APOCALYPSE

For thirty-four years of comics, Apocalypse recruited Horsemen from other people’s families — brainwashed mutants handed new names like War, Famine, Pestilence and Death. X of Swords: Creation #1 (2020) revealed why those four titles mattered so much to him: the original Horsemen were not recruits at all. They were his own four children.

Their mother was Genesis, En Sabah Nur’s wife, an omega-level mutant who could control plant life on a massive scale. Millennia ago the family ruled together on the living island of Okkara, long before that land was ever called Krakoa, and the children rode out as its defenders under the very names their father would later give to strangers.

When the demonic hordes of Amenth tore Okkara in two, Genesis led the children through the breach to hold the enemy back, while Apocalypse stayed behind on Earth and sealed the rift. He spent the centuries that followed culling the strong from the weak — not only out of cruelty, but to forge a mutantkind mighty enough to survive a rescue he never stopped planning. In X of Swords the family finally reunited, and when Arakko returned to Earth, Apocalypse chose to leave with Genesis and their children rather than remain behind.