Okay then…<\/p>\n
X-MEN: AGE OF REVELATION INFINITY COMIC #2. <\/strong>By Tim Seeley, Phillip Sevy, Michael Bartolo & Clayton Cowles. Despite the title, the\u00a0Age of Revelation<\/em> Infinity Comic is actually covering events shortly after the X-Virus outbreak, not that far into the future. That means it gets to be the one book where we have Revelation as the leader of the X-Men, still recognisable as Doug Ramsey. That’s probably the most interesting thing about this arc, but this chapter (quite understandably) is mostly devoted to setting up Anton Kruch as a major threat for a Cable story, so that Revelation can show up at the end to kick things up a gear. Kruch is a weird choice of villain at first glance – his only previous appearance was in a single\u00a0Cable & Deadpool<\/em> arc 20 years ago. But he has the advantage of being a pre-existing character with his own plan to transform the human race with a virus, which works as an opponent for a pseudo-heroic Revelation pretending to have a team-up with Cable, so I can see why we’re using him. Still, this chapter is mainly setting up Kruch so that we can get to the good stuff next time.<\/p>\n ROGUE STORM #2.<\/strong> By Murewa Ayodele, Roland Boschi, Neeraj Menon & Travis Lanham. If I’d had time to do annotations this week, then this is the only book that would have qualified anyway. Some “Age of Revelation” books seem to be having more trouble with pacing a three-issue story than others. For Murewa Ayodele, it seems to suit him quite well – this feels a lot more focussed than the regular\u00a0Storm<\/em> story, and the jumping through time frames works nicely in terms of filling in the back story. After giving the first issue to Rogue, this one is from Storm’s perspective, and it basically turns out that her odd behaviour was due to possession from a demon we’ve seen in the regular series. There’s a bit with Doctor Voodoo that presumably plays into the regular series at least obliquely, as well. But mostly, it turns out to be a fairly straightforward story which leans less than usual on overpowering Ororo. Boschi’s art is really good – the demon design, with the grinning mask-like face, suits him perfectly, but he’s also adding a bit of humanity to the cast. I wish somebody would talk Ayodele out of his gimmick of sticking sound effects on literally everything – I’ll just about tolerate “LISTENING” (which isn’t easy to show), or “SLICE!” (since you’d kind of expect a sound effect in that panel of some sort), but when you get to “POUR”, “TOSS” and “CATCH”, that’s just getting in the way of the artist doing his job. On the whole, though, this is clicking better than the regular\u00a0Storm<\/em> title, and I think the discipline of three issues is helping there.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n IRON & FROST #2.<\/strong> By Cavan Scott, Ruair\u00ed Coleman, Yen Nitro & Joe Sabino. This, on the other hand, feels like a book that’s struggling with the pacing – it’s really just one uninterrupted scene, and comes across as a slight story that’s been stretched to fill the length. There’s actually a solid enough concept underneath it, though. Emma is stuck in diamond form because of an injury that would kill her if she changed back to normal – which means she can’t use her telepathy. Tony has been merged with his own armour by the X-virus, and his own personality is subsumed by the armour’s computer. Emma would have to kill herself to free him, but just having her around seems to let him out for brief moments. That’s all completely fine as a high concept, and Coleman’s art gets across Iron Man’s impassivity and Landslide’s panicky reactions. But the pacing is off; as essentially a single scene, it feels too rushed, and at the same time not enough story material to fill the space.<\/p>\n SINISTER’S SIX #2.\u00a0<\/strong>By David Marquez, Rafael Loureiro, Alex Sinclair & Ariana Maher. Sinister’s mutated mutants (well, mostly) raid one of Revelation’s abandoned bases in the hopes of finding the notes that will let Sinister develop a cure to the X-virus. It’s pretty straightforward but bounces happily around the cast members with their individual thoughts on their situation – which in turn makes it feel more layered than\u00a0Iron & Frost<\/em>. And they kick it up a gear to close, by bringing in the big guns from the wider event. (For those really interested in tracking the event, it’s the cast of Book of Revelation<\/em>.) I’m not sure there’s actually that much to the main story, but the character bits and the general visual polish make it work.<\/p>\n SPIDER-MAN & WOLVERINE #7.<\/strong> By Marc Guggenheim, Kaare Andrews, Brian Reber and Travis Lanham. Spider-Man and Wolverine wind up on a parallel Earth where their counterparts are the same guy and he’s a villain. I’ve not generally been too keen on this title, beyond its primary function as a Kaare Andrews showcase – which is not a bad function to have, to be sure. As a story, though, this is actually alright. If you’re going to do a contrived Spider-Man\/Wolverine team-up book then you may as well lean in to the contrivance and have fun with it. And this one does feel fun. There’s even a vague nod that the book might do something with Mariko Yashida because, after all, no one else is. Don’t get me wrong, it’s still an art showcase, but it’s figuring out how to be a romp at the same time, and that’s a step up.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Okay then… X-MEN: AGE OF REVELATION INFINITY COMIC #2. By Tim Seeley, Phillip Sevy, Michael Bartolo & Clayton Cowles. Despite the title, the\u00a0Age of Revelation Infinity Comic is actually covering events shortly after the X-Virus outbreak, not that far into the future. That means it gets to be the one book where we have Revelation […]<\/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,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11529","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-x-axis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11529","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=11529"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11529\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11530,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11529\/revisions\/11530"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11529"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11529"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11529"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}