Look! It’s a tribute cover! And it’s not just “Days of Future Past” that gets a tribute…

That cover is a little harder to place, but here’s where they got it from…

William Stryker, the old mutant-hating cult leader, is suicidal until Nimrod appears before him (pretending to be an angel) and encourages him to resume his hate-based preaching. Nimrod, who is from the future, tells Stryker that mutants are about to be decimated by House of M and then says that, in the aftermath, Stryker must pick up where he left off–and kill the mutants who remain.

He re-forms his Purifiers army and starts killing mutants.

Many of the surviving New X-Men from Xavier’s school are killed.

By the end of the story arc, DJ, Rubbermaid, Dryad, Tag, Icarus, Quill, Wallflower and others are dead.

For the big final battle, Stryker begins to gain power from Nimrod.

It is ended when Elixir uses his healing powers, which apparently enable him to alter a person’s physiology in a negative way, to kill Stryker simply by touching him.

This is the end of Stryker’s “Crusade” story, but Nimrod is still around and will need to be dealt with. It ends with him tracking down Forge and calling Forge the “maker.”