The Armchair Squid: Marvel Unlimited: Age of Apocalypse Omega

I have reached the end of the main body of the Age of Apocalypse story. Despite all my griping, it's not terrible. Faint praise, I know. But you have to understand how much the story structure drove me crazy: too many characters, too many threads going at once. Now that I've gotten to the end, I'd rather have read each individual series separately, then read Omega at the end. But I realize I am not every reader.

I prefer an overly complicated X-Men story to an overly complicated Avengers story. Even with the cast of thousands, the X-Men franchise is built around a unifying concept in a way that the Avengers are not. It always comes back to Charles Xavier, even when he's been removed from the narrative, and the mutant/human dynamic. The characters have defined relationships with each other - enough for some soap opera romance elements, and I mean that in a good way. The Avengers, on the other hand, always feels like a hodgepodge, a landing platform for every superhero - and villain - they want to keep but don't know what else to do with. Sure, there's always the core trio: Iron Man, Thor, Captain America. But even they don't play a prominent role in every story. What else holds the overall concept together from one arc to the next?

The Fantastic Four? Reed Richards is way too annoying for them to ever be my favorite Marvel team, even though so much good has come out of FF: the Inhumans, Galactus, Silver Surfer, Jack Kirby's best artwork, the whole Marvel Silver Age philosophy, etc.

I only have a few days left in my Marvel Unlimited subscription. Expect a wrap-up post next week.

My Recent Reads

Weapon X #4

Cover Date: June 1995

Writer: Larry Hama

Artist: Adam Kubert