Every Time Marvel Comics Has Returned To The Age Of Apocalypse

Last week Marvel Comics announced they were once again returning to the “Age of Apocalypse” in X-Men of Apocalypse for the event’s 30th anniversary. But it’s far from the first time that the publisher has returned to the smash hit storyline.

When the “Age of Apocalypse” hit, Marvel knew it was a big deal. After all, they were cancelling the entirety of their most popular line, relaunching them in an alternate reality post-Apocalypse hellscape, and telling a single epic across about 5 months. Even reading the oral history of the 1995 crossover event, it doesn’t quite seem like anyone quite knew how big a deal it was going to be.

Regardless, the crossover was a massive hit, but it was a very close-ended story. After all the story ended with the world coming to an end. But this is comics and no there’s no hit story that couldn’t be mined for more later.

Nate Grey

Not really a return but a continuation, Nate Grey was the singular character of the 8 Age of Apocalypse titles Marvel published whose story continued into the Prime Earth (AKA Earth-616). Though essentially Cable’s twin, the two were entirely different individuals. Though Marvel tried for nearly several years, Nate never really had a purpose, which kept him from fulfilling any potential he had.

He’s since transformed into a messianic figure, but still not quite meeting his potential. We’ll get into other continuations in a moment, but worth calling out Nate first since I’ll refer to him a bunch.

Flashbacks

The first actual return to the universe came in the form of flashbacks. Within a year of the story’s end we got three Tales of the Age of Apocalypse one-shots that told lost stories of the dystopian reality- Age of Apocalypse: The Chosen in 1995, Tales from the Age of Apocalypse: By The Light in 1996, and Tales from the Age of Apocalypse: Sinister Bloodlines in 1997. In Marvel’s Flashback month (every title that participated had a -1 numbered issue), X-Man #-1 went back to the AOA in a tale similar to the one-shots.

Probably the biggest of the bunch was the Blink miniseries. Blink was probably the biggest breakout character of the event. In Marvel 616, Clarice Ferguson was a character created to be fridged, but her design and powers caught readers’ attention. She returned in Astonishing X-Men and was an instant fan favorite. The character was an early internet favorite, with #BringBackBlink trending before hashtags and trends were even a thing.

The Blink miniseries told an untold story of Clarice’s early days with the X-Men. Through an accident she ended up in the AOA’s Negative Zone and fighting a war that wasn’t her. It also revealed her first love was Earth-295’s (sexy) Annihillus. Yes, you read that right. And it led right into another story we’ll talk about in a minute.

Also, I’m not totally sure when the AOA got the official designation Earth-295, but there it is.

Kinda-Sorta-AOA

While there have been returns to the AOA, there have also been multiple stories inspired by the original- both using the original event name and its own.

Using the original name, there was a 2006 What If…? one shot creating a new Age of Apocalypse. For a few years, Marvel did a one-a-year What If…? event with a unifying theme, and that year it was all old Marvel events, like Civil War and Spider-Man: The Other. There was also the 2015 Secret Wars series Age of Apocalypse that was written by original AOA architect Fabian Niceiza and was incredibly close to, but not a direct continuation of the original story.

As far as other names, there’s Ages of Apocalypse, a loose crossover in which every X-title explored its own dystopian timeline for a single month following the Apocalypse: The Twelve crossover. Age of Ultron was an Avengers-fronted take on the time travel caused dystopia. There’s Age of X, in which Legion altered the timeline yet again, and the last 100 mutants on earth are fighting a losing battle in the last mutant stronghold on earth (but not all is as it seems).

And most recently, there’s Age of X-Man which found Nate Grey pulling the vast majority of the X-Men into a pocket dimension just before House of X/Powers of X.

Continuations

There’s two categories that I can think of within the continuations- character based, and full on returns to the AOA.

As far as character continuations, there’s several both in Earth-616 and outside of it. Nate Grey was not the only Age of Apocalypse survivor to cross into Earth-616 though. The villains Sugar Man, Holocaust and Dark Beast joined Nate on Marvel’s Prime Earth, each arriving before the present day. Holocaust (later renamed Nemesis for obvious reasons) we placed in suspended animation, but Sugar Man and Dark Beast were retconned into Marvel history.

Sugar Man became a power-behind-the-throne type for all the horrors of Genosha. Having a mutant geneticist do it all sort of watered down the apartheid metaphor of Genosha. Meanwhile, Dark Beast because a constant evil presence in the background of X-Men books. Notably in the past, he was tied to Emma Frost in Generation X #-1, and replaced Earth-616 Hank McCoy for a period around the Onslaught crossover.

The other two most notable character continuations are Blink and Sabretooth. At the end of the Blink miniseries, Clarice found herself pulled away from the destruction of her Earth and transplanted into a desert wasteland. At that point, she was recruited as the leader of the Exiles, a team of interdimensional heroes who jumped from timeline to timeline fixing them. Before the end of the first year of the series, it was revealed that another Exiles team, called Weapon X, existed and they were led by A Sabretooth… who was actually Clarice’s adoptive father Victor Creed, one of the few noble, heroic versions of Creed in the Marvel multiverse. Creed would eventually defect and join the Exiles later in the series’ run.

As far as continuing the actual Age of Apocalypse timeline… well… hoo-boy.

At the ten year anniversary of the event, Marvel went all in. There was a continuation miniseries, titled X-Men: Age of Apocalypse from artist Chris Bachalo and rising star writer Akira Yoshida (wonder whatever happened to him). The Exiles spent a storyline back “home” in issues #60 and #61 at around the same time.

Then several years later, Uncanny X-Force kicked off the Dark Angel Saga, which found a possessed Warren Worthington trying to take over the Age of Apocalypse. That led to several characters from Earth-295 moving to Earth-616- Iceman in Astonishing X-Men and Nightcrawler in Uncanny X-Force. Simultaneously, Age of Apocalypse launched, featuring an ongoing story of X-Men and human freedom fighters battling a new Apocalypse- Logan. That series seemingly ignored other continuations, such as featuring Sabretooth with no explanation of how he returned home from his Exiles adventures. Those stories came together in a crossover called X-Termination that brought the original Earth-295 to an end… more or less, for now.

So, thirty years in, it’s a great time to celebrate the Age of Apocalypse… but it’s sure not the first time.