X years later, the Revelation Territories stretch from the Atlantic to the Mississippi — a mutant utopia ruled by the heir of Apocalypse, Doug Ramsey. But beneath the surface, rebellion brews. As a ragtag X-Men team strikes from the shadows, Revelation faces threats from within. X-Men: Age of Revelation Overture #1 is written by Jed MacKay, drawn by Ryan Stegman, inked by JP Mayer, colored by Edgar Delgado and lettered by Clayton Cowles.
Well, here we are, three months of the X-Men’s latest dark future. Welcome to the Age of Revelation, where Doug Ramsey rules half the United States, a scrappy band of X-Men leads the resistance, and other mutants (and non-mutants) are also there.
But what exactly is going on X years in the future? We thought we’d offer this handy guide to give folks the lay of the land, based on this week’s Overture issue, the zero issue that came out in July and other information that’s been solicited.
SPOILERS FROM HERE ON OUT!!!
D.R.E.A.M. (Doug Rules Everything Around Me)
The crossover is predicated on the premise that Doug Ramsey, Revelation, rules the eastern half of what was once America. His Apocalypse-given ability to control other people through language has bent most of mutantkind to its knees, while a mutating virus has killed — decimated? — most of the humans and left the survivors changed.
Doug’s come a long way from his days as the weakest New Mutant. And Revelation is just the latest stop on Marvel’s quest to make him more than a guy who can understand any language. From using body language to become good at fights, to getting addicted to the internet, to becoming the voice of Krakoa, Doug has been on a power-creep trajectory since the late 2000s. This is just another glow-up, albeit one you could build an event around.
In a letter at the end of the zero issue, event architect Jed MacKay says it was intended as part of the celebration of the 30th anniversary of “Age of Apocalypse,” along with the current X-Men of Apocalypse mini by Jeph Loeb and Simone Di Meo and the Giant-Size Age of Apocalypse one-shot that was part of a larger Ms. Marvel/Legion story this summer. But where AoA was an alternate present that took over the line for four months, AoR is a dark-future time-travel story, set 10 years after Cyclops and Doug shake hands at the end of X-Men #22. And it’s only rewriting the line for three months, the length of a traditional comics solicit cycle or a fiscal quarter.
Days of Future Future
To stop Revelation, the X-Men of the future have brought forward in time the consciousnesses of present-day Cyclops and Beast — “the X-Men’s greatest leader and the X-Men’s greatest mind,” per Magneto — to help them formulate and execute a plan, much like adult Kate Pryde sent her mind back in time into the body of her younger self to stop the assassination of Sen. Robert Kelly in the original “Days of Future Past” story. It helped that future Scott and Hank had apparently been rendered consciousness-less “babels” by Revelation as retribution for their opposition.
(That said, present Beast is still adjusting to life as an X-man after awakening as a factory-reset clone of the Beast that did war crimes. If the goal is to stop Revelation permanently, why not go farther back in time and bring back war crimes Beast? At least you know he’ll get the job done. There’ll be horrific consequences, but it’ll get done.)
Who are (were?) the X-Men?
Cyclops awakens to a resistance squad that includes Magneto, Forge, Angel, Xorn, a Glob Herman with the action-hero gravitas of MacGruber, Schwarzschild from the 3K X-Men and Jen Starkey from the Alaska base. Most of these characters were active in MacKay’s X-Men. Forge was a carryover from the canceled X-Force, and Angel — sporting a very Shatterstar-looking head sock and white outfit, btw — was a carryover from the canceled X-Factor.
Don’t get too attached, though. Within pages, several of the team are killed by Doug’s “Angel of Death,” Wolverine (not his first time being a something “of Death”), culminating in Xorn doing the thing where he takes off his helmet in a moment of heroic-yet-destructive sacrifice.
In running through the X-Men so quickly, we get the big “oops, team’s all dead” moment that establishes the stakes in “Days of Future Past,” House of X #4 or the very end of “Age of Apocalypse,” with Xorn providing a callback to his death scene in Powers of X #3.
But, as in all things, it’s Glob who steals the show, his squishy pink body sporting clothes from the Punisher collection and spitting lines like, in response to Cyclops’ observation of his newfound edge, “Can’t cut a throat without one, Slim.” Stay gold, kid. Stay gold.
Who is on Team Doug? (aka MOAR ’90S BLORBOS)
Naming everything after words that sound biblical, Revelation (in the Bible) has created a stratified system of allies.
His Choristers (not in the Bible) boost his powers and those of his favored children, led by professional betrayer Fabian Cortez (last seen in Sentinels) and including the character Topaz introduced in Gail Simone and David Baldeon’s Domino series from 2018. Though not identified by name, other Choristers may include the Arakkan Khora of the Burning Heart and former Alaskan Factory resident Ben Liu.
Then there are the Seraphim (in the Bible), his top assassins, which include the former X-man and Krakoan war captain Psylocke, as well as Hellion (ex-Academy X), Dragoness (ex-Mutant Liberation Front), Chrome (ex-Acolytes) and Strobe (ex-MLF). His top assassin, Logan, is Doug’s Angel of Death (not in the Bible). Quentin Quire runs a gang of telepathic urchins known as the Omega (in the Bible) Kids. Locus, previously of Reignfire’s MLF and King Bedlam’s New Hellions, serves as Doug’s teleporter, though Vanisher was shown performing the same duty in the zero issue.
As for Revelation, he looks like the version that emerged from the end of last year’s Heir of Apocalypse mini again, as opposed to the version in recent comics where he looked like himself but more jacked with some face tats.
And what of the other two-thirds of his throuple? Well, his wife, Bei the Blood Moon, is here, though like many characters, she’s not long for this crossover. His selfsoulfriend Warlock, on the other hand, appears nowhere to be found. BUT, if you recall the New Year’s Timeslide one-shot, War-Lock Drones patrolled the ruins of the Revelation Territories, so it’s very likely he’ll show up soon.
Where is everyone?
Further channeling the “Age of Apocalypse” before it, a helpful map on the Bullpen Bulletins page lets us know where things are:
- The Revelation Territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Mississippi River, with Philadelphia (GO BIRDS!) serving as the capital.
- Washington, D.C., has been nuked, so the remains of the American government have set up shop in San Francisco (bet the Republicans love that).
- The Darkchild, Illyana’s evil half, rules her own fiefdom, the Limbo Lands, in New England with the Juggernaut by her side as her enforcer.
- Texas has seceded and become its own independent nation.
- Alaska is now part of Canada.
- And the Southern Hemisphere is purportedly a mess due to Storm, who will appear in the miniseries Rogue Storm by Storm writer Murewa Ayodele.
- The map also points out that Haven House, the home base of the Louisiana X-Men, falls just outside the Revelation Territories. That will be picked up on in Unbreakable X-Men by Uncanny writer Gail Simone.
The Second Krakoan Age?
A new mutant homeland? What’s so bad about that? As Cyclops says to Magneto, “This seems to be the best situation for mutants since Krakoa.”
While the From the Ashes era (excepting NYX and the Hellfire Vigil one-shot) largely avoided saying the K-word, Krakoa’s shadow looms large in Revelation’s vision of a mutant-centric future. Boosted by Cortez, Doug uses his power to convince plants to grow until whole cities are returned to nature, like Midgar at the end of Final Fantasy VII. These trees are shown to grow their own exotic fruits, which while not stated explicitly, I wouldn’t be surprised if they turned out to be boost fruits, the power-enhancing fruits grown on the mutant island.
Doug clearly misses his mutant homeland, where he was a big deal because of his ability to speak to and for the island, often allowing him to stand up to and sometimes defy the Quiet Council based on his own moral code. As the heir of Apocalypse, that power has blended with his moral certainty to create something far more dangerous and fascistic. I mean, where are the mutant sex parties?
You could make the argument that “Age of Revelation” is a meta commentary from editorial asking fans of the Krakoan age to let it go, the exclamation point at the end of a publishing initiative (“From the Ashes”) that did much the same. And I imagine a lot of Krakoa fans would be pissed at that, if they were still reading the books.
You and me have a disease
3K’s experiments jumpstarting latent adult mutants made them patsies in the creation of the X-virus, a new sickness targeting humans. Many humans died. A lucky relative few were mutated, including a number of non-mutant Marvel heroes, as we’ll see in other books.
It’s the latest in a long line of mutant-related diseases, including the Legacy Virus, an AIDS allegory that sickened mutants until their powers flared out and they died, and M-Pox, a disease born of mutant exposure to the Inhumans’ Terrigen Mists. Only instead of targeting mutants, it transforms Rogue’s friend Spider-Man.
What about Doug’s ‘Daddy’?
Bei the Blood Moon’s final act before her death is to send a psychic message to Apocalypse on Arakko letting him know just what his heir has been up to, believing it a betrayal of his creator’s design.
Apocalypse’s receipt of the information sets the ticking clock, his pending arrival on Earth this dense crossover’s “Just wait until your father gets home, young man” moment.
What will it mean for everyone else? We’ll find out by the end of December.
What’s next?
The Age of Revelation will continue across 16 books, each lasting three issues, ending with a Finale issue dropping on New Year’s Eve.
Out next week are Amazing X-Men #1, which will follow what’s left of Cyclops’ team as they attempt to take the fight to Revelation; Binary #1, which appears to be the substitute for Phoenix; Laura Kinney: Sabretooth, in which Logan’s daughter seems to have taken a heel turn; Longshots #1, a Mojo story co-written by Krakoa-era writers Jonathan Hickman and Gerry Duggan; and World of Revelation #1, an anthology one-shot that shows other corners of the Marvel Universe reacting to Doug’s reign.
Unlike 1995’s X-Men Alpha #1, which kicked off both the “Age of Apocalypse” and worked to set up the specific plot arcs of a good chunk of the “transformed” series, Overture offers few plot details about the (voluminous) tie-ins to come, focusing mainly on the worldbuilding and setting up MacKay’s own Amazing X-Men.
For a full look at all of the titles, click here.
And then?
Marvel has teased the post-AoR era, “Shadows of Tomorrow,” starting in January, which it plans to reveal more about Oct. 10 at New York Comic Con. So far, the line includes resumptions of X-Men, Uncanny X-Men and Wolverine, a second “season” of Ayodele’s Storm, a new Cyclops solo series and Wade Wilson: Deadpool (and possibly something involving Magik). No word on creative teams yet for most of these.
Buy X-Men: Age of Revelation Overture #1 here. (Disclaimer: As an Amazon Associate, ComicsXF may earn from qualifying purchases.)
Dan Grote is the editor and publisher of ComicsXF, having won the site by ritual combat. By day, he’s a newspaper editor, and by night, he’s … also an editor. He co-hosts The ComicsXF Interview Podcast with Matt Lazorwitz. He lives in New Jersey with his wife, two kids and two miniature dachshunds, and his third, fictional son, Peter Paul Winston Wisdom. Follow him @danielpgrote.bsky.social.
Austin Gorton also reviews older issues of X-Men at the Real Gentlemen of Leisure website, co-hosts the A Very Special episode podcast, and likes Star Wars. He lives outside Minneapolis, where sometimes, it is not cold. Follow him @austingorton.bsky.social.
