X-Men #23 annotations
X-MEN vol 7 #23
“Assassin”
Writer: Jed MacKay
Penciller: Tony Daniel
Inker: Mark Morales
Colourist: Fer Sifuentes-Sujo
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Editor: Tom Brevoort
COVER: Cyclops attempts to kill Revelation with the Soulsword, while everyone else looks horrified.
This issue is bannered both as an “Age of Revelation” epilogue and as part of “Shadows of Tomorrow”, the tag line being used for the post-AoR books. The “Shadows of Tomorrow” branding doesn’t appear to require any particular impact from AoR, though – it also appears on this week’s issue of Wolverine, which has nothing to do with AoR at all.
It’s a new year and I think we’ll go back to the character-by-character format for these posts, rather than the page-by-page one – which was often rather confusing with double page spreads, and given Amazon’s persistent misnumbering of the pages in the digital editions.
THE X-MEN:
Cyclops. Aside from the recap at the very start of the issue, he spends the whole story possessed by his future self from the Age of Revelation (of whom more below). This story takes place before X-Men: Age of Revelation – Finale, where present day Cyclops returns to his body and wakes up in his cell.
Revelation. Technically an X-Man for the duration of this story, since he was admitted to the team right at the end of issue #22.
He seems surprised by the allegations that the future Cyclops is making, but often reacts as if it’s causing him to realise something. His initial reaction is to stick with the X-Men – a little oddly, he tells Bei that “these are our X-Men”, as if there might be other X-Men. (Such as the 3K group, presumably.) When Bei focusses on Cyclops’ attack, Revelation starts explaining to her that it’s a “gift” before being cut off. The suggestion may be that, having failed to kill Revelation, Cyclops has only succeeded in giving him ideas.
If so, he’s faking concern when he speaks to Cyclops later in the issues and asks for information about the future timeline, supposedly so that he can know how to alter the timeline – and Cyclops sees through him, refusing to answer. On the other hand, he stops short of using his powers to compel Cyclops to answer, and his professed concern that Cyclops will be an unstoppable killer seems genuine. He seems to take it as a sign that even the mutants will turn against his crusade, and that his little group will have to go it alone – thus, he, Bei and Warlock leave the Factory without warning.
He’s unaware that Temper changed her codename ages ago, and seems surprised that she doesn’t remember Krakoa fondly, even though he dealt with her in the Pit.
Future Cyclops believes that the Soulsword could be used to kill Revelation. Quite why isn’t spelled out, but Cyclops claims that he doesn’t have enough personal power to kill Revelation without it. He might mean that Revelation’s power is partly magical and capable of being disrupted by the Soulsword, or he might simply mean that his optic beams aren’t powerful enough to inflict a fatal blow. Cyclops also claims that, at least at this point in history, Revelation could be killed without difficulty by Magneto at full power.
Psylocke. Once again, she takes control as soon as it’s clear that Cyclops is possessed. Future Cyclops claims that she (and not Quentin) was the opponent who most worried him.
Temper. She takes great offence at being called a Krakoan, and reminds Revelation and Bei of what a miserable time she had there.
Juggernaut, Magik and Kid Omega are also there.
SUPPORTING CAST:
Age of Revelation Cyclops. He has a detailed plan to take out the X-Men and kill Revelation, based on his memory of the scene and his years of preparation, but it depended on Beast showing up alongside him. As we’ve seen in Amazing X-Men and Finale, the AoR Beast instead swapped bodies with the Chairman of 3K, who appears to be the original Krakoan Beast. When “our” Beast stops him, Cyclops calls him a traitor before figuring out what has happened.
Cyclops claims that he’s sacrificed himself for the mission, presumably by overwriting his past self and creating a new timeline with no expectation of coming back. AoR Jen Starkey made similar comments about Beast’s thinking in Amazing X-Men.
He has no apparent difficulty in escaping his restraints (but then he presumably knows the technology very well).
On learning that Magneto’s status quo doesn’t reflect his world’s history (see below), Cyclops declares that “I have to revise my plan”. What he then does is to threaten Revelation by promising to pursue him until he’s dead. This seems to prompt Revelation to leave the X-Men, which does in fact alter history, at least by averting the particular sequence of events that occurred with Revelation and the X-Men in his timeline; perhaps that was what he was trying to achieve.
He quotes to Revelation the line “You need to be lucky every time. I only need to be lucky once.” The best known version of this quote – “Today we were unlucky, but remember we only have to be lucky once, you have to be lucky always” – comes from the IRA’s statement claiming responsibility for the Brighton hotel bombing in 1984, which failed to kill Margaret Thatcher, but did kill five other people. There are earlier versions of the quote which are much less well known.
Bei. She’s openly disdainful of “Krakoans”. She blames the whole X-Men team for Cyclops’ attempt to kill Revelation, and calls Revelation an “idealistic clown” for suggesting otherwise.
Warlock. He’s there with the other two, but doesn’t get anything to do.
Beast. He’s quite exercised about the fate of the present-day Cyclops, rather more so than he usually is. Future Cyclops responds by spelling out to him that the future Beast was on his side; this plays into the subplot of Beast knowing how the Krakoan Beast turned out and fearing that he’ll go the same way. Incidentally, now that the Krakoan Beast appears to be behind 3K, their attempt to recruit the Beast in issue #18 becomes rather more interesting.
Magneto. Future Cyclops is baffled to find that Magneto is powerless and confined to a hover chair – as with WizKid in Amazing X-Men #3, this isn’t how he remembers events. This seems to suggest that the AoR timeline actually diverged at some point in the past, although the significance of that isn’t obvious. When Cyclops asks Magneto to help him kill Revelation, Magneto’s initial reaction is to think that Cyclops is mocking him; he’s too busy being offended about that to even register the question of whether killing Revelation is a good idea.
Jen Starkey, Xorn, Ben Liu and Glob Herman all appear, but don’t get anything to do.
CONTINUITY REFERENCES:
- The first page of this story is repeats the final two pages of X-Men #22, including all the dialogue word for word. Well, it has been three months.
- Future Cyclops calls Beast a traitor; Beast mentioned this in X-Men: Age of Revelation – Finale.
- Future Cyclops says he doesn’t know how to swap back; as we saw in Finale, this is something that has to be done from the future.
- Revelation and Bei’s sign language was also seen in issue #19, though they seem to prefer getting Warlock to translate more complex speech.
- Temper’s time in the Pit on Krakoa was covered in the Krakoan-era miniseries Sabretooth and Sabretooth & The Exiles.
- Revelation refers to Harlan Ryker, a character who first appeared in a Deathlok story in Marvel Comics Presents #62 by Dwayne McDuffie, Gregory Wright and Jackson Guice. According to Avengers Arena #2, he suffered repeated attacks from time travellers from the future who wanted to stop him from developing Deathlok technology. His wife Anna and son Bryan die in that story. The daughter who was “almost killed” in the same incident is Rebecca, who appears in Avengers Arena as Death Locket. Death Locket is still out there somewhere, but doesn’t seem to have appeared since War of the Realms in 2019. The whole thing is an oddly specific reference to a completely unrelated storyline.
- Future Cyclops says that he was the first person that Revelation forced to agree with him. According to Xorn’s account in X-Men: Age of Revelation #0, this was when Revelation forced Cyclops to accept his plan to break Fabian Cortez out of a S.H.I.E.L.D. facility.
Magneto should have been more concerned about Futureclops trying to kill Doug. As recently as Resurrection of Magneto, Mags felt guilt and regret over Doug’s initial death.
The timeline diverging at a point before Magneto was in a hoverchair makes no sense. The mutants lived through Krakoa in the AoR future. Doug only gained these powers after the fall of Krakoa. The X-Men were speculating that Magneto ended up this way due to the resurrection protocols (which seems to have been a red herring, but regardless). There’s no gap where the timeline could diverge between “Fall of X” and “From the Ashes”, which is when the jonbar point would need to occur.
I wonder…
a) Cyclops travels from the future to the present to try and kill Doug, but fails, prompting Doug to leave the X-Men and presumably altering the AoR. But this is still part 1 of 3 AFAIK so there may be more future altering happening.
b) They specifically reference time travelers trying to preemptively assasinate Ryker in a Terminator-style situation. Which, as noted, hasn’t been relevant since 2019.
c) The whole Magneto thing has now been presented as a plot point in the future and in the present, proving it’s not just a throw-away. Alternate timelines are postulated, but there’s no good divergence point.
The end of AoR saw Cyclops and 3K Beast return to the present with information about the future, and we also saw Tony try to send information back at the end of Iron and Frost. There may have been other instances of this sort of information transference I just don’t recall offhand.
The X-Men franchise LOVES the theme of “time travelers trying to prevent the future.” Lord knows they’ve revisted it enough times since the original Days of Future Past.
This suggests to me that we’re going to see more time travel before this is out, setting up a divergence further back in the past. Not a big one, mind you–don’t wanna muddle things at this point, but there’s gotta be SOME reason the whole Magneto thing is important. And not just “it’s a plot point Jed started which needed to be junked for reasons…”
Are these threads connected? Who even knows.
“Cyclops claims that he’s sacrificed himself for the mission, presumably by overwriting his past self and creating a new timeline with no expectation of coming back.”
This and Beast’s reaction to present Scott being dead was really odd. They know that Kitty’s present-day consciousness came back.
That Harlan Ryker reference sure was oddly specific. The kind of specificity that makes you question how Doug knows about it. I know it CAN be explained, but still.
Doug also oddly knew a lot about Ego.
Ryker was the founder of Cybertek Systems, one of Marvel’s largest tech industries. Doug was always portrayed as a hacker. He probably does a lot of hacking and following of the CEO of a company like Cybertek.
“Future Cyclops believes that the Soulsword could be used to kill Revelation. Quite why isn’t spelled out, but Cyclops claims that he doesn’t have enough personal power to kill Revelation without it. He might mean that Revelation’s power is partly magical and capable of being disrupted by the Soulsword, or he might simply mean that his optic beams aren’t powerful enough to inflict a fatal blow. Cyclops also claims that, at least at this point in history, Revelation could be killed without difficulty by Magneto at full power.”
MacKay seems to be treating the Soulsword as a magical weapon that can cut through almost anything, like the Black Knight’s Ebony Blade. I’m not liking this interpretation at all. The Soulsword couldn’t even cut through non-magical people or items before Krakoa. It shouldn’t be more effective against anything non-magical than a normal blade.
It’s odd that we don’t get to see Magik’s reaction to FutureScott trying to kill Doug. Especially since she can travel through time- no one asks if she can locate the present-day Cyclops.
Also, you’d expect Illyana and Magneto to point out that they’ve seen multiple evil future versions of Sunspot, and at least one evil future version of Doug, so one more evil future version is no big deal.
This works as a twisted version of Cyclops- still a brilliant tactician but he gets everything wrong from start to finish.
My guess would be that the Chairman is responsible for Magneto being in a wheelchair somehow- either he used a time machine to bring Cassandra Nova to the present and she put Magento in the wheelchair or maybe sent the X-Virus back in time and it infected Magneto.
Some of the seeming discrepancies in Age of Revelation can be explained by history diverging when Magento was put in a wheelchair. For example, in Age of Revelation, Carol failed to recognize Maddie, even though Carol saw Maddie in One World Under Doom in the same costume she was wearing during Age of Revelation. Presumably Magento being at full power during One World Under Doom changed how One World Under Doom unfolded. This might also explain why Maddie wasn’t ruling Limbo when Illyana died. However, some discrepancies would have to be errors- for example. Illyana’s flashback of growing up with Mikhail in the Infinity Comics. when every other story made it clear Mikhail was trapped in another dimension by the time Illyana was born.
@The Other Michael- Also, Future Beast tried to send a message back to the past about the Chairman.
I’m glad they’re getting back to the plot so quickly here (Jed MacKay is a pretty productive writer, if nothing else) but this issue didn’t really tread much new ground for the reader. Doug leaving instead of joining the X-Men is a development, but even if they waited for present Cyclops to come back, we’d probably get to the same place since he’d be unlikely to let Doug stay (even if he wouldn’t just kill him).
We also already knew that there was something off about the future’s history or the timeline… but this didn’t get us much closer to figuring it out.
I’ll be interested to see if we continue to follow Revelation, if MacKay just lets this drop for someone else to pick it up, or if he moves to revert Doug to the geek who speaks Latin as part of the “put the toys back in the box” at the end of his run.
Fixing Doug would be a SPECTACULAR outcome.
Like… Kwannon mindlinks Future!Scott and Doug and Doug takes a look at everything and goes “Oh, HELL no” and has all of his Apocalypse enhancements removed and then goes to be a teacher at Greymatter Lane to find a way to help mutants with less combat-effective powers find safe career paths.
@Dave: ‘That Harlan Ryker reference sure was oddly specific. The kind of specificity that makes you question how Doug knows about it. I know it CAN be explained, but still.’
It’s explained in the scene. Doug asserts ‘if you follow tech, and I always have, you know his name’. Just a truth about the Marvel universe. Not everything has to have a convoluted explanation.
Granted, I haven’t expected to see an editor’s note referencing Avengers Arena in a 2025 X-Men comic (that doesn’t include Laura Kinney), but still.
Tony Daniel’s art is interesting – I think he’s the first to draw post-transformation Doug as… Doug with zigzags on his face. He’s not even slightly bulkier, taller or older, it’s just Doug. Which could be a choice to present him as more innocent, or it could be that he wasn’t given any reference.
I did not expect the time travel story to conclude with more, seemingly unrelated time travel nonsense. And I have to wonder if that was planned or if MacKay decided to pivot on Magneto’s resurrection syndrome degeneration whatsis. As in, it didn’t make sense with regards to Magneto’s resurrection and status at the fall of Krakoa, because MacKay didn’t know how those stories would end, so he then dediced to make the way it doesn’t make sense a part of his plot.
Anyway. I remain engaged. I like MacKay’s X-Men. It’s not great, but it’s good enough.
Shit, 2026. Gah.
The reference to Harlan Ryker can’t be random, particularly with the very recent use of his brother Simon in the “Red Hulk” book after so many years.
The Earth-616 versions of the characters don’t have much more than thirty appearances between the two of them, but they take part in some of the most complex and confusing time travel stories that Marvel ever published. I wonder if Omar agrees.
Both are counterparts of Earth-7484 characters that go back to the original “Deathlok” series published in 1974-1977 in “Astonishing Tales”. Simon from Earth-7484 was the main enemy of the original Deathlok; Harlan from Earth-7484 was Hellinger, the main villain of Captain America #288-289 (1983) where Deathlok’s timeline diverged from Earth-616’s.
Coincidentally or not, Earth-7484 Harlan Ryker was at the core of that timeline split, and the X-Men are now trying to create another timeline split from a similar dystopia.
“…help mutants with less combat-effective powers find safe career paths.”
That sounds interesting but I don’t know how Doug would know what a safe career path would be for an unformidable mutant. For that matter, I can’t even think of what one might be as I can’t think of what specifically would make a career path safe for a mutant, formidable or not. Also, Doug can pass for a normal guy easily enough. What about someone who can’t?
Seems to me.that what ever career path you choose, you just have to roll the dice and hope that wherever you apply to work that 1) management has no problem hiring someone who is visibly a mutant, and 2) you don’t have any bigoted coworkers.
@Moo- And 3) hope that you don’t get attacked by Sentinels or blown up on a bus.
@Michael- That too.
All I can really think of is something that’s strictly work-from-home like an author, or a telemarketer.
Or perhaps a small business that involves craftsmanship/artistry like carpentry, or ceramics, or floral arrangements where you as the visible mutant craft the product in the back room of a shop, out of sight, while your employee (a human who doesn’t mind mutants, or perhaps secretly does but really needs the job) sells the stuff at the front of the shop.
Like maybe you become a silversmith, and you open your own shop that specializes in silverware. You could call it “X-Forks”.
Then you dress your employee up as classic Cable with an absurd number of pockets and pouches all over him, but instead of bullets, they’re all stuffed with common table utensils. And you make him wear a nametag that reads “Table”.
“Not everything has to have a convoluted explanation.”
But the way it happens here is more convoluted than you’d expect. Doug has to explain to Oya what ‘Mutant Ryker’ means, with a reference to Avengers Arena – I read that and didn’t know what he was talking about without the (full page) explanation. He could have compared himself to (reverse) John Connor or baby Hitler, something anyone would get. If we don’t now get something like time travel tech from the Deathlok stories involved then this was very odd.
“It’s a new year and I think we’ll go back to the character-by-character format for these posts”
I’m excited to see the return to the character-by-character format. I’m enjoying it 300% more! I’d like to go as high as 400% better, but even with the lesser format the reviews were always enjoyed.
@Dave: I see this exactly backwards – I think MacKay started with Doug comparing himself to John Connor, and then had a thought ‘wait, isn’t there a Marvel equivalent I could reference here’.
Time will tell.
I don’t think there is a Terminator movie in the Marvel Universe. Terminator only exists in the Malibu Universe of the Marvel multiverse. Instead, there is a documentary on the true-life inspiration for the alternate universe Terminator films, Deathlok the Demolisher (and the sequel Deathlok: Judgment Day, co-starring Captain America). The Demolisher created by the evil Cybertek Corporation. With Ryker in place of Miles Dyson.
Also, mutants cannot use the “baby Hitler” analogy, as that starts Magneto ranting, “Of course I would kill Hitler as a baby! I would smith his body to ashes in the very crib!”, and that gets very awkward.
I can’t be the only reader who assumed he was talking about Commander Will Riker (just with a typo) and wondering where they were going with that. Is Doug’s secondary mutation the inability to sit down in a chair like a normal person?
Hey, Will Riker can sit down. Just not while he’s on the bridge for some reason (maybe the chairs are uncomfortable). He sits down to play poker though.
Jed MacKay isn’t afraid of a deep cut. Isn’t WYRE one of the members of 3K? I would assume he’s pulling something similar with Ryker.