X-Men: Age of Revelation Overture #1 annotations
X-MEN: AGE OF REVELATION OVERTURE #1
Writer: Jed MacKay
Penciller: Ryan Stegman
Inker: JP Mayer
Colourist: Edgar Delgado
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Editor: Tom Brevoort
COVER: Simply an assortment of characters from the “Age of Revelation” timeline.
This is the opening one-shot for the “Age of Revelation” event. As things stand, I’m only planning to do annotations for the quasi-ongoing titles: Amazing X-Men, Binary, Laura Kinney: Sabretooth, Rogue Storm, Unbreakable X-Men, Last Wolverine and Expatriate X-Men. But we’ll see how things turn out.
PAGES 1-4. Glob Herman kills Topaz.
“X Years Later.” The X-books started using this formula during the Krakoan era, but it’s explicit later in the issue that in this case, “X” is 10.
“The Revelation Territories.” The general set-up of this world was previously established in July’s X-Men: Age of Revelation #0, though the essentials are all repeated anyway in the course of this issue. That issue consists of an account of the history of the timeline written by the future Xorn for the benefit of the present-day Cyclops, who the (future) X-Men are planning to bring to their timeline in the style of Days of Futures Past. In very brief outline, X:AoR #0 tells us that Revelation seized control of the X-Men after joining the team; that he used power-boosting mutants like Fabian Cortez to increase his powers so that he could control the environment as well as just forcing people to obey his instructions; that a mystery “X-Virus” was unleashed in Philadelphia, which killed most humans and turned the rest into mutants, and which was blamed on 3K; that the virus terraformed the environment to become hostile to humans; that Revelation has tried to make this world into a quasi-Krakoa; and that Revelation rules as a dictator.
“Choristers.” The power-boosting mutants who serve as Revelation’s trusted inner circle, according to X:AoR #0.
Topaz. We saw this character as one of the Choristers in X:AoR #0, but she wasn’t identified. She’s a pre-existing character – she was the villain in the first arc of Gail Simone and David Baldeon’s Domino series in 2018. She died at the end of that story, but that was pre-Krakoa, so it’s not surprising that she’s back. She was also virulently anti-mutant in the original story (despite being a mutant herself), but that might have changed during the Krakoan era. Or, in view of her importance, her mind might have been changed for her by Revelation.
Locus. She’s a teleporter. The original Locus is best known as a member of the Mutant Liberation Front, though we last saw her as a member of King Bedlam’s Hellions.
“Seraphim Captain Psylocke.” X:AoR #0 already showed up that Psylocke and Kid Omega had joined up with Revelation, while most of the remaining X-Men seemed to remain as rebels. The “Seraphim” were described in that issue as “Revelation’s chosen”, who “enforce his will without mercy.” Psylocke apparently retains her leadership role in this world.
“I’m told that your village suffered in the storm?” This is clearly an understatement of whatever happened to the village, since Psylocke describes the place as “flattened”. To be fair to Topaz, she’s genuinely about to solve the problem, so she’s probably just trying to be nice to a child. However, this being the X-books, any sort of massive devastation caused by a storm raises obvious questions about whether Ororo might have something to do with this.
Glob Herman. Always a non-combatant in the mainstream X-Men, he’s now a gun-toting assassin. Other characters will remark on this later in the issue; but his transformation seems much more extreme than most characters.
PAGES 5-8. Cyclops wakes up in his future self’s body.
This picks up from the end of X-Men #22, where the body swap appears to take place. We saw most of these future X-Men at the end of X:AoR #0: Jen Starkey, Beast, Glob Herman, Magneto, Xorn, and Schwarzchild. The group in that issue also included a man with wings and longer red hair (so apparently not Angel as shown here), and someone in a purple top and bandana. Angel is new, then, and so is Forge.
The concept of swapping the minds of past and future versions of the same characters is taken from “Days of Futures Past” (X-Men #141-142), although this time our focus is on the present-day character being taken to the future. Quite why he’s here is a little unclear at this stage. In X:AoR #0, there was some talk of “set[ting] things to rights”, for which Cyclops “is going to need to know what happened” and why it was his fault. That suggested that the idea was for Cyclops to return to the present armed with information. But… well, we’ll come to what Cyclops is told.
“Thing have gone very badly for us, especially seeing Schwartzchild here.” Schwartzchild is one of the 3K “X-Men”, who claim to be the “real” version of the team – later in the issue, he still seems to insist that he was always an X-Man, and appears to regard the teams as having simply merged. His presence here makes a little more sense in light of the indication later on that 3K, his faction, were not responsible for the virus, and were framed by Revelation – he may be the last man standing.
PAGES 9-10. Revelation reprimands Psylocke.
The overwhelming amount of foliage is evidently meant to evoke Krakoa; this is Revelation’s idea of a paradise.
Revelation takes the loss of a Chorister mutant very seriously, and regards making Psylocke wear an X-Men badge as a way of shaming her. Evidently they’re very much out of favour, rather than Revelation presenting himself as the legitimate successor. He claims that he’s been indulging their presence on the fringes out of “nostalgic indulgence”.
As in present-day issues, Revelation’s commands are only irresistible when they’re shown in white on black. Psylocke has no difficulty answering back to Revelation up to that point (and evidently believes she’s in a position where she can get away with doing so).
PAGE 11. Bei on the run.
We’ll come back to Bei later, but suffice to say that Bei was conspicuously missing from Revelation’s inner circle in X:AoR #0. That’s despite her being his wife and appearing in the present-day lead-in stories in X-Men #19 and #22. Those stories rather implied that Bei thought Doug was being too soft in pursuing the task that Apocalypse had charged him with, but we’ll come back to why she’s on the run.
PAGES 12-14. Magneto explains the story to Beast and Cyclops.
Much of this is a brief recap of X:AoR #0.
“This mutant land.” Revelation repeatedly uses this term to refer to the transformed landscape in X:AoR #0. It seems to be a reference, not to the Revelation Territories as a political concept, but to the environment as altered by the X-Virus.
Babels. These outcasts, punished by Revelation by removing their capacity for language, were previously mentioned in X:AoR #0. Magneto claims that they brought Cyclops and Beast forward in time because “we needed the X-Men’s greatest leader and the X-Men’s greatest mind” in order to kill Revelation and free “this land”, and says that the AoR versions of those characters had been turned into Babels by Revelation.
But this contradicts the end of X:AoR #0, where we saw both of them with the X-Men, and Cyclops had dialogue. While it’s possible that they were turned into Babels after that issue, they were already planning to bring Cyclops to the future by that point. So it seems more likely that Magneto is lying for some reason. (Note also that Kid Omega doesn’t seem surprised to learn that Cyclops is with the X-Men.)
Incidentally, Magneto’s powers seem to be working normally again, unlike in the present-day series.
PAGES 15-16. Psylocke catches up with Bei.
Psylocke is still wearing X-symbol, so either she’s still compelled to wear it, or she doesn’t want to cross Revelation again by taking it off.
PAGES 17-18. Cyclops talks to Glob Herman and Schwartzchild.
Omega Kids were also mentioned in X:AoR #0: “Children spy on their parents for any sign of dissent. These are so-called Omega Kids, reporting to Revelation’s spymaster Quentin Quire.”
PAGE 19. Kid Omega passes on the X-Men’s location.
PAGES 20-21. Psylocke and Bei fight.
Psylocke seems to genuinely believe that Revelation is working in mutants’ best interests, but Bei claims to have discovered something that “betrays everything he has been charged with”. Presumably that means she believes he isn’t working for mutants after all, though it’s possible that her objection is something to do with his approach to the concept of survival of the fittest. At any rate, whatever it is, Bei thinks that it’s worth calling in Apocalypse to save the day.
If Revelation did indeed create the X-Virus himself, then an obvious possibility here is that his actual agenda is turn the world into a global Krakoa, with mutants as its food.
PAGES 22-29. The X-Men escape Wolverine.
But Magneto and Angel die, and Xorn apparently sacrifices himself by unleashing his black hole. Wolverine obviously doesn’t die here, because he has a book during the event. We’ll no doubt find out there why he’s serving Revelation and with what degree of free will – and why he’s wearing what appears to be an adamantium mask on his face. In keeping with his religious motif, Revelation consistently refers to him as the Angel of Death. Wolverine doesn’t speak.
The fact that Magneto dies so easily is a little odd, as well – Magneto has traditionally been presented as a character that Wolverine is uniquely ineffective against, because adamantium is magnetic. And Magneto sees him coming here. It’s all a little odd, particularly as we’re specifically shown that Magneto’s powers seem to be working earlier in the issue.
PAGE 30. Revelation kills Bei.
Revelation knows that Bei thinks he’s “betrayed the grand purpose”, but disagrees – so it may be a question of interpretation.
This issue is just a mess.
Scott claiming that “despite how we got here, this seems to be the best situation for mutants since Krakoa” just makes him look like a mutant supremacist. He doesn’t seem concerned about the fate of the X-Men’s human friends who lived in the affected regions. And he doesn’t seem to care that the virus is continuing to spread.
So we’re apparently supposed to believe that Doug wasn’t planning to release the virus before issue 19 but Age of Revelation 0 made it seem like the virus was released maybe a couple of months after Doug joined the X-Men. So Doug and Cortez, who are not geneticists, managed to created a virus that was capable of turning thousands of people into mutants in a couple of months when it took 3K all the time between the fall of Krakoa and now to turn a handful of people into mutants. And Doug couldn’t have mind-controlled Beast into doing it, since Magneto says Beast was the one who discovered it.
“So it seems more likely that Magneto is lying for some reason.”
Or Scott somehow temporarily regained the ability to speak. Or it’s just an error.
“Incidentally, Magneto’s powers seem to be working normally again, unlike in the present-day series.”
Or they aren’t completely working fine, and that’s why Wolverine was able to kill him. You’d have expected some clarification on that point.
The idea that Wolverine was able to kill all these X-Men is just ridiculous. Scott alone has been able to take on Wolverine (although admittedly he had a younger body) but Scott didn’t even try.
it’s been said that Magneto was imposed on MacKay by Breevort, which is why MacKay doesn’t like using him. But killing Magneto off at this point is just idiotic. Magneto is the only character in this group who has an emotional connection to Doug- he was Doug’s teacher and mourned Doug’s death. Since Magneto is dead and Illyana is evil.,there’s no characters with an emotional connection to Doug to oppose him.
Killing Warren was also dumb because he was a former Horseman of Apocalypse, so he might have an interesting perspective on this.
Doug is just a generic mustache twirling villain in this.
I know they were busy but Scott or Hank might have asked Schwartzchild, “So, who was this Chairman guy anyway?”
Note that on the map. the Limbo Lands seem to be composed of Rhode Island and southern Massachusetts. Beverly, Massachusetts, where the Binary series takes place, is in southern Massachusetts. So this seems to confirm that Maddie will be the villain in the Binary series.
it’s also interesting to see that the virus didn’t stop at exactly the Mississippi River. And that the virus is starting to spread into Canada instead of stopping at the border.
Weird choice and very bad pacing to portray 3K, the main villains of the ongoing X-Men series, portrayed as being framed and secondary to the villainy of Revelation before 3K have been properly established as a true threat in the pages of X-Men. There’s going to need to be some heavy lifting to save the idea of 3K before the current status quo returns, as otherwise, the Chairman reveal is going to be even more of a disappointment. “Who cares? We already saw 3K subsumed by the threat of Revelation.”
This would be the equivalent of something like Bastion being destroyed by Onslaught in 1996, then brought back immediately after Onslaught for “Operation: Zero Tolerance”. Why would fans believe that Bastion was a major challenge when the main villain of the last crossover was portrayed as being a bigger threat?
If (this is a big IF) Marvel is still working from discarded plot points left behind by Hickman with the decision to use Doug in this manner, his eventual betrayal of mutants for the benefit of (the being) Krakoa seems plausible.
Doing that story at this point seems like even more poor planning, though, considering that this another dystopian alt-future is already generic without reusing other similar ideas from the recent Krakoa-era.
I am all about an alternate reality where familiar characters show up in unfamiliar forms (and new costumes!), but this premise sounds like a remix of a remix.
The “What If…?” fan in me wants to see everybody die, but the rest of me doesn’t want to have to wade through all the reheated references.
Wouldn’t it have been cool if Doug has been on the X-Men team all along and his heel-turn was a big reveal? Or if the X-Men had been actively dealing with their feelings about Krakoa for a year and AoR somehow fit in thematically?
Do we know what the Doom Note is that Bei possessed? May have something to do with her defecting from Revelation.
@Michael Beverly is in northern Massachusetts. But it’s a small state and that map may not be exact. So I buy your theory about Maddie.
Bei’s Doom Note is basically her power. It’d a sonic blast. And her defection was due to a difference of opinion over Revelation’s current plan.
This was… an interesting opener for the event, but I remain wary. There are a lot of moving parts and a lot of tie-in storylines that could go horribly off the rails, and I really hope MacKay is up to the challenge of juggling all these elements. This issue was a rocky start. Definitely a shame to see so many characters killed off so early.
I’m also wondering if that really is actual contemporary Hank McCoy in the future Beast.
Also disappointed we didn’t get a better lead-in to this event by actually -seeing- Doug’s time with the X-Men and slide into extremism over the course of a few months.
Thanks for the context. I think I’ve read all of her appearances but didn’t make that connection!
I liked it more than X-Men: Age of Revelation #0. But that’s about all I can say.
@Michael: One of Doug’s greatest feats was using his language power in New Mutants #50 to hack Magus’s genetic code (with the help of Warlock) and turn him back into an infant. With his power boosted as Revelation and further increased by Cortez, in isn’t unbelievable that he could hack a virus, esp. if he got Beast’s notes on the 3K version or even a sample of it.
Sure, Doug’s not a geneticist, but he could control as many as he needs. He even could have made Beast create the virus, then forced him to forget. Or Doug used his biohacking powers.
Wolverine obviously doesn’t die here, because he has a book during the event.
THE LAST WOLVERINE is set to star Leonard as a legacy Wolverine, so it is a possibility that Logan really got cooked here.
(He probably wasn’t and there’s a good chance he’ll show back again later as a “twist”, but I wouldn’t bet 100% on it. It sure would be funny if that was truly the end of him for this crossover.)
The thing that confuses me is… who is this FOR? It’s not like “Age of…” events are guaranteed blockbusters from a pure sales perspective – “Age of X-Man” sold so poorly, the whole thing would have been cancelled if they were ongoings. And they’re spamming so many titles (16?!) that there can’t be that many people planning to buy every single issue. And unless someone really buys into the premise… they’re (almost, hi Longshots!) all so tied into it that it seems like more of a jumping OFF point than jumping ON.
@JD
Last Wolverine #3 solicit shows Logan vs Wendiverine.
I think they’re hoping that Age of Apocalypse nostalgia will see increased interest for this over something random like “Age of X-Man” (it’s the anniversary, didn’t you know?). “Age of X-Man” made it obvious they were throwing out anything to kill time before Hickman. Marvel has given fans very little to look forward to as the future of the X-line this time.
The idea of throwing out sixteen books with some of them priced at $5 is probably Marvel’s attempt to say that AoR made more money than AOA. Even if only a small percentage of fans buy (say) Longshots, it’s still additional sales.
Plus, of course, this is all an excuse to relaunch the line again. “From the Ashes” is over, it’s time for “Shadows of Tomorrow”. New #1s, new titles! Will Brevoort be able to keep these books above the cancelation threshold god an entire year? He has at least another ten months to work with for these new titles after every FtA series had dipped below the cancellation threshold except four books.
Also of note: “Shadows of Tomorrow” is abbreviated SoT, which means “stupid or an addict”. This may be purposeful or coincidental on Marvel’s part.
YMMV and all that, but I don’t think Age of X-Man’s books were ever meant to sell particularly well, let alone being potential ongoings.
IIRC at the time I took them to be palate cleansers to play around with unusual arrangements and ideas to see how readers reacted, while also being something to read if one found the concurrent issues of Uncanny X-Men too depressing (which they were).
IMO they succeeded. We got some Nightcrawler spotlight, Blob as a bartender, and a bit of spotlight on Psylocke, Iceman and Glob. And some measure of footwork towards presenting Apocalypse as “somewhat tolerable” and having Bishop appear as clearly heroic (which will always be a necessary periodic care after his role in Messiah Complex and the 2008-2010 “Cable” series). Nothing too predictable nor too commiting, so that future writers would have some working space. It helped that they were in their own continuity pocket and the next era was almost in the same situation on its own.
“This may be purposeful or coincidental on Marvel’s part.”
Yeah, it’s probably one of those two.
First thought without having read anything here yet: I always forget what’s going on with Bei’s speech when she appears, but should Psylocke be able to understand her? And do we assume that no Psylocke body means she’s alive?
Bei’s power of omnilinguism means she can be understood by anyone… except Doug.
Meanwhile, the implication is that her power utterly melted Kwannon. But since we didn’t -see- that happen, and Doug only -assumed- it… it’s ambiguous enough for her to show up alive later.
We see Psylocke running away (in a panel while the Xorn is unleashing his black hold) before Revelations arrives and kills Bei.
Oh, so we do.
The preview for Amazing X-Men 1 is out. The dialogue makes it clear that Magneto and Schwartzchild were lying through their teeth. So Scott and Beast WEREN’T turned into Babels. The contradiction between Age of Revelation 0 and this issue wasn’t an error- it was deliberate. And the story with the X-Virus doesn’t seem to be what Magneto claimed it was. This issues reads a little better knowing that Magenta’s story is SUPPOSED to have holes in it.
Is Magneto The Chairman? That would be a great reveal.
Chairman: “Hello, Scott.”
Scott: “That sounds a lot like Erik, but nah, they have a clone of Magneto already. No way would they put both Magnetos on the same team.”
Wait. I thought a clue was that no one knew about cloning as much as The Chairman.
Magneto: “Well, yeah. My clone is standing right over there. Red Herring!”
Hey maybe. Maybe the big clue is that lately Magneto is always sitting. In a CHAIR. It’s not TLDR or whatever that disease is called, it’s foreshadowing.
That logo is so nostalgic for me. It’s what they used for the Classic X-Men series that started back in 1986.
The greatest of all the X-Men serieses!
Magneto as the chairman would be an interesting twist, as we haven’t really seen Magneto in that light in a long time. Following Morrison’s quickly-retconned take, we got a brief hint of him as a villain at the start of the San Francisco era, but that quickly ended when the X-Men moved to Utopia and he decided to join them.
After that, we got some brief flirtations with anti-heroic means during his solo series alongside the Bendis era, but he never had villainous ends. The X-Men Black series of one-shots implied that he (and Emma) were going back to their roots, but that immediately got wiped out by Krakoa, where he was one of the founding fathers, and he immediately defused any rumblings about a heel-turn by telling Charles there would never again be bad blood between them.
I could see a return to Magneto-as-villain to prepare for the movies, but I think he’s grown past that, and I think the conflict between humans and mutants has largely proven both that he was right and that his original methods would never succeed. X-Men ’97 briefly echoing Fatal Attraction felt played out and uninspired.
The “Magneto” of this issue could be Joseph. Or the other Xorn doing Magneto cosplay again.
Wolverine’s hands (presumably attached to the rest of him) show up after Xorn’s blast. I’m sure he’s stil alive.
This issue was… okay? I’m not super-intrigued by the world, but it wasn’t bad enough to get me to stop reading. I won’t buy most of the spin-offs, but will keep up with Amazing… and Expatriate X-Men.
[…] AGE OF REVELATION OVERTURE #1. (Annotations here.) So I liked this. It’s a little weird to be having a second lead-in book when we already […]
Just saw the checklist page in this issue: 17 first issues! I’m interested in this event but not to that extreme.
Also amuses me that the checklist has books that are taking place “meanwhile, in the present” and includes the Emma Frost flashback series.
Yes, the penultimate story page shows Wolverine clawing (ha ha) his way out of the blast crater, which rather suggests he’s still alive.
Unless it’s just his hands. Anyone up for Literally Just the Deadly Hands of Wolverine?
“Unless it’s just his hands.”
Strange: by the crimson bands of Cyttorak!!!
Clea: Literally Just the Deadly Hands of Wolverine!!!
Strange: wait…what?
Laura: They are attached you know. You could have asked. Is this the way you treat all of our fellow Avengers?
Logan: (waits for a mouth to regenerate)