X-MEN OF APOCALYPSE ALPHA #1: Return To An Old Beginning…

As X-Men events go, The Age Of Apocalypse ranks at the top with a very large cross section of X-Fans especially those who were there when the X-Office took quite possibly the largest calculated risk in the x-lines’ history. All current books were cancelled and we were catapulted into a dark reality where Apocalypse had conquered North America and readers encountered a mutantkind completely different from the teams and world we knew. Bad Guys were good guys, good guys were bad guys, people were dead and certain couples were no longer a thing or didn’t even know each other. It was heady stuff and to this day remains a mammoth crossover event that ran over thirty-four books. This massive event gave the creatives involved the breathing room to tell a comprehensive and engaging story with teeth but imbued with just the right amount of mystery to make it deeply compelling. There have been some revisits but we’ll leave those alone primarily because this opening chapter is a direct sequel set immediately after the events of Age of Apocalypse Omega.

I have been following Simone Di Meo for several years and across several titles. I have always wanted him on an X-book and boy does he deliver in this opener! This book is gorgeous. Di Meo’s unique stylish angular line style combined with his use of color, solid blacks and blurred backgrounds for added depth mean that we end up with a unique beautiful looking book that can stand side by side with the likes of Joe Madureira’s iconic issues of the original Astonishing X-Men run. Sharp eyebrows and hard facial angles are the order of the day and the characters in foreground dominate the pages in everything from splashes to close ups. Di Meo colors his own work which again adds a unique flavor to the whole look of the book, there is the odd slip up in this department but it’s in tiny details like Rogue’s eyes and hardly ruins the books overall beauty. Di Meo does have moments where he shines in the coloring department and shows this off by giving Gambit a new look by getting rid of the red scarf cape and giving him a snazzy black trench with his signature pink accents that transforms the look of the character to something new but at once familiar.

Special shout-out to the lettering team of Richard Starkings and Comicraft’s Tyler Smith that complete the return to this world with the identical fonts used across the original run and even that green used on the text boxes that echoes the green of the text boxes in the original Age Of Apocalypse Alpha #1.