The X-Axis – w/c 18 November 2025
X-MEN: AGE OF REVELATION INFINITY COMIC #3. By Tim Seeley, Phillip Sevy, Michael Bartolo & Clayton Cowles. Oh, it’s a three-parter. I figured we’d be spending longer with early-AoR Revelation. Instead, this issue switches to Revelation as its narrator. Tim Seeley does have an interesting angle on how Revelation feels about Cable: he doesn’t really know the guy, precisely because he died before the New Mutants met Cable, and maybe Cable is the hardening mentor that he missed out on. But the plot boils down to Revelation summarily defeating the villain, and then getting rid of Cable too. This might be heading towards Cable being the source of the techno-organics we’ve seen sporadically in “Age of Revelation”, and perhaps it does make sense in the wider scheme of things that Revelation just swans into the story and ends it… but it reads a little oddly.
UNBREAKABLE X-MEN #2. (Annotations here.) I’m not sure this story has very much to do with “Age of Revelation” at all, but the flipside is that it has quite a lot to do with Uncanny X-Men, by picking up the Dark Artery/Shuvahrak storyline in the near future. Shuvahrak is a weird character, with Gail Simone’s stories seeming to be intentionally vague about how she became transformed and how she came to turn against mutants in general. But it kind of works; the story wants her to be a sort of looming, ungraspable presence who’s been changed from a conventional character into a kind of Cthulhuesque monster of unavenged sins, and spelling her out too directly would point away from that. The downside is to leave the stakes a little bit obscure, but I think it’s a more interesting story for leaning into the mood. CF Villa’s art really sells Shuvahrak’s demonic angle too, even while it gives us the clearest view of her that we’ve had to date. The rest of the issue mostly consists of gathering the Outliers for a last stand, with a few more hints of things to come – though the clash with the way Deathdream was written in Amazing X-Men is really, really hard to interpret as anything other than an error. I’m still not sure what Spider-Girl is doing in this book – maybe she’s showing up in Uncanny soon, maybe it’s just a vague gesture at the wider Marvel Universe for the sake of the event.
X-MEN: BOOK OF REVELATION #2. (Annotations here.) You know, even though three months feels like plenty of time for “Age of Revelation” to take over the event as a whole, I can’t help feeling that Jed MacKay’s core books would have benefitted from a little bit more space. But this is a nice bit of internal politics within Revelation’s Choristers, with a series of well executed swerves that take the story in new directions that make sense based on what’s come before. Cortez got Topaz and Bei killed; Kitty’s plan is more about getting revenge on Doug than actually achieving anything; and Elbecca turns out to be from Arakko. It all fits – Elbecca’s more simpering moments actually come off better on a second reading with knowledge of the twist. And it leaves me wondering who the hero of the next issue actually is, now that Kitty and Elbecca both seem to be out of the running. Khora? Or are we simply rooting for Elbecca to take Revelation down anyway? Netho Diaz’s art scores on getting the personalities across – the shift in body language for both Elbecca and Cortez in the final scene is perfectly done – though I’m not really sure what the grid effect layouts are adding. A pretty good issue, though.
LAST WOLVERINE #2. (Annotations here.) Okay, yes, this story only works if you’re willing to accept that Leonard never presses Heather for a proper explanation of her plan before charging off to help her “save” Wolverine. But I’ll let that slide because he’s meant to be well-meaning and naive, and there’s something quite endearing about him and Nightcrawler trying to remain optimistic heroes in the face of everything. This is the book that’s bending over backwards to be hopeful and the basic question it’s asking is whether that’s a worthwhile thing to be doing or just something that makes Leonard a sucker. The art is a little stiff at times but it gets the idea across, and it does make Leonard’s innocence convincing.
OMEGA KIDS #2. By Tony Fleecs, Andrés Genolet, Fer Sifuentes-Sujo & Travis Lanham. Pretty much the story you’d expect from issue #1: Quentin is trying to mentor these kid psychics to do what he considers the right thing, and they just want him out of the way so they can do their thing as the next generation. I’m not honestly sure what Rachel Summers is doing in this story, particularly as someone who’s thrown in the towel and gone into retirement – yes, she can play off the “mutants hunting other mutants” angle, but in order for her to be available to talk to, she can’t be actively opposed to Revelation, so her role winds up feeling awkward. But the twist in the closing scene is well executed (having been nicely set up in the previous issue), and the closing page of Bailey’s sociopathic devotion to the cause – if that’s even what she really cares about – is beautifully chilling.
RADIOACTIVE SPIDER-MAN #2. By Joe Kelly, Kev Walker, Cam Smith, Chris Sotomayor & Joe Caramagna. So basically we’re doing the idea that Peter is so devoted to May that he’ll stick with her even in the face of armageddon, and even at the point where he could be making more of a contribution elsewhere – a sort of inversion of the normal routine where his double life keeps him away from her. That’s fine as an idea, and Kev Walker’s ageing and hangdog Spider-Man is beautifully pitched. I’m not so sure it fits into “Age of Revelation”, since it seems to be depicted a more explicitly dystopian future in the Revelation Territories when mutants in general are supposed to be experiencing it as a utopia. It doesn’t quite feel like it’s working from the same memo as everyone else. Fortunately, precisely because it’s written in the margins of that story, it doesn’t really matter whether it fits or not; it’s really just a story about how some of Peter’s traits are immutable in the face of disaster.
X-MEN OF APOCALYPSE #1. By Jeph Loeb, Simone Di Meo & Tyler Smith. Which is really issue #2 because the first issue was the Alpha one-shot. This isn’t as egregiously awful as that was, but it’s basically just a pointless fight scene with pretty art, in what seems to be intended as a jump through various points in X-Men history. This time, “just after Age of Apocalypse“. Next time, the Silver Age. It’s autopilot stuff, doing something not wildly different from the recent Giant-Size X-Men one-shots, from the looks of it. And look, Jeph Loeb is absolutely capable of writing acceptable material, as his work with Tim Sale has shown. But he’s also capable of putting his name to some of the most incompetent stories I’ve ever laid eyes on, such as Ultimatum and his two Romulus arcs, and bluntly, those have done a lot more to set my expectations of a Jeph Loeb comic. This one exceeds my expectations, but it still falls some way short of being worth my time.
X-Men: Book of Revelation 2 was indeed good, but I don’t expect a newly-introduced character like Elbecca to take down the main villain. Cyclops’s team and Apocalypse are both gunning for him. I hope McKay doesn’t have Elbecca sacrifice herself to motivate another character or something.
Book of Revelation was one that I was convinced I’d skip. Because the pitch just felt like world-building filler. But out of what I’ve read from AoR, it is easily the best book. If not the best X-Men book of the year, crossover or not.
Re: Unbreakable X-Men 2:
“I’m still not sure what Spider-Girl is doing in this book – maybe she’s showing up in Uncanny soon, maybe it’s just a vague gesture at the wider Marvel Universe for the sake of the event.”
Since Ewing’s X-Men United is supposed to be the school book, my guess is she’s going to turn up there.
Re: Omega Kids 2:
Fleecs has said that he didn’t use Betsy because someone else had her in the original plan.
Rachel not doing anything to oppose Revelation is odd. Does she know what he did to Cable and Kitty?
Re: X-Men of Apocalypse 1:
This really doesn’t fit into continuity. Nate Grey is Westchester but this story takes place before Gambit awakes from his coma after Rogue kissed him. Nate should be wandering around Europe at this point.
Eve Ewing’s new books has been announced. It’s called X-Men United. The idea is that Emma Frost founds a new school called Graymatter Lane. It’s apparently on the astral plane. The faculty will include Wolverine, Beast, Storm. Magneto, Rogue and Prodigy.
A young mutant will be injured on the first day and an X-Man will be responsible. In other words, the same basic setup as Avengers: Initiative 1, which Breevort had alluded to.
A secret from Sinister’s lab will play a role- presumably this will follow up on the plot in Exceptional X-Men.
And Cyclops will be opposed to the new school and try to sabotage it.
I guess the idea is to give Eve an ACTUAL flagship book this time and see if she can make it work. Still, considering how poorly Exceptional sold, you’d think Breevort would find another writer. And Cyclops being opposed to the school seems contrived but we’ll see how it plays out.
Michael> I guess the idea is to give Eve an ACTUAL flagship book this time and see if she can make it work.
Remember, Exceptional was sold as a flagship book. The From the Ashes announcement included a triptych selling Uncanny, adjectiveless and Exceptional as the three major books.
I don’t see this as any different. You mention Avengers: The Initiative – that wasn’t the flagship, Bendis’ books were. Or, for an X-Men reference, New X-Men: Academy X, where they moved the NXM name from Morrison’s book over to the continuation of New Mutants v2.
Same sort of thing, we’ll just see if this one ends up in a slaughter of the new kids this time.
Even though Exceptional was billed as a flagship book, it never felt that way. The book was a vehicle for trying to fix Shadowcat’s time as Shadowkat. The book focused too much time on White Queen and Shadowcat’s relationship, and it was left out of the loop with the rest of the X-books. The stories were too plodding and felt disconnected from what was going on in Uncanny and Adjectiveless. The art may have looked good, but that is pointless if the story is meandering.
Was hoping to see Batman/Deadpool on the list.
Contrived conflict between teams seems to be Brevoort’s thing. Only none of his writers appear to want to tell those stories.
One of the reasons Exceptional didn’t feel like a flagship title was that it started last and was a monthly book instead of running, what, 18 issues a year like the other two.
Still, at times it was my favourite of the three. And I like the school books. I hope Ewing’s second shot hits with more people.
As for this week – it was good. Book of Revelation was best, Spider-Man continued to be fun (I’m not sure if bringing in Miles and Gwen was necessary… Gwen, especially, has nothing to do), Last Wolverine remains more readible than the ongoing, and Omega Kids remains intriguing.
The world seems like a crapsaccharine one at best, if not a dystopia. Dissenters are turned into babels or killed like in Omega Kids, even for wrongthink. A grandmother had her memory of her grandson erased “just to be safe”.
@Krzysiek- Exceptional was basically a New Mutants-Generation X type book. But Brevoort knew that those kinds of books are quickly cancelled. So he decided to pretend it was a flagship. Most readers saw through it right away.
Bleeding Cool’s Weekly Bestseller List is out. X-Men of Apocalypse 1 came in 6th. None of the other X-books made this list. This is just embarrassing. I can’t think of another major crossover where none of the books made the weekly top 10 list. And there were plenty of Marvel books in the top 10, so this isn’t a Marvel problem, it’s an X-books problem.
“we’ll just see if this one ends up in a slaughter of the new kids this time”
With Emma running the school, the likelihood is pretty high.
Also, Omega Kids has no right to be as good as it is. I even buy Quentin as a toe-the-line psychic cop, which should a harder sell. And the art’s great.
With the X-Books doing line-wide crossovers and relaunches so frequently, this seems less like an ‘event’ to boost the sales, and more like a placeholder for while they plan the next relaunch – a bit like what the Age of X-Man did before Dawn of X.
This is not really an event.
It’s just a relaunch of Exceptional under a different name.
It even gets the same number of variant covers.
@JCG – I think @Aro was referring to Age of Revelation, the subject of the actual blog post :p
Which parts showing Quentin in Omega Kids 2 were actually happening?
Finally, news about Moonstar’s series is out. Moonstar’s series will debut in March and it’s written by Ashley Allen. Dani must hunt down a soul-devouring weapon. So presumably this will follow up on Dani becoming the leader of the Society of the Eternal Dawn at the end of Allen’s Magik run.
Oh, and it’s a limited series.
AGE OF REVELATION INFINITY COMIC #3 came out, the first part of Seeley doing the story about how Illyana became the Darkchylde full time in the future and…
It was not received well at all. Many online people are very, very mad to the point of wishing harm and death upon Seeley and the artist.
If there’s even a #5 at this rate, I’ll be shocked.
I’ve only seen vague posts on Bluesky about how death threats are not nice, I had no idea that was a reaction to some idiots reacting to this particular story.
Weird. I’m not going to delve looking for details, but this is such loser behaviour… and it comes round and round again.
Yeah, people get way too worked up over fictional characters. Sure, it’s fine to get annoyed but the amount of sheer anger is ridiculous. It started off with people insisting that Seeley was not a feminist and how the story was so sexist and offensive. It then degenerated into multiple death threats against Seeley and his family until Seeley announced he was leaving Twitter and joining BlueSky.
The decision was probably Brevoort’s idea to help kill interest in Magik anyway. heh
I avoid all social media. I only know of the details from reading the coverage on a comic web-site.
Getting random death threats is the Xitter experience. If you don’t want bots, vatniks, and trolls making constant death threats against your family than you should not be using Xitter. I left, Paul left, Al left, X(men)Twitter once thriving X-men community left. Was feeling bad for Seeley until Chris V’s post. Anyhoo…
X-Men of Apocalypse- Is the Xavier timeline supposed to be 616? I started off presuming so because that was the only thing that would fit with the original event, but the more that I read, the less continuity seemed to fit. Is it just typical Jeff Loeb or could this be an actual clever misdirection? I know Loeb’s work enough to not hold my breath, but the pieces would work if this was a broader multiversal event than the on page exposition. Kang, Doctor Doom, Franklin Richards… how many characters at this point have not reset the universe? With the MCU heading towards incursions and merged realities we are likely to see even more of this worn trope.
BOOK OF REVELATION-does Doug actually have to be defeated within the event? Apocalypse seems to be the most likely candidate, but finishing the event with a doomed outcome, a true bad end might be a better set up for Shadows of Tomorrow.
“Which parts showing Quentin in Omega Kids 2 were actually happening?”
I don’t know.
This isn’t sloppy ambiguity, this is intentional and well done.
I don’t know.
This is praise.
@Woodswalked: People get death threats on other platforms than Twitter. I hope Seeley gets fewer on Bsky, but I have my doubts. It’s a fandom issue, not just a social media issue.
@Steven Kaye: Oh, the psychos are running wild on BlueSky too. Just run a search on Tim Seeley’s name and see what comes up, it’s lunacy.
Probably the same loons that got Chip Zontowski.