X-MEN vol 7  #24
“Three Thousand”
Writer: Jed MacKay
Penciller: Tony Daniel
Inker: Mark Morales
Colourist: Fer Sifuentes-Sujo
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Editor: Tom Brevoort

COVER: The core members of 3K, with the Chairman still in his previous  body, to avoid spoilers in the solicitations.

As with the previous issue, this is billed both as a “Shadows of Revelation” issue and as an “Age of Revelation: Epilogue”.

The X-Men themselves don’t appear in this issue, which covers what was happening with 3K while the Chairman was absent in the future, and what happens upon his return.

3K:

The Chairman refers to the ruling group as the “Great Table”, a name which previously came up in issue #14, and feels like it has echoes of the Krakoan Quiet Council.

As we saw in X-Men: Age of Revelation – Finale, the Chairman’s body went into lockdown when the future Beast from the Age of Revelation timeline attempted to swap places with him. As a result, he’s missing for a week. In this time, 3K is already falling apart, with Cassandra Nova and Astra fighting one another for control; evidently this organisation depends on the Chairman to hold it together. In fact, the others seem to have remarkable deference to him.

The Chairman. He says that he had previously inhabited a synthetic body in order to “act as a being of pure logic and intellect, unencumbered by the washes of various hormones”, but his time in the future has changed his mind. Although he doesn’t spell this out to the other members of 3K, it seems that he’s been inspired to clone himself a new body as a result of his encounter with Animalia, the future version of Jen Starkey, who’s the love interest for the X-Men’s Beast at the moment.

The body which he’s chosen resembles the Age of Revelation Beast, with white fur – though again, he doesn’t explain this change to the other members of 3K. It does mean that we’ll now be able to tell the two Beasts apart with ease, so that’s good.

The Chairman describes himself as “the genuine Henry McCoy, misunderstood saviour of Krakoa etc”; he’s clearly being flippant to some degree, but doubtless still means it.

He regards Revelation as having achieved 3K’s goal, specifically by creating a virus that transforms humans into mutants, and sees it as shameful that 3K’s entire contribution to the future was to be framed for it. He doesn’t directly tell the rest of the 3K about the fact that most humans died – Astra takes him to be claiming “a reliable method”, and he doesn’t correct her. He says that he knows how to re-create the X-virus himself, based on the work of his future self that he saw in the Age of Revelation – this must be why he was poring through the X-Men’s computers at night in Amazing X-Men #3.

Cassandra Nova. She gives it a week before asserting herself as 3K’s new leader in the Chairman’s absence. She correctly anticipates Astra as the main source of opposition to this. She now has Myriad as a loyal sidekick; more of that later. She does seem genuinely enthusiastic about the X-Virus as playing into a shared goal.

Myriad. This is Robin Cobb, the twin sister of Piper Cobb who we last saw in issue #18 when she left to be with Cassandra. She seems completely confident when sneaking up from behind to disarm Joseph; by all appearances, Myriad is entirely loyal to Cassandra and unfazed by being involved in the struggle for control.

Astra. She claims, at least for Joseph’s benefit, to be more interesting in resisting Cassandra’s takeover of 3K than in obtaining power for herself – she calls Cassandra “insane”. According to Myriad, she spends most of her time “complain[ing] about not being allowed to make more clones” – she was indeed weirdly obsessed with this in issue #17, when she wanted to make even more Magneto clones. She calls Joseph “baby”, and seems to ignore his requests to be addressed as “Magneto”.

Her initial approach to fighting Cassandra is just to let Joseph do it for her, but when that goes wrong she teleports to attack Cassandra from behind, and is apparently quick enough for this to give her the upper hand before the Chairman intervenes. She seems really enthusiastic about the X-Virus and being able to turn more humans into mutants; to date, she says, 3K have just been using trial and error and sometimes made it work.

Joseph. He’s aware that Magneto – who he calls his “gene-father” – is powerless at the moment, and seems keen to usurp his identity and be accepted as the real Magneto. He’s meekly loyal to Astra, who he calls “mother”. His helmet can block psychic attack just like the real Magneto’s, but that doesn’t do him much good when Myriad ambushes him and takes it off. He doesn’t say anything once the Chairman returns, and reverts to standing loyally next to Astra.

Wyre. He says that he has no interest in leading 3K, and this seems genuine. He repeatedly claims that his only concern is “a more interesting future”, and seems happy to go with the winner of Cassandra vs Astra as the person most likely to deliver it. He advises the 3K X-Men to do the same, and they evidently agree, even though they clearly have the power to affect the outcome of any battle where a rookie like Myriad could make a difference. Unlike Cassandra and Astra, he shows no particular interest in turning humans into mutants as an end in itself, but does seem to regard the end result as a suitably “interesting” future.

The 3K X-Men: Schwarzchild, Constellation, Galatea, Timebomb, Psychovore and Juice. Cassandra believes that without the Chairman, they will simply follow Wyre’s lead, and she seems to be right. Since the Age of Revelation Schwarzchild was a member of the (real) X-Men, the Chairman orders him killed, either because his future loyalty is suspect, or simply as another way of derailing Revelation’s timeline. This isn’t what happened to Schwarzchild in Age of Revelation; he claimed in Amazing X-Men #1 that 3K had simply abandoned their X-Men. The other 3K X-Men seem entirely happy to kill him despite his protests, and you can just see his body being chucked off the side of the 3K ship in the last panel. Something tells me he’ll be back.

CONTINUITY REFERENCES:

• Joseph refers to his “gene-father” (i.e., the real Magneto) as “a broken-down wreck”; this refers to the degenerative condition which he’s had throughout this series.
• Obviously, the Chairman and Cyclops swapped into the future in X-Men: Age of Revelation – Overture #1, and goes on to appear in Amazing X-Men #1-3 and X-Men: Age of Revelation – Finale, which also revealed that the Chairman’s synthetic body had gone into lockdown as a result. The material about Revelation’s X-Virus, and the framing of 3K for it, comes up repeatedly in “Age of Revelation”.
• The Chairman’s claim to be “misunderstood saviour of Krakoa” references his story arc in X-Force during the Krakoan era.