Age of Apocalypse 004

Writer - David Lapham
Artist - Roberto De La Torre/Renato Arlem
Colorist - Lee Loughridge
Letterer - Cory Petit

This series is my second favorite post apocalyptic dystopian comic series next to The Walking Dead. It does not play at being edgy like DC's New 52, it outright is hardcore edgy comics. Never does an issue arrive that is not packed to the gills with blood. One of the coolest things about it is pretty much what was one of the coolest thing about this series when it came out in the 90s. We get to see some of our favorite characters in a dark mirror. Like Star Trek's Mirror Universe. Often the bad guys in the regular universe are now the heroes and the heroes in the normal universe are now the big bad scaries. There are some characters that are already standout favorites of mine. Jean Grey and Prophet. They are just oozing badass. If you read last month's issue, you know how much of a BAMF Jean is now. She sweep kicked some dude! Top ranked fighter for sure!

This issue dealt mostly with Fiend's capture. She had killed Abyss upon his resurrection and destroyed some necessary plasma lines to Beast's equipment before being caught. Elsewhere Goodnight is trying to convince Bruce Banner to become The Thing and help his friends out. Without giving away too much of the issue, Prophet shows up and does what he normally does, which is show his complete genius where tactics are concerned. He also intentionally brings a mutant back to life, which surprised me a great deal but it seems to me that out of all of the humans, he is one of the few that have no hate for mutants as a species, seeing them only as humans with power. The mutant he brought back to life is one of my favorite lesser known mutants in the 616 universe (that is the normal universe to you comic noobs). As far as choices go, this is probably the best one considering the mutant's power set.

I was a little let down in the issue due to the cover. It implied that we were going to have a major smack down, drag out fight between Weapon Omega (Wolverine) and The Thing (Hulk) but all we get is a few panels. The fight could barely be called that. I know we have seen Wolverine vs Hulk a million times so maybe the writers just felt like it was so overdone that we could just skip it, but in my opinion, it is overdone because people love seeing it.

That is really my only complaint. The art is fantastic in a dirty, gritty kind of way and the plot is not overly complex but leaves a few things in the dark so we want to come back next month and see what happens. I honestly wish more comics would take a page out of this book's bindings and follow its formula, especially the more "popular" titles.

If you are a first time reader, this issue will not leave you in the dark. Assuming you can read the two paragraphs on the first page, you will be brought up to speed on everything you need to know. So I would even recommend this issue to new readers. Overall I give this issue a 4.7/5. A mostly pleasing issue with the only problem for me being the Hulk/Wolverine fight. However, this also will have my favorite mutant in the upcoming months so it almost made up for it.