X-Men of Apocalypse Omega #1 // Review
They’re staring-down Sinister and his Holocaust Clones. Sinister is looking to wipe-out humanity. It’s a strikingly unoriginal idea for the Marvel Universe. And given the track record for Marvel Villains, Sinister’s hopes of accomplishing what he’s set out to do are pretty meager in X-Men of Apocalypse Omega #1. Writer Jeph Loeb and artist Simone Di Meo take things in a sharply new direction for a group of displaced super-humans in an issue the serves as a preview for the new Gambit series that’s going to be slinking its way onto the new issue rack in the near future.
Forge is killed right away. Things get really bleak really quickly. So Blink has to take them away as quickly as possible. She teleports them away without a terribly clear idea of where to bring them. Where they end up...is the middle of Manhattan. It’s not long before Sinister arrives and sends-in the clones. Thankfully, the team doesn’t have to face them alone: they’ve got the local X-Men helping them out. This is particularly confusing when Wolverine runs into someone he’s killed and Gambit runs into...Gambit. Things are about to get complicated for everyone.
Loeb has a lot of different characters in play here. Thankfully, he's able to work with the characters in a way that doesn't make it seem as though they are simply standing around. All too often, big crossovers involve a lot of people just appearing for the sake of appearance. Loeb manages a very dynamic part between a lot of different characters that ends up feeling like a lot of fun. Granted: no one character gets enough time on the page to be truly satisfying. That being said, it's still a lot of fun overall.
And, of course, with a script like this, you're going to need an artist who can do big crowd shots, and make everybody look distinct. Simone Di Meo does a brilliant job of making all of the actions feel very kinetic and very energetic and very dynamic while making everyone look like they're taking up their own space on the page. It all feels like it's laid out quite well as well. The graceful motions across the page deliver the right kind of impact as a great many different personalities assert themselves in a very, very big crossover issue. There's a lot going on. And it all seems really impressive.
Back in the 1980s, Uncanny X-Men writer Chris Claremont crafted a storyline in which Rachel Summers (Jean Grey and Scott Summers’ daughter from a dark future) had traveled back in time to the mid-1980s. She was forced to adjust to what appeared to be an alternate timeline past. The current X-Men of Apocalypse storyline envisions a situation in which a whole group of characters from a dark future find themselves in the current present of the Marvel Universe. It’s a bigger mess than the one Rachel had to deal with, but it’s got a lot of potential.
