{"id":11589,"date":"2025-12-03T23:11:40","date_gmt":"2025-12-03T23:11:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=11589"},"modified":"2025-12-03T23:11:40","modified_gmt":"2025-12-03T23:11:40","slug":"amazing-x-men-3-annotations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=11589","title":{"rendered":"Amazing X-Men #3 annotations"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>AMAZING X-MEN vol 3 #3<\/strong>
\n“Philadelphia”<\/strong>
\nWriter: Jed MacKay<\/strong>
\nArtist: Mahmud Asrar<\/strong>
\nColourist: Matthew Wilson<\/strong>
\nLetterer: Clayton Cowles<\/strong>
\nEditor: Tom Brevoort<\/strong><\/p>\n

COVER.<\/strong> The X-Men in the ruins of Philadelphia (rather worse than it actually looks in the stories), with a mural of Revelation.<\/p>\n

Notionally this is the final issue of the miniseries, but in practice the story continues into\u00a0X-Men: Age of Revelation – Finale.\u00a0<\/em>Counting the\u00a0Overture<\/em> issue as well, this is really more issue #4 of 5 than issue #3 of 3.<\/p>\n

PAGES 1-4.\u00a0<\/strong>Psylocke tells the X-Men what she learned from Bei.<\/em><\/p>\n

Last issue, Cyclops won a duel against the Darkchild, who agreed to transport them from her territory in Providence to Revelation’s capital city of Philadelphia. Presumably that happened between issues and she’s dropped them off on the outskirts. Glob Herman seems genuinely surprised that they escaped Darkchild, which is clearly not a common experience – certainly the Age of Revelation X-Men seemed terrified of the place when they arrived there in issue #1.<\/p>\n

All the material about Glob killing Topaz, and Psylocke being sent to kill Bei, comes from Overture. Psylocke’s account of what happened is correct as far as it goes. Interestingly, she comes across as much more sympathetic than the future X-Men – certainly than Glob Herman, who actively laughs about it, but all of the X-Men seem to have much more of a “this is war” attitude than Psylocke. Compared to the others, Schwarzchild seems the most reasonable, since at least he makes a fair point about Psylocke’s selectivity rather than just brushing Topaz’s death off.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The flashback page is simply a recap of a scene from\u00a0Overture<\/em> #1. That scene ended with Bei telling Psylocke that “In telling you the truth, I will take my revenge. Because once you hear my words, your life will be over as well.” Psylocke refers back to that here, by saying that her “life was ended” – presumably meaning that she could never go back to her life as one of Revelation’s Seraphim. Apparently signing up for low-grade misery in Providence seemed like the most promising way to escape.<\/p>\n

“Ego the Living Planet all over again.” <\/strong>We now learn what Bei told Psylocke: that the X-virus is ultimately designed to convert the whole Revelation Territories into an extension of Revelation himself, ultimately leading to him becoming the whole planet. As the Beast says, this is indeed somewhat like the origin story of Ego the Living Planet, which (per\u00a0Thor<\/em> #228) involves a scientist winding up as the consciousness of his whole planet – although he wasn’t trying to do that.<\/p>\n

PAGES 5-11. <\/strong>The X-Men fight off a group of Seraphim.<\/em><\/p>\n

The Seraphim here seem to be entirely new characters.<\/p>\n

Psylocke is wearing an X-Men logo partly because she rejoined the team last issue, but mainly because Revelation compelled her to wear it in\u00a0Overture<\/em>. Given the reaction of the Seraphim here, this seems like a fairly serious obstacle to her doing her job – though in fairness, Redgarden doesn’t the chance to do much more than express confusion before Glob Herman shoots him.<\/p>\n

Glob really does seem to be a psychopath in this timeline, shrugging off Cyclops’ orders, and nicknamed “Mad Dog” by the Seraphim.<\/p>\n

Once again, the future characters acting most like traditional X-Men are Psylocke, making the case for sparing their opponent’s lives, and Schwarzchild, who works sensibly with Scott.<\/p>\n

The Beast tells Psylocke that “The future is worth any betrayal”. She broadly agrees with him, but flags this as out of character. More of this below.<\/p>\n

PAGES 12-15.\u00a0<\/strong>The X-Men reach the “X-Mansion” in Philadelphia.<\/em><\/p>\n

This “X-Mansion” is simply an underground base occupied by\u00a0Wiz Kid<\/strong>, who must have been the “agent” in Philadelphia mentioned in issue #1. It’s the first mention we’ve had of him in this timeline, and we haven’t seen his mainstream counterpart in the post-Krakoan era.<\/p>\n

“The Angel of Death ambushed us.”\u00a0<\/strong>Animalia means Wolverine, in\u00a0Overture\u00a0<\/em>and in issue #1.<\/p>\n

“The teleporter… glitched.”\u00a0<\/strong>Issue #1 again. Schwarzchild suggested in issue #1 that the teleporter had glitched because of the ghosts swarming the X-Mansion (which were no longer under Deathdream’s control), but perhaps there’s a suggestion in Animalia and Wiz Kid’s exchange that something else might have been the problem.<\/p>\n

“Revelation’s got three Choristers left, and one of them is a little kid.”\u00a0<\/strong>X-Men: Book of Revelation\u00a0<\/em>#2. The remaining Choristers are Chance, Khora and Elbecca (the “little kid”). What Wiz Kid doesn’t know is that Elbecca is a sleeper agent for Apocalypse.<\/p>\n

PAGES 16-18.\u00a0<\/strong>Animalia talks to the Beast.<\/em><\/p>\n

The Beast seems to have got up in the night to use the computer – or perhaps he sent everyone else to bed\u00a0so that<\/em> he could use the computer – but we’re not told what he’s doing with it. To be fair, Animalia can presumably see the screen, and Beast doesn’t seem too concerned about that.<\/p>\n

According to Animalia, the future Beast insisted on being one of the X-Men to travel back to the past because he believed that they would be “steal[ing] the life of an X-Man in the past”. This rather sounds as if the plan was never to swap them back, and that future Beast thought that he would at least be inflicting this on a version of himself. Note that in the previous scene Animalia was actively lobbying to sent the time travellers back anyway.<\/p>\n

In issue #1, the Beast referred to Jen as “Ms Starkey”, prompting her to comment that he didn’t know her yet. He didn’t seem to dispute that. In this issue, the Beast refers to Animalia being in a relationship with a “future” version of himself. But all of this is inconsistent with what we’ve seen in regular\u00a0X-Men<\/em>, where Hank and Jen are already starting their relationship. There are two obvious possibilities. One is that Beast went back to a different point in the past. The other is that this is the Krakoan\u00a0X-Force\u00a0<\/em>Beast – who is the original, after all, and who was bound to show up alive and well at some point. That would fit more with his exchange with Psylocke earlier in the issue. It seems unlikely that Cyclops has spent this long around Beast and future Jen without picking up on these points.<\/p>\n

The Beast’s promise to Jen that “you will get him back” could equally be read as a promise that he is going to get himself home.<\/p>\n

PAGES 19-20.\u00a0<\/strong>The X-Men’s plans are interrupted.<\/em><\/p>\n

The big development here is that future Wiz Kid has never heard of “resurrection-linked degeneration syndrome”, which Magneto is supposed to be suffering from in the present day\u00a0X-Men<\/em> stories. He does remember Magneto having a hover-chair but recalls it being an affectation.<\/p>\n

This is, obviously, weird. One possibility is that Wiz Kid is simply wrong; after all, R-LDS isn’t widely known about and he’s out of the loop in the present day, so perhaps the whole thing gets sorted out and covered up before Wiz Kid has any occasion to know about it. Another possibility is that we’re not in a possible future timeline after all, but rather in a timeline that diverged at some other point. And another is that something has happened to alter the past.<\/p>\n

The issue ends with Apocalypse and Professor X arriving from Arakko, with a pointer to Book of Revelation<\/em> #3 for the next part of the story. Professor X was established as an ally of Apocalypse in this timeline in the Arakko story in\u00a0World of Revelation<\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

AMAZING X-MEN vol 3 #3 “Philadelphia” Writer: Jed MacKay Artist: Mahmud Asrar Colourist: Matthew Wilson Letterer: Clayton Cowles Editor: Tom Brevoort COVER. The X-Men in the ruins of Philadelphia (rather worse than it actually looks in the stories), with a mural of Revelation. Notionally this is the final issue of the miniseries, but in practice […]<\/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":[31],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11589","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-annotations"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11589","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=11589"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11589\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11591,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11589\/revisions\/11591"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11589"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11589"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11589"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}