Onslaught Retrospective 1: Introduction

Art by Andy Kubert

If you were reading Marvel comics in the mid-nineties there was no escaping the expansive, multi-title events that seemed to get bigger and more EXTREME (because everything in nineties comics was EXTREME) as time went on. Age of Apocalypse, which ran through all the X-Men titles from February 1995 to June 1995, might be the most critically successful. The Spider-Man Clone Saga, running through all the Spider-Man books for two years starting in 1994, might be the most infamous. But certainly the messiest and most incoherent of these events was Onslaught.

Onslaught ran through a number of different Marvel titles from August to October of 1996, but the seeds were planted long before that. The titular character Onslaught was first teased in X-Men Prime in July 1995 and given a name that same month in Uncanny X-Men 322. He would first be seen in shadow almost a year later in X-Man 15 published in May 1996, finally appearing in full the following month in X-Men 53. And when all was said and done, the origin of Onslaught was retconned to being X-Men 25 from October 1993.

The idea that really got the ball rolling came from Scott Lobdell who wrote a scene in Uncanny X-Men 322 where Juggernaut had smashed into the ground, having been hit so hard that he went from Canada to New York. Asked to identify his assailant he said only “Onslaught.” There was nothing behind that idea, though, and as we’ll see later on it creates a couple serious incongruities.

Eventually Onslaught was reverse engineered (to serve as a means to an end to ship Marvel characters off to the Jim Lee/Rob Liefeld helmed Heroes Reborn universe) as an errant dark thought from Charles Xavier which somehow became a separate entity. Later Magneto was roped into the whole thing in order to keep from making Xavier too difficult to rehabilitate after Onslaught’s actions. For in depth context on how Onslaught tied into events happening at Marvel at the time click here.

Onslaught proper (that is to say every issue with the event’s brand) is 32 issues long. 15 of those issues have little if anything (a few absolutely nothing) to do with the event in what are perfect examples of “red sky issues.” There are “road to Onslaught” and “prelude to Onslaught” issues (the former of which includes issues going all the way back to the aforementioned X-Men Prime which was published 10 months before Onslaught himself would actually appear). Five issues effectively serve as an epilogue tying up loose character arcs. The event sprawls across 18 separate ongoing series with two one shot issues beginning and ending the event.

This Onslaught retrospective will cover 54 issues from the prelude to Onslaught period through the epilogues. I’ll be telling it in five parts (including this overview) with the remaining parts to cover Prologue to Onslaught, Onslaught Phase 1, Onslaught Phase 2, Onslaught Epilogue, and Congratulations! You Survived Onslaught.

For issue-by-issue commentary of every issue, visit my Twitter @theroncouch #CompleteOnslaught.