{"id":11188,"date":"2025-07-02T18:06:23","date_gmt":"2025-07-02T17:06:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=11188"},"modified":"2025-07-02T18:06:23","modified_gmt":"2025-07-02T17:06:23","slug":"x-men-19-annotations-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=11188","title":{"rendered":"X-Men #19 annotations"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>X-MEN vol 7 #19
\n\u201dRevelation\u201d<\/strong>
\nWriter: Jed MacKay<\/strong>
\nPenciller: Netho Diaz<\/strong>
\nInker: Sean Parsons<\/strong>
\nColourist: Fer Sifuentes-Sujo<\/strong>
\nLetterer: Clayton Cowles<\/strong>
\nEditor: Tom Brevoort<\/strong><\/p>\n

REVELATION<\/strong><\/p>\n

The X-Men don\u2019t appear in this issue at all. Instead, the de facto star of the book is Doug Ramsey in his new guise as Revelation.<\/p>\n

We last saw Doug in\u00a0X-Men: Heir of Apocalypse<\/em>, where he won Apocalypse\u2019s tournament, accepted the hazily-defined role of \u201cheir\u201d (with Apocalypse himself retreating to Arakko), and was transformed by Apocalypse. The actual transformation took place off panel in that story; here, the first two pages show it in flashback, with Doug\u2019s body being\u00a0eaten away and rebuilt. He has nightmares about this every night, but still talks positively about the experience.<\/p>\n

Apocalypse also gave Doug pale skin, lightning bolt designs on his face and upper arms, a gold robe, and weird marking on his bald head. Doug has backtracked heavily on this: while he\u2019s kept the name \u201cRevelation\u201d, he\u2019s grown his hair back, which \u201cmakes me feel more like me\u201d. He wears a \u201cKrakoa was for lovers\u201d T-shirt. His personality appears basically unchanged from the Krakoan era.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

He lives in the Pacific Northwest with Bei and Warlock, in what seems to be a nice little rural cabin. In Heir<\/em> #4, Apocalypse described them as Doug\u2019s \u201cfirst disciples\u201d – Doug acknowledges that line here, but rejects it, calling them his \u201cfamily\u201d instead. They certainly act like one.<\/p>\n

His transformation has significantly increased his resistance to injury, and he can be thrown out of a window with no apparent harm. His mutant power has also been enhanced. Bei describes him as \u201cspeak[ing] with the authority of Apocalypse himself\u201d, while Doug and Warlock both prefer a more prosaic description that he can use language to control people, who are essentially compelled to do as he says. Doug takes the ethical implications of this very seriously, regards it as akin to mind control, and singles out Professor X as an example of the sort of telepath he wants to be better than.<\/p>\n

Doug refers to a time on Krakoa when he told Professor X \u201cWe need to be good, or we\u2019re nothing\u201d – this is Immortal X-Men <\/em>#13, where he persuades Professor X to disband the Quiet Council. Doug says he still believes what he said.<\/p>\n

When held at gunpoint by a Z*E*R*O agent, he uses his powers to make the man put his gun to his own head. Bei kills the man before Doug can do anything else. It\u2019s deliberately left unclear what Doug would have done otherwise. He objects to Bei killing the man, but that doesn\u2019t resolve whether he was planning to psyche the guy out and let him go, or kill him personally (in which case he\u2019s aggrieved that Bei is being overly protective of him). Bei clearly thinks it\u2019s the former, but makes a point of not translating that speech for Doug\u2019s benefit. She says that he needs to get used to taking lives in order to fulfil his mission and clearly thinks he isn\u2019t there yet.<\/p>\n

From the look of it, since we last saw him, Doug has been adjusting to his new powers, pondering what his mission might mean in practice, and doing absolutely nothing to actually advance it. Nonetheless, he seems to take the mission seriously. He takes his mission to be \u201csurvival of the fittest\u201d, but recognises that Apocalypse failed on his own terms (which was the whole premise of him appointing an heir) and isn\u2019t sure what the motto means in the real world.<\/p>\n

Doug regards himself as having been the \u201cleast fit\u201d of the New Mutants, since he was the first of them to die (in New Mutants <\/em>#60).<\/p>\n

Doug says at one point: \u201dI used to hack computers. Now I can hack people. But we have to hack the planet.\u201d Apparently this is a movie reference that Bei and Warlock don\u2019t get. I\u00a0think<\/em> it\u2019s\u00a0Hackers<\/em> (1995), but to be honest, I\u2019ve never seen the film either.<\/p>\n

SUPPORTING CAST<\/strong><\/p>\n

Bei.<\/strong> Despite Doug\u2019s power-ups, he still can\u2019t understand Bei\u2019s psychic speech (as was always the case). Although she seems to be speaking to him at the start of the issue, she\u2019s actually using sign language alongside her dialogue. Quite why she\u2019s \u201cspeaking\u201d to him at all isn\u2019t entirely clear, but perhaps Doug can still \u201chear\u201d her tone of voice – or simply likes to hear her voice alongside her signs. Once, when she wants to make a relatively complex and abstract point about cultural relativism, she asks Warlock to translate..<\/p>\n

Bei is pleased that Doug has reverted to type. She regards \u201csurvival of the fittest\u201d as a concept \u201cencoded into every aspect of [Arakkii] society\u201d due to its wartorn history, but recognises that her notions will be culturally specific and unhelpful in trying to lead earth\u2019s mutants. Privately, she clearly anticipates that the mission will inevitably lead to lives being lost, and that Doug having to do this personally. Doug doesn\u2019t seem to fully appreciate that she thinks this, and she makes a point of not translating the speech where she says it. It appears to be something that she views as a regrettable necessity.<\/p>\n

Warlock.<\/strong> Cheerful hanger-on as always. You rather suspect he\u2019s only in the issue because that\u2019s what Heir<\/em> set up.<\/p>\n

He considers his own Technarch culture to espouse a form of survival of the fittest, but evidently doesn\u2019t think it\u2019s very helpful to Doug\u2019s mission. The basic idea is that the Technarch are necessarily the fittest in their own minds; suitably fit cultures are absorbed and everything else is destroyed.<\/p>\n

He appears to serve as a sort of alarm system for the building, detecting Z*E*R*O\u2019s approach. He can be temporarily knocked out with an EMP.<\/p>\n

Apocalypse.<\/strong> His voice is heard in the opening flashback: \u201cFor centuries, I have believed that my methods were the only way forward for mutantkind. That I could become mutantkind\u2019s great monster in the darkness, driving the species forward through fear and might. You have lost much, Doug Ramsey. And death can be a passage towards rebirth.\u201d These are excerpts from a speech in Heir of Apocalypse<\/em> #4, though it comes from the sequence where Apocalypse is persuading Doug to accept the position, not the later scene where Doug is actually transformed. The cuts include Apocalypse musing that perhaps Doug is well suited as an heir because his skill in politics and diplomacy is more important than Apocalypse\u2019s direct power.<\/p>\n

VILLAINS<\/strong><\/p>\n

Z*E*R*O.<\/strong> A group of renegade O*N*E members who have taken it upon themselves to murder dangerous mutants. They wear\u2026 well, they look like armed ICE agents, bluntly. Doug takes this to be a sign that he\u2019s dealing with a black ops unit rather than the regular US government forces. How quaint. But he seems to be right, at least in the sense that the regular O*N*E authorities would not go as far as carrying out assassinations.<\/p>\n

When first challenged by Doug, the Z*E*R*O member who confronts him claims to be a O*N*E agent. But he quickly concedes that his group acting without authority. They claim that the \u201c[b]rass doesn\u2019t realise that we\u2019re in a state of gene war\u201d.<\/p>\n

Somehow, Z*E*R*O are aware that Doug is the heir of Apocalypse – he doesn\u2019t seem to regard this as particularly surprising, so maybe it\u2019s reasonably widely known in superhero circles.<\/p>\n

Doug\u2019s initial guesses are that Z*E*R*O might be Gene Nation or Sapien League. These are the same two examples of anti-mutant propagandists that Ben Liu gave in the previous issue, despite the fact that Gene Nation was a pro-mutant terrorist group. Either there\u2019s another group of the same name that we haven\u2019t met yet, or this is a repeated error.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

X-MEN vol 7 #19 \u201dRevelation\u201d Writer: Jed MacKay Penciller: Netho Diaz Inker: Sean Parsons Colourist: Fer Sifuentes-Sujo Letterer: Clayton Cowles Editor: Tom Brevoort REVELATION The X-Men don\u2019t appear in this issue at all. Instead, the de facto star of the book is Doug Ramsey in his new guise as Revelation. We last saw Doug in\u00a0X-Men: […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11188","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-annotations"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11188","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11188"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11188\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11191,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11188\/revisions\/11191"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11188"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11188"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11188"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}