Top 5 Dead or Alive: En Sabah Nur (Apocalypse)

The barbershop in my mind has conversations that sound a little bit like – “His momma named him ‘En Sabah Nur!’ I’m callin’ him ‘En Sabah Nur!’ “He converted! He calls himself “Apocalypse” now! Respect the man’s beliefs!” “I heard he changed his name to a symbol..the boy’s Krakoan now!” “What? He’s on crack now?! Bast help us!” Call him what you like, but the first mutant, the fittest of the fit, the beginning and the end, Apocalypse himself is worthy and stands amongst the chosen of the BNP Top 5 Dead or Alive. Since the new status quo of mutant nationhood at the X-offices, Apocalypse has been reinvigorated as a character. Instead of a one-note villain built on destruction, Tini Howard (writer of Excalibur) and Jonathan Hickman have groomed a more fully realized, and amazingly empathetic character. I. “Sometimes I don’t want to be bothered Sometimes I just want a quiet life, with Me and my babies, me and my lady Sometimes I don’t want to get into no war” The Dawn of X and X of Swords accomplished something under “Head of X,” Jonathan Hickman that no other storylines have come close to touching – making Apocalypse a sympathetic character…a tragic hero even. In the recently concluded storyline, Apocalypse is forced to battle his estranged wife Genesis to stop the forces of Amenth (a dark dimension existing in a rift between Krakoa and its own estranged island Arakko). Initially the X of Swords was teased as merely a mystical battle of the realms, its emotional arc, how…