X-MEN: AGE OF REVELATION INFINITY COMIC #8. By Alex Paknadel, Edoardo Audino, KJ Díaz & Clayton Cowles. Well, it’s an issue of the Punisher taking Glob Herman under his wing, ultimately leading to him going off on his own to seek revenge. The idea here is that the Punisher isn’t even trying to groom a successor, and thinks he’s just helping the poor kid to defend himself. That kind of  works for Glob. It’s kind of weird for the Punisher, who’s apparently given up on vigilante homicide after the X-virus affected his hands, and has retired into a life of general niceness. I don’t really buy the Punisher reacting like that, as opposed to immediately setting about finding another way of pursuing his obsessional agenda – his one dimensionality is the point of him. But viewed as a Glob story, there’s a certain charm to it, and the story kind of requires the Punisher to present himself as a sympathetic figure to Glob. Perhaps it needs to be a bit more of an act for Glob’s sake.

EXPATRIATE X-MEN #3. (Annotations here.) So here we are, at the tail end of the “Age of Revelation” crossover, with just next week’s Finale one-shot to go. And this issue is… a bit of a mess, to be honest. There’s a lot of double-crossing going on and it doesn’t really come together. As near as I can tell, the plot is that the X-Men on the Flotilla thought that they were being hired by Mystique to take this Lyrebird guy to the Darkchild for reasons unknown, in exchange for unspecified intelligence. In fact, Lyrebird was tricking the X-Men into going to Darkchild’s territory as part of a deal with her. But Darkchild never explains why she wanted them, and ultimately just lets them go… and Lyrebird actually did want to go there all along, because and Illyana have a daughter from before she became Darkchild. Conceived at what point on the timeline? Oh god, don’t ask. Oh, and Melée had a side deal with 3K to get their technology into Limbo, for… reasons. And 3K didn’t want Lyrebird to wind up with Darkchild for… reasons? I mean, I think the idea is that Lyrebird was also working with 3K, but in that case, what was up with Melée and Lyrebird last issue? And then the payoff seems to be that everyone learns the lesson that they shouldn’t have got involved in these convoluted machinations, which would be a weird message for an X-Men story to begin with… except the next thing they do is announce that they’re spontaneously going to Philadelphia to appear in Finale, for no apparent reason.

So it’s a mess. It looks nice enough, to be sure, but whatever point it was actually trying to make gets completely lost in a welter of confusion. The Lyrebird/Magik thing comes completely out of nowhere and seems disconnected to anything around it; it might make some sense if it’s setting up a plot point for 2026, but Eve Ewing isn’t the regular writer for Magik, so that seems unlikely. All very weird.

CLOAK OR DAGGER #3. By Justina Ireland, Lonrezo Tammetta, Edoardo Audino, Andrew Dalhouse & Joe Caramagna. This is one of the lower-key successes of “Age of Revelation”. I’m not quite sure that Fenris make sense in this villain role, except by virtue of the thematic link of being another duo who are weakened when they’re apart. But that doesn’t hugely matter, because Fenris are really just there to provide the opposition. Where this book scores is simply on the relationship between the two leads and having more or less get a happy ending and a family in an otherwise dystopian future. Things aren’t so bad for Cloak and Dagger! Sure, they can’t be together for long periods, but they can work around that, they’re doing okay, and they get to be proper superheroes – which Tammetta’s art fits well. Cloak just getting to be a dad is sweet, too. From their personal standpoint, this isn’t such a bad timeline. I mean, up to the point where Revelation is planning to turn the world into Ego the Living Planet, but that’s in another book. It’s rather weird to do happy ending stories in the midst of an event like “Age of Revelation” but it’s nice that we’re getting some.

UNDEADPOOL #3. By Tim Seeley, Carlos Magno, GURU-eFX & Joe Sabino. Guest starring the Exceptional cast, although their main role here is simply to refuse to deal with Deadpool on the grounds that he’s a self-centred mercenary who didn’t even manage to kill Revelation when he was paid to. Fearless turns out to be a traitor, and Deadpool dies heroically in stopping her. That’s basically it. It’s a very nice looking book, and it does a decent job of going for the 70s horror vibe, with Deadpool finally earning his release from quasi-zombie status. I’m not sure it delivers what people are normally looking for in a Deadpool story, being quite a downbeat and sombre affair at the end of the day, but it does at least strike a clear tone and maintain it.

X-VENGERS #3. By Jason Loo, Sergio Dávila, Aure Jimenez, Rain Beredo & Joe Sabino. The Avengers have been given just three hours to avert a war between Revelation and the remains of the USA by providing that President Sam Wilson wasn’t responsible for the attack on the Revelation Territories. And that turns out to be pretty much false peril, because instead of a race against the clock, it just turns out to be MODOK. There’s a reasonable idea in here somewhere, of a battered and beleaguered Avengers team clinging on to their former dignity, but once you’ve made that point, it doesn’t really have a great deal to do with the actual plot of MODOK’s biological weapons. It’s entirely serviceable both as writing and art – nobody seems to have given Dávila any reference for what techno-organics look like, which is unfortunate, but otherwise it looks solidly traditional. Still, it winds up as a rather generic superhero plot instead of really digging into the premise.