So, bottom line, it was just another day at the office in comic-book land. There's nothing in here to get particularly fired up about, never mind offended.

So frankly, not a heck of a lot going on. Exposition-heavy setup issue that isn't going to make much sense unless you've read a lot of recent Apocalypse-lore in the other X-books.

Overall, a solid volume, uneven as these buffet-style compilations are, but what's not to love about a triple-sized dose of red, white and blue uplift this Independence Day?

Tune in again next issue to see whether this motley duo of bickering beefcakes can refrain from killing each other long enough to possibly prevail against a sextet of hyper-advanced meta-mutates who have basically already won in a world that thinks B&C are the enemies, and where there are essentially no other X-types around to rely on for, (let's see, avg. Earth Mars distance…) about 140 million miles.

Double-threat writer/artist Iban Coello holds down the visuals with some expressive (dig the facial expressions!) artwork, eventually getting a chance to take a pass at dozens of familiar characters, and lovingly rendering even Johnny's truly heinous Sons of Anarchy 'stache, which he should burn off immediately, if that is even possible.

Writer Al (Immortal Hulk) Ewing had to name check sixty years of the most tangled chronology in this single double-sized one-shot!