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The first volume featured the X-Men heavily which offsets this volume, which shows how wide the breadth of the Onslaught saga reached into the Marvel Universe. There are only a few X-titles here, and none of the two flagship titles. You get other Marvel characters like Spider-Man, Punisher, and Green Goblin, who were all involved in the Onslaught saga.
Spoiler Warning
-Excalibur #100- This isn’t the full issue, just parts relevent to the Onslaught saga. The X-Men show up to Muir Island and find a secret undeground lair of Xavier’s where he has ways to kill all the X-Men, even himself, should they go rogue. The X-Men are quite shocked that he kept this and thought of ways to kill them.
-Wolverine #104- Wolverine, who is in a very bestial state here, is at the Boston Xavier School (where the Generation X kids reside) looking for answers from Gateway. It seems that when Professor X wiped out Magneto’s memory (in X-Men #25), there was a small part of Magneto (his dark ego) that went into Xavier without anyone knowing and leading to his descent into the being known as Onslaught. Logan laments at the end, with Elektra (who was helping him at the time) that he used to be a man.
-X-Factor #125- Havok has been captured by Dark Beast (a leftover from Age of Apocalypse) and brainwashed. Onslaught recruits Dark Beast to his army. X-Factor is involved in a fight with a Sentinal and Mystique is asked to grab Sabretooth to help but the two are transported away by Fatale, a teleporting mutant. Eventually X-Factor face off against Havok and Polaris is convinced she can get through to Havok. Forge finds out that Sentinals are being mass-produced and he is worried. The Sentinals are dispatched at the end of the issue and a back-up shows what happened with Sabretooth and Mystique. They met with Dark Beast and they are asked to kill Forge and they actually turn on Dark Beast. They go to look for the original Beast. If you didn’t know these characters prior to reading this volume, you would’ve been lost.
-X-Factor #126- So Forge, Mystique and Sabretooth look for Beast, find him, free him, find out it wasn’t the real Beast, find the real Beast, and Polaris frees a captured Havok who turns on her and escapes. Not too much going on this issue that had to do with Onslaught.
-Sensational Spider-Man #8- This was only one page, the Sentinals flying to New York.
-Amazing Spider-Man #415- Peter and Mary-Jane encounter a Sentinal, and Pete has to escape when the Sentinal sees he has powers. The Sentinal leaves when Pete’s powers fade (as they have been doing). The Sentinals attack the Bugle, Ben Reilly (the new Spider-Man) gets into costume destroys a Sentinal.
-Green Goblin #12- Green Goblin (not the bad one, the mid-90’s one who was the nephew of Ben Urich). He gets his ass kicked by a Sentinal and decides if being a hero is really for him. He never asked for it, and thinks it’d be easier just to give up. He decides not to and defeats the one Sentinal! His costume is destroyed though, and the next issue would be the last so it seems he never fixed it. This was a very good character study that took place in the hectic Onslaught storyline.
-Spider-Man #72- Peter Parker goes out to take pictures, Spider-Man shows up, and the two of them team up in a great action story illustrated by John Romita Jr. There was a weird part where Spidey passed out for some reason and Pete brought him back to where the clone was first thought killed, but other than that it was a good story. Again, we have the interplay between the fake and real Spidey taking place in the Onslaught story and finding a way for the Spidey story to be moved along while also dealign with Onslaught.
-X-Man #18- X-Man is another stowaway from the Age of Apocalypse and one of the most powerful mutants in the world. Mr. Sinister is after X-Force (who are all introduced here with their names and powers, thankfully the writers had the insight that this would be collected 10 years from when it was written). Threnody, one of Nate’s pals, is captured by Sinister, who then goes off to try and captur Nate. X-Force fight back but are overwhelmed. Sinister has the upper hand at issues end.
-X-Force #57- So Sinister is about to take Nate with only Domino left to fend for them. Caliban fights back with strength not seen by the members of X-Force before and Domino destroys the Mansion. Warpath returns with a mutant named Risque (even I don’t remember who she is). Again, X-Force and Sinister fight, with Sinister knocking them all out and walking away with Nate at the end of the issue.
-Punisher #11- This is Punisher’s view of the Onslaught saga. He sees the helicarrier go down and goes to help, saving GW Bridge in the process. GW was the head of SHIELD after Frank killed Fury while under mind control. This was just another Marvel character’s look at the Onslaught thing.
-The Bottom Line- What I like about this volume, as well as the previous volume, is that it gives you updates on where the X-Men were at this point in time, as well as Punisher and Spider-Man (who were featured prominently in this issue). The Spidey one is especially helpful since this was in the midst of the Clone Saga fiasco. The whole Spider-Clone saga was explained well, though. Just a side note, they should collect the Clone Saga, too. Perhaps having them in chronological order will help. This volume is helped by the chronological order. Like the first volume, it made it easier to follow and you won’t have a problem reading it out of order since there was no specific order when it first came out. I remember being a lot more confused when reading it back in 96. Now you have it in order, with all the tie-ins represented in order, and it made the whole storyline enjoyable. This wasn’t as good as the first volume, as it wasn’t as focused on Onslaught himself but more about the effects of things he was orchestrating, like the Sentinals being released and the rest of the MU dealing with it. For a volume titled, “X-Men: Onslaught,” there is very little from the X-Men themselves. The best issue for me was probably Green Goblin #12, while the X-Factor stuff was some of the weakest, but overall it was enjoyable. Mild Recommendation due to lack of X-Men and majorly important plot points.
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