BINARY #3
Writer: Stephanie Phillips
Artist: Giada Belviso
Colourist: Rachelle Rosenberg
Letterer: Travis Lanham
Editor: Annalise Bissa

COVER: Um… well… it’s a woman running away from Phoenix. I assume she’s meant to be Carol Danvers, but she looks absolutely nothing like Carol Danvers beyond the fact that she’s white and blonde (as far as you can tell given that she’s coloured entirely in grey-blue, which means there’s a murky shape as the centre of focus). Her expression doesn’t seem scared, but more like she’s leading the Phoenix after her. I have no idea what it has to do with the story.

This is the final issue of Binary, which in turn was a continuation of Phoenix. That book isn’t returning in January, so the series truly does end here.

PAGES 1-7. Binary realises that she’s dealing with Madelyne Pryor, and Jean Grey manifests.

The basic plot so far is that Carol Danvers inherited the Phoenix Force after Jean Grey apparently burned herself out while containing the X-virus on Earth; that Carol has been using the Phoenix Force to protect her home town of Beverly, Massachusetts by shielding it from the X-virus in a psychic dome; that she started seeing Jean again last issue, since Jean and the Phoenix are one and the same as per Rise of the Powers of X; and that Madelyne Pryor has been scheming against Carol in an attempt to get the Phoenix powers for herself. (more…)

AMAZING X-MEN vol 3 #3
“Philadelphia”
Writer: Jed MacKay
Artist: Mahmud Asrar
Colourist: Matthew Wilson
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Editor: Tom Brevoort

COVER. The X-Men in the ruins of Philadelphia (rather worse than it actually looks in the stories), with a mural of Revelation.

Notionally this is the final issue of the miniseries, but in practice the story continues into X-Men: Age of Revelation – Finale. Counting the Overture issue as well, this is really more issue #4 of 5 than issue #3 of 3.

PAGES 1-4. Psylocke tells the X-Men what she learned from Bei.

Last issue, Cyclops won a duel against the Darkchild, who agreed to transport them from her territory in Providence to Revelation’s capital city of Philadelphia. Presumably that happened between issues and she’s dropped them off on the outskirts. Glob Herman seems genuinely surprised that they escaped Darkchild, which is clearly not a common experience – certainly the Age of Revelation X-Men seemed terrified of the place when they arrived there in issue #1.

All the material about Glob killing Topaz, and Psylocke being sent to kill Bei, comes from Overture. Psylocke’s account of what happened is correct as far as it goes. Interestingly, she comes across as much more sympathetic than the future X-Men – certainly than Glob Herman, who actively laughs about it, but all of the X-Men seem to have much more of a “this is war” attitude than Psylocke. Compared to the others, Schwarzchild seems the most reasonable, since at least he makes a fair point about Psylocke’s selectivity rather than just brushing Topaz’s death off.

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EXPATRIATE X-MEN #2
Writer: Eve L Ewing
Artist: Francesco Mortarino
Colourist: Raúl Angulo
Letterer: Ariana Maher
Editor: Tom Brevoort

COVER: Rift, Melée, Bronze and Ms Marvel in the crosshairs of… something.

PAGES 1-5. Bronze brings Colossus his medication.

Bronze. She hasn’t met Colossus yet in the present day timeline, but in this timeline she calls him “Unc” (and he calls her “Tristachka”). She’s clearly trying to keep up good spirits when talking to Colossus, although talking about the loss of Kitty Pryde (see below) does bring tears to her eyes. She claims that Kitty would want them to “live”.

Colossus. He was on the cover of the previous issue, but didn’t actually appear, so this is the first time we’ve actually seen him in the “Age of Revelation” timeline. He has a cabin on the Dragonfly and doesn’t look to be in great health. His left arm has been replaced with a crude cyborg one, and much fo the left side of his body seems damaged (it’s hard to tell whether it’s meant to represent rust, or acid burns, or what). He seems to get through pills at quite a rate – Bronze gives him four to take in one go, which nearly exhausts the supply. He has regular nightmares about the missing Kitty Pryde.

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LAST WOLVERINE #2
Writer: Saladin Ahmed
Artist: Edgar Salazar
Colour artist: Carlos Lopez
Letterer: Cory Petit
Editor: Mark Basso

PAGES 1-4. Vindicator persuades Leonard to help her free Wolverine.

Vindicator. Heather confirms that she was indeed referring to Logan as her husband in the previous issue. Given that he becomes an agent of Revelation not too far into the “Age of Revelation” timeline, this must be something that happens not too far into the future, and so it’s potentially another piece of foreshadowing for regular stories.

Heather said last issue that she had found a way to “save” Wolverine, and she refers throughout this scene to breaking Revelation’s hold on him. Apparently Leonard never asks her what the plan is, because we’ll find out later that she’s simply planning to kill him. She believes, probably correctly, that being forced into service as a weapon again would be the most horrific thing he can imagine; evidently she believes that she’s freeing him from torment.

Leonard certainly takes Revelation’s claims of good intent at face value, and is willing to countenance the possibility that Logan has been driven to this by the need to defend his fellow mutants from human aggression; he’s very reluctant to believe that Wolverine would ever directly turn against his friends.

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X-MEN: BOOK OF REVELATION #2
Writer: Jed MacKay
Penciller: Netho Diaz
Inkers: Sean Parsons with Livesay
Colourist: Fer Sifuentes-Sujo
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Editor: Tom Brevoort

COVER: Kitty Pryde shields Elbecca from Fabian Cortez.

PAGES 1-3. Kitty saves Elbecca.

This picks up directly from the cliffhanger of the previous issue, which Elbecca helpfully recaps for us.

PAGE 4. Flashback: Revelation turns Kitty into a ghost.

“When the X-Virus kicked off, when [Revelation] organized the relief in Philadelphia…” This is the official version of Revelation’s role in history, as recounted in X-Men: Age of Revelation #0. We’ve been told in other books that Revelation was actually responsible for the X-Virus in the first place, but Kitty may or may not know that.

“One of my generation of mutants…” Even though she was principally an X-Men character and he was in New Mutants, Doug was first introduced as Kitty’s friend and peer.

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UNBREAKABLE X-MEN #2
“Burial At Sea”
Writer: Gail Simone
Artists: CF Villa with Mario Santoro, Davide Tinto, David Marquez, R.B. Silva, Alessandro Cappuccio & Ramon Rosanas
Colourist: Espen Grundetjern
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Editor: Tom Brevoort

COVER: Basically an image of the cast looking dramatic. That looks to be Shuvahrak in the background, though she’s largely obscured by the logo.

PAGES 1-3. Henrietta comforts Remy after he fends off the zombies.

We established last issue that Rogue had turned into a giant statue as a side effect of using her powers to defeat Galactus, and that Remy had lost his eyesight afterwards. This is a continuation of the final scene from the previous issue, where the “Tormented” from the Penumbra attacked Haven House, and Gambit was driving them away from the “Unbreakable” memorial which commemorates Rogue. It reads a little oddly, since the previous scene was paced as if he’d already finished dealing with them, but apparently there are more. As in Rogue Storm #2, Gambit can still aim acceptably by sound alone.

The previous issue didn’t give any particular reason for Gambit losing his sight. He said last issue that it had happened “with time”, but in this scene he says it started when Rogue was transformed. The prevailing theory seems to be that his eyes were damaged in the flash of light in that scene, but Gambit prefers the emotional/symbolic explanation that he had nothing worth looking at without Rogue. Gambit’s narration also plays up his eyes as symbols in themselves, as the one thing that makes him a visible mutant; this has also come up in regular Uncanny X-Men.

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LAURA KINNEY, SABRETOOTH #2
Writer: Erica Schultz
Artist: Valentina Pinti
Colour artist: Rachelle Rosenberg
Letterer: Cory Petit
Editor: Mark Basso

COVER: Laura fights Gabby and Akihiro.

PAGES 1-2. Revelation sends Laura to stop mutants from escaping his Territories.

It’s not made clear why Revelation has chosen to send Laura to deal with the escape plan, but he uses his powers to impose his will on her in the first panel of page 2 (indicated by the inverse colouring on his word balloons). Most likely, he sees this as an opportunity to cement his control over her given her obvious concern about her son.

Laura seems oblivious to the fact that Revelation has used his powers on her, and apparently just believes that she’s come to her senses.

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BINARY #2
Writer: Stephanie Phillips
Artist: Giada Beluiso
Colourist: Rachelle Rosenberg
Letterer: Travis Lanham
Editor: Annalise Bissa

COVER: Binary turns to face a mysterious figure (presumably Goblin Queen).

PAGES 1-3. Flashback: Jean dies quarantining the Earth, and gives the Phoenix to Carol Danvers.

We were told last issue that Carol had been Binary for “almost ten years”, and this seems to confirm that she gets the Phoenix power (and the X-virus is released) a year into the future.

It’s fair enough that Phoenix wants to quarantine the X-virus on Earth. It’s not exactly obvious why she’s doing it on this scale when (at this point) the virus must be localised to a small area of North America. Nor does her barrier seem to be especially effective – we’ve seen teleportation between Earth and Arakko in X-Men: Book of Revelation #1 and Laura Kinney, Sabretooth #2, and aliens in Rogue Storm #1 and X-Vengers #1. Is it specifically a virus-filtering barrier? If she can do that, why not just purge the virus from Earth?

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AMAZING X-MEN #2
“A Duel of Truths”
Writer: Jed MacKay
Artist: Mahmud Asrar
Colourist: Matthew Wilson
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Editor: Tom Brevoort

COVER: The Darkchild, with the X-Men as prisoners.

PAGES 1-7. Cyclops accepts the Darkchild’s challenge.

We’re picking up directly from the end of issue #1, where the X-Men teleported into Providence apparently as a result of a teleporter accident. In X-Men: Age of Revelation #0, we were told that Magik died when the X-Men broke Fabian Cortez out of jail, but “the Darkchild did not”; and that Juggernaut quit the team soon after. The AoR X-Men basically confirm that account here (and throw in that this happened just one year into the future, relative to the mainstream titles). Apparently, Illyana literally died in this attack but was magically revived in some way, with just the Darkchild persona remaining. We’ll come to how that squares with the recent Magik series.

Juggernaut has been demonically transformed to some extent, which Darkchild ascribes to his role as “my demon knight”. He’s very protective of Illyana and gets frantically upset at the suggestion that she might be dead, something that doesn’t seem to bother Darkchild herself at all. It’s unclear whether he simply refuses to believe the story or whether he’s convinced that she fully returned from the dead. There’s a definite implication here of Cain being, at the very least, puppyishly loyal to Illyana, which we haven’t really seen in the present day.

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EXPATRIATE X-MEN #1
Writer: Eve L Ewing
Artist: Francesco Mortarino
Colourist: Raúl Angulo
Letterer: Ariana Maher
Editor: Tom Brevoort

COVER: Simply a group shot of the cast – except that Colossus, at the back left, doesn’t actually appear in this issue, and Mystique, at the back right, is more of a supporting character who the X-Men are dealing with.

This is the stand-in book for Exceptional X-Men, although that book hasn’t been solicited to return in January. Still, it’s written by Eve Ewing and it features Rift, Melée and Bronze. As for the other Exceptional cast members, Kitty Pryde has appeared in X-Men: Book of Revelation #1; Emma Frost is co-starring in Iron & Frost; and I don’t think we’ve seen Iceman or Axo yet.

PAGES 1-5. Rift, Ms Marvel and Bronze attack a border post.

Rift is Reggie McNair, Trista’s crush from Exceptional X-Men. He turned out to be a mutant in the closing issues of Exceptional when his time portals sent the cast back to Kitty Pryde’s teenage years. He seems to be the narrator here, since the first caption has the same colouring and lightning-flash symbol that appears in his portals.

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