This week’s Age of Revelation books check in on the villains and key mutants like … Spider-Man

The Age of Revelation continues to grow with another four new stories! 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:

X-Men: Book of Revelation #1 by Jed MacKay, Netho Diaz, Sean Parsons, Fer Sifuentes-Sujo and Clayton Cowles gives a glimpse at the bad guys.

Radioactive Spider-Man #1 by Joe Kelly, Kev Walker, Chris Sotomayor and Joe Caramagna takes the idea of power and responsibility to a scary conclusion.

Omega Kids #1 by Tony Fleecs, Andres Genolet, Sifuentes-Sujo and Travis Lanham gives readers Professor Q.

The Last Wolverine #1 by Saladin Ahmed, Edgar Salazar, Carlos Lopez and Cory Petit introduces a new Wolverine.

Tony Thornley: This has all been so much so far this month. How’s everyone holding up? Anyone grown any new limbs or eyes?

Adam Reck: I’m doing OK, but I did realize yesterday that after reading what I think is like 15 Age of Doug books, I still don’t understand the rules of the X-Virus, had Austin explain it to me, only to ask him about Nightcrawler and we were both confused again. In general, this week feels like a step down in quality from the last, or at bare minimum is proof we don’t need all these titles, since so many of them are just “set in the world” as opposed to telling the actual story.

Austin Gorton: “Set in the world” is a good way to put it. Only one book this week has anything at all to do with whatever the ur-plot is, and that’s after zero books last week. 

Anyway, I should be OK as long as I don’t sit on any high ledges [eyes everyone suspiciously].

Anna Peppard: I’m barely here because in general, me and my sometimes-beloved X-Men comics are on one of our semi-regular breaks. But Adam told me I needed to read one of this month’s books to witness Crimes Against Nightcrawler, so against my will and better judgment, here I am, Witnessing.

Dan Grote: I’m just here for the snacks.

Adam: There are snacks?

Dan: In my heart there are, Adam. In my heart.

The New Kid Meets the New Kid (X-Men: Book of Revelation #1)

Tony: So it seems like this book is the stand-in for X-Men’s every-three-weeks releases, and a “villains” counterpoint to Amazing X-Men. Honestly, I really liked this a lot. Like Amazing, it was the strongest for developing the plot of the event.

On the flip side, this is, what, the fifth or sixth release to feature a totally new character as the protagonist. This event is way too short to make us care about them. And on top of that, it’s still a deeply flawed story.

But hey, it’s nice to see Diaz continue to develop as an artist in positive ways. It’s a good looking book!

Adam: In “Age of Apocalypse,” I understood what Apocalypse’s motivations were and why the world was what it was. I continue to be confused about what Doug is doing or why he thinks it’s carrying on Apocalypse’s legacy. Book of Revelation didn’t help with any of that. Aside from seeing a nerfed Death show up to deliver an email and Fabian Cortez being his normal super ’90s jerkwad self, there wasn’t much to enjoy. 

Stephanie Burt: It’s 2 a.m. and I’m up watching Doug villain-splain. The Netho Diaz/Sean Parsons line art looks great and reminds me of the art teams for the Morrison run (in a good way), and I think the idea is that Revelation-world is a kind of Mirrorverse for Krakoa: Doug has built a safe space for his people, and built a religion around that safe space, which he can enforce with his words (unlike the three laws of Krakoa, which got broken about as often as the Prime Directive). “This is our mutant land! We adapt and evolve and survive!”

He’s even got a funeral oration. It really does feel like Krakoa Two. And when he tells Elbecca the Chorister that a mutant leader can’t come off as “a normal person,” he’s looking back to Magneto’s Krakoa-era speech (“you have new gods now”) and to his own death in the Simonson run of New Mutants (where he died, both in-universe and for commercial reasons, because he was too much like a normal person). So I kind of buy what Doug’s been doing. I even buy his decision to talk like Apocalypse. Apocalypse’s motivations, on the other hand … ?

Tony: Yeah, there’s a lack of motivation for the villains, there’s a lack of a hook for the plot, and honestly, knowing we’re back out in less than three months gives the creative teams no time to develop ANY of this.

Austin: Big “coulda been an email” energy from the Death/Revelation scene, but I enjoy seeing Bei’s “betrayal” and death rubbed in Doug’s face, especially after he told his Choristers to keep their cool. And to Adam’s point, it’s telling that most of what we know about Doug’s motivations at this point comes from real world marketing material and not, you know, the actual stories. 

Still, I give this issue props for at least trying to move the plot, such as it is, along. Though can anyone tell me what the deal with all the extra panel gutters is?

Stephanie: I have purposely avoided the extra marketing nonsense so I could learn from the books, and I would love to see more backstory — how did Doug get this way? — but I do buy the motivation.

Dan: Cortez’s presence in this book — all backsliding aside — really had me thinking the “Ghost of Philadelphia” was going to be Amelia Voght. She f*cking HATED that guy, and would totally use her mutant mist powers to mess with him and undermine whatever mutant villain hierarchy she’s found herself caught up in. I mean, this book is already blorbo city — Chance is here? Chance? From Fallen Angels? That Chance? — why not explore how the relationship between those two has evolved over time? It would give her more to do than her apparently off-camera present-day status quo of helping John Greycrow do heists while Psylocke is off on missions.

But I guess it’s important we know what Kitty Pryde is up to in all of this, given she’s one of the Important X-Men.

Austin: As a fellow lover of ’90s Glup Shittos, I’d have delighted at a Voght appearance. And backsliding aside, I do appreciate the psychoanalysis of Cortez as someone who is the most powerful at making other people powerful and how that’s warped him. But Kitty being the ghost feels, in hindsight, so obvious, I wonder how it was ever a mystery. She’s pretty much the only character from one of the three pre-AoR headliner books to not show up, and with Exceptional X-Men lacking a direct counterpart, well, here she is!

(Dan: Wait, does Expatriate X-Men by Eve Ewing and starring two of the three Exceptional kids not count as that?)

Austin: Does this mean we might actually get some reaction from Kitty about the transformation of the friend she introduced to the world of the X-Men in the first place? One can only hope! 

Stephanie: Kitty Pryde, Earth-1218 version, coming online for a bit to explain what’s going on with my Age of Rev counterpart. Of course at some point, when all this nonsense began, she got pretty upset about her former best friend and co-computer nerd becoming an evil dictator (literally, he dictates what people do).

Right now, though? She’s too busy to think about it, since she’s doing what she literally always ends up doing, no matter how hard she tries to do anything else: She’s now and forever Baby Mutant Rescue Lady. And she’s got more baby mutants to save. She’s also been a ghost, or felt like a ghost, before. For other heroes, the Age of Revelation changes everything! For Kitty, it’s another editorially mandated dark future crossover event in which she has to save the mutant children because no one else knows how to do it. Just another day beginning with X and ending with Y.

But X-Men: Book of Revelation #1 here.

Radioactive! Radioactive! (Sung to the Tune of Imagine Dragons) (Radioactive Spider-Man #1)

Tony: I’m continuing to really like Joe Kelly’s Spider-Man. I think I said it with Scott when we reviewed the early issues of Kelly’s Amazing — I was really nervous to see him take over Spidey. His last Spider-Man work was Non-Stop/Savage Spider-Man, which was, in my opinion, one of the worst Spidey spin-offs of the last 20 years.

Though I wish this issue had more of Peter’s traditional supporting cast and villains, this was for me a pretty solid Spider-Man adventure. Kelly made the plot, script and setup all very engaging. Walker’s art looked really good. His action was really dynamic, his designs were good, and I really liked his take on the sickly Peter Parker.

And I kind of loved the last-page twist.

Adam: I can totally get down with a mutated Spidey in a The Fly-like relationship with Cecelia Reyes, but there is no need for this book to exist. This is an X-event, and a story about a radioactive Spider-Man easily could have been relegated to the World of Revelation book. As is, it gives no real connective tissue to the main story that would make it a must to check out, and even though Walker’s art is solid, I’d argue his Peter Parker doesn’t actually look like Peter. 

Austin: To Tony’s point, I enjoyed this issue a lot. Nice art, fun twist at the end. On social media I recently asked who everyone’s favorite of the Marrow/Reyes/Maggott trio is, and I think Reyes is mine, so it’s fun to see her here. Good stuff all around, for the most part. 

To Adam’s point, I’d have enjoyed it just as much if it was set in any random dark future, because given the lack of specificity/connection to Age of Revelation, it functionally is. Kudos to Kelly for writing this while the main Amazing Spider-Man book is still doing its thing; it would have been all too easy to farm out this rando event tie-in book to literally anyone else. Especially because it doesn’t really seem to be designed to add anything to the event (other than more money). 

Also, Spidey’s little Kuato-esque mutant arm creeps me out.

Buy Radioactive Spider-Man #1 here.

The Kids Are Really #$%^ed Up (Omega Kids #1)

Tony: Tony Fleecs is starting to build his name at Marvel more by the day, and I dig that. But man, this issue really puts the faults of the event at the forefront. Eighty percent of this story’s cast is new characters, and just like last week it has me asking “and why should I care?”

Adam: I’m torn by this one. I think it’s well executed with good art and a good tactical use of psychic powers. On the other hand, this has the same whack plot element as The Accountant 2, wherein (spoiler alert) Ben Affleck’s protag has a basement full of kids with magical-austistic-hacking-powers. Plus, as Tony noted before, this is yet another AoR book that wants us to get to know new kids. We didn’t necessarily want to meet new kids in “From the Ashes,” and I’m not sure why I’d want to do so in an event that I know is ending in two months. I will keep reading this, if only to see just how far Quentin is being gaslit by these children. 

Stephanie: The kids don’t have personalities of their own, or not yet, but that’s not the point: Quentin, and his inside-out idealism, and the real-world commentaries about disability and utopia and education (what’s it for?) — that’s the point. I like grown-up, supposedly mellowed-out but still very murder-friendly Quentin (I mean, I like him but I don’t want to hang out with him). I think the adults get enough character work. But the book looks better — looks awesome, honestly, though maybe my standards have sunk — if I imagine it not as part of the Age of Revelation event, but as an indie comic that has to build its world from scratch, using familiar science fiction bits (telepaths in steel hats in the basement) to set up less familiar disturbing bits (the telepaths scheme to undermine the head of school, who’s all about deception and preserving a facade anyway).

That said, we do get a look back at earlier X-plots that had no connection to Doug. In this case, it’s the Morrison run. The kids plan to low-key Riot-at-Xavier’s against the guy who started the original riot at Xavier’s, and they’re going to ask the familiar cyberpunk questions about belief and doubt and shared illusions (familiar since way before cyberpunk: Try Henrik Ibsen, or Dostoevsky’s Grand Inquistor, or the Grand-Inquistor-plus-gay-telepaths novel called The Fortunate Fall, recently reissued by Tor after 29 years on the AWOL SF classics list). It’s 2 a.m. I’m rambling. This book has very little to do with the main plot, but on its own? I’m all in. And the Genolet art really fits the sad beats, from the children’s conspiracy scenes to Quentin’s rundown would-be domestic tranquility.

Austin: Like with the Spidey book (and Adam with this one), I’m torn. This is well-executed. Fleecs does a good job tempering Quentin’s voice with age, Genolet makes it all look great, and the twist is well-executed (and timed — I’m glad this was the issue #1 reveal and not the end of the penultimate issue). 

But yeah, I’m getting really burned out on learning new characters (even if one is an adorably creepy murderous 8-year-old), and this series is another that feels totally disconnected from the main event. What does any of this have to do with Revelation’s plans and the X-Men’s efforts to stop them other than “it takes place inside Revelation’s spy ring?” “Age of Apocalypse” was sprawling for its time, but every one of those titles had a purpose of some sort. In this event, even the books that are direct counterparts of regular series are off doing their own thing (see last week’s Rogue Storm and Unbreakable X-Men). 

Buy Omega Kids #1 here.

Wolverine, Canada’s Greatest Cannibal Superhero (The Last Wolverine #1)

Tony: I’m sorry, but did anyone else kind of hate this issue?

Adam: Bold of the X-office to think that anyone cared enough about the Wendigo kid from Ahmed’s Wolverine to make him the lead, but I actually do like the idea of a super-Wendigo saving kids in Canada. 

Austin: It’s me, I’m the one who cares about Kid Wendigo. I inadvertently willed this book into existence by citing Kid Wendigo as the one successful element of Ahmed’s run so far (it marries the familiar — “Wolverine mentoring a youth” — with a slight twist — “the youth is a Wendigo!” — and a touch of the absurd — “the youth is a Wendigo!”). I am sorry. 

Adam: The more important thing we’ve got to talk about here is the big reveal that Kurt Wagner has been depowered and just looks like a dude. Again, I have no idea how the X-Virus works or why it would have done this, or if Doug just decided to de-mutant Kurt. What I take issue with is that human-Kurt doesn’t look much like Nightcrawler, and the idea that he “settled down” with MacKenzie DeNeer from Uncanny X-Men and is living a suburban life with no swashbuckling seems very out of character. I have to imagine you have thoughts on this, Anna.

Dan: [The ring goes dark. Glass breaks as electric guitars howl. Suddenly, everything is illuminated in a burst of pyrotechnics.] BY GOD, THAT’S DR. ANNA PEPPARD’S THEME! Marvel’s in for it now!

Anna: “Human” Nightcrawler has cropped up a few times in comics (most extensively in X-Men Forever), and every time it happens, it’s deeply unnerving. But this is a particularly unnerving rendition that makes Kurt even more aggressively “normal” than usual. Besides the “settling down” in the suburbs thing, he’s visually nondescript and emphatically white (apparently, becoming human makes you lose your iconic curls). 

Honestly, I don’t care about this all that much other than the fact that at this point, with the information on offer, this isn’t a particularly engaging take on Kurt’s psychology, in general or vis a vis his mutation. The other times he’s been de-mutated, he was deeply upset about it. Maybe this time he’s also upset but just putting on a brave face? I also had to ask Adam who Kurt’s wife is, because I’m not caught up on Uncanny. Questions I asked include: “So is she a sorceress? Is she from space? Is she a bounty hunter? Is she an alien? Is she a pirate? Is she a princess?” Apparently, the answer to all of these questions is no. Which confuses me because Kurt Wagner has never previously dated a woman who couldn’t break him in half. And he’s always been a certified, irredeemable thrill-seeker. The latter isn’t necessarily positive; in fact, it’s one of his fatal flaws. But it is a core character trait that definitely doesn’t come across here, unless he and MacKenzie are training their kids to be aerialists and altruistic jewel thieves in a secret underground lair.

Anyway, I’ll just keep repeating to myself, in a hushed tone, “five-fingered Nightcrawler can’t hurt you” until the undoubtedly glorious return of David Marquez and/or Luciano Vecchio’s renditions of X-comics’ best blue boy.

Tony: So, I think it’s great to see a legacy Wolverine that isn’t one of his many children for once, and there are some interesting things here, like Leonard being extremely heroic in an aggressively dystopian time.

However, Leonard is way too chipper. I don’t need grimdark, but he’s a cannibal monster in the middle of a dystopia. A little angst outside of a single word balloon about wanting to eat people again would be nice.

I do not like what Ahmed did with Nightcrawler at all, and the design is not good. At least let him keep his fingers and curls, even if he loses the fur and tail. There’s nothing telling me this is Kurt.

There’s a good hook here, but not a single bit of the execution kept my interest.

Austin: I continue to struggle with the scope/scale of dystopia in this event. Because Vancouver seems … normal? And the general idea that has emerged seems to be that outside the Revelation territories, things are … mostly normal. Which is fine, but kind of undercuts the impact of your alternate future. If Nightcrawler can just uncharacteristically retire to a suburban dad life, it kind of saps the urgency/necessity of the efforts to reverse all this, which is meant to be the main narrative thrust of the event.

Buy The Last Wolverine #1 here.

X-traneous Thoughts

• That first panel of Last Wolverine sure looks like a guy peeing on the fire Calvin-style.
• I knew the Ghost of Philly was Kitty the moment they gave it/her a name.
• I’m (Dan) sorry, when I hear “Ghost of Philadelphia” I think of ghost Benjamin Franklin from the beginning of the Duggan/Posehn/Hawthorne/Koblish Deadpool run from 2012. Now, if they’d said “Ghost of Chicago” or “Ghost of Deerfield, Illinois,” then hell yeah, Kitty all day. That said, Marvel needs more Philly-based characters. Can I get a Go Birds?
• Just … don’t dangle your feet over the edge of a super-high building, OK? Even if shifty-ass Cortez isn’t lurking in the background.
• Is The Last Wolverine actually going to do anything WITH Logan, given his important role in Amazing X-Men? Or is this another book (like the two last weeks) that’s actually set some time BEFORE the main story of the event?
• Fun fact: When you search Omega Kids #1 on Amazon, the first thing that comes up is children’s vitamins. Ten million stroooooooong, and growing.
• … No? I can’t get a Go Birds? Well, you see my point then.

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