[Dr Kain]

It took me longer than I had anticipated, but I just finished reading Age of Apocalypse.

I highly enjoyed it. It wasn't perfect and there were areas that didn't make sense due to poor artwork and story telling (especially Generation Next), but the end product was very well done. I loved getting to see what the universe was like if Apocalypse had taken it over. The different personalities of the characters were interesting, but it was Beast that shocked me the most. He was completely different compared to everyone else. I would really love to have seen him have his own miniseries in that universe. Cyclops was kind of bad ass, but I do feel it was quite convenient that him and Jean still had something together. My favorite character in this universe is probably Nate. I really enjoyed his story the most and he was an interesting charcter despite it not being possible for him to have been born given that Madelynn never existed.

On the negative side, I do wish there was actually some backstory to Holocaust and the Sugarman, especially the Sugarman. I mean, Holocaust can get away with just being the son of Apocalypse, although I would like to know more about him. Is that his body or just a suit of armor? If that is really just a suite of armor, what happened to his body? As for the Sugarman, I just don't get him or the Generation Next comic. Who the hell were any of these people? What was up with the dude with the long hair and nose piercing? Also, Sugarman jumped into the Mkraan Crystal and we don't see his fate, he just disappears. God did he suck. I feel like he was created to be a Clown wannabe even though he was no where near the level of awesomeness that is Violator.

There is a lot more I could talk about, but I'm still digesting it all, so I'm going to end it here. Overall, I give it a 3.5/5 stars and I feel like my adventure into the X-Men universe is now truly complete. Of course I'm not going to stop there though as I do have a friends copy of House of M sitting on my shelf to read along with those two Uncanny books I picked up for a few dollars a few months ago.