Joel Phillips
Jan 11, 2005, 11:11 pm
<img src="http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/images/logos/cfdlogo.jpg" align=left border=0 alt="Comics For Dummies logo">By Raul Grau, RJacknite@aol.com
The Aged Apocalypse
The year was 1995. The Macarena was playing at every senior prom across the country, Patrick Swayze made his return to the big screen dressed as a terribly ugly woman, and Marvel canceled their entire X-line of X-titles. Legion, the schizophrenic and often comatose son of Professor Xavier, decided to do some impromptu time traveling, and ended up accidentally killing his father. It turns out that when you kill your own daddy long before you are ever conceived, that creates certain problems, especially when your dad was all set to later found the team which represented a sizable chunk of the Marvel Universe. No Xavier meant no X-Men, and that opened the door for the Age of Apocalypse. Five months later, everything went right back to normal, with barely a mention of it from then on out... until this March, when Marvel revisits AOA, and we all know that revisits are always a good idea.
The premise for Age of Apocalypse was simple enough... well, as simple as superpowered, schizophrenic, time-traveling, walking paradoxes usually are. Legion had the bright idea that preemptively killing Magneto, the chief foe of his father's X-Men, would create a better world for all mutants (himself included). Unfortunately, Charles Xavier has always been the self-sacrificing type, and he saved the man who would be Magneto at the cost of his own life. Apocalypse, the Darwinian immortal mutant, noticed the power display of the temporal assassination and sped up his world conquering plan accordingly. Fast forward twenty years, and America is under the iron fist of Apocalypse, and not the oversized glove of Disney.
It turns out that even without the influence of Xavier, the X-Men would still find their way into being. Sure, Wolverine went by the name Weapon X, Gambit lead the X-Ternals, and Colossus (a giant metallic man) wore a mask, but these X-Men were pretty much the same as their mainstream counterparts, just with cooler costumes, improved powers (so, basically, Xavier was holding them back), and the freewheeling personalities that only seem to come with alternate universe stories. A plot device called the M'Kraan Crystal was slowly wiping out reality, the surviving humans were plotting the nuclear annihilation of Apocalypse's empire (pretty much, all of North America), and Bishop (bald for the first time) was screaming about how history was not quite right. The X-folks tried to deal with all of these various annoyances, quite a few of them died along the way, and they finally succeeded in unraveling their own timeline, just as the nukes were falling over New York. End of AOA.
The Age did have a few (very few) lasting effects. Holocaust, Sugar Man, and Dark Beast, arguably the three least interesting characters in their entire universe, managed to stow away to the regular X-books. Another new face, Nate Grey, the X-Man, kept his series going long after the other Agers faded, but later lost the battle with cancellation. However, the Age of Apocalypse itself was over, having began (Legion screws up badly), middled (the X-Men do stuff, almost all of which is rendered moot), and ended (lots and lots of nukes). This self-contained tale had been told, which is why the return seems so perplexing. Of course, this is not the first time an alternate timeline has been strip-mined for future material... though just look at how those turned out.
Let us start with Kingdom Come, still remembered fondly as one of the best miniseries of the 90s, not just for the fully painted interior art by Alex Ross, but also for its (mostly) innovative storyline (Squadron Supreme who?) and expansive cast (but mostly for the fully painted interior art by Alex Ross). In this mildly dystopian future, the up and coming generation of heroes were all of the grim n' gritty sort, engaging in pointless street battles that left property damaged and civilians killed... of course, the older set of heroes does the same exact thing, but they at least feel a little bad about it. Superman had ended his Neverending Battle years earlier, but cuts his retirement short in order to bring together all of the heroes who agreed with him, and imprison all of the ones who do not. Batman, on the other hand, did not care much for that plan, and put together his own private superpowered army to take out Superman's private superpowered army.
In the end, a handy atomic explosion narrowed the list of superpowered beings significantly, and the survivors decided to no longer place themselves above the likes of normal men, giving up their masks to take on a more personal kind of world saving. The epilogue added to the collected editions of KC provided a fine coda, with the codename abandoned Clark and Diana asking the beleaguered Bruce to be the godfather of their expected child. There were plans for a Waid/Ross sequel of sorts, set in the modern DC universe, with the heroes attempting to prevent the forthcoming carnage, but the story of Kindgom Come had been fully told with a clear beginning, middle, and end. There was no need to revisit this future... so of course DC did.
Just over two years later, The Kingdom arrived, a skip week event which seemed to do everything it possibly could to erase Kingdom Come as well as another much-heralded miniseries. Ross wisely distanced himself from the project, where all of the heroes were back in their spandex, including quite a few who really should have been far too dead to do much fighting. Now, granted, we never did see the irradiated corpses of Power Woman, Flash IV, and Zatara, but KC was pretty apparent with the whole 'who lived?' thing, and then there was Hawkman, whose irradiated corpse we did actually see, so that one should be a little harder to get around.
Of course, perhaps I am being too harsh... perhaps this timeline did indeed need even more costumed heroes added to it, like Offspring, the pliable son of Plastic Man, and perhaps having a trio of heroes flying around the world to announce the birth of his son does nothing to lessen Superman's proclamation that the heroes not set themselves above society, but The Kingdom did the one thing that no DC series should be able to do and get away with... it made a mockery out of Crisis. Crisis on Infinite Earths set up the rules for the modern DC universe (those rules, by the way, were less timelines, less Flash's, and more aging), but The Kingdom decided that all of those erased universes and Elseworlds can feel free to interact with the present whenever they felt like, though the magic of Hypertime. Some people (for example, me) regarded Hypertime as a new excuse for lazy writers to ignore continuity, but, at the very least, it made the unnecessary return to the Kingdom Comeverse all the more disappointing.
Ten years before KC, DC had released another grim, mutant-filled look at the future, where another long-retired titan remembered his neverending war on crime, but this time The Dark Knight Returns. Here, Batman had hung up his pointy-eared cowl a decade earlier, but an escalating crime rate (and a maniacal Reagan in the White House) brings back the Bat. He finds a new, biologically female Robin in form of eager young Carrie Keane Kelley, whose parents were woefully unaware of where their daughter was, and the pair set about curtailing the 'rampaging mutant' population of Gotham City. Superman, hero turned government lackey, ends up in a life or death struggle with the loose cannon of a caped crusader, a battle which Batman both wins and dies from. Of course, his death, like all events in the DC Universe, was comprehensively planned out by Batman, and the tale ends with Bruce, Carrie, and their happy-go-lucky mutant army plotting their future.
DKR may have been a bit open-ended with its ending, but readers received enough closure to feel satisfied, and were allowed to let their imaginations run wild, dreaming of what the Bat-army would do next... of course, imagination is overrated, so, fifteen years later, The Dark Knight Strikes Again. Only three years had passed in DKR time, but Carrie had been promoted from Robin to Catgirl, the new President was digital, and nude women delivered the news (ok, maybe that future is not all bad). The Bat-forces were finally ready to make their move, beginning with the collection of other former heroes to aid in their society-toppling plans, and therein lies the Crisis (figuratively speaking).
Now, there was nothing intrinsically wrong with DK2 (though I doubt a single person exists who prefers it to the original), but it did create problems where none were before. DKR gave the impression that Superman had given himself over to governmental servitude in order to protect the other surviving (and hiding) heroes, but here we see other folks operating publicly in full spandex (or, in Wonder Woman's case, full metal brassiere). DKR could have been the actual factual future of the Batman (not that DC would ever let him age dramatically, but still), and perhaps having Hal Jordan as Green Lantern and Barry Allen as Flash was fun for Frank Miller, but for the readers it creates an Identity Crisis (figuratively speaking). I will not even get into the deaging of Green Arrow or the dystopian Plastic Man... some things are just better not being ranted about.
DC is certainly not the only publisher to routinely fast foward their characters, and Age of Apocalypse was not the first dystopia visited upon the X-books either. That distinction goes to Days of the Future Past, a tense confused world where robotic Sentinels had killed all non-mutant superheroes as well as all the less popular mutants, leaving only the most popular mutants to fill government-sponsored prison camps. This future resulted from the assassination of bigoted Senator Robert Kelly by the Brotherhood of Magneto-less but still Evil Mutants, so Kate Pryde (the grown-up, name changed version of Kitty), projected back in time by currently nonexistent Cyclops/Jean-spawn Rachel Summers, assisted the X-Men in foiling the plot, thereby erasing that terrible possible future. In just two issues, the story was over... or so it seemed.
Four years later, Rachel Summers wandered her way into the modern era, proving to be pretty spry for someone who no longer existed. It seemed that the Days of the Future Past timeline was still a possibility, just as long as any number of factors still occurred, including (but not limited to) the death of Senator Kelly at a later date and any sort of progress in the Sentinel project. As the X-verse grew, the visits to dystopia town became more frequent, as every added character, be they a new New Mutant or Excaliburite, was shown in their DotFP form. 1990 even brought Days of the Future Present, which went on for four whole annuals about how much of a nut an adult Franklin Richards could be, and introduced Ahab, who was like a mutant-hunting Melville character. Can Days of the Future Pluperfect be far behind?
Of course, not every alternate timeline needs to remain isolated by design. Earth X contained the seeds of its own sequels (as well as a whole lot of other seeds, seemingly one per person). Guardians of the Galaxy, Legion of Super-Heroes, and the 2099 line all fall within the category of ongoing, if alternate, futures (and, coincidentally enough, are all far enough away in their respective futures to make appearances by modern day characters unlikely). So why is it that some timelines can be played in repeatedly, while others need to erect heavy fencing to protect their integrity?
Being mainstream comic book readers, we all know that these characters will outlive each of us, remaining young as long as their sliding timelines will allow. Barring divine or editorial intervention, they will never have a future, and simply spend their days in the eternal present of the spotless superhero. Therefore, there is a profound freedom in an alternate timeline, where characters can change, grow, and die (sometimes all in the same issue), and writers are allowed to break from the serial format, if just for a miniseries, to tell a story with an actual ending. This is not necessarily a better way to tell stories than the serial method (yes, it is), but it has different rules.
By the way, this type of self-contained storytelling is not just inherent to alternate timelines, as you might have noticed it in your Watchmens, your Sandmans, and your Bones. It shows up whenever a creator is allowed to tell their story, in full, and then to put their characters away, hopefully in a place where no one else (not even themselves) can ever reach them again. Honestly, as neat as you might think it could be, do you really want to see a sequel to Watchmen? Or how about The Punisher Kills the Marvel Universe... Again, The Other Last Avengers Story, or The X-Men: Even More Ended?
I am not saying that the return to the Age of Apocalypse will necessarily be bad (though it probably will be), but it will invariably cheapen the original work. AOA has already been revisited, but through stories set in its own past. Neil Gaiman occasionally returns to Sandman, constructing some new, brilliant, but untold tale from the earlier years of Morpheus (immortals, by nature, have lots of untold tales), and that does nothing to lessen the established end to the story. It is only when creators try to expand upon the already finished that both the new and the classic work suffer.
People, have we learned nothing from The Kingdom?
<center><hr width=75%></center>
Raul Grau has a peculiar affinity for stories set in alternate timelines. This disorder probably stems from an early childhood incident, where he wondered aloud about what Mister Rodgers would be like as an unrelenting cyborg killer with comfortable shoes.
<center><hr width=75%></center>
The opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the writer, and are not reflective of ComiX-Fan or its other staff in general.
The Aged Apocalypse
The year was 1995. The Macarena was playing at every senior prom across the country, Patrick Swayze made his return to the big screen dressed as a terribly ugly woman, and Marvel canceled their entire X-line of X-titles. Legion, the schizophrenic and often comatose son of Professor Xavier, decided to do some impromptu time traveling, and ended up accidentally killing his father. It turns out that when you kill your own daddy long before you are ever conceived, that creates certain problems, especially when your dad was all set to later found the team which represented a sizable chunk of the Marvel Universe. No Xavier meant no X-Men, and that opened the door for the Age of Apocalypse. Five months later, everything went right back to normal, with barely a mention of it from then on out... until this March, when Marvel revisits AOA, and we all know that revisits are always a good idea.
The premise for Age of Apocalypse was simple enough... well, as simple as superpowered, schizophrenic, time-traveling, walking paradoxes usually are. Legion had the bright idea that preemptively killing Magneto, the chief foe of his father's X-Men, would create a better world for all mutants (himself included). Unfortunately, Charles Xavier has always been the self-sacrificing type, and he saved the man who would be Magneto at the cost of his own life. Apocalypse, the Darwinian immortal mutant, noticed the power display of the temporal assassination and sped up his world conquering plan accordingly. Fast forward twenty years, and America is under the iron fist of Apocalypse, and not the oversized glove of Disney.
It turns out that even without the influence of Xavier, the X-Men would still find their way into being. Sure, Wolverine went by the name Weapon X, Gambit lead the X-Ternals, and Colossus (a giant metallic man) wore a mask, but these X-Men were pretty much the same as their mainstream counterparts, just with cooler costumes, improved powers (so, basically, Xavier was holding them back), and the freewheeling personalities that only seem to come with alternate universe stories. A plot device called the M'Kraan Crystal was slowly wiping out reality, the surviving humans were plotting the nuclear annihilation of Apocalypse's empire (pretty much, all of North America), and Bishop (bald for the first time) was screaming about how history was not quite right. The X-folks tried to deal with all of these various annoyances, quite a few of them died along the way, and they finally succeeded in unraveling their own timeline, just as the nukes were falling over New York. End of AOA.
The Age did have a few (very few) lasting effects. Holocaust, Sugar Man, and Dark Beast, arguably the three least interesting characters in their entire universe, managed to stow away to the regular X-books. Another new face, Nate Grey, the X-Man, kept his series going long after the other Agers faded, but later lost the battle with cancellation. However, the Age of Apocalypse itself was over, having began (Legion screws up badly), middled (the X-Men do stuff, almost all of which is rendered moot), and ended (lots and lots of nukes). This self-contained tale had been told, which is why the return seems so perplexing. Of course, this is not the first time an alternate timeline has been strip-mined for future material... though just look at how those turned out.
Let us start with Kingdom Come, still remembered fondly as one of the best miniseries of the 90s, not just for the fully painted interior art by Alex Ross, but also for its (mostly) innovative storyline (Squadron Supreme who?) and expansive cast (but mostly for the fully painted interior art by Alex Ross). In this mildly dystopian future, the up and coming generation of heroes were all of the grim n' gritty sort, engaging in pointless street battles that left property damaged and civilians killed... of course, the older set of heroes does the same exact thing, but they at least feel a little bad about it. Superman had ended his Neverending Battle years earlier, but cuts his retirement short in order to bring together all of the heroes who agreed with him, and imprison all of the ones who do not. Batman, on the other hand, did not care much for that plan, and put together his own private superpowered army to take out Superman's private superpowered army.
In the end, a handy atomic explosion narrowed the list of superpowered beings significantly, and the survivors decided to no longer place themselves above the likes of normal men, giving up their masks to take on a more personal kind of world saving. The epilogue added to the collected editions of KC provided a fine coda, with the codename abandoned Clark and Diana asking the beleaguered Bruce to be the godfather of their expected child. There were plans for a Waid/Ross sequel of sorts, set in the modern DC universe, with the heroes attempting to prevent the forthcoming carnage, but the story of Kindgom Come had been fully told with a clear beginning, middle, and end. There was no need to revisit this future... so of course DC did.
Just over two years later, The Kingdom arrived, a skip week event which seemed to do everything it possibly could to erase Kingdom Come as well as another much-heralded miniseries. Ross wisely distanced himself from the project, where all of the heroes were back in their spandex, including quite a few who really should have been far too dead to do much fighting. Now, granted, we never did see the irradiated corpses of Power Woman, Flash IV, and Zatara, but KC was pretty apparent with the whole 'who lived?' thing, and then there was Hawkman, whose irradiated corpse we did actually see, so that one should be a little harder to get around.
Of course, perhaps I am being too harsh... perhaps this timeline did indeed need even more costumed heroes added to it, like Offspring, the pliable son of Plastic Man, and perhaps having a trio of heroes flying around the world to announce the birth of his son does nothing to lessen Superman's proclamation that the heroes not set themselves above society, but The Kingdom did the one thing that no DC series should be able to do and get away with... it made a mockery out of Crisis. Crisis on Infinite Earths set up the rules for the modern DC universe (those rules, by the way, were less timelines, less Flash's, and more aging), but The Kingdom decided that all of those erased universes and Elseworlds can feel free to interact with the present whenever they felt like, though the magic of Hypertime. Some people (for example, me) regarded Hypertime as a new excuse for lazy writers to ignore continuity, but, at the very least, it made the unnecessary return to the Kingdom Comeverse all the more disappointing.
Ten years before KC, DC had released another grim, mutant-filled look at the future, where another long-retired titan remembered his neverending war on crime, but this time The Dark Knight Returns. Here, Batman had hung up his pointy-eared cowl a decade earlier, but an escalating crime rate (and a maniacal Reagan in the White House) brings back the Bat. He finds a new, biologically female Robin in form of eager young Carrie Keane Kelley, whose parents were woefully unaware of where their daughter was, and the pair set about curtailing the 'rampaging mutant' population of Gotham City. Superman, hero turned government lackey, ends up in a life or death struggle with the loose cannon of a caped crusader, a battle which Batman both wins and dies from. Of course, his death, like all events in the DC Universe, was comprehensively planned out by Batman, and the tale ends with Bruce, Carrie, and their happy-go-lucky mutant army plotting their future.
DKR may have been a bit open-ended with its ending, but readers received enough closure to feel satisfied, and were allowed to let their imaginations run wild, dreaming of what the Bat-army would do next... of course, imagination is overrated, so, fifteen years later, The Dark Knight Strikes Again. Only three years had passed in DKR time, but Carrie had been promoted from Robin to Catgirl, the new President was digital, and nude women delivered the news (ok, maybe that future is not all bad). The Bat-forces were finally ready to make their move, beginning with the collection of other former heroes to aid in their society-toppling plans, and therein lies the Crisis (figuratively speaking).
Now, there was nothing intrinsically wrong with DK2 (though I doubt a single person exists who prefers it to the original), but it did create problems where none were before. DKR gave the impression that Superman had given himself over to governmental servitude in order to protect the other surviving (and hiding) heroes, but here we see other folks operating publicly in full spandex (or, in Wonder Woman's case, full metal brassiere). DKR could have been the actual factual future of the Batman (not that DC would ever let him age dramatically, but still), and perhaps having Hal Jordan as Green Lantern and Barry Allen as Flash was fun for Frank Miller, but for the readers it creates an Identity Crisis (figuratively speaking). I will not even get into the deaging of Green Arrow or the dystopian Plastic Man... some things are just better not being ranted about.
DC is certainly not the only publisher to routinely fast foward their characters, and Age of Apocalypse was not the first dystopia visited upon the X-books either. That distinction goes to Days of the Future Past, a tense confused world where robotic Sentinels had killed all non-mutant superheroes as well as all the less popular mutants, leaving only the most popular mutants to fill government-sponsored prison camps. This future resulted from the assassination of bigoted Senator Robert Kelly by the Brotherhood of Magneto-less but still Evil Mutants, so Kate Pryde (the grown-up, name changed version of Kitty), projected back in time by currently nonexistent Cyclops/Jean-spawn Rachel Summers, assisted the X-Men in foiling the plot, thereby erasing that terrible possible future. In just two issues, the story was over... or so it seemed.
Four years later, Rachel Summers wandered her way into the modern era, proving to be pretty spry for someone who no longer existed. It seemed that the Days of the Future Past timeline was still a possibility, just as long as any number of factors still occurred, including (but not limited to) the death of Senator Kelly at a later date and any sort of progress in the Sentinel project. As the X-verse grew, the visits to dystopia town became more frequent, as every added character, be they a new New Mutant or Excaliburite, was shown in their DotFP form. 1990 even brought Days of the Future Present, which went on for four whole annuals about how much of a nut an adult Franklin Richards could be, and introduced Ahab, who was like a mutant-hunting Melville character. Can Days of the Future Pluperfect be far behind?
Of course, not every alternate timeline needs to remain isolated by design. Earth X contained the seeds of its own sequels (as well as a whole lot of other seeds, seemingly one per person). Guardians of the Galaxy, Legion of Super-Heroes, and the 2099 line all fall within the category of ongoing, if alternate, futures (and, coincidentally enough, are all far enough away in their respective futures to make appearances by modern day characters unlikely). So why is it that some timelines can be played in repeatedly, while others need to erect heavy fencing to protect their integrity?
Being mainstream comic book readers, we all know that these characters will outlive each of us, remaining young as long as their sliding timelines will allow. Barring divine or editorial intervention, they will never have a future, and simply spend their days in the eternal present of the spotless superhero. Therefore, there is a profound freedom in an alternate timeline, where characters can change, grow, and die (sometimes all in the same issue), and writers are allowed to break from the serial format, if just for a miniseries, to tell a story with an actual ending. This is not necessarily a better way to tell stories than the serial method (yes, it is), but it has different rules.
By the way, this type of self-contained storytelling is not just inherent to alternate timelines, as you might have noticed it in your Watchmens, your Sandmans, and your Bones. It shows up whenever a creator is allowed to tell their story, in full, and then to put their characters away, hopefully in a place where no one else (not even themselves) can ever reach them again. Honestly, as neat as you might think it could be, do you really want to see a sequel to Watchmen? Or how about The Punisher Kills the Marvel Universe... Again, The Other Last Avengers Story, or The X-Men: Even More Ended?
I am not saying that the return to the Age of Apocalypse will necessarily be bad (though it probably will be), but it will invariably cheapen the original work. AOA has already been revisited, but through stories set in its own past. Neil Gaiman occasionally returns to Sandman, constructing some new, brilliant, but untold tale from the earlier years of Morpheus (immortals, by nature, have lots of untold tales), and that does nothing to lessen the established end to the story. It is only when creators try to expand upon the already finished that both the new and the classic work suffer.
People, have we learned nothing from The Kingdom?
<center><hr width=75%></center>
Raul Grau has a peculiar affinity for stories set in alternate timelines. This disorder probably stems from an early childhood incident, where he wondered aloud about what Mister Rodgers would be like as an unrelenting cyborg killer with comfortable shoes.
<center><hr width=75%></center>
The opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the writer, and are not reflective of ComiX-Fan or its other staff in general.