The X-Axis – w/c 15 December 2025
X-MEN: AGE OF REVELATION INFINITY COMIC #7. By Alex Paknadel, Adoardo Audino, KJ Díaz & Clayton Cowles. One last back story arc for the Age of Revelation, then. This one is about how Glob Herman wound up becoming a violent radical. He starts off the way we normally see him in Alaska, just a bit disappointed about the how same-y Revelation’s paradise is. He winds up being accused of counter-revolutionary thought on the basis of a single conversation with an old school friend (and yes, Radian really is a very minor New X-Men character). And he gets rescued by a mutated version of the Punisher. So apparently we’re getting “Punisher mentors Glob Herman” for the next two issues. And that sounds like it could be quite fun, since it’s such a ridiculous clash of characters. The Punisher doesn’t belong in this storyline at all, in a good way. This is apparently Alex Paknadel’s last contribution to the Infinity comics – if they’re even continuing after Age of Revelation, given how many other ones have been wrapped up lately – but it seems like a pretty solid entry.
X-MEN: BOOK OF REVELATION #3. (Annotations here.) For such a sprawling event, Age of Revelation has only two books you really need to read, and they’re the Jed MacKay ones. Amazing X-Men and Book of Revelation are both behaving like an actual crossover, converging for the finale issue. Last Wolverine might possibly be feeding into the finale, but pretty much everything else feels peripheral – or at most as if they’re setting up future plot points for the 2026 titles. But these two books are at least bringing us to some sense of events coming to a head, with the X-Men showing up in Philadelphia just as Arakko invades.
That said, this issue consists mostly of Revelation’s showdown with Elbecca, and an explanation of what he’s really up to. One issue with MacKay’s minis is that the plots may be too minimalist, but they do generally work a character pieces. Here, we get the echoes of Doug’s original personality as he keeps up his computer hobby, and a self-justifying speech about what he’s really trying to achieve. As I read it, the idea seems to be that he’s been driven mad by a compulsion to achieve Apocalypse’s goal that he can only reconcile with his other beliefs by doing something completely deranged – and obviously the direction for the present-day Doug will be to avert this timeline. Netho Diaz’s art has him swinging wildly from relative calm to hysterical emoting, and I can’t honestly figure out whether this is intentional or just massive overacting. It doesn’t quite land for me, anyway, and I’m not sure the conspicuous grid layouts are adding much either. But the subtler moments work.
ROGUE STORM #3. (Annotations here.) This is one of the books that’s much more interested in doing its own near-future storyline than in having anything to do with the wider Age of Revelation – it has some crossover with Unbreakable X-Men, but that book is pretty much detached too. As with Storm, this has a rather convoluted timeline which probably does more to obscure the plot than to help it, but the story itself is clear enough in the end, and Boschi really does deliver some lovely bold artwork here, with an engagingly creepy Eēgūn shifting appearance in an otherwise stable world. I notice the excessive use of sound effects has stopped entirely, and since that happens in mid-arc, I can only assume that someone had a word. Having two versions of Rogue in AoR seems a very odd choice, but at its core it allows for a fairly simple story: Storm is the only X-Man who accepts the copy as a real person, Rogue tries to save Storm and winds up getting herself killed, Storm brings Rogue back to life while sacrificing herself to contain Eēgūn. The trouble is that the “bringing Rogue back” bit feels entirely arbitrary and tacked on, and it’s never really clear what the other choice was, and thus what Storm sacrificed to do it. But there’s something in there. Now, whether we really needed a story where Storm is better at magic than Dr Voodoo… I know we’ve had some material in the present-day book about her undeveloped magical potential, but really, she doesn’t have to be the best at everything. It clearly has an appeal to Storm’s fans, but she really could do with some redeeming flaws these days.
LAST WOLVERINE #3. (Annotations here.) In theory I see where this is going. Heather sets out to “free” Wolverine by using the Muramasa Blade to kill him, but ironically winds up freeing him anyway by using it for a bit of light amputation instead. Leonard’s effort to serve as a stand-in heroic Wolverine ultimately pays dividends, but he has to sacrifice his own humanity to do it – yet since he’s giving in to his berserker rage, it doesn’t even feel like a sacrifice to him. In fact, perhaps his extremely sunny and naive disposition throughout this series is as much as anything a side effect of him working so hard to suppress anything remotely approaching his dark side. And we get Leonard saving Logan in an inverted version of the way Logan drove him away from the Revelation Territories back in the flashback in issue #1. On the other hand, Kurt seems tacked on, and the art is missing something.
Partly it’s the lack of flow in the action sequences. Look at 11 in the digital edition (or page 12 if you’re going by Kindle’s numbers, because they still haven’t fixed that bug). Panel 1: Leonard runs straight at Logan and levels him. Panel 2: Logan is clambering on Leonard’s back. Panel 3: somehow, Leonard is now suddenly behind Logan and grabbing him. Panel 4: Logan swipes at Leonard with the same arm that Leonard was grabbing in the previous panel – not the free arm, which would actually have made sense. Panel 5: close up of Leonard. Panel 6: Leonard is running towards an off-panel Logan (when did the distance between them appear?). It’s choppy, and doesn’t exactly reward attention. But the other issue is one of scale and drama; it’s an issue that mostly consists of people punching one another on the roof of an office building, and it pretty much looks like that. It’s all a bit muted, I think, and doesn’t really pull off what the story was going for.
OMEGA KIDS #3. By Tony Fleecs, Andrés Genlot, Fer Sifuentes-Sujo & Travis Lanham. Well, as you’d probably expect, Quentin gets control of his prodigies again. That’s not particularly surprising (unless they were going to have Quentin’s defeat playing into Revelation’s vulnerability), and I’m a little underwhelmed by the lack of individuality shown by the Omega Kids themselves in this issue. Bailey seemed to be set up as the psycho and Nell as the relatively nice one, but nothing really comes of that. Where the issue does score is in Quentin’s reaction to figuring out what’s going on. Since he still considers himself one of the good guys, he’s honestly horrified by the kids’ disregard for what he regards as innocent civilians. But he’s also desperately proud of what a good job he must have done as teacher to make these maniacs so dangerous. Ultimately all the kids succeed in doing is in prompting him to raise his game, at which point he’s way out of their league – and Genlot does get across the idea that Quentin is as dangerous as they are, even as he firmly considers himself to be the reasonable one. I don’t think it quite sticks the landing, because of the kids themselves becoming interchangeable, but Quentin’s arc works for me.
RADIOACTIVE SPIDER-MAN #3. By Joe Kelly, Kev Walker, Cam Smith, Wade von Grawbadger, Elisabetta D’Amico, Chris Sotomayor & Joe Caramagno. Ten years into the Age of Revelation, Spider-Man finally has to accept that now that Aunt May has turned into a dangerous monster, it’s perhaps time to let her die. This is getting into parodic territory, with Spider-Man attempting to fulfil his usual function of protecting Aunt May beyond all possible reason, despite being warned how irrational this is. But I don’t think it’s intended to be read that way, since much of this issue is devoted to flashbacks of May telling Peter to accept her mortality. It gets away with it largely on the strength of Walker’s art, which gives everything and everyone a suitably run-down look while still feeling dynamic and bold; I really wish someone would give him a higher profile assignment at Marvel, because his art is always a pleasure.
Comicswebsite just released their weekly sales estimates and the X-Men is OFFICIALLY dead. NO X-book made the top 500 list. Paul might actually be the ONLY PERSON in the planet who bought Last Wolverine and Omega Kids,
I liked Omega Kids, and I say that as someone who doesn’t much care for Quinten in the present. Between this and X-vengers, it’s nice to see some heroic types who believe in Revelation and can meaningfully explain being on his side.
It was also nice to see Rachel get a role to play outside of “Betsy’s girlfriend.” I feel like she’s been sidelined into that since Krakoa when there are more interesting stories that she could be pursuing.
I couldn’t tell what was supposed to have happened at the end of Omega Kids.
“Last Wolverine might possibly be feeding into the finale, but pretty much everything else feels peripheral”
Rogue Storm says at the end that it continues into the finale, surprisingly.
It’s a shame that Mary Jane’s part of the deal with Mephisto was that he leave Peter alone. Age of Revelation really should have ended with Peter making a deal with Mephisto to reset the timeline so that Aunt May won’t be a dying horribly mutated monster. Marvel had an out right there, which would have made up for publishing 15 superfluous tie-in books.
I have profoundly mixed feelings about Omega Kids. On one hand, I think that Quentin Quire the second only to Damien Wayne in the “terrible creations of Grant Morrison that should not have been used again” bucket. Viewed through this lens, there is something really creepy about his indoctrinating young children and kind of making them into a Cuckoos-like collective bond (Sigmund Freud would have a field day).
The Honors Class thumb their collective noses at him (which I agree with) but then turn out to have one truly disturbed member (who’s also like 8, so I also question whether this dumb, selfish period is something that she might have grown out of). Nobody seems to act against her, even when at least a couple of them are surprised of her automatic killing mental process, though none of them seem to do anything against it. The Honors Class also are dumb as stumps, as nobody questions Quentin summoning up a few dozen X-men until one of them sees a telepathic glitch.
And then it ends with Quentin killing them all (or turning off their minds, if we want to be more specific and antiseptic about it). Killing kids is what supervillains do, and I guess that AoR Quentin has always been on that side of the villains, but it’s a pretty good way to kill someone’s character and remove my desire to ever see them again.
I guess that AoA Generation Next ending was very influential on these minis.
I am still confused by the lack of any scenes going to the modern day where AoR Cyclops and Beast presumably try to deal with Doug, but I supposed that Cyclops giving him an optic blast to the face is probably a one panel solution. Though I would perhaps offer a second one where Beast provides Doug with copies of the 90s Silver Surfer series (or perhaps the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe) where it’s revealed that Ego developed his consciousness naturally, and his original Thor origin was fake. I have no idea which one is the current one, because all of them are pretty inferior to Ego the Loving Planet from Marvel Adventures.
The modern day scenes featuring Cyclops and Beast will be filled in when MacKay’s X-amen returns to regular service in January.
-Doug reads Beast’s updated comic collection:
Doug: “Wait. You mean I’m not creating an Ego? So, what am I doing? Creating a Dominion or something?”
Marvel: “Nothing to see here. Full service will return shortly. Marvel is absolutely, positively not repeating a storyline from only two years ago and pretending it’s all-new, all-different. Age of Doug will be replaced by One World Under The Leader…a Marvel series like you have never seen before, True Believer!”
@Sam- We’ll see what’s going on in the present in X-Men 23. But it’s fairly clear that the Beast that was switched with the AoR Beast wasn’t the Factory Beast. Whoever he is, he’s not the Factory Beast.
So, this giant crossover doesn’t even have an ending that’s contained in the crossover?
The only thing that could redeem this is Brevoort revealing that he’s been a deep cover agent for some defunct comics company from the 80s (Comico? Eclipse?) and the Age of Revelation is the result of his master plan to destroy Marvel.
It still wouldn’t make the books good, but it would be a satisfactory explanation.
I think it’s going to be kept around as a looming threat in the background for the X-titles moving forward (or at least until the next relaunch) because Brevoort thought the X-titles needed a “Days of Future Past”, which has been devalued (rightfully so) after Hickman, considering it had been the constant looming threat in the background for over twenty years (minus Morrison).
Of course, mutant who has been our friend and ally might doom all of humanity as the replacement for human government may be working towards genocide of minority is a questionable choice, sort of a return to the Lee/Kirby interpretation of mutants from the Silver Age.
@Sam, Chris V- I think the reason the original Days of Future Past worked was because the future scenes were intercut with the present day scenes. The present day scenes had a major impact on the Marvel Universe- they introduced a new Brotherhood of Evil Mutants whose members went on to appear everywhere from Hulk to Avengers Annuals to Rom to Dazzler. And the X-Men actually accomplished something in the present-day issues- they defeated the Brotherhood and saved Senator Kelly. If Age of Revelation had been a multi-part storyline within X-Men that followed a similar format it could have worked. But Brevoort and MacKay had to turn it into a crossover.
So, Brevoort finally posts a new Substack and the first two comments are about Phoenix.
The more things change…
I don’t see how the looming threat will work.
Presuming modern day Doug hasn’t started down the track toward evil overlord, either Cyclops keeps it a secret and goes behind the scenes, thus making the threat loom a lot less, or he tells others and Wolverine, Cable, or Bishop immediately murder Doug. These characters make any such threat laughable.
And if Doug has already turned evil, they’re going to have to nerf his power pretty severely, or he’s going to win every fight with a word. And if they nerf him, his threat isn’t going to loom nearly as much.
Hey, here’s a good idea. Maybe Bishop decides to go across every timeline and kill every version of Doug, only to have Cable try to stop Bishop. Bishop forms an alliance with Stryfe who wants to stop Apocalypse’s heir, then Bishop kills Cable. Future Cyclops returns to tell them they had it all wrong and Doug was innocent. It did wonders for Bishop the last time.
@Si- Doug’s power is basically the same as the Voice’s. And he’s remained a D-list villain for decades.
One of the best parts of Age of Apocalypse was seeing the artists from the regular books give their takes on alternate versions of all the characters, I think having all fill in artists on these titles really hurts the comparisons with Age of Apocalypse. Also Recelation sucks.
Speaking of Phoenix, Stephanie Phillips’ Planet She-Hulk two issues in and it’s vastly more comprehensible than her Phoenix ever was.
I really didn’t like the Magik Infinity story, and the Cable one just didn’t start. But the Glob story is absolutely bananas. Pointlessly bananas. It’s not even trying to be funny or anything, it’s just Dada. I kind of love it.
@Sam: The retcon of Ego’s origin took place In Fantastic four 235.
Why is it necessary to show why Glob became a violent extremist? He started out as one, even willing to burn up a school bus filled with children.
@MasterMahan
Yes, compare all of her works, especially the concurrent ones under Jordan D White and Brevoort. The difference is shocking.
Good point about the artists. Mckay’s X-Men has 2 very good artists whose styles don’t clash. Amazing is completely different. It sends the message that this was 3 months off rather than 3 months ‘moving sideways’ (or forward and sideways).
So at the end of Omega Kids did Quentin mindwipe them or kill them or what?
Glob Herman was using Kick when they were killing humans. Emma described using Kick as making her feel “angelic and violently psychopathic”, which shows that the drug doesn’t automatically make a person become hateful, but the violent tendencies of the drug are inherent, so Glob and the other students were being goaded by Quentin to hatred while using Kick.
Hence, also pushing Magneto from a more nuanced villainous role back to the Silver Age ranting loony during Morrison’s run.
It’s been over twenty years since Glob was portrayed in that manner, as he’s been written as a loveable loser since that time. The original story, where he was using Kick, shows he has that potential, but after his portrayal for such a period of time, some sort of inciting background is needed.
Wasn’t Radian already in AoR as Phaser (his New Warriors identity) in Iron & Frost?
“…as Phaser (his New Warriors identity)”
Oh god. I forgot about that series. As far as ill-considered relaunches go, that was a worse idea than Fightbolts.
@Chris V- Glob was also shown to be a potential villain in Wolverine and the X-Men. His behavior was so bad Wolverine was considering expelling him. Among other things, he mocked Evan about turning into Apocalypse. He abandoned the team in the Savage Land and left with Sauron. He said “This is awesome. A big-time villain picking me up”. He found out life at the Hellfire Academy wasn’t what he imagined. But still, when push came to shove. he was going to kill Quentin rather than risk being punished.
He DID have a change of heart in Ayala’s New Mutants. He explained that his father was an abusive and hateful jerk and he realized he’d turned out to be just like him. But breaking cycles of abuse is never easy. It’s not surprising that under the stress of the Age of Revelation he reverted to old patterns.
@Dave Mindwipe, but in the Revelation territories which seem to have few safe areas, it would seem to be an effective death sentence.
Where Nate Grey, Dark Beast, Sugar Man, and the-guy-who-started-out-and-ended-up-as-Nemesis (I’m not using his AoA name) ended up in the regular timeline after AoA, I don’t see any of the AoR characters making the jump, unless the mindswapped Cyclops and Beast are going to stick around. There doesn’t even seem to be an avenue for a breakout character to do so. So, it’ll take a Exiles-like situation for any AoR version to show up, unless I am missing something.
Reading through a lot of 70s Marvel lately, there’s a ‘holocaust’ about every third issue.
Did Abyss appear more than the one time I can think of in 616? I think it was in Cable.
Oh, you kind of wish that Abyss only appeared one time. He ended up being sucked into some of the worst X-related story-arcs of all time,
After his appearance in Cable, he showed up in Joe Casey X-Corps story-arc in Uncanny X-Men as a mutant that Banshee wanted X-Corps to capture so that they could brainwash him.
From there, it was even more downhill, as he was revealed to be Nightcrawler’s half-brother during the Chuck Austen “Draco” story-arc. I don’t think anyone has bothered to mention this again, even with Azazel returning.
To be fair, a great many of the Marvel writers at the time were of Jewish origin. It used to be common for atomic post-apocalyptic fiction to be referred to as the “nuclear holocaust”. The term “holocaust” comes to us from a Hebrew word which meant “a burnt offering”.
It’s probably for the best that a gimmicky character from the ‘90s got renamed though.
@Chris V- He showed up in Dark X-Men 4, where he was seemingly killed by his father Azazel. It’s not clear if he was resurrected by the Five later.
@Chris V: Being on drugs isn’t regarded as a valid defense if you willingly took them. He might have a rationale for killing U-Men, but did Quire push him to attack the school bus? s Michael has said, the pacifist who raises chickens was a relatively recent addition during the Krakoa era.
@Michael: That was in Ed Brisson’s run.
The much-watched 1978 US miniseries Holocaust has been credited with narrowing the term’s usage. I don’t think ‘nuclear holocaust’ has completely faded out as a term, but the more cheaply dramatic usage from those 70s Marvel books certainly has.
Neutrino-I never said it was a defence. If someone is going about their lives and decides to take a drug and they kill someone while on drugs, they are still culpable for murder, but it may be more about the fact that the person was using drugs. As I pointed out, it shows an underlying propensity for such behaviour.
Morrison’s intent was to put focus on Kick (due to the final reveal of the actual nature of Kick). Morrison saw Magneto as a terrorist who uses his traumatic past to make excuses for vile actions, but Morrison was also showing that use of Kick had turned Magneto into a ranting Silver Age loony. A lot of readers seemed to miss that and Marvel’s response of retconning that the Magneto of Morrison’s run really was Xorn was a response to that misunderstanding.
Other characters not associated with hate also used Kick for a limited time and were not portrayed as being overwhelmed by violence or hatred, as I also pointed out.
However, a character like Beast’s continued usage of Kick for years led to him finally being taken over by Sublime.
Regardless, Michael pointed out that Glob had been portrayed as a potential villain after Morrison, which I had forgotten.
Glob might have always had that violent potential, but he’s still a pink blob with googly eyes. The wavering between comedic and violent is his recurring character arc.
Also, unless i’m misremembering completely Kick isn’t just any drug, it’s John Sublime in aerosol form, and when he infects a host that way he got more control of his hosts.
I would absolutely take any drugs I was offered if I looked like Glob. And I’m an adult. Glob’s a teenager. Teenagers get emotional over the sudden appearance of a zit.
Badseed-No, that’s correct. That was the reveal about Kick. I mentioned that about Sublime taking over Beast in the end (“Here Comes Tomorrow”). It took long-term use before he was able to completely take over the mutant host though. Beast started using after Scott closed the Xavier Academy and Beast was left in charge of the future for mutants, and it took years of addiction to Kick before Sublime had fully taken him over.
Some news from today’s solicits:
Spider-Man & Wolverine isn’t on the schedule for March. So it has been cancelled.
Jed MacKay iS ending his run on Avengers with issue 36. It looks like his run was cut short for Armageddon.
BTW, New Avengers 10 seems like a final issue as well from the solicits.