The first book on the slate collects X-Men Chronicles #1 & #2, Tales from the Age of Apocalypse: By the Light, X-Man #-1 & '96 Annual, Tales from the Age of Apocalypse: Sinister Bloodlines and Blink #1-4.

While the first collection does include some canon essential to the entire plot of the Age of Apocalypse saga, I find no use for the X-Man Annual and the Blink miniseries. If anything, they only add in the filler necessary to make it seem less of a rip-off. I managed to read most of it, but opted out from reading Blink. If I have the time, or decide it's essential to me, I'll read it later. ( )

I wanted to read Age of Apocalypse in publication order but i had access to this and didn't want waste time trying to untangle what goes where.

Anyway.. as far as i can tell like 95% of this is stuff that was written way later and even though its chronological it was still really annoying. It was clearly done for an audience who had alreay read AoA.

There are a few good issues mostly with Cyclops (loved the issue with Corsair) but overall just glad to get it out of the way so i start the actual Age of Apocalypse stuff.

PS: The last few issues the Blink-mini was awful. I'm sure it would have been fairly dull anyway but since i'd been reading things in order, all i knew about Blink was from the 5-mins i saw of her in the build up to Gen-X and all that info worked against me.
Her powers are different than they where in that but also... isn't she like a teenager? Her slutty-elf costume in this really didn't work for me. I mean i guess its not worse than what they used to do to illyana in New Mutants but it annoyed me more here for some reason. ( )

A fan favorite of the 90s that doesn't hold up as well as one would hope. Although part of my problem is that the some (but not all) of the art hasn't aged well. ( )

I've heard that Age of Apocalypse Book 1 is a selection of unimportant side stories that serves as a poor introduction to this fan favorite alternate universe storyline, but that's not the real problem; more importantly, it's badly written and badly drawn, suffering from clumsy exposition, adolescent melodrama, a bland setting, thin characters, confusing action, clichéd plots, and bloated scale.

As an inexperienced reader of Marvel comics, I'll just assume that this is not representative quality and pretend that I never came across it, lest I lose interest in the X-Men altogether. ( )

I love everything Marvel. The storylines are incredible! They have everything you could want: action, adventure, comedy, romance, political intrigue, allegories, metaphors, etc. Some stories drag, some end too soon. ( )