Xtinction Agenda

Inverted twin catastrophes, machine and flesh, spawn crawling apocalypses, waiting. The simian turns feline. Marriage is cold. Frost touches and torques. Platinum cards pay for drinks after crashing dust up. And from the iron prison of the foreign empire, the star child is released. His wings are his alone.

"Doesn't everything seem mildly traumatized to you, Scott?"

Imperative verb meaning 'to be free', calling out commands. Singular pronomial object, speaking directly to you alone. And emphasized in the weirdest way possible. We can only conclude that the speaker is attempting to confuse you. Or using words to drill down. Which is fitting, you see, because they want you to free yourself from below.

"Where we're going, we won't need eyes to see."

We can assume that Xavier lived a regular human lifespan. Same with Magneto, cloning aside. Sinister, he might have stuck around, but probably not for that long. So why oh why did it take Apocalypse two entire millennia to rise to power? That's one thing I'll never understand. The other is Cable. Who is this mysterious failed father from the future who also has a twin that sometimes inhabits his body? Your guess is as good as mine.

"I have intermerged my substance with Nathan's, my friends..."

In the dark realms of irrationality, mysticism, and lust, red demons snake and throb through the blue haze. They hunger for the old man lounging in the backseat as we speed through the wicked city. Unknown to us, elsewhere and in another time, his spirit is poisoning a pure soul, moving it across the board towards checkmate. He says we must fight poison with poison and cure poison with love. He smiles to himself and says that we must send them back to their golden hell.

"A Tokugawa government spy wants to hire me?!"

Roll up! Roll up! Jim Lee presents all your favourite beats! THIS WEEK: ultra cover band Jim Lee LIVE! It would be a good life to die this way, in Jim Lee's arms. Bring in the hot babes. Selina... I wish that I'd called her sooner.

"We've got seconds before he realizes we're not going to stand and fight."

America is crumbling. Its businesses, its gangs, its drugs all worthless, all left behind. The nation is ripe for corporate takeover. Enter the Yakuza, twisted perversions of Japanese honour and American style. They'll leave you with one hand to wipe your ass. That is, unless an unplaceably accented, full bred American warrior has something to say about it. Trained in the arts of bushido, he will return America to its regular gangsters and take for himself the Asian wife he'd always dreamed of.

"Yeah, I saw you strip down for that hot tub. I'd be frightened, too..."

Lesson One. April Fool's Day is not a holiday. Understand what a holiday is. Then, Lesson Two: understand what a mystery is. If you cannot understand such things as holidays and mysteries, then skip to Lesson Three: find an artist who can make an audience forget that stories should make sense. Another way of saying this? Find someone who puts the reader into a warm bath. Someone clean. Find yourself a Tim Sale.

"I've just come from Arkham."

Here, the dead have no shape of their own. Nor does the hero of our story. Not at first anyway. For him, life is first lived as the form of life and then as content. Watch the eyes bulge and fall to the ground. Watch the limbs grow back. Watch sword fall from shoulder joint onto the earth. This is life returning to itself whole. Here devil gods are vanquished and order restored.

"I'm still missing thirty body parts."

The three men each made a vow. To women they pledged their lives. And then, to uphold those vows, they made an oath. To each other they promised to bend but not break the laws that bind. They did this for the greater good.

This is ultimately the story of how one man buckled under those twin imperatives, how one man shattered into two and how with both hands he brought the others down into misery with him.

"Our jobs don't include murder, Harvey."

We wanted to tell the best possible story we could. Nothing more. Kids those days, they didn't get what the Big Guy stood for, you know? They thought he was all gee shucks and apple pie, flying around saving kittens from trees. So we thought we'd shake it up a little, show them his heart pumped blood just the same as you and me. But to do that we needed a memorable villain, right? Something original and not like anything else Superman had ever faced before!

*Draws a picture of Wolverine crossed with Punisher and the Incredible Hulk*

"...violence is the price we pay to accomplish a greater good."