One X-man of the present has been stranded in the Age of Revelation, fighting against impossible odds in the world of tomorrow. But while he’s been there, what has his future counterpart been doing in his body in the present? X-Men #23 is written by Jed MacKay, penciled by Tony Daniel, inked by Mark Morales, colored by Fer Sifuentes-Sujo and lettered by Clayton Cowles.
Adam Reck: I don’t usually write about Jed MacKay’s X-Men. But folks really seemed to like our Age of Doug -ahem- “Age of Revelation” coverage (or non-coverage, depending), so it only seems fair we keep the party going with the event’s epilogue issue, wherein I assume future-Scott will beam back into now-Scott’s body and unleash his visor-less optic blast, vaporizing everyone in the room.
Dan Grote: Sorry, no disintegrations. But he does get a new hat.
Scott Redmond: They say there is nowhere to go but up after things are at their lowest, so surely escaping the Doug-est timeline will do us a solid. Especially a story focused on my fellow Scott, my favorite boi of summer(s).
How Not to Kill Doug
Adam: Future-Scott has had 10 years to figure this scene out. Mutantdom’s premiere strategist had TEN YEARS (and I want everybody to think about that for a second, since Scott is apparently not allowed to even turn 30 years old despite being in print since 1963) to contemplate, plot and connive, and he still messes it up.
Scott: The groan that emerged from me as I read that moment could have powered so many things, it resonated from that deep within my soul.
Look, I’m a Cyclops fanboy, but I’m OK with seeing him struggle and fail as well as succeed. It’s part of what makes me like the character — the steadfast determination, but also the anxiety-riddled unsureness that he had early on that I saw as a reflection of my own. But every single bit of the narrative “Oh my gosh” tension of the reveal of future-Cyclops being back in the past on a kill mission was sucked out of the room in an instant.
Adam: To Scott’s credit, he allllmost gets away with it. He’s thwarted by the one thing he somehow didn’t account for: Now-Beast ain’t future-Beast and tackles future-Cyclops to the floor.
Scott: No matter which version of Beast we get, he’s always messing things up!
Dan: This issue is a rewinding of the clock from the epilogue of the Age of Revelation Finale, filling in the gap between present-Cyclops’ chrono-psychic attack from the future and his waking up in the brig in Alaska. In being that, it takes some of the wind out of the Finale reveal, which as I recall had many of us pumping our fists and alternately hooting and hollering, “Finally, some good f$@%ing food!”
I almost like the idea that we don’t get to see what happened in that intervening time, that Scott emerges from the jail, yells “SITREP! NOW!” and people just fill him and we move forward. The tri-Doug-virate can still be in the wind to sow well-intended chaos elsewhere, plus we can move on to the 3K-is-run-by-evil-Beast stuff that we crave.
Scott: Building up a whole muddled, disconnected event to rest it on two reveals, for one of them to already be followed up on in such a sputtering way, sure isn’t a great sign. Had the event been just in this series, and MacKay been given room, perhaps this would hit harder. As it is, the rest of the issue just feels kind of bland, even with MacKay trying to work that character magic that is his bread and butter.
Dan: There are moments that work, as there always are in this book. Doug and Bei communicating via their own sign language. Temper confronting Doug about her time in the pit on Krakoa. Even a small panel of Glob Herman holding a flower and freaking out about Scott’s escape helps punctuate the book and make it about more than advancing a plot that’s lurched in fits and starts. And they’re the things I’ve always appreciated, editorial event-pushing be damned.
The Magneto Paradox
Adam: I’m all for a good extra-confusing twist, but this Magneto thing feels like a hat on a hat (or is that a helmet on a helmet?). We had already established in the pages of Amazing X-Men that maybe there was something shifty with Magneto’s “Resurrection-Linked Degenerative Sickness,” but here we discover that now-Magneto certainly is still ill, which means … maybe the Age of Revelation didn’t actually splinter from the 616 timeline in the first place? Which begs the question: WHAT ARE WE DOING HERE?!
Maybe it’s just me, but why would you inflate Age of Doug into a 50-issue What If…? if it has literally no connection to the world we’re reading?
Dan: Overkill in the mighty Marvel manner! Excelsior!
Scott: There seems to be such a massive disconnect in the X-office that might even rival some of the messy eras the line has had in the past. Generally the line usually had an issue of books repeating the same series hook/plot thread or too many repeating cast members. Here there are entire plot lines that are seeded and ignored and brought back up but then altered and then pushed aside again in short order.
Everything about R-LDS rang hollow from the start. There are characters on this team that were resurrected far more times than Magneto ever did (lookin’ at you, Quire!), and Magneto’s last return wasn’t tied to Krakoan resurrection. So now them trying to get all “Oooh, is it real? Is it not?” just feels so pointless.
A whole event that added very little other than a bunch of extra cash in Marvel’s pockets.
Dan: Did it, though? Like if you look at what limited sales data we have, this wasn’t a hit. ICv2’s November chart has the highest-selling AoR comic, Amazing X-Men #2, at No. 23, below a mountain of Absolute, Ultimate and Energon Universe books. Heck, even X-Men of Apocalypse outperformed it. The data are limited to shops that use ComicHub, but still.
Back to Mags, though. Splitting off the timeline just enough gives Marvel what it no doubt wanted from jump: another alternate reality for future writers to play around in, regardless of the fact that “Age of Revelation” ends, pretty definitively, with Earth becoming Doug-O the Living Planet.
And the “maybe Max has R-LDS after all” reveal buys MacKay some more time to pay off that storyline while he brings his main plots back to the front burner.
Not that I’m defending it; I’m just saying at some point he’s going to have to wrap it up definitively.
What Was It All For?
Adam: I’m having flashbacks to “X-Manhunt,” where after multiple pages of disconnected nonsense, Xavier had to fly away to be in another book that had nothing to do with what we just read. Because alas, after all that future-stuff, Doug, Bei and Warlock stride off into the Alaskan wilderness to potentially start this whole thing over again.
Scott: I might have to go back and reread it (I’d rather not), but the way this goes down feels so hollow. The X-Men are no strangers to versions of themselves coming from the future or elsewhere to warn them about bad events. So the way this team just assumes Cyclops is crazy and doesn’t try to find out if there is validity to what is happening boggles the mind. Doug was altered by Apocalypse, a dude that swings back and forth on the scale and often corrupts things that he touches. Yet they are more prepared to lock up Cyclops than even entertain the idea that Doug might be up to some stuff.
Adam: Meanwhile, Scott is still future-Scott until I guess next issue where he can stop messing things up and go be part of the Doug meat-planet?
Scott: That cover showing at the end makes me think we won’t even get that. It’ll either be a quick moment in #25 or a note that “Remember that moment in Age of Revelation Finale where Scott switched back? Sure you do!” or something.
But hey, we might get some information on the other reveal that the 5 million issues of AoR were built to lead up to. So that’s something, I guess.
Dan: It sounds like issue #24 will be focused on 3K and #25 will bring present-Cyclops back (again) just in time to shunt him into his solo series, which releases the same week.
As for Doug & Co., I wouldn’t mind seeing them pop up in other X-books trying to start again with a different team. Let Rogue and the Louisiana X-Men take a crack at resolving this. If anything, it might be fun to see different artists try to draw Warlock. Which, if I’m being honest, is where Tony Daniel dropped the ball the hardest.
X-traneous Thoughts
- We left off with X-Men being drawn by the talented C.F. Villa. Daniel brings a much less flashy look to this issue, moving from the more up-to-date Pepe Larraz-influenced house style to something more akin to Marc Bagley. Fer Sifuentes-Sujo’s colors try to make up the difference, but the issue feels less dynamic and more locked to the horizon line.
- Who made that Scott prison helmet? Did they just have that hanging around just in case?
- And did anyone else notice the prison helmet looks different in issue #23 than it did in Finale? The Finale version had a nose cutout and was a little more squared off.
- Can Cyclops actually wield the Soulsword? Or is this just a rule-of-cool thing and I should give it a pass?
- I appreciated the callback to Temper’s time in the pit. It makes sense that she would hold a grudge against Doug, despite her escape with her fellow Exiles.
- Does having Doug and Bei be able to communicate via sign language defeat the very reason for their attraction? You decide!
- Props to Jed for the deep-cut Deathlok reference, though it feels a little out of place here in this X-story.
- I shouldn’t have had to Google Harlan Ryker. I thought Doug was calling himself the mutant Jonathan Frakes, and quite frankly, I kind of like that more for him.
- For more on what’s next for Cyclops, check out this week’s Battle of the Atom podcast for an interview with writer Alex Paknadel.
Buy X-Men #23 here. (Disclaimer: As an Amazon Associate, ComicsXF may earn from qualifying purchases.)
Adam Reck is the cartoonist behind Bish & Jubez as well as the co-host of Battle Of The Atom. Follow him @adamreck.bsky.social.
Scott Redmond
Scott Redmond is a freelance writer and educator fueled by coffee, sarcasm, his love for comic books and more "geeky" things than you can shake a lightsaber at. Probably seen around social media and remembered as "Oh yeah, that guy." An avid gamer, reader, photographer, amateur cook and solid human being. Follow him @scottredmond.bsky.social.
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.
