Book Review: X-Men: The Age of Apocalypse Vol. 2 by S. Lobdell et al.

X-Men: The Age of Apocalypse Volume 2 Reign written by Scott Lobdell, Mark Waid, Jeph Loeb, Warren Ellis, and others

See my review of Volume One here.

The saga of a world without Charles Xavier continues. Magneto has taken his place as head of the X-Men and is leading a desperate fight against Apocalypse, a mutant who has taken over most of the Western hemisphere. Apocalypse is either recruiting or destroying all the mutants in the Americas. What regular humans are left he uses as slaves or as genetic fodder for creating more mutants. Or he just "culls" them. One mutant, Bishop, is from the normal timeline where Xavier didn't die and he is helping Magneto craft a plan to restore history. So some X-Men are seeking out a special telepath while Nightcrawler is headed to the hidden refuge Avalon (which is apparently the Antarctic Savage Land from the normal timeline). Jean Grey and Wolverine work with the European humans to make a plan to contain or defeat Apocalypse. The Europeans' solution is to nuke Manhattan (Apocalypse's headquarters). Jean wants to warn whoever's left, but can she get there in time? Can the humans' plan come off? These questions and what happened with the rest of the non-X-Men heroes are looked at in this issue. Age of Apocalypse runs for another two books, so nothing is resolved yet, but the plot is still intriguing enough to keep me reading.