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.

Hellion. Laura killed Hellion at the end of the previous issue, when he was trying to pressure her into being his partner. She lies to Revelation about that, and seems to believe that she can get away with this. However, while Revelation isn’t technically a mind-reader, even regular Doug Ramsey has been established as able to read body language. So it’s highly unlikely that she’s fooling him.

“Life outside of my Territories is increasingly unkind to mutants.” Revelation made a similar claim last issue, although more specifically under reference to Arakko. (We’ll come back to what he said about that.) He also mentions something called “the Rootless Lands” here, as another potential destination – that could be anything.

The Vanisher. We saw the Age of Revelation Vanisher before in X-Men: Age of Revelation #0. The US government tried to nuke Revelation, and Vanisher (boosted by Fabian Cortez) teleported the bomb back to Washington DC.

Wolverine is standing around in the background of the scene, but nobody comments on that.

The flashback shows Laura with her husband Zane and son Alex; we were told last issue that Zane was the son of the original Sabretooth, and that he’s since died.

PAGES 3-5. Laura interrupts the escape plan.

We saw Sage, Gabby, Akihiro and Alex last issue, and their dialogue here is basically just recapping what we learned there.

PAGES 6-16. Laura fails to stop the escape, and kills Sage.

Under Revelation’s influence, Laura believes herself to be the hero here, saving people from themselves. Sage seems to deliberately encourage Laura to kill her, in the hope that it’ll cut through to her on some level. It does seem to work, up to a point, leading her to remember why she was trying to get Alex out in the first place.

Laura believes that she would be immune to mind control, though she’s starting to doubt it. Her reasoning is rather odd: she believes that Logan’s healing factor would counter any attempt to mind control him, and therefore so would hers. There are obvious problems with this reasoning. For a start, the Age of Revelation Logan is obviously greatly changed, and Laura herself mentioned that last issue – though she was trying to rationalise it as something to do with the virus. Also, Laura and Logan both have back stories involving mind control and brainwashing.

Admittedly, she’s not entirely wrong – some stories do have Logan’s healing factor countering mind control to a degree, and Amazing X-Men #1 showed him as being particularly resistant to Revelation’s powers, needing periodic reinforcement to keep him under control. But her reasoning is weak enough to suggest that it’s more a reflection of Revelation’s manipulations than anything else.

Shark-Girl was also seen last issue (and is still going by that name, despite the passage of ten years).

PAGES 17-19. The refugees arrive on Arakko.

In issue #1, Revelation claimed that Arakko “has become even more inhospitable to Terran mutants” and said that “One would think it was run by humans with their level of aggression.” This scene suggests that there was actually some degree of truth to that, as the Arakko border patrol promptly demand that the refugees prove their worth in combat. Since they’re uniformed and Apocalypse doesn’t suggest that they’re vigilantes, it seems reasonable to assume that they are indeed implementing official policy.

Al Ewing’s Arakko story in World of Revelation #1 gives some indication of Arakko’s current attitude to refugees. That story claims that Arakko has “mellowed somewhat” since the days of X-Men Red, but this does appear to be relative. It shows a community of human refugees living on Arakko, and says: “These are the ones who fought against Revelation and survived to tell the tale and so, mutant powers or no, they are of Arakko.” That would suggest that Arakko accepted them, not because they were refugees, but because they were defeated warriors. If so, it may be that even this “mellowed” version of Arakko views typical refugees as something close to deserters.