Basement X

Apocalypse: The Twelve.

The seeds for this storyline began way back in the mid 1980's when Master Mold referred to Cyclops as one of the “strong twelve,â€￾ who must be killed. When MM fused with Nimrod, again he refers to the Outback X-Men as the Twelve before he was sent through the Siege Perilous.

Who were the twelve, and why were they targeted for termination?

Quoted in Power Pack, MM said:

"The dozen mutant humans who will one day rise up and lead all of mutantkind in war against homo sapiens in the twilight of Earth."

There seemingly was going to be an apocalyptic battle leading to a Days of Future Past type of scenario where The Twelve were going to battle mankind and sentinels. Sounds pretty cool, right?

What did we get instead?

The prophecy of The Twelve was made up by Apocalypse so he could kidnap them and use them in a machine to grant himself omnipotent powers. Oh, and Wolvie was his new "Death" and Cyclops wound up possessed by Apocalypse.

that was a MAJOR disappointment!! all we got out of that was wolverine getting his adamantium back but that was it

I somewhat enjoyed the Twelve since it used tons of characters I loved, and I liked how Cyclops came out in the end of it overall

I would have been okay with the storyline if they had not used the 12 Prophecy as the basis for it.

I hadn't read most of the issues regarding the prophecy prior to this storyline, and only had a tiny grasp on it, so it didn't overhaul anything for me, tho I can see how it would for longer readers. Today yea I see how it totally changed from what it was, but for me at the time it was a good fun read that brought in characters from all over the X-Men universe and actually had cohesion between a number of X-books.

Also, Franklin Richards was supposed to be one of The Twelve.

I agree with Tragic, I rather liked The Twelve storyline as well as what happened to Cyclops afterwards. Chalk that up me not reading UXM at all during the 80s and sporadically during the 90s. As such I wasn't nearly as let down as others were when a years long storyline ended with a groan rather than a roar.

I was ok with Richards not being one of the Twelve, though I knew he was supposed to be. Leaving him out kept the story to an X-Men only story, and at the time that's what I wanted. I'm fine with him coming to be an insanely powerful Mutant but really I was happy with how the selected and explained who the Twelve were. i really liked the idea of earth, elements, poles, space, family, time and mind to channel the energies.

Though I was disappointed with the aftermath of the Twelve, outside of Cyclops' changes. I liked the small team with Cable Phoenix Storm Gambit and Beast but the other one just wans't that great for me... It was supposed to be a huge come back and it let me down.

I think I'm with Python on this: I didn't dislike the storyline, but the premise should never have been The Twelve.

Wait till Arn get's here.. then he can learn that for me I was utterly disappointed by the work Morisson did when it became New X-Men

Tragic Angelus wrote:Wait till Arn get's here.. then he can learn that for me I was utterly disappointed by the work Morisson did when it became New X-Men

Thems fightin' words

I just didn't like it.. I didn't like any of the X-Books at that time, but I couldn't bring myself to drop them since it had high hopes and i had started with them. I really really would've dropped comics in general if I hadn't started to expand to other books at that time I think...

You're lucky were in the DCUnion or else I'd have to kill you.

So what exactly did you dislike about New X-Men?

I'm lucky? We let you in bitch

I wasn't a fan of the team itself, the secondary mutation, and then just the overall 'Grant Morisson-ness' that the stories began to take on as he stayed on the book longer.. stuff just got out there and messed up for me.. though maybe if I go back and read them all collectively some day it'll be more cohesive. Cassandra Nova was a fun villain, but she got played out to me way too quickly.. I just wasn't a fan of it during it's initial run

Tragic Angelus wrote:I'm lucky? We let you in bitch

I wasn't a fan of the team itself, the secondary mutation, and then just the overall 'Grant Morisson-ness' that the stories began to take on as he stayed on the book longer.. stuff just got out there and messed up for me.. though maybe if I go back and read them all collectively some day it'll be more cohesive. Cassandra Nova was a fun villain, but she got played out to me way too quickly.. I just wasn't a fan of it during it's initial run

Oddly I was a big fan of it the first time, but when I reread it recently I wasn't that keen. It was ground-breaking and I love where it took the X-Men and I love the ideas, but the actual writing didn't do it for me. I think it's because I was reading Carey and Yost right before, and they are just better writers. Morrison is brilliant, his vision is amazing, but his writing... eh.

I'd like to nominate any story arc involving Nightcrawler in the last 15 years. Except Ultimate, because I fucking loved that.

Also every story arc written by Austen. I can't pick just one! That Romeo and Juliet thing, the Draco, I can't remember any of the rest but I know they sucked too... you may make the case that you have to look forward to something to be disappointed so I have to admit that I did look forward to it. The Draco was supposed to be cool! Fuck it!

Agreed. Anything by Austen on the X-Books was utterly just shit

But that wasn't disappointing, since everone expected it to be shit.

I wasn't expecting it to be necessarily, but it did become that quickly.

MGM wrote:But that wasn't disappointing, since everone expected it to be shit.

I addressed this in my post. No one expected it to be shit when he first started.

Fuck you all, the Morrison era was the best the X-Men had been in years.