One of my chief quibbles with “Age of Revelation” has been the loud use of deep-pull mutants without any real examination of why they’re there or what they think about the world they’ve created. And of course, it’s hard to do that when the story is only three months long and you have to zip through it at breakneck pace, essentially building the car as you’re driving it.
But there’s a version of it where it works. And once again, it’s Eve Ewing showing us why she’s the modern X-Men writer to beat.
Ewing and Francesco Mortarino’s Expatriate X-Men is about a group of mutants playing pirate on the waters surrounding the Revelation Territories. It centers mostly on Ms. Marvel; Bronze, Melee and Rift from Ewing’s Exceptional X-Men; and Colossus (who, like the Exceptional kids, is grieving the loss of Kitty Pryde, who unbeknownst to them became The Ghost of Philadelphia).
But a handful of mutants does not a flotilla make, and if you look around them, you see plenty of other familiar characters battening down the hatches and swabbing the poop deck. There’s Doop, and Blob, and Toad, and … I wanna say Northstar. And they’ve all got bandanas and sashes and swords and eyepatches and all of the pirate trappings, like a bunch of Greendale students dressed up for a paintball episode.
The pages don’t shout that they’re there. There are no bold-text caption boxes announcing their arrival. No as-you-know-Blob expo dumps listing crew members. They’re just there. If you see them, great; it enriches the story. If you don’t, it doesn’t distract from the central characters or the story Ewing and Mortarino are telling.
THAT’S how you blorbo.
Check out our exclusive preview of Expatriate X-Men #3, out next week, and keep scrolling for the basic deets.
And for the latest on what Ewing is doing in the X-line, click here.
W: Eve Ewing | A/CA: Francesco Mortarino
TARGET: DARKCHILD! X YEARS LATER, MELEE, BRONZE, RIFT, COLOSSUS, MS. MARVEL and the crew of the Dragonfly face DARKCHILD herself. She wants something they have, and she has something they want. But just when they need to band together most, their group of insurgents is being torn apart by lies and deception. Will they escape with their lives or be swallowed by the whims of the Limbo Lands?
$3.99
Buy Expatriate X-Men #3 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.
