X-Men #186
May 19, 2006 by     Comments Off on X-Men #186    Posted In: Reviews

“Blood of Apocalypse, Part 5: The Battle of the East River”
Marvel Comics – July, 2006 – $2.99 – Color – T+
Writer: Peter Milligan – Art: Salvador Larroca – Cover: Salvador Larroca

If you’ve read my latest review of Cable & Deadpool, you know I hate the whole X-Force era (aka Rob Liefield era) of the X-Universe. Then you must know I didn’t like this arc, concerning Apocalypse’s return (again, for like the fifth time). He’s a boring character, and it ends up the same way every…single….time. I will give $100 to the guy who kills him off. Then if some writer brings him back, they owe me $1000.

Anyway, Apocalypse is back and he wants to be the messiah of the mutants, because “they need him more than ever” after the events of M-Day. He recruits his four horsemen as usual (Gazer, Sunfire, Gambit and Polaris), there are some struggles and sutff, then it’s over. Utterly boring. Milligan tries to make things interesting, and I appreciate that with such a tired and overdone character, but it really doesn’t work. He brings in some new fancy sentinels to help, but why would we want that? We’re reading X-Men, we don’t like sentinels… and why are the X-Men ok with newer, better MUTANT-KILLING MACHINES?! I don’t get it. Also, it was interesting that he brought in the New Avengers to help, and even moreso that he put Wolverine on their team.

Anyway, after all that I was indifferent… Apocalypse didn’t die, but he got sent away somewhere for a while, so that’s alright. Then in the back-up story right after that, it shows that he got all this power from the celestials, and owed them a debt sometime in the future. Looks like that time has come. Looks like Apocalypse might be back sooner than I thought five pages ago. Looks like I’m kinda pissed.

All in all, a terrible story arc, but at least I got to look at Salvador Larroca’s creamy, beautiful art the whole time.

Writing: 7.5 – Story: 3.5 – Art: 9.5 – Cover: 7.5
Overall: 7.0

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