The Age of Revelation will continue until morale improves (or January, whichever comes first), so we’ve got another week of fresh new “replacement” books and tie-ins alike!
Rather than tackle each book in a traditional “ToX” format, your intrepid CXF review crew will offer up their individual thoughts in brief for each of this week’s offerings, including:
Unbreakable X-Men #1, written by Gail Simone, drawn and colored by Lucas Werneck, and lettered by Clayton Cowles.
Rogue Storm #1, written by Murewa Ayodele, drawn by Roland Boschi, colored by Neeraj Menon and lettered by Travis Lanham.
Sinister’s Six #1, written by David Marquez, drawn by Rafael Loureiro, colored by Alex Sinclair and lettered by Ariana Maher.
Iron & Frost #1, written by Cavan Scott, drawn by Ruairí Coleman, inked by Coleman and
Roberto Poggi, colored by Yen Nitro and lettered by Joe Sabino.
Tony Thornley: Hey, gang, and welcome back to the future! This was quite the eclectic week in our new alternate future home. And also, fully a third of Marvel’s releases this week were set here.
Adam Reck: While AoR got off to an unsteady start last week, week two brings a better variety of worldbuilding and some really great artwork. I wouldn’t call it entirely successful, but it felt much more coherent (with at least one exception).
Austin Gorton: Overall, this is a much stronger batch of books — everything looks great, and while I wouldn’t call any of these, at this point, essential to the overarching story (it’s not even clear in at least two of these issues HOW they connect to the event), they’re doing some interesting and at least somewhat successful things in their own right.
Armaan Babu: A dystopian future event gives creators a chance to mess around and not have to worry too much about what’s come before — something most of the X-books in the “From the Ashes” era have clearly wished they could do. This is their chance, they’re taking it and there’s a lot to enjoy here, even if it doesn’t all cohere.
The Saddest Man on Earth (Unbreakable X-Men #1)
Adam: Gail’s stand-in book for Uncanny X-Men has two things going for it: The first is the incredible artwork of Lucas Werneck, who makes every page of this look like a million bucks. The second is a pretty solid What If? pitch: What If 10 years from now, Rogue died fighting Galactus, leaving a broken, mourning Gambit to lead what’s left of the N’awlins X-Men? The best versions of these books should be flash-forward alternate futures of their existing stories, and whether you dig UXM or not (lord knows we’ve been on the fence), there’s no denying Gail has command over the environment she’s storytelling in here.
Austin: I have zero clue how “Rogue turns into a statue fighting Galactus, leaving behind a heartbroken Gambit” has anything to do with “Age of Revelation,” but when it looks this good, I don’t really care. This issue also has a solid emotional hook, as Simone’s depiction of the broken Gambit is well done, his grief palpable on the page — the three-panel sequence where Gambit stays in one spot and ages as life goes on around him hits like a ton of bricks.
Stephanie Burt: I’m with Austin on this one. It’s a solid — literally solid: The plot turns on a giant statue — stand-alone block of sadness, with a hook that leads to the next issue of this very title, and yeah, it doesn’t seem connected to the changed world of the Enormous Crossover Event in any way, but I do not think I especially care. I do wonder how it’s connected to the other Rogues, though. And sad Gambit broke me.
Adam: Rogue is having a wild decade. First she gets split in two (see below) and then turned into a giant statue. What a way to go. I will say, the emotional heft of this is dampened slightly knowing there’s another Rogue wandering around in another book. Does Gambit know about her? Does Gail? Or given the timeline, is Rogue Red already dead by the events of Unbreakable?
Armaan: A lot of unknowns, but one thing that Rogue Storm tells us — Gambit’s now a one-woman man, even if there are two of the same woman. Rogue’s the only one for him, he accepts no substitutes — and the great galactic stone Rogue is the only one who holds his heart. This was a really fun issue. It holds little to no connection (so far) to the rest of the event, but it’s a good story in its own right. Anchoring the story to Gambit’s heartbreak does a lot for this story — it sets up a lot that answers that age-old question, “Why should we care?” and has me invested in the story to come.
Tony: I love this setup, but the bulk of the book being set about seven years after AoR started did confuse me a little. How is this going to fit into the larger tapestry of the event? It’s absolutely gorgeous, and genuinely a fun superhero story. And hey, I sympathized with Remy LeBeau, one of my least favorite X-Men, WAY more than I normally do. This is the Simone I was hoping for when the series started, and now I’m wondering if I jumped off the title too soon?
Oh, and seeing the new Spider-Girl as a future X-man was a cool touch. I hope that thread gets picked back up in the present day.
Buy Unbreakable X-Men #1 here.
Riding Rhinos (Rogue Storm #1)
Adam: Much like I do not understand anything happening in the current Storm title, I likewise did not understand very much happening here. Rogue split into two because … I guess the Collector can do that? Where’d these Giant War Rhinos come from? And why are there Evangelion mechs defending Storm?
Anywho, what I did like very, very much was Roland Boschi’s artwork. I am constantly begging for comics to have their own visual style, and Boschi’s work here defies house style and brings energy and verve to every page. Everything looks cool as heck. I just wish he were drawing one of the other books.
Austin: This is weird, but not bad weird, just … weird. It is very much a continuation of Ayodele’s regular Storm book in that it has a distinctive style (both visually and in terms of the way it tells stories and the kinds of stories it tells) and makes me feel like I missed an issue or three. It’s also clear that Ayodele continues to reference/be inspired by things about which I know very little (which, again, isn’t inherently bad!). As with Unbreakable, I have zero clue how this is an “Age of Revelation” book aside from it taking place in a future, but it’s got good energy, great art and is fun. That’s enough.
Armaan: Weird is a good word for it — and not in a way that hooks me. This story has less that grabs me as compared to any of the other books in this event, and they’ve not set a high bar. In addition, the unique lettering employed here is a little jarring, making every page and panel less appealing to read. The art is a blast, though — Rogue Red’s heartbreak at seeing Gambit pick Rogue Green is a powerful panel, and the action beats are the kind of fun you only really get to see fully unleashed in an event like this. Who needs context when you’ve skipped ahead into the future?
Tony: I liked the team at the heart of this issue. I pretty much didn’t like anything else about it. The dual Rogues was confusing, the depiction of Ororo just felt off and the whole thing, much like Unbreakable, was so disconnected I had a hard time trying to figure out why I should care.
I want to like a series about the best X-man, and I just have a hard time here. A pass for me.
Check out Jude Jones’ full review of this issue here.
New Hellions (Sinister’s Six #1)
Adam: I was super curious about this title as it marks David Marquez’s debut as an X-writer, and while I think the book would’ve absolutely killed if he had also drawn it (Loureiro’s no slouch, just not quite on the same level), Marquez does a pretty good job of assembling a new set of Sinister’s Hellions in search of a cure to Revelation’s X-Virus. I dug the lineup (Cluster?!), I dug the cameos (Venom?!) and Marquez does a pretty solid job with Sinister’s voice. I enjoyed this one.
Austin: In terms of Sinister’s voice, Marquez strikes a nice balance between “regular” Sinister and the more campy, Gillen-esque Sinister of the past few years, and as much as I like the latter, it works well here, where Sinister is cast, if not as a good guy, at least as less of an arch villain than usual. The cast is an intriguing mix of characters, and gives us our first proper look at “already had powers but got mutated further” characters. I’m genuinely curious to see this group go up against Revelation, and to learn more about Havok’s kid. Which, all in all, makes for a pretty good first issue.
Adam: Freakin’ wild that Havok has yet another kid in this future. Given he’s already lost his son with Maddie Pryor (Scotty) in Mutant X and lost the alternate timeline daughter he had with Wasp (Katie Summers), not to mention his relationship with Nurse Annie’s son Carter. Gotta assume Havok’s track record with kids doesn’t bode well for this new little guy.
Armaan: Havok is a mess, and he passes his misfortune along to everyone around him, future children in alternate timelines very much included.
The fun of this book comes from not just Havok though, but our entire main cast. This is a fun group, bound by little more than twists of fate and a broken future, and they’re a fantastic team. Every one of them brings both fun little quirks to the storytelling and a dynamism to the page in the hunting sequence we see here. It’s a perfect event mini: a concept that won’t work anywhere else, a team that is just fun enough to make each issue action-packed, and the limitations of a mini that mean this wildly mismatched team won’t overstay its welcome. I wouldn’t read an ongoing with this team; there’s not enough to anchor them together. As a mini, though? Perfection.
Tony: I genuinely found this issue a bit forgettable the first time through, but when I read it the second time, I realized it was SO much better because two-thirds of the issue seemed to be directed at the trope of introducing the team. The stuff that WASN’T just that trope was really enjoyable. I was also glad to see this wasn’t a straight villains story like I assumed it might have been. The art was solid, and there’s a lot of fun setup. This might be the first book of the event that made me wish it was four or five issues instead of three.
Stephanie: I wouldn’t go that far, but yeah, I’d love to see more of this team. I’m not sure Marquez gets Sinister’s over-the-top voice right, or rather I am sure he’s toned it down, and I have a hard time even imagining a toned-down Mister Sinister (we’ve seen a lot of versions of Nathaniel Essex, and they’ve all monologued it up to eleven).
I think this book has an easier lift than some of the others because it’s something close to a self-contained story, it’s a team book that can lean on banter, and (maybe most important) it looks like something not only we but the people who crafted the book have 100% seen before: It could have come from the original Age of Apocalypse. Striking costumes, villains recast as heroes, red stripes on black backgrounds, everything just a bit more violent than we’d expect in a mainline Earth-616 book, a breakaway territory with a weird HQ protected from the big bad, and evil scientists who want to outwit other evil scientists. I get it. Marquez and Loureiro get it. It’s maybe not so hard to get. I’ll certainly take more of it.
I can’t believe somebody made me care about Omega Red, by the way. Pretty sure that’s never happened before. Mutant death factor, indeed. And the guy looks cool.
Fall of the House of A (Iron & Frost #1)
Austin: This issue leans so heavily on the Tony Stark/Emma Frost fake marriage/affectionate respect relationship from “Fall of X” that I had to double check that Gerry Duggan didn’t write it (sidebar: why DIDN’T Gerry Duggan write it?). It uses it to good effect, though, giving the issue an emotional core that anchors what is otherwise a mix of worldbuilding (“what happened to the Avengers?”) and an examination of Emma’s relentlessness.
Adam: This one surprised me. I wasn’t a huge fan of the Stark/Frost relationship, but I love the idea of Emma being stuck in diamond form with an arc reactor-sized hole where her heart used to be. And yeah, this felt very indebted to “Fall of X”-era X-Men, down to the use of Krakoan to denote the new Hellfire Club.
Armaan: The issue spends most of its time setting up its premise. It’s an intriguing premise — a mutated Tony Stark and a diamond-bound Emma Frost; strong, uncomfortable feelings between them, and a broken future to fight through. I’m not quite sold on this #1 — it feels like the most interesting part of this series will be in the books to come.
It does do a good job of immersing us in the desperation of this world, though — how bad things got when turmoil was at its highest, and how much on the back foot the remaining heroes are. Things feel lost, things feel dire, and it’s a good place to start a miniseries in an event. I’m holding some judgment for the series based on the #2, but I like the way it’s telling its story despite drawing heavily from a storyline I wasn’t all that fond of to begin with.
Stephanie: Um. Uh, no. First, Emma doesn’t sound like Emma to me. She ought to be either scheming, or teaching, or scheming in order to teach, or telling us all how to be magnificent, or (failing that) grieving her fallen students. I think the narration’s going for the last one, but I don’t buy it, as prose showing her inner monologue.
I don’t mind the gotta-stay-mineral, if-I-turn-back-to-flesh-I-die trope (how many times has Colossus done that?). But I do mind the way Emma’s arc depends, in a contradictory way, both on how she can’t feel her feelings in diamond form, and on how bad she feels about that fact. Maybe she can feel grief, but not love (in which case I, like Foreigner, want to know what love is).
It’s very hard to write a character who supposedly cannot feel her feelings, harder when you adopt that character’s point of view for the issue! Usually such stories show that really the android/Vulcan/whoever has feelings after all; they just don’t know it. That’s Data’s arc in Star Trek: The Next Generation, just like it’s the Tin Man’s in The Wizard of Oz. It’s hard to see Diamond Emma ending that way. I do like the art, though. Especially the look and the angles on Iron Man/War Machine.
Tony: Cavan Scott continues to surprise me. I feel like he’s just one story away from hitting it REAL big. This story was a good superhero adventure, it had great character stakes and it actually made me believe in a stunt pairing. Coleman’s art was genuinely great, reminding me a lot of Marcus To, and I really want to dive in deeper.
Maybe this creative team can get a spin-off/sequel miniseries after the event is all over.
X-traneous Thoughts
- After teasing it on a cover and then never following through, it took “Age of Revelation” to finally give us Storm riding a hippo.
- The implication in Iron & Frost that things might have turned out different if Emma hadn’t gotten trapped underground and lost track of “her” X-Men is fun.
- Always here for a Unuscione appearance. If nothing else, “Age of Revelation” is a Glup Shitto jamboree.
- I kind of hated seeing Marrow get taken out like she did. Would love to see her back on an X-Men team.
- Really, “Age of Revelation” is the first time since just before “Fall of X” that the X-Universe feels as rich and deep in regards to character roster as it did in the Morrison era or the Krakoa era.
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Tony Thornley is a geek dad, blogger, Spider-Man and Superman aficionado, X-Men guru, autism daddy, amateur novelist and all around awesome guy. He’s also very humble. Follow him @brawl2099.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.
Adam Reck is the cartoonist behind Bish & Jubez as well as the co-host of Battle Of The Atom. Follow him @adamreck.bsky.social.
Armaan is obsessed with the way stories are told. From video games to theater, TTRPGs to comics, he has written for, and about, them all. He will not stop, actually; believe us, we've tried.
Stephanie Burt is Professor of English at Harvard. Her podcast about superhero role playing games is Team-Up Moves, with Fiona Hopkins; her latest book of poems is We Are Mermaids. Her nose still hurts from that thing with the gate.
