X-MEN #24. (Annotations here.) This is billed as a second epilogue issue to “Age of Revelation”, though I’m not sure that’s the best way of framing it. As I’ve said before, “Age of Revelation” really works best if you think of it as a middle phase in Jed MacKay’s overarching X-Men storyline. And these two issues aren’t really epilogues, so much as characters in the present day changing direction in light of what they’ve learned from that future timeline. This is the villain issue, focussing on 3K – half of it is the remaining members of 3K’s inner circle squabbling for power in the Beast’s absence, and the other half is him returning and announcing that he knows how to create the X-virus. It’s a pretty good issue, at its best with the individual character work – although the 3K X-Men get shortchanged a bit, and I’m still not quite sure I buy the Beast having quite so much influence over this otherwise murderous assortment. Tony Daniel does a rather good take on the snow-white Beast design from “Age of Revelation”, which the Krakoan Beast has evidently decided to adopt without explaining why – we seem to be heading towards a romantic triangle with Jen Starkey and two Hanks, which is cute – and I really like the final page of the 3K base hanging serenely over a mountain landscape, with the tiniest little dot showing Schwarzchild’s body being dumped over the side.

INGLORIOUS X-FORCE #1. (Annotations here.) Last year’s X-Force didn’t really work out, being cancelled after ten issues and rushed to a conclusion. It also didn’t have much to do with the X-Force name at all. This time, Tim Seeley and Michael Sta. Maria take the more conventional route with Cable landing back in the present day and prompting recruiting Archangel, Hellverine and Boom Boom as a new version of X-Force. Despite Archangel and Hellverine being in the book, Seeley isn’t a grimdark writer, and seems much keener on the early 90s version of X-Force, which was more of a sugar rush than anything else. And I quite like the way that Cable seems to be trading on X-Force’s history and reputation as a way of encouraging the rest of the cast to stay with him (for ulterior motives); if nothing else, it provides a legitimate reason to brand this as an X-Force title.

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UNCANNY X-MEN #22. (Annotations here.) It’s a weird schedule, this month. You might have thought that the X-books were simply doing a soft relaunch and spreading out the launches of the new titles after “Age of Revelation”. But then you look at next week’s schedule, which has six X-books… and then the week after that seems to have just the one again. Baffling.

Whatever they’re up to, it means that Uncanny X-Men gets a more-or-less clear week for its return to regular stories. Gail Simone returns to the Mutina storyline from issues #17-18, as she shows up at Haven simultaneously threatening everyone with knives and demanding to be allowed to join the team for PR reasons, as if that was somehow a reasonable thing to request. This doubles somewhat as a Nightcrawler spotlight issue, in as much as it also features his first date with Mackenzie, and he’s the one who actually heads her off. But her storyline isn’t really tied to him more than any other regular cast member, although he is at least well placed to be the most open-minded X-Man about the possibility of redeeming her.

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So there is a new Infinity comic on Marvel Unlimited – the imaginatively named X-Men Infinity Comic – but it seems to take place in some sort of not-quite-616, not-quite-XTAS limbo, which means that it’s out of our remit here. For those interested, it’s by Steve Orlando and Alan Robinson, and it’s pretty much by the numbers. That just leaves us with…

X-MEN #23. (Annotations here.) “Age of Revelation” was always strongest when viewed as an X-Men storyline rather than as an event, and this is where we pick up on what was going on in the present day. Most of it is along the lines that you could have figured out: future Cyclops tries to kill Revelation, but the plan goes awry because his Beast wound up somewhere else. History quite clearly gets altered in some way, since Revelation doesn’t stay with the X-Men, but whether those changes are for the better, or whether Cyclops has just wound up giving him ideas, remains up in the air. It’s a pretty straightforward issue, but there are some subtleties going on with Hank and Doug’s reactions to all this that add to the interest. And I’m interested to see where we’re going with the subplot about Magneto’s status quo not matching the future characters’ memory – it feels like it may be an attempt to back out of the wider idea of resurrection leading to degeneration, but then again I doubt that was ever really the plan, given that we’re 23 issues into the run and Magneto remains the only character affected.

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