Unbreakable X-Men #1 annotations
UNBREAKABLE X-MEN #1
“Guarding the Gate”
Writer: Gail Simone
Artist: Lucas Werneck
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Editor: Tom Brevoort
COVER: Age of Revelation Gambit, with the tombstones of Rogue and Marcus St Juniors, and… well, that looming face in the background might be Shuvahrak, but the green gloves seem more like Rogue.
This is the “Age of Revelation” title standing in for Uncanny X-Men.
PAGES 1-8. Rogue dies fighting Galactus.
“Seven years from now.” The main time frame for Age of Revelation is ten years into the future, relative to the present day. By this point, the Revelation Territories should be well established. However, this is Louisiana, and it’s not part of Revelation’s territory even in the main time frame.
Haven House. The base of the X-Men team from Uncanny X-Men. Evidently they’re still there years into the future – or at least they return there at some point.
The X-Men. The team at this point consists of Ransom (as team leader), Rogue, Gambit, Temper, Dome, Spider-Girl and Sentinel Boy. Taking them in turn:
- Rogue still looks much as we remember. Notionally Ransom is the team leader but (maybe just because she’s the focal point of the scene) Rogue sure comes across as if she’s really in charge. It feels as if Ransom’s been recently promoted to this role, perhaps before he’s quite ready, and perhaps because Rogue never felt comfortable doing it. Rogue’s power absorption has been getting stronger with age (for no particular reason), to the point where she’s able to singlehandedly put Galactus out of commission for several years – although the effort of absorbing that much power somehow turns her into the giant statue we see later in the issue.
- Gambit, again, is basically as we remember him – after all, the point of the issue is for him to be changed by Rogue’s death.
- Ransom, as noted, is the team leader, though he seems understandably unsure what to do about a threat on the scale of Galactus. Maybe that’s the reason why the more experienced Rogue winds up taking more of a role.
- Dome. This is Chelsea St Juniors, the daughter of the present-day Haven House. The rest of the family have died somewhere along the line. We saw Chelsea using her force field power in Uncanny X-Men #10, where she told Nightcrawler that she wanted to be called Dome as a future X-Man.
- Temper. Currently a member of the Alaskan team, but there’s a subplot about a romance between her and Ransom; we learn later in the issue that they have a son, Clay.
- Spider-Girl. From the costume, this is apparently meant to be an older version of Makawalu Akana, the main character of the current Spider-Girl series – who is indeed a mutant.
- Sentinel Boy. Never clearly identified, but evidently a boy piloting a Sentinel. The obvious candidate, particularly given this Sentinel’s rather cuddly design, is Juston Seyfert from the short-lived Sentinel ongoing (who also appeared in Avengers Arena). Juston recently resurfaced in the Sentinels miniseries having been partially transformed by nanotech; the idea might be that this is how he winds up.
“Why not the Avengers or whatever the hell is left of the Fantastic Four these days?” We don’t know at this stage what’s up with either of those teams.
Shuvahrak. The Shuvahrak plotline is a sequel to the “Dark Artery” arc from Uncanny X-Men #13-16. The key points of that story are all explained in the dialogue. It established that Haven is near the Dark Artery, a sort of magical mutant graveyard, and that beneath the Dark Artery is “the Penumbra”, a kind of prison afterlife for humans who had betrayed mutant relatives. Shuvahrak was a sort of demonic ruler of the Penumbra, and presented as godlike. The original arc strongly implied that Shuvahrak had started off a Greta, the mutant who created the Penumbra, although it stopped short of saying so in terms. In that arc, Shuvahrak was rather keen to escape the Penumbra and tried to get one of the Outliers to take her place.
This story is rather more specific than the original about the number of inhabitants of the Penumbra, with Ransom putting it at “a thousand”. Temper claims that they would rip mutantkind to shreads if they got out, which seems a bit pessimistic when Revelation’s around – and in fact they don’t live up to the billing in the closing pages. Nonetheless, they did clearly have great strength and endurance in “Dark Artery”.
“Last time I did this, I burned my village to ash.” This is Temper’s back story from her debut in Uncanny X-Men #528 (2010).
Galactus. His reasons for being here aren’t spelled out. The X-Men initially assume that he wants Shuvahrak, but he claims to be seeking simply a new herald, and wants to select Dome. We’re not told why she’s of interest to him. Rogue apparently gets credited by everyone with saving the world when she defeats Galactus, but it’s at best unclear whether the world was actually in danger here.
Rogue Storm. You may be wondering how Rogue can have died fighting Galactus three years ago when she’s co-starring in another “Age of Revelation” book, Rogue Storm. This issue ignores that question entirely, but Rogue Storm #1 does provide a fairly straightforward answer. According to that book, a couple of years into the Age of Revelation timeline, Rogue is split into two versions of herself, known as Rogue Green and Rogue Red. The one in this issue is Rogue Green. According to Rogue Storm, everyone regards Green as the original and Red as a copy, though there’s some suggestion that they might actually be equally valid. Gambit in particular remains committed to the “original” Rogue, leading the rejected Rogue Red to leave Haven House. Oh, and all of Rogue Red’s scenes in Rogue Storm are flashbacks which take place a couple of years before this issue’s Galactus flashback.
PAGE 9. Montage: Gambit goes into decline without Rogue.
Rogue’s wake is attened by Cyclops, Nightcrawler, Beast and two women who are probably Jubilee and M. In the context of the wider event, what’s notable here is that Cyclops is normally dressed and clean shaven as little as three years before the “main” time frame, where his X-Men seem to be beleaguered refugees.
The boy in this scene is later identified as Clay Correa, the child of Ransom and Temper.
PAGES 10-11. Gambit talks to Rogue.
Well, the statue, anyway. The fact that Rogue is still physically present – because what are you going to do with the enormous statue? – obviously isn’t helping Gambit to move on.
Gambit still has his cats – presumably new ones but his point.
PAGES 12-14. Galactus wakes.
Somehow, Galactus has ended up underwater, being ignored as a familiar sight by passing Atlantean patrol guards. Presumably this where he wound up while trying to teleport to safety, or something like that. It’s taken him three years to recover from his encounter with Rogue, but he wakes up and immediately makes contact with Shuvahrak (depicted as she was in “Dark Artery”).
The Atlanteans mention being at war with Latveria, which is new information.
PAGES 15-17. Lady Henrietta visits Haven to warn about Shuvahrak.
The monolith commemorating Rogue has a plaque next to it, which simply shows Rogue’s face and her real name; the rest of the text is illegible.
Henrietta was introduced as the apparently immortal guardian of the Dark Artery in the original storyline. She seems to anticipate that Rogue will at some point be “ready” for a conventional grave in the artery, but gives the impression that she hasn’t spoken to Gambit in three years – she talks as if this is the first time they’ve spoken since Rogue died, despite being about five minutes walk from the house. Of course, on Henrietta’s timescale – which involves hanging around the Dark Artery being very patient – this may not register as much of a delay.
Aside from the information that Shuvahrak has been sleeping for the past few years and has recently reawoken, Henrietta is mainly just infodumping for people who didn’t read “Dark Artery”.
PAGES 18-20. Gambit fights off the Tormented.
Having been released from the Penumbra by Shuvahrak (presumably at Galactus’ instigation), the Tormented appear as a zombie horde. In practice, Gambit seems able to despatch them fairly easily, though there’s a suggestion that he’s making an unsuccessful attempt to blow himself up in the process.
The cyborg dog that joins the fight is Waffles, the Sentinel dog that Deathdream inadvertently freed in Uncanny X-Men. Deathdream himself is up at the X-Men Mansion, as shown in Amazing X-Men.
My guess for Sentinel Boy is that he’s Shogo. We’ve seen him as a Sentinel pilot in future timelines before, and he asks other X-Men to speak to his mom if he survives.
I haven’t read Rogue-Storm yet, but it’s somewhat comforting to hear that Ayodele didn’t tamp down on any of the insanity.
Oh, I see. There was an X-Men x-change program swapping Deathdream and Temper.
This doesn’t seem to have anything to do with AoR wider plot.
Perhaps that’s for the best.
“he claims to be seeking simply a new herald, and wants to select Dome. We’re not told why she’s of interest to him.”
One theory I’ve heard is that she’s the Endling.
Scott and Beast coming to the wake is more evidence that the Babels story was a lie.
This story doesn’t feel like an Age of Revelation story. In addition to Scott being normally dressed and clean shaven, Gambit mentions receiving letters in the mail. Granted, this takes place in the United States, not the Revelation Territories- it’s possible the government is functioning relatively normally outside the Revelation Territories. But still…
In addition, no one is worried about the X-virus spreading into Louisiana even though in this week’s Sinister’s Six, Sinister says that the virus will continue to spread until the entire world is remade in Doug’s image. This issue seems like a generic Bad Future and not the Age of Revelation.
Note that Remi calls the Tormented zuvembies. This was the term Marvel had to use for their zombies because the Comics Code wouldn’t let them use the term zombies.
Not a comment on this, but on Iron & Frost as that won’t get fully annotated…
Revelation’s people there can tell that a new character is a new mutant, yet in the Laura book they don’t know if her kid is a mutant or not.
With that out of the way, something that is more relevant to this issue: Doesn’t it seem like a bit of a cheat when some of these titles just do a direct flashback to the intervening years? As far as I remember, the only time you got to see the years before ‘now’ in AoA was in the dedicated 2 issue title that was entirely for that purpose (Chronicles).
The whole “Rogue Red and Rogue Green” thing feels like utter nonsense, but also a callback of course to Superman Red and Superman Blue. There’s literally no reason why Rogue of all people should be split into two, save I guess that they needed one for this book’s backstory and another for Rogue Storm’s current story.
Mind you, this week also sees two Fantomex–one male, one female, which calls back to that time there were three running around. Because again, two different books just HAD to have Fantomex after a while of no books having Fantomex.
I glanced at Rogue Storm long enough to realize that if the regular Storm series was gonzo, this is the Storm series without restraint or moderation.
So far the Age of Revelation is really off to a rocky start, with so many titles existing for the sake of existing. Iron & Frost is Duggan picking up on threads from his Iron Man and West Coast Avengers runs; Sinister’s Six is Sinister up to his usual hijinks with a cast of misfit mutants; Unbreakable is Gail gamely playing with what she’s left of her cast; Rogue Storm is absolutely unhinged.
We’re halfway through month one and I’m just not sure where this is all even going, especially with so many titles opting for flashbacks (4 years, 6 years, 7 years later…). Is this going to be a standard “prevent a bad future by changing the past??” or will it actually do something different?
@Dave- in Iron & Frost, Revelation’s people got there a few minutes before Eris used her powers for the first time. In Laura Kinney: Sabretooth they’re not sure if her son will manifest powers months or years from now. Cerebro was able to detect Kitty shortly before she used her powers the first time but could not detect children who were months or years from manifesting their powers.
@The Other Michael- iron & Frost is written by Cavan Scott, not Duggan.
@Michael. I get the confusion, the roster are characters Duggan loves to write.
My mistake. I saw the Tony & Emma thread and then the Tony/Rhodey/Angelica part of the WCA and of course figured Duggan was picking up on leftover storylines.
Neither here nor there*, but cats regularly live 15 years or longer. They could easily be Gambit’s current cats.
*unlike Rogue, who is both here and there. Between there being two Rogues, and a Sabretooth that was born, lived, and died entirely off-panel, I have to question the tightness of their world building.
“yet in the Laura book they don’t know if her kid is a mutant or not.”
I interpreted that as Revelation’s intentional obfuscation.
Still, with so much incoherence between the titles, who can tell.
Brevoort: “Okay, everyone, MacKay ‘s got an idea for an event, so everyone needs to figure out how to make your book work with that.”
Simone: “I don’t want to do that. Can I just write an Outliers story and put Wolverine and Nightcrawler on the cover?”
Brevoort: “You already do that every month.”
Simone: “Okay, can I just tell a Gambit story that uses my existing villains?”
Breevort: “Sure. I stopped listening because I’m concerned that Ayodele has started madly writing on the walls.”
I guess this falls into the “Red Skies” category of tie-ins, in that it has nothing at all to do with Revelation, the X-Virus or anything resembling the main plot.
I hope that Sentinel kid does come back one way or another. I don’t remember reading any of his solo books, but I still felt Avengers Arena did him dirty. And his recent appearance in Sentinels just made it worse. He was a character for kids for goodness sake, enough with the grimdark.
I supposed having just revisited the Savage land arc someone decided splitting in 2 is something Rogue does. Or they picked the name as classic Claremont story name, then Simone brought in her plot and pulled rank as core book, so the needed a fudge to make the name work.
I fully support a writer ignoring a crossover and doing their own thing instead. Considering pretty much everyone has been complaining about crossovers ruining the flow of this book, I don’t mind Simone writing a story that actually feels like it belongs in the book. I’m hoping she can tie it back into the present somehow by the end.
I actually enjoyed this comic. It feels like Simone is using this crossover to have fun with a look into a possible future using her characters and storylines, and I’m just fine with that.
I don’t even mind the two Rogues thing. I chalk that up to a weird status quo, like looking back 10 years ago today and wondering why there are two Cyclops running around. Or when Wolverine died, there was Old Man Logan.
Yeah, so far I’m digging Age of Revelation.
Well, at least this is slightly more coherent than X-Manhunt.
Of all the titles so far, Sinister’s Six is the one I enjoyed the most. David Marquez can draw and write!
Given how often X-Men headquarters get blown up, is it really a good idea for Gambit to have pets? (Although metatextually, I guess it’s one way to ensure this team’s HQ WON’T get destroyed.)
Also, there’s ANOTHER new Spider-Girl? Dear Lord, what are they up to now, eight? Nine? They’re going to be able to field a baseball team soon.
Big Two comics went through a period (and may still be going through it) where they do terrible things to teen characters made for kid’s comics. To my mind, DC was worse than Marvel, but both are bad.
Also, hearing there is Rogue Red and Rogue Green makes me hope that there is some writer that is tasteless to introduce a red-green colorblind character who is unable to distinguish between them.
At this point I just want a Rogue Squadron
I kind of like the idea of having an alternate future timeline where there are “flashbacks” to stories that are still in the future for our current characters.
Two Rogues seems like a wacky superhero trope that’s plausible, and works as a kind of call-back to the days when she was half Rogue and half Carol.
In addition to the Superman Red/Superman Blue comparison, you could also see it as a reference to X-Men Gold/X-Men Blue, which is fun.
I’ve seen people say they probably just did this because Simone and Ayodele both wanted to write Rogue stories, and I hope there’s a little more to it than that.
I’m sorry, but Rogue beating Galactus?
On what PLANET does that make sense? Galactus isn’t even supposed to be actual flesh, but energy we PERCIEVE as a man because our brains can’t handle his true appearance. How does Rogue’s power, which involves touching FLESH, work on someone NOT MADE OF FLESH?
Sam> Also, hearing there is Rogue Red and Rogue Green makes me hope that there is some writer that is tasteless to introduce a red-green colorblind character who is unable to distinguish between them.
The funny thing is that “Rogue Green”‘s costume was YELLOW where Rogue Red’s is red.
Aaron Elijah Thall> I’m sorry, but Rogue beating Galactus?
>
> On what PLANET does that make sense? Galactus isn’t even supposed to be actual flesh, but energy we PERCIEVE as a man because our brains can’t handle his true appearance. How does Rogue’s power, which involves touching FLESH, work on someone NOT MADE OF FLESH?
I mean, it doesn’t, but however over-the-top this “feat” is, the ship sailed a while back. Literally one of the first things established about Rogue is that she couldn’t absorb Wonder Man – her first scene had her grab Thor & Cap’s powers, but fail on Wonder Man & Vision. Fast forward to now, and her current “flying brick” powers come from… absorbing Wonder Man.
[They’ve never used any of the distinctive traits of his powers for her, even visually – he bleeds kirby dots rather than blood and has red eyes. And occasionally turns into a man made of kirby dots, plus is generally immortal.]
Now I wish they’d gone with Rogue Blue & Rogue Gold.
[…] X-MEN #1. (Annotations here.) We’re in week two of the “Age of Revelation” proper – as opposed to the […]
Rogue Red should have been called Rogue Rouge.
No ones mentioned…Rogue absorbing all of Galuctus’ power seems a bit much to me. I know there are some other odd examples over the years, but the big G is supposed to be a cosmic force. Putting Rogue to that level makes her way too powerful.
Add Rogue to the list of cosmic X-people with Phoenix and Storm. Maybe they can level up Wolverine and Polaris to cosmic beings, too. And Eye-Boy and Toad and…
There already was a Phoenix Wolverine a few years back.