The X-Men are popular now, but the 2020s don’t have anything on the ’90s. The decade of extreme was the also the decade of the X-Men. At least two X-Men comics sold millions of copies in the early ’90s (yes, I know that most of those copies are still sitting in shops all over the world, but they were technically bought from Marvel), and the other X-books were the best selling month to month. We also got one of the biggest mutant stories ever in the ’90s, a tale whose legacy is still influencing mutant stories to this day: “The Age of Apocalypse”. This classic story is still beloved by fans and creators, and Marvel has tried to recapture its success numerous times.
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“The Age of Apocalypse” is great, but it’s honestly kind of standard when it comes to quality. Several of the series are better than others, and the art is fantastic, but none of them were really amazing. Well, that’s not exactly true. “The Age of Apocalypse” is home to one of Marvel’s most underrated stories: Generation Next #1-4. Scott Lobdell and Chris Bachalo’s tale is a tense, heartbreaking story with amazing art, and it doesn’t get nearly the credit it deserves. This story is the best X-Men story of the ’90s, and it’s about time we admitted that.
Complete Spoilers for Generation Next #1-4
Generation Next Was a Shocking Story that Ended In a Way No One Expected
I’m going to be frank — as much as fans love it, “The Age of Apocalypse” is overrated. It’s not a bad story by any stretch of the imagination, but as a I alluded to earlier, it’s mostly just a bunch of normal quality ’90s X-Men stories. I grew up with it, and remember loving it, but looking at it from a critical standpoint, as stories, it didn’t have anything that was the level of “The Dark Phoenix Saga” or the like. However, Generation Next was able to reach levels of quality that the rest of the story doesn’t.
Generation Next was the Generation X of the AoA universe. The ’90s teen mutant book was never the most popular, but it was probably the most unique teen mutant team in the X-Men’s history, with a cool group of mutants and amazing art from Chris Bachalo. The AoA version of the story starred Colossus and Kitty Pryde’s team of young X-Men — Chamber, Husk, Skin, Mondo, Vicente, and Know-It-All — on a mission to the Seatle Core (a massive power facility) to retrieve Illyana Rasputin, who was thought dead. What follows is a book that gets more and more harrowing as it goes on.
The X-Men books in the ’90s were known for their amazing art, with the styles of Andy Kubert and Joe Madureira being the dominant ones. Kubert was a student of Jim Lee and Marc Silvestri (as well as his father Joe) and Madureira was all about the manga style. That what makes Bachalo’s (along with inker Mark Buckingham and colorist Steve Buccellato) art so amazing. His style looked nothing like theirs; it was, for lack of a better word, quirky. It’s insane detail was able to create horrific scenes that you never expected til you saw them and the character acting did an amazing job of capturing the emotion of the various scenes, which is a key part of the story’s success.
Writer Scott Lobdell also went all out on the book, with the most brutal plot of the entire “Age of Apocalypse”. Basically, the mission to the Core is a suicide mission; a team of mutant kids sneaking into a place that is crucial to Apocalypse’s nation was only ever going to end one way. Guards are everywhere, and danger is around every corner. The team’s plan mostly works, lulling you into a false sense of security; you expect the whole thing to work out. However, that ends quickly in issue #4, as members of the team start dying. Kitty is able to get Illyana out, but no one else in the Core survives, with Colossus allowing the last member of the team to die (although we later learn she survived). It’s a moment that no one could have predicted.
However, a twist ending alone isn’t enough to make something this great, and this book has so much more to it than that. Lobdell is able to make you love these new version of familiar characters, showing them as young people doing a difficult job, and mostly succeeding. The way the book lulls you into thinking that everything is going to work out, with the kids able to get through the kind of twists and turns we often see in these types of stories, is perfect and when the first member of the team dies, it’s a massive shock. It’s an example of amazing storytelling, and nothing else in the decade can match it.
Generation Next Is the Only Book That Used the Promise of “Age of Apocalypse” Correctly
The above page is the second to last page of Generation Next #4. The issue is narrated by Illyana, who believes her brother is the greatest hero ever. She honestly believes that he will save the day, and that’s why it’s so heart-rending to watch him give up on the last surviving member of his team. He lets the door close, leaving his final student to die. It’s an ending we don’t get often get in comics, watching characters we like die hopelessly. It did something that no other AoA comic was able to pull off — it actually shows the hopelessness of the situation the heroes are in.
“The Age of Apocalypse” tried for tragedy numerous times, killing characters and showing us terrible things happening to many of our favorites, but most of the time it didn’t land. Other than the death of Jean Grey and Cyclops, most of the deaths were just okay, since we knew they didn’t count. However, Generation Next made us forget that this was a story that “didn’t count”. It was able to enthrall readers like no other book in the story did, and was the most shocking part of “The Age of Apocalypse”. Give it a read; there won’t be a dry eye in the house by the end.
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Image courtesy of XYZ Films
