DNX #1
Writer: Jed MacKay
Artist: Federico Vicentini
Colour artist: David Curiel
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Editor: Tom Brevoort

COVER: The X-Men and the Fantastic Four facing the camera, basically. The art is by Kaare Andrews.

DNX is a crossover running through this five-issue miniseries, X-Men #37-41 and Fantastic Four #17-18. X-Men #37 also comes out this week.

This feels like a story more suited to the scene-by-scene format, so let’s go with that. I’ll use the story pages, since Amazon’s reader still persists in listing every comic as starting at page 2.

PAGE 1. Cyclops recaps the Age of Revelation.

This page is essentially a recap of the “Age of Revelation” event, set mostly in a future timeline in which Revelation had released a “X-Virus” that turned some humans into mutants, and killed the rest. The future Cyclops and Beast attempted to swap minds with their present-day counterparts in order to kill Revelation before any of this could happen, but accidentally swapped places with the original Beast – the Chairman of 3K – instead.

None of what Cyclops is saying here is news to his team – he already told them about his experiences in the Age of Revelation in issue #25.

PAGE 2. Cyclops briefs the X-Men in Philadelphia.

Philadelphia was indeed the place where the X-Virus was first released by Revelation, as established in X-Men: Age of Revelation #0. However, the X-Men’s immediate concern is that the Chairman has been able to replicate the X-Virus using the knowledge he gained in the future. In X-Men #36, the Chairman attacked Magneto to obtain DNA samples from him, believed to contain coded information that had been sent back from the Age of Revelation.

Psylocke rightly points out that this is a different series of events and that there’s no inherent reason why 3K should go for the same location. Cyclops is convinced that the Chairman will feel drawn to go for Philadephia anyway, because of “his own sense of dramatic symmetry”. I’m not sure that’s really a major feature of the traditional Beast character, but it makes some sense for the Chairman and his sense of destiny. In the next scene, the Chairman does indeed take that position – he seems to be arguing that he’s trying to seize control of the events that worked for Revelation in the AoR timeline.

Interestingly, the inexperienced Animalia has made it into this field team (yet the rather more qualified Xorn hasn’t).

PAGES 3-4. 3K on their cloaked headquarters.

3K have always been a fractious outfit – X-Men #24 shows Astra and Cassandra Nova nearly killing one another in the Chairman’s absence. He seemed to be able to reassert control when he returned to the present, but he’s clearly having trouble keeping them in line here. Wyre’s claim that he only wants “a more interesting future” comes from the same issue.

It seems to be the act of flying over Philadelphia while cloaked that Astra and Cassandra regard as stupid, rather than the choice of Philadelphia as a location for the X-Virus release.

As the Chairman points out, Wyre has started talking about the 3K X-Men as specifically his team, rather than 3K’s team. He is indeed responsible for training them. In X-Men #36, the 3K X-Men had been placed under the command of Joseph (loyal to Astra) and Wyre wasn’t present, so he may well be reacting to that.

PAGES 5-7. Beast and Mr Fantastic discuss Magneto.

The other guy with them is Ben Liu, though he doesn’t get any dialogue in this scene.

Magneto was injured by the Chairman in X-Men #36. That issue also established that Magneto and Beast were working on the theory that Magneto’s degenerative condition was something to do with a message from the AoR future being encoded in his DNA (having rejected the earlier theory that it was something to do with Krakoan resurrection, from the earlier issues of X-Men).

Reed is still treating Magneto as a villain years after his face turn, but he’ll be talked round on that later in the issue. Note that Beast somewhat glosses over the significance of what’s happening in Philadelphia at this stage; this isn’t an entirely candid bid for aid.

Reed’s comment about Magneto being “one of the most dangerous individuals to ever walk this planet” is illustrated by a flashback to him removing Wolverine’s adamantium in X-Men vol 2 #25.

PAGES 8-10. Cyclops continues to brief the X-Men.

Scott says that they’ve been “reacting, not acting”, and that “our enemies have come for us”. Since Age of Revelation, the X-Men tried to take the initiative in hunting down Revelation in X-Men #25, but got derailed by events. X-Men #26-30 was the “Danger Room” arc where the X-Men were hunted by the Beyond Corporation, X-Men #31-33 saw the X-Men reacting to the gravitational anomalies caused by Schwarzchild, X-Men #34 was Juggernaut responding to a controversy about a statue, and X-Men #35-36 was the 3K attack that left Magneto incapacitated.

Cyclops offhandedly mentions an “inside man” in 3K, who isn’t identified in this issue or in the X-Men tie-in. We can obviously rule out the Chairman and Cassandra, given her interactions with Kid Omega. Joseph and Wyre have both been good guys in the past, or another possible candidate might be Myriad, the twin mutant from Merle who Cassandra recruited in X-Men #18 – she doesn’t appear in this story.

PAGES 11-13. The Chairman offers drinks to 3K, and Cassandra collapses.

Heidsieck is a champagne house. The 1907 vintage is an oddity: some bottles of it were salvaged in 1998 from the wreck of a Swedish ship that sank in 1916. It’s not something that collectors actually tend to drink (though according to a guy on Reddit who claims to have tried it, it’s still fairly drinkable). For some reason, it seems to have been coloured light green here. No wonder nobody’s willing to drink it.

The Chairman actually seems surprised that his gesture is so badly received – partly because he attaches much more significance to the wine than any of the others do. Note that when Astra (wrongly) accuses him of poisoning it, his first reaction is to protest that he’d never poison a 1907 Heidsieck, before making the rather better point that she didn’t drink it. Wyre correctly identifies that Cassandra has come under psychic attack (confirmed later in the issue).

Cassandra’s reasons for distrusting him make sense – 3K is an alliance of convenience with the skills that the Chairman needed to pursue his goals, but doesn’t that make them expendable once the virus is ready to go?

PAGES 14-15. Hank, Beast and Ben continue to argue.

Ben, who seems to have been willing to hang back up to this point, gets rather more active in Magneto’s defence. He seems to be correct in saying that Reed just doesn’t want to risk being responsible for what Magneto might do in future. Reed’s argument that Magneto is more dangerous than a weapon because he isn’t directed by anyone makes little sense, since Magneto obviously directs himself.

PAGE 16. Kid Omega confronts Cassandra Nova.

The psychic battle is shown in much more detail in X-Men #37.

PAGES 17-19. The X-Men board the 3K ship.

Psylocke has been pressed into serving the communications function that Kid Omega normally serves, because he’s busy dealing with Cassandra. She’s not as powerful a psychic as he is, and presumably finds it a distraction from using her own skills.

Temper’s “Contingency: Pietro” move – which is just to cover the floor in ice – is obviously intended for speedsters in general, and named after Quicksilver.

Timebomb seemed to present herself as a rival to Schwarzchild when the 3K X-Men first appeared, and didn’t seem terribly happy about Joseph being foisted on them as a replacement leader in X-Men #36. So Cyclops’ theory that she’s trying to put herself forward as leadership material by attacking without waiting for the rest of her team does make sense.

PAGES 20-23. Sue persuades Reed to help restore Magneto.

Beast’s pitch to Reed focuses both on Magneto’s symbolic importance to mutant culture, and on his return from the dead with a focus on oppression more generally (in Resurrection of Magneto).

Sue seems much more willing to take Magneto’s change of heart at face value, but also rightly identifies that this seems to be a sideshow compared to the Philadelphia thing that Beast glossed over earlier in the story. It’s only when pressed on this that Beast reveals that he thinks Magneto’s problems stem from the message that’s been added to his DNA, and that he wants Reed to help extract it. (Was he hoping to somehow get Reed to do this without clearly explaining why?)

PAGES 24-25. Ben and Johnny attack 3K.

Sue has already despatched them to Philadelphia in advance of finding out what the problem is.

Like Cassandra, Astra doesn’t trust the Chairman not to kill his allies, and refuses to let her bodyguard Joseph leave her side. The Chairman seems infuriated and baffled that nobody trusts him – his own treatment of Schwarzchild, who was booted out of 3K and seemingly killed, might be contributing to his management problems here.