Astonishing X-MEN #1 (Age of Apocalypse Part 11)
Written by Scott Lobdell.
Art by Joe Madureira.
Inks Dan Green and Tim Townsend.
Colors by Steve Buccellato.
Picking up from issue 1; Rogue and the rest of the X-men are in Chicago to prevent the cullings from occurring. The X-men arrive a little too late as the mutant named Holocaust has already released his killer drones or probes to see where the humans are located in the city once known as chicago. Upon seeing the death probes, Sunfire freaks out and reveals himself to the humans around him as he screams that he has had enough death and rushes off to takeout as many probes as possible.
Rogue sees this and with a great sigh takes off after him, leaving Blink in charge of evacuating any and all humans. Sunfire takes out several; as Rogue attempts to talk him down so that they can focus on the evac. Rogue discovers what Apocalypse and Holocaust did to Sunfire prior to him joining the x-men when Apocalypse marched his legions across the world. She manages to stop Sunfire and continue to help the humans.
We then cut to Westchester as we again see Bishop interact with Magneto. Bishop as a lot of animosity towards Magneto. He starts to act like a jerk when Magneto reminds Bishop at he is attempting to put young Charles down for nap. Bishop quick changes his tone and begins to act like a human.
We are then shifted back to Manhattan where we see Apocalypse is angry over the evenings in Amazing x-men 1 and calls for his crony Rex. He demands to know if Rex has found the x-men base yet. Coincedently he just gets the search results as Apocalypse is ready to rip his head off. Rex then shows him the Xavier mansion and Apocalypse does one of his maniacal laughs.
We then cut back to Chicago where we see Sabretooth and Blink share a moment; and Sabertooth asks Blink to send him to where Holocaust is to slow him down long enough so the X-men can finish their mission. Reluctantly Blink acquiesces and sends Sabertooth and an unconscious Wild Child to Holocaust's location. Indianapolis, Indiana.
Sabretooth and Holocaust fight and then fight some more and then Sabertooth eventually beats Holocaust by fracturing his containment suit and then Sabertooth passes out as his healing factor tries to repair all the damage. Holocaust being composed of energy, manages to reassemble himself back into his containment suit. Then we get the; to be continued.
As a followup issue to the story I thought it was pretty solid. However, the whole idea that Blink can now exactly where a person is at in order to transport some one there is a little sketchy. Had it been partially explained then I wouldn't have questioned it. We do get some more back story through a dream sequence as well as expositional storytelling.
The art was great Joe Madureira's art is pretty tight with his line work. The sharpness of Sabertooths features really shows his more feral side. His women are draw a little over proportional as most nineties super hero books.
All in all I would give this an:
8.5 out of 10
