Review from Amazon:
Both as an essential piece of the X-Men continuity and an individual piece of storytelling that could be read by anyone unfamiliar with the X-mythos, "The Rise Of Apocalypse" is one of the great pieces of literature ever presented in comic book format. Probably more rewarding if you've been long familiar with the entity known as Apocalypse, this could nonetheless serve as the first X-Men story you've ever read, taking place as it does entirely in ancient Egypt, eons before the formation of the X-Men or the births of Charles Xavier and Erik Lensherr, or even the dawn of Sinister (magnificently told in the "Further Adventures Of Cyclops And Phoenix" trade paperback, possibly THE greatest 4-issue mini-series Marvel has ever published). Taking place at the beginning of the building of the pyramids, the book tells the tale of Apocalypse, aka En Sabah Nur, apparantly the first Homo Superior mutation in world history. Chronicles a period of years, from his very beginnings as a newborn infant left by his tribe to die out in a sandstorm because of their fear of his mutated physical appearance to his dawn as early conqueror and the manifestation of the first hints of his true power potential. It performs a difficult task in arousing sympathy for the character without diminishing the evil of what you know he's going to become. For a few years Marvel had been making the mistake of turning almost all their top-tier villains good; it's good to do that sometimes, and it's good to have characters like Magneto and Doom who can often straddle the line between 'good guy' and 'bad guy' distinctions, but if you turn All your villains into straight-up 'good' characters, you're left with no adversaries higher than Tier 2. This book makes one empathise with En Sabah Nur while superbly foreshadowing the eternal terror and bane on the world he's to become, both making the character even more frightening and adding a previously undreamt-of air of tragedy.