and moved to the island in the summary, Okkara, and set about making mutant babies.  But obviously that didn’t work because he’s still a villain in the present day, and he should have known his girl was crazy as soon as the babies were born and she started naming them Pestilence, Death, and so forth.  Sure enough, fans hadn’t even been invented yet, but the shit still hit it when Okkara got sundered by something called the Twilight Sword and demons started pouring through the gap in creation.  In defense of his island, or what remained of it, he rediscovered his love of killing, but his wife and kids loved it even more than he did and actually got whisked off to the hell dimension to hold off the hordes there, which explains why they were nowhere to be seen until recently.

At the start of this issue, • –|Å|– • is levitating over a pile of bones, probably on Krakoa(?) the current mutant sanctuary that is one of the sundered fragments of Okkara, when some little scumling cruises up and asks him to philosophize, and • –|Å|– • obliges, but the demon doesn’t know what he’s talking about, and tragically doesn’t have much time to think about it because he immediately takes a sword in the head from Genesis who just teleported in to persuade hubby to set up a warp gate to somewhere unknown for reasons unstated.  And • –|Å|– •’s like, no, and she’s all, we’ll see about that, and the rest of the issue is them talking about old times while sword fighting.  • –|Å|– • loses (spoiler) but it doesn’t matter because there’s not much more futile than attempting to (or even succeeding in) stabbing someone who has total control over every atom in their body.  Nevertheless, that sort of thing is why he liked her to begin with, so he sets up the gate for her and gives her a warp seed to spare.  They went through some hard times, sure, including just now when she stabbed him, but that spark is still there, people.

So frankly, not a heck of a lot going on.  Exposition-heavy setup issue that isn’t going to make much sense unless you’ve read a lot of recent Apocalypse-lore in the other X-books.  You may still want to check it out since it seems that Gen is getting ready to be the big bad for this next arc, possibly with
• –|Å|– •. acting as some sort of anti-hero now that he’s toned down bit and started acting his age.  Presumably the kids will be along shortly.  But who are these Heralds they’re talking about?  No one is in evidence unless his wife counts, or maybe the little crapling, who it turns out lived (spoiler) due to his crafty internal arrangement of not carrying any vital organs in his head.  Doesn’t matter.  You know you’re big time in Marvel when you get some heralds to go before and crying your coming to the cowering multitudes.  After thousands of years of trudging around Marvel earth, getting played by Kang (in his Rama-Tut mode), getting stomped on by star giants, starting several once-major religions around yourself, but eventually being reduced to bankrolling a bunch of D-list clowns to annoy the original X-Men, it’s nice to know En Sabah Nur has finally arrived.  And don’t call him Apocalypse.  • –|Å|– • is Revelation now.

Have to wait until next ish for anything of significance to happen, but…

Rating:
ComicsOnline gives X-Men: Before the Fall – Heralds of Apocalypse 3/5 shocking revelations about matters you didn’t necessarily know even needed to be clarified.

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