Age of Apocalypse review part III

Astonishing X-Men told the tail of X-Men co-leader Rogue, who went to the Midwest to stop the culling of hundreds of thousands of humans, by the hands of Holocaust, Apocalypse' son. Holocaust is cursed to live within life support body armor, which also serves as battle armor. Nemesis, as he used to be called, when he was human, discovered Magneto's secret base on Windegoo mountains, or something like that, and slaughtered all the remaining students, while Magneto, and his (at that time) fledling X-Men were on a mission, again, saving humans somewhere. So it also happened that Nemesis killed the scarlet witch, Magneto's daughter. Mags was pissed. He destroyed Nemesis, but did not kill him. Somehow Nemesis was given the life support body armor that he now wears as Holocaust. When Scarlet Witch died, Rogue was by her side; this gives partial credence, to me, for her 'present day' family with Magneto, but it is also sillily disturbing.

Right off the bat in Issue One Magneto makes reference to the whole Bishop thing. That, I will explain later, keep it in your mind though. Oh, and Joe Madureira (has his last name conspicuously absent from the title page so I can't tell if I spelled it right) draws this absolutely seminal rendition of Apocalypse sitting at his throne upon a monument comprised entirely of stories and stories of human bones. One of my favorite comic images of all time. The rest of Issue One further elaborates on Magneto's choices to dispatch his mutant army in various locations (i.e. each other spinoff title) and why he is sending his A Game team of mutants on a practically suicidal mission to free a legion of constrained and tortured humans.

So then we move on to Sabretooth and Blink, which is oddly reminiscent of the relationship between Wolverine and Jubilee. 'tooth needs Blink to transport him to where Holocaust is, and everyone knows it will probably lead to Sabretooth's imminent death, but he goes anyway. He goads Holocaust into revealing the hidden location of the Infinite processing plant (the plant where live humans are genetically altered and composited to be Apocalypse' super-soldier-mutant pawns), hearing this, Sabretooth lets Wildchild, his weirdo, semi-homoerotic, partner loose from his chain, to go relay the info to the rest of the X-Men, 'Tooth and Holo fight. Holo kills 'tooth, Not.

Issue Three, the rest of the team infiltrates the Infinite processing plant compound, and Holocaust kills Sabretooth again. Not.

Issue Four, Blink kills Sabretooth....not, the X-Men free all the humans. Here though, we also learn that Apocalypse has captured Magneto, and he and Rogue's son, take a guess, Charles.

This is the cool part of reading it this particular way. Though my review of the last two issues makes it seem trite, we have now learned the format of each AoA series. You must remember, though I never stated, there were One-Shot issues that bookend all the events of each spinoff issue, and the bookends spawn each issue's specific direction and lay the foundations to tie each issues cliffhanger together. Take a deep breath. Reconvene at a later date.