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I Have Issues (18)



Are You Ready?




Everyone seems to be under the impression that world will either end or everything will go on as normal on December 21st. However no one seems to be talking about the third possibility… Post-Apocalyptic Nightmare! If you have ever played Fallout then you might have a leg up on the competition (hope you've been saving those bottle caps.) but comics have been trying to prep us for some nightmare scenarios as well. I’m a firm believer in looking on the Bright side but it also pays to be realistic as well so without further ado we visit the first scenario.

Y: The Last Man


So a plague comes along and kills every man but you and now you have to disguise yourself as a woman just to make it down the street without getting attacked.


Before you start thinking that maybe this is a future you want to happen you need to remember something, the reality is going to be less like an Axe commercial and more like Black Friday and you’re a buy one get one free! 


Also there is a group known as the Daughters of the Amazon and they believe that the plague was mother Earth wiping the Earth clean so they are constantly after you but not for your skin flute, no they want you dead like the rest of your former fantasy football buddies.


Upside:  Well it’s obvious isn’t it?

Downside:  The nagging, dear God in heaven all the nagging!


The Walking Dead


Okay you don’t need to read the comic or even watch the show that it’s based on to get ready for this. I mean Hollywood has been preparing us for zombies for so fucking long it would almost be a disappointment at this point if we don’t get to use some of our survival skills.



If this happens the first thing I’m doing is finding a katana because I have always wanted to swing one of those at someone!



Upside:  Getting to finally cut loose with some cool ass weapons for realzies!



Downside: You will probably end up a zombie and people taste like chicken (or so I have heard) so if you don’t like chicken, this might be a deal breaker.




Judge Dredd


Nuclear conflicts have made the majority of the Earth completely uninhabitable. So you are either a radioactive disfigured mutant that lives in the desolate Cursed Earth very similar to the Mad Max movies or you live in a violent and overpopulated Megacity.


In the Mega city you are forced to live in a Block stacked on top of or around people. If the extremely violent criminals don’t get at you then just dropping a piece of lint on the ground can get you a life sentence from the Judges who have absolute authority.  


That’s also if a major conflict doesn’t come about such as the Dark Judges paying the city a visit and killing millions on a whim until Dredd kicks them back to their dimension. Nobody even bats an eye at the deaths because overpopulation is such a huge problem!



Upside: Finally the justice system is moving at a good pace!


Downside: Fuck up once with even something small like jaywalking and you can kiss your ass goodbye.


Days of Future Past


Speaking of mutants what about a universe where it’s illegal to even be one? With the Mutant Registration act having just passed, all mutants are now going to concentration camps. If you put up a fight then you will meet a posse of Sentinels who will either capture or kill you, depending on how much of a fight you put up.


The X-Men are mostly dead and any hope of them saving the world this time is all but dead along with them.



Upside: Only if you’re not a Mutant.

Downside: Downside? What downside? That sounds like mutant talk and you’re not a mutant… are you?


Age of Apocalypse



When Legion goes back in time to kill Magneto he accidentally kills his own father, Charles Xavier which if you know your Back to the Future science means that the universe skews into an alternate tangent reality.




In the AOA reality without Xavier to stop him, Apocalypse has triumphed in turning the world into a nightmare where only the strong mutants survive and the only ones who stand against him are the X-Men led by Magneto. Apocalypse has “culled” more than 80% of the world’s human population and carved up the United States for himself and his four horsemen.



In this reality even being a mutant isn't safe because Apocalypse doesn't want any pussies in his universe.

Strict no pussy policy.

Upside: The skies may be dark but look at those costumes, damn they are colorful!




Downside:  Apocalypse puts the A in asshole!



Kingdom Come



All the well-known responsible heroes have decided to hang up the tights and left the door open to a bunch of wannabe poser mall kid heroes. 

Fucking mall kids!

Also if you live in Kansas you are probably dead now thanks to this asshat.



But don’t worry because Superman is due back any day now!



Upside: Even you might end up being a superhero and responsible for the worlds safety!

Downside: The world might have to count on you? Forgive me for not feeling safe.



So the moral of this article is don’t worry about what might happen because it can always be worse… or better.

Was that a moral or a lesson?

I don’t know, I just like comics.

J. Ryan Buck (Lostscribe@gmail.com)

Previous installments here http://lostscribe0.blogspot.com/

Comments

  1. "don’t know, I just like comics." Good enough! Who needs morals and lessons? ;)

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  2. Oh man, Age of Apocalypse...how 90s can you get? Foil covers, temporarily renamed series, "Alpha" and "Omega" issues, gritty reimaginings, you name it. Worst of all, leading to Rob Liefeld writing and drawing major Marvel series again.

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  3. It sucks reading something from that era then coming back a decade later and wondering what the hell you saw in it. X-Cutioner's Song and Onslaught were terrible too, the comic version of Crush's gear in '93.

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  4. Oh i actually loved the AoA. I thought it was a well timed story which made it's own (internal) logical sense. They had a very clearly defined beginning, middle and end, plus you got to see a number of re-imagined characters.


    X-cutioners song was long winded and boring. Onslaught was just a disaster, Fatal Attractions followed by all that Legacy Virus stuff. Nineties and terrible. But AoA was a grand adventure.


    Juggernaut as the unstoppable monk alone was pretty great. Of course once the story was finished and years later they started bringing in all manner of AoA characters into the normal Marvel Universe it got a bit silly. Wolverine as the new apocolypse? Meh.

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  5. I have to admit. For as awful as Liefeld was/is, there's some endearing about the commitment he has to making everything gritty. He'll always be a guilty pleasure in the same way Vince Russo is. Being immersed in it, all you see is crap. Looking back now, it's definitely terrible but there's still some awful fun to be had.

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  6. I really wanted to like Y the last man. As a concept I really loved it, but it really fell apart quickly in the actual books. When the president of the U.S. (who was also the guy's mom) allowed the last man, perhaps last savior of mankind to leave the safety of the whitehouse and the army in order to go search for his ex girlfriend, it really took me out of the story. There's no way anyone lets him go. Why would he? He's the single most valuable person on the whole of the planet.

    You could have had a huge allegory of what it means to be truly free or imprisoned, or what it means to be truly unique. There were infinite possibilities and they decided to go with the storyline of "Going across zombieland to find your girlfriend."

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  7. I disagree totally and completely, not just with this but also with the Y:The Last Man post.


    LOVED Fatal Attractions. Liked X-Cutioners Song well enough. DID NOT LIKE AoA.

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  8. I am an unapologetic '90s comics defender ... at least early '90s comics. Onslaught was my "peace out" moment in Marvel, while the horrible end of Knightsend and Superman Red/Blue were my cutoffs in DC. "Hush" got me back into comics after about a five-year absence.

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  9. Those two arcs actually got me to stop buying the comics in the nineties. Fatal Attraction was probably the last story arc I finished in totality. That coupled with the "Spiderman's parents are still alive/Maximum Carnage" fiasco over in Spider-land.

    I didn't start back up until a year ago on a whim I bought the complete trade paperbacks for the Age of Apocolypse. Everything is contained in four volumes. Across different books, but put in chronological order. I loved it and have been buying books straight through to today. (For certain things. For example I quite liked the Emperor Vulcan storyline culminating in the Thanos Imperative.)

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  10. I was thinking about AoA after reading the biography of Marvel recommended on the blog recently (which was ok, but not brilliant).


    I really enjoyed the AoA, and whilst it's bloated, the main story held up pretty well.

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  11. As I mentioned above, AoA was beginning to test my patience, and then Onslaught killed it. Haven't been able to get into the X-verse since, as nobody acts like themselves anymore.

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  12. The Clone Saga took me out of Spider-Man, and the resurrection of Norman Osborn brought me back. I love pure, asshole Norman Osborn. That one issue of Thunderbolts where he puts on the Goblin outfit after giving a damn monologue about what'd he do as President is still the funniest issue of a comic book I've ever read.

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  13. I loved what the end game of Peter's parents coming back ended up being: Harry Osborn's big end game to completely fuck Peter's head up, only he died before the plan came to fruition so Peter couldn't get any revenge.

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  14. Watch the movie A Boy and His Dog. Utilizes the same idea in a much more entertaining way. Plus, a young Don Johnson telepathically communicates with his dog.

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  15. Caliber_Winfield_69420BoobiesDecember 13, 2012 at 8:37 AM

    I never followed The X-Men much, but that Days of Future Past sounds like some good reading.

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