HISTORY: Apocalypse was born nearly five millennia ago in ancient Egypt as a member of the Akkaba clan. From birth he inspired fear; grotesque and visibly malformed, he was abandoned in the desert to die. He was instead discovered by the Sandstormers, a feared band of desert raiders. Most of them believed the child should be left to perish, but their leader, Baal, sensed extraordinary potential within him. Naming the infant En Sabah Nur, “the First One”, Baal raised him as his own son.
As En Sabah Nur matured, he surpassed his peers in both intellect and physical power. With the exception of Baal, the tribe feared and despised him for his appearance and abilities. Though he did not initially comprehend their terror, Nur grew hardened by it and embraced the Sandstormers’ guiding belief: only the strong, forged through hardship, deserved to survive. At the age of seventeen, during his rite of passage into adulthood, Nur killed three armed warriors using only his bare hands.
At that time Egypt was ruled by Pharaoh Rama-Tut. On the day of the rite, Baal revealed that Rama-Tut was not a god, as widely believed, but a man who had arrived in a mysterious vessel. Years earlier, the Sandstormers had discovered the wreckage of this craft and rescued its injured, temporarily blinded occupant. After being nursed back to health, the man vanished with artifacts from the ship, only to return weeks later, his sight restored, commanding advanced weapons and the Egyptian army. He slaughtered the tribe and enslaved the survivors, yet none betrayed the location of the timeship.
In truth, Rama-Tut was a time traveler from the far future, later known as Kang the Conqueror. Aware that Apocalypse, the most powerful mutant destined to rule the world, had been born in ancient Egypt, Kang traveled back in time to locate him as a child and mold him into an instrument of his own dominance.
On the day of Nur’s rite of passage, Baal led him into a sacred cave that collapsed, trapping them underground. After days of wandering without sustenance, they discovered Rama-Tut’s timeship hidden within a subterranean tomb. Baal confided his belief that Nur was the conqueror foretold in prophecy, destined to overthrow Rama-Tut. Soon after, Baal died of starvation, while Nur survived due to his mutant physiology. Swearing vengeance and embracing his destiny, Nur eventually escaped to the surface weeks later.
Nur was enslaved, but soon experienced a vision of the Egyptian death god Seth, who urged him toward conquest. At that moment his superhuman powers first manifested. When time traveling heroes including the Fantastic Four, the West Coast Avengers, and Doctor Strange arrived in Rama-Tut’s era, Nur finally confronted the Pharaoh. Rama-Tut offered him succession in exchange for loyalty, then attempted to kill him when Nur refused. Nur defeated Rama-Tut’s champion, Ozymandias, and drove Rama-Tut back into the future, where he would ultimately become Kang.
Thereafter, En Sabah Nur, now Apocalypse, dedicated himself to reshaping the world through conflict, believing that war would allow the strong to rise and the weak to be eradicated. Across centuries he was worshipped under many names, patiently awaiting the day when mutants would rule humanity under his command. Much of his activity during this vast span remains unknown.
During the Crusades, Apocalypse activated the latent mutant abilities of the warrior Bennet du Paris, renaming him Exodus. Though Exodus served him faithfully for a time, Apocalypse later cast him into a deathlike stasis after rebellion. In 1859, Apocalypse awakened from prolonged hibernation beneath London and encountered Dr. Nathaniel Essex, a geneticist obsessed with engineered evolution. Apocalypse granted Essex immortality and power in exchange for loyalty, transforming him into Mister Sinister. Their plans were briefly thwarted when the Askani, rebels from a distant future, sent Cyclops and Jean Grey to that era to prevent Apocalypse from assassinating key British leaders. Weakened by a virus engineered by Sinister, Apocalypse withdrew once more to await his return.
He resurfaced a century later, as the world saw the emergence of a new generation of mutants. Apocalypse first acted through proxies, employing the Alliance of Evil against the original X-Factor. He then began assembling his Horsemen, reshaping Warren Worthington III into the Horseman Death by granting him metallic wings after the loss of his own. Worthington eventually broke free and returned to the X-Men.
Recognizing the threat posed by the future power of Nathan Summers, the infant son of Cyclops and Madelyne Pryor, Apocalypse infected the child with a techno-organic virus. The Askani intervened, carrying Nathan into a distant future. In the present, Apocalypse continued his machinations, while in the Askani timeline he rose to absolute power. Unaware that the Askani had created a clone to divert him, Apocalypse raised that duplicate, later known as Stryfe, as his heir, intending to transfer his aging consciousness into the young body.
Meanwhile, Cyclops and Jean Grey were transported to the future by Mother Askani and raised the true Nathan, who would become Cable. Ultimately, Apocalypse was defeated and killed in combat by the teenage Nathan. Seeking resurrection, Apocalypse later attempted to draw power from “the Twelve,” mutants of immense potential. Although Wolverine and others were briefly enslaved as Horsemen, the plan culminated in a fusion with Cyclops, thwarted through the combined efforts of Jean Grey and Cable, who purged Apocalypse’s essence.
NOTE: Information from The Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe: Update '89 (Vol. 3, No. 1 July 1989).
