False Hoods
Credits:
Joe Pruett (writer), Bernard Chang (penciler), Andy Owens & Rod
Ramos (inkers), Hi-Fi Designs (colors), Comicraft (letters)
Summary:
In Egypt, Cable leads a group of rebels against the Living Pharaoh.
He’s joined by his wife, Aliya. After invading his sanctuary, Cable’s
team is ambushed by Living Pharaoh and the amalgamation of Cyclops and
Apocalypse. The Living Pharaoh boasts that he allowed some of the
mutants to live in order to serve his purposes. Cable realizes that
this reality is a fraud, and that Aliya is truly dead. He awakens in
Apocalypse’s lair, questioning if Apocalypse can ever be defeated.
Continuity Notes:
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According to Cable, Apocalypse still maintains some of the Twelve’s combined reality-warping powers after merging with Cyclops. He’s created this new reality in order to “recreate the Twelve circuit.”
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The alternate reality designs on cover don’t exactly match the ones inside the issue. Sunfire’s design is entirely different, as he merely dresses like a samurai inside.
Review:
This is a good example of how badly Marvel misunderstood the
initial popularity of “Age of Apocalypse.” Overlooking that the
quasi-sequel “Ages of Apocalypse” lacked the scale and issue count to
truly sell the new reality, it fails because it just assumes that new
realities are automatically interesting. If that were true, What If…?
would have never been cancelled. “Age of Apocalypse” connected with
readers because they had never seen dark dystopia done with such
conviction in the X-titles, and because it’s actually fun to discern the
new continuity. Without Xavier to found the X-Men, how would the life
of every mutant in the Marvel Universe be different? You could play
that game for hours.
This
storyline doesn’t give us a firm breaking off point for the new
continuity, which leads to each chapter reading like random alternate
realities that the writers are killing time in this month. Apparently,
there’s nothing more exciting for Cable to do in this new reality than
lead soldiers into battle, and then get captured in time for the issue
to be over. There’s some effort put into selling his feelings for his
late wife, but the scenes lack any real emotion (and Jeph Loeb already
did a similar bit earlier in his run.) The only redeeming element of
the issue is Bernard Chang’s art, which doesn’t present any brilliant
alternate reality makeovers, but is still well-constructed and nice to
look at.
1 comment:
this storyline doesn’t give us a firm breaking off point for the new continuity, which leads to each chapter reading like random alternate realities that the writers are killing time in this month.
And that's pretty much my issue with this "crossover" in a nutshell. I spent way more time trying to figure out what the point of divergence was, if it was the same for each reality, if so, how, etc. than actually giving a toss about the stories themselves.
Just a jumbled mess all around.
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