We still have one more Secret Wars X-books to go – House of M – but Age of Apocalypse completes our tour of the X-books’ outright dystopias.  As with most of the throwback minis, this isn’t actually the original Age of Apocalypse world, but a new one of the same general ilk.  And it pretty much pays lip service to the Battleworld gimmick (in fact, both the prologue and the ending don’t really work in Battleworld terms).  What we have here, then, is a nineties nostalgia mini.

This one commits rather more fully to the nostalgia angle, bringing back Fabian Nicieza, one of the writers of the original crossover.  Nicieza hasn’t done any work for Marvel in a while, but is obviously well placed to echo the tone of his own original story.

Plainly, the budget for a series like this doesn’t run to Joe Madureira or Andy Kubert, so instead we have Gerardo Sandoval on art – for the first three issues, at any rate.  Sandoval seems to be in full-on nineties pastiche mode, loosely going for an emulation of Madureira’s style, though with something of the jaggedness of a Humberto Ramos.

It’s ugly as sin, with bulky, over-muscled, over-pointy figures filling the page and obscuring anything much in the way of atmosphere or storytelling.  Asked to do a two-page sequence in Angel’s glamorous penthouse nightclub – something that most artists would have embraced as an opportunity for a change of tone  – Sandoval just fills the page with the same angry, bloated figures as he does everywhere else.  Comparison with New Avengers #1 shows that Sandoval doesn’t always draw like this, though even there his work is pretty unimpressive.  The overall impression is of a mediocre artist trying to parody a worse one.  Things improve when Iban Coello turns up for the last couple of issues, since although he’s stuck with the tone that’s been established, at least his basic storytelling is sound.

The plot starts off with both the X-Men and Apocalypse’s forces hunting for Cypher, who is apparently going to be very important.  Cypher is all over this series, since he’s the narrator, and once he’s around to explain what’s happening, we move into the actual plot.  This involves the human resistance having got their hands on a version of the Legacy Virus, which they intend to use as a bargaining chip against Apocalypse.  This doesn’t go according to the plan, for precisely the reason you’d expect – Apocalypse is a raving lunatic, who thinks that anything likely to cause mass extinction is simply wonderful.  He’s also blithely confident that it can’t hurt him, since he’s so awesome.

There are some neat ideas along the way, but many of them remain underdeveloped.  Cypher is written, in line with his most recent appearances, as somebody who doesn’t just translate languages, but sees the hidden meaning in all things.  He’s nicely ambivalent about the X-Men, who he regards as an obvious improvement over Apocalypse, but still essentially a bunch of already-defeated losers hanging out in a basement.  And of course he’s right, since the X-Men have already lost, and lost big-time, by the mere fact of any version of the Age of Apocalypse coming to pass.

There are some odd gestures in the direction of everyday life in the Age of Apocalypse, with a suggestion that the general mutant population is living in relative comfort, though it’s something we never actually see – unless you count Angel’s club, which, as I say, Sandoval doesn’t really draw.  Cypher talks about being taught Apocalypse’s philosophy at school, so apparently there’s an education system out there.  And of course, one of the stronger ideas of the Age of Apocalypse was always the fact that characters like Scott and Alex, raised in this society, had pretty much internalised it as their culture.  So while Scott is plainly more sympathetic to individual humans than anyone else on Apocalypse’s side, he’s still a guy who’s doing pretty well in this society and whose idea of reform is a bit of tinkering around the edges.

There’s also a cute subplot with a mystery new X-Man called Burner, whose mainstream counterpart is hinted at over the first few issues until being indicated more or less directly in the final one.  He’s Adam X, the X-Treme, arguably the most nineties character imaginable, and thus a perfect choice for this book.  This story also runs with the idea of him being the long-lost third Summers brother, an aborted plot which was genuinely considered back in the day.  This is all pretty obscure continuity these days, but anyone who’s in the market for a nineties nostalgia trip in the first place is rather more likely to get the reference.

But it’s not a very satisfying read.  Even aside from the dodgy artwork, the plot of Cypher’s supposed importance doesn’t seem to come to anything – there’s some suggestion that his communication powers were meant to make him particularly well placed to foment a revolution, but that isn’t the plot.  And the decision to defeat Apocalypse in issue #4 before having a big finale against Dr Nemesis, of all people, seems curious – surely if you’re going to do a story which actually brings down the regime, it’s Apocalypse who ought to be the main event.

There are bits in here that do succeed in recapturing the original story – the use of Cyclops and the Adam X gag, most obviously.  But as a whole, it’s got a lot of problems.