With “Age of Revelation” coming to a close, we figured it was the perfect time to update the longstanding Xavier Files entry on the New Mutant turned Heir of Apocalypse turned alternate timeline despot, Doug Ramsey! Remember, you can help choose who we add to our Mutant Master Rankings. Support ComicsXF on Patreon at the $5-a-month level or higher, and you can request either a new entry to the Files, or an update of an existing file (as most of these were written pre-Krakoa)!
Name: Doug Ramsey
Mutant Name/Aliases: Cypher, Revelation
First Appearance: New Mutants #13 (March 1984)
Created by: Chris Claremont & Sal Buscema
Powers: Hyper-lingualism, the ability to intuitively understand and translate language, whether spoken, written, physical, human or alien, including computer codes and body language. As Revelation, the Heir of Apocalypse, he can also issue commands to others that must be obeyed.
Group Affiliations: New Mutants, X-Men (as a member of the adult New Mutants squad), X-Factor (Serval Industries team), the Quiet Council of Krakoa (non-voting member).
Find the previous Xavier Files entry on Doug here.
About
Following his tenure on the Serval Industries iteration of X-Factor, Doug disappeared until the unfortunate IvX era, when Marvel was actively downplaying the X-Men in favor of the Inhumans (because, pre-Fox buyout, Marvel had more control over/profited more from the potential cinematic adventures of the Inhumans than the X-Men). During this time, Wolverine died, and was replaced in X-Men adventures by his older, crankier counterpart from the “Old Man Logan” reality (and also for a time by an “inverted” heroic Sabretooth). When Marvel finally started to get its X-Men house back in order, OG Wolverine was resurrected by a six-issue Return of Wolverine miniseries, which in true comic book fashion spawned its own spinoff “Hunt for Wolverine” miniseries. Doug popped up in one of those, Charles Soule’s Weapon Lost, having decided to decode the entire internet and, as a result, developing an addiction to it that left him a filthy hermit. It was neither a good look for Doug, nor a well-executed story turn for the character.
Following this low point comes the arguable high point for Doug (at least in terms of visibility and recurring appearances), the beginning of a series of plotlines and character developments that continue to this day. The launch of the Krakoa era in 2019 via Jonathan Hickman, Pepe Larraz and R.B. Silva’s House of X/Powers of X miniseries is a watershed moment for the franchise, on par with Giant-Size X-Men #1, the coming of Claremont and Grant Morrison’s run (Battle of the Atom has it at #1 on its Big Ol’ List), and Doug is right there in the thick of it. He is credited with devising, behind the scenes, the Krakoan language that is telepathically downloaded into the minds of all its citizens, and contributed to the creation of the island’s transit, defense and monitoring systems. While Doug doesn’t have a permanent place on the roster of any of the initial Dawn of X titles, his connection with the consciousness of Krakoa earns him an advisory role on the ruling Quiet Council, ensuring he’s present (even if only to usually be seen lounging in a tree) for numerous key scenes throughout the era.
Doug still found himself drawn into the action from time to time. He joined his former teammates in Shi’ar space early in Hickman’s New Mutants, an adventure that underscored how important his presence on Krakoa was. In Giant-Size X-Men: Storm, he helped cure Ororo of a techno-organic virus. And most notably, he was drawn into the looming civil war between Krakoa and Arakko as part of the “X of Swords” crossover event when Warlock — pretending to be fused to Doug’s arm — was selected as one of the 10 titular swords to be used in the contest between the Krakoan and Arakkan champions.
Despite his relative lack of fighting skills, Doug joined his selected teammates on the extradimensional Otherworld, whose ruler Saturnyne oversaw the tournament intended to settle the dispute without an all-out war. But rather than host a series of one-on-one swordfights, Saturnyne mixed things up, including simple games and bizarre challenges. Which meant that rather than duel someone to the death, Doug was simply asked to marry an Arrakan woman. And so it was that Doug met and married Bei the Blood Moon, the only person he’d ever met whom he couldn’t understand. Genuine affection blossomed between them, and when the “X of Swords” tournament ended, Doug returned to Krakoa with his “large wife.”
In the back half of the Krakoa era, Doug returned to working behind the scenes. He played a pivotal role in Inferno, the story that upended the Krakoan status quo, preventing Mystique and Destiny from executing the now-human Moira MacTaggert, thereby inadvertently setting the stage for Moira’s lethal vendetta against mutants (a popular fan theory contends that Hickman intended this to be the first steps for Doug toward playing a similar role in the back half of the storyline that Mister Sinister ultimately played — trying to achieve Dominion status — but Hickman left the X-books with Inferno, and that rumor has never been confirmed). He also got involved in Krakoa’s carceral system, helping Nature Girl and Curse escape from the prison-like Pit when Krakoa expressed its concern about their imprisonment in the online X-Men Unlimited Infinity comic, and later assembling a team to track down Sabretooth after Creed used his connection with Krakoa — set up by Doug to help ease his prison time — to make his own escape from the pit in Victor LaValle’s Sabretooth.
After the “Fall of X” and the end of the Krakoa era, Doug became a somewhat curious participant in the efforts of Apocalypse, who in the wake of Krakoa’s departure from Earth was effectively retiring to Arakko’s settlement on the terraformed Mars, to name an heir to further his work on Earth. Even more curious, as chronicled in the aptly named Heir of Apocalypse miniseries, Doug was ultimately named Apocalypse’s heir, receiving a power boost (in addition to his original language-based power and general strength increase, Apocalypse gave him the power to compel others to obey him) and a new name: Revelation.
What Doug would do with his newfound power wasn’t immediately apparent in the initial wave of “From the Ashes” books, but he eventually returned in the pages of Jed MacKay’s X-Men, setting up events that would lead to the “Age of Revelation,” the crossover event that brings “From the Ashes” to a close. Chronicling an alternate future ruled by Doug-as-Revelation in a vague homage to the ’90s crossover event “Age of Apocalypse” (in addition to the Apocalypse/Revelation connection, “Age of Revelation” repeated AoA’s trick of canceling all the X-books and replacing them with new series set in the alternate reality). But where “Age of Apocalypse” is tightly plotted (and by comparison, less sprawling in terms of tie-in issues), “Age of Revelation” is … a bit of a mess (as we’ve detailed here and here), with less specific world-building and a looser central narrative, making all the (ultimately superfluous) tie-in miniseries feel more like a cash grab relative to its spiritual predecessor. Ultimately, the Doug of the “Age of Revelation” future timeline succeeds in his goal of reconciling Apocalypse’s “survival of the fittest” ethos with his own personal morals by transforming all life on Earth — human and mutant — into a singular planetary intelligence: Revelation the Living Planet (an end goal not entirely dissimilar to the one sought by Sinister at the end of the Krakoa era — or by Doug himself, if Hickman’s rumored plans were true and ever came to fruition).
With the focus of the X-books returning to the “present” and the efforts to avoid the future depicted in “Age of Revelation,” Doug’s future remains unclear now that at least some characters have experienced a possible end to his role as Apocalypse’s heir. Whatever that future holds, it’s clear that, for better or worse, Doug Ramsey has arguably never been in the spotlight more than he is now.
Fun Fact
Early in his tenure with the New Mutants, Doug enjoyed a brief (and age-inappropriate) relationship with a pre-ninja Psylocke in the wake of her introduction to American audiences, in one of those character plotlines Chris Claremont would occasionally toss out and then forget about when the characters moved in different directions than he originally had in mind (not long after Psylocke’s U.S. introduction, she would join the X-Men and the X-Men would move out of the X-Mansion, effectively ending the Doug/Psylocke romance).
Must Read
Sabretooth (vol. 4) #1-5: While Sabretooth is the title character and protagonist of this Victor LaValle-penned miniseries, Doug plays a key role throughout as he continues to question the nature of crime, punishment and rehabilitation in a society where mutants get to make their own laws. Taking full advantage of the storytelling opportunities provided by the Krakoa era, this is one of the better series in the back half of the era.
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.
