I read E for Extinction earlier this week, because the destruction of Genosha comes up a lot on this board and in the comics, and I had never actually read the arc that it happened in. Looking back on it, its kind of....bad.
I'm not talking about the art, which is all over the place. The story itself is just not good. For something that involves something as monumental as the total destruction of a nation and the death of 16 million people, the actual attack is barely a blip in the plot. We get maybe 6 pages total on the destruction itself. The nation looks like its wiped out in minutes.
Here's a quick summary of the story:
Cassandro Nova abducts the nephew of Bolivar Trask by faking being a government agent. The Trask guy is a shmuck, and is initially told he's needed to help the President with a dental problem (he's just a dentist). She takes him to a Master Mold base in South America that's been producing 'Wild Sentinels', Sentinels that constantly build new Sentinels by scavenging parts from anything metal around them. While they look a bit creepy, they also look really rickety and most don't even have the major Sentinel guns, since they've had to make do with old car parts and handguns.
Anyway, while this is going on, Nova is ranting at the man about how mutants are super dangerous and are going to kill and replace all humans inevitable because of evolution. The usual junk. She even shows him a super gross VR simulation of Neanderthals getting slaughtered by Homo Sapiens to emphasize her point. He vomits into the VR helmet because of it. When the Sentinels try to attack them, Trask begs them to stop, and they listen because they are programmed to not harm the Trask family. Nova tells him that to save the human race they have to send Sentinels out to commit genocide.
Meanwhile, Jean, Beast and Xavier are testing out a new Cerebro, called Cerebra, and preparing for a new school year. They detect a weird mutant reading in Central America, and send Cyclops and Wolverine to look at it. Those two had just rescued a random guy called Ugly Tom from an old Sentinel, and just bring him along despite him being a totally normal dude with no powers. Meanwhile, Nova almost possesses Xavier, and he nearly shoots himself in the head.
We don't actually see Trask and Nova give the order to send the Sentinels to Genosha. We see them go into the facility, and then leave the area they had to go to give the order. The entire time the Trask guy is scared, confused and unsure of what's going on and if he did the right thing. Nova declares that she had been copying his DNA into herself the entire time, and just finished. So she kills him, and starts ordering the Sentinels herself. Wolverine and Cyclops arrive, promptly get captured and Ugly Tom gets killed by Nova. They eventually break free, subdue Nova and decide to bring her to Xavier to figure out what the hell her deal is.
In what looks to be less than an hour, the Wild Sentinels descend on Genosha and reduce it to dust. I'm assuming Magneto was depowered at this point, because there's a dramatic shot of a giant fist blowing through his skyscraper. There are no scenes of anyone fighting back or anything. Just a kaiju-sized Sentinel and a swarm of misshapen smaller ones descend on the nation at the end of one issue, and the next issue starts with Beast digging through the ashes and making a Shakespeare joke with a skeleton. They dig Emma Frost out, and she seems shocked, but not so shocked that she isn't snarking at Beast and Jean on the way back. The tone at this point is bizarre. Characters are being witty, and Jean even tells off Emma by saying Magneto is dead now, and his ideas should have died with him. Emma should listen to the X-men because Xavier is the only one left alive.
The story ends with Nova healing her injuries and curbstomping the entire X team, making her way through the mansion to Cerebra. Just when she plugs herself in, Emma gets behind her and breaks her neck. Xavier then unloads his gun into her. I know the twist here; Nova actually used Cerebra to switch bodies with Xavier right when Emma snapped 'her' neck, and Nova-as-Xavier killed 'her' to hide this. Nova-as-Xavier then goes on TV and reveals that Xavier is a mutant to the world for the first time. CREDITS!