The X-Men: Age of Revelation event has ended. I’ve covered each of the miniseries and one-shots in a previous post but that was published before the finale came out. 

I was at my dad’s for New Year, so I had to wait a couple of days before picking up a copy from my comic shop. I’ve read it a couple of times and I have a few thoughts.

What Happened?

Apocalypse and Charles Xavier invaded Earth with an army from Arakko in a full-page piece of art which felt evocative of the House of X first issue cover. They met up with the Amazing X-Men and one-armed Wolverine. Scott and Logan have a reunion and hug, then get to the fighting.

Kid Omega and his off-brand Omega Kids (the previous ones were killed) take on Professor X and he’s killed before Psylocke can murder Quentin. Of course, all of this is a moot point, as Revelation explains to Apocalypse that he wanted all of this. The American government wasn’t going to let him keep going for too long (although the current state of things in the real world feels like everyone will let America do basically anything at the moment). The X-Virus is all connected to the land and everyone mutated by it, so now it’ll make everyone into a single mind. Tentacles attack everyone and Beast gets all panicky about sending him and Scott to the present. That happens, but oh no, that wasn’t the Hank McCoy everyone thought it was (I called it!). Future Scott’s back, says that Hank wasn’t there and has a doomed attack on Revelation’s tentacles, but it’s all doomed. Everyone is Revelation now, as is Earth.

As Hank said, this wasn’t a battle to be won, but a warning. It wasn’t like Days of Future Past or Age of Apocalypse where it’s solved in the story. Instead, I guess we’ll have to wait to see what happens in the epilogue and Shadows of Tomorrow to see how it can be avoided.

There were a lot of seeds of things in the miniseries, did any of them pay off here?

• Amazing X-Men, Book of Revelation & World of Revelation: Yes, the finale directly carries on from them.
• Binary: Jean took the Phoenix back over and protected the town I forget the name of. Somehow despite being Phoenix she ended up in the flesh orb.
• Laura Kinney: Sabretooth: Laura was dead and her weird-looking son didn’t resurface with Apocalypse’s invasion force.
• Longshots: Ha! No. All the stuff with the power plant and television didn’t really do anything.
• Iron & Frost: Tony sent a signal to the past which didn’t come up here, but I assume will in the present.
• Rogue Storm: Storm was in a celestial hunting ground, Rogue Red was alive and heading somewhere with Gambit, I assume after Unbreakable.
• Sinister’s Six: There were Sinister or Havok-style crystals on some leaves. They don’t show up.
• Unbreakable X-Men: This was pretty self-contained with a happy ending until this issue kills Gambit & Rogue (Green? I assume?) in a single panel.
• Omega Kids: After killing the Omega Kids, some outlined, unnamed Omega Kids show up.
• The Last Wolverine: Logan lost an arm and came to his senses. This one actually does pay off in the main series. I so thought they were going to offhandedly have him taken over again.
• Radioactive Spider-Man: There wasn’t anything left here, but he does visibly end up absorbed into the flesh orb.
• Cloak or Dagger: They had a complete enough story and I assume are in the flesh orb.
• Expatriate X-Men: They looked like they were going to storm Philadelphia and then didn’t appear in the finale.
• Undeadpool: Everyone was dead apart from the Expatriate X-Men, so there was nothing to follow up.
• X-Vengers: The American government were helped by the Avengers, mentioned probably flippantly about a peace treaty and then the threat of them eventually doing something was enough for Revelation to get his plans moving. The Avengers end up in the flesh orb.

So what did this serve?

A reminder that there are too many titles

Most of the Age of Revelation titles had a counterpart in the From the Ashes X-Men era. X-Men, Phoenix, Laura Kinney: Wolverine, Storm, Uncanny X-Men, Wolverine, Exceptional X-Men and Deadpool were all replaced. From the Ashes had recently finished Psylocke and Magik series, too. It’s times line this where you look at the list of comics and go, “am I getting too many?”

The answer is yes, but something is broken in me and for now I’m still getting them.

A pretty good final page reveal

I’ve given the event a lot of crap, and I kind of saw the OG Beast reveal coming (although I had a second of wondering if it might be Dark Beast). It’s still a fun reveal and given Brevoort seems eager to get rid of anything from Krakoa, it’s a surprise.

Obvious story-to-event bloat 

Everyone’s said it and they’re right. This feels entirely like it was a story arc in X-Men which was made into a massive event. It could have been a six issue arc and incorporated both Amazing and Book, maybe with a linked one-shot if they must, the same way that Ghost Boxes accompanied Astonishing or the Age of Alpha-connected issues.

A couple of good miniseries

Cloak or Dagger was good. Unbreakable X-Men had a lot of art changes, but was still a fun companion to the original series. Rogue Storm looked good. I think that’s about it.

Only three books meant anything

Amazing X-Men, Book of Revelation (and World of Revelation) are the only real ‘core’ books and The Last Wolverine is the only one which links to the main events in any way.

Unfortunate comparisons to other “Age” events

Age of Apocalypse – 38 issues (39 with X-Men Prime)

This is the big point of comparison. Age of Apocalypse replaced each of the eight X-Men comics with four-issue miniseries, showed the wider world and preludes in a couple of two-issue series, then opened and closed with one-shots. Each title paid off to some level in the conclusion. Astonishing and Amazing X-Men were the ‘core’ titles, while Factor-X showed the bad guys. Weapon X showed an invasion force, Gambit and the X-Ternals brought the M’Kraan Crystal, Generation Next brought Illyana Rasputin and X-Calibre brought Destiny. X-Man brought himself, but he’s just like that. Each title felt like it told a story and pointed to the finale.

Age of X – 11 issues

This is what Age of Revelation should have been, to be honest. Oft forgotten and we entered the event knowing something was off from the start. It was only New Mutants and X-Men Legacy, but had the wider X-Men cast and a couple of one-shots. I really enjoyed it, and there were longer ramifications for some characters. The world is different all of a sudden one day, all because of Legion (and his imagined Moira, which feels like an unintentional call-forward). 

Age of X-Man – 32 issues

This may not have been a perfect event, but it was great fun. While Uncanny X-Men went through a grim phase, all the other X-Men characters were in Nate Grey’s weird alternate world where he believes all the relationship drama is the worst bit of the X-Men instead of the best. His ‘utopia’ is retro-tinged in its style and has some great stories which pan out in six five-issue series. NextGen highlighted Glob, Amazing Nightcrawler was a bit of a weak link but still entertaining. X-Tremists and Prisoner X would prove to be fantastic introductions to Vita Ayala and Leah Williams to the X-Books, where they’d later return.

Bonus Comparison: Days of Future Past – 2 issues

Oh yeah, this also raises unfavourable comparisons to the two-issue story which put Kitty’s mind in the future and vice versa. This is effectively a reverse DoFP, but the future events won’t affect the present, just show how bad things can get.

No actual fix to the future in the event

It felt odd that Cyclops is sent back and nothing seems to have happened to make this grimdark future not happen. With 3K Beast around and aware of the X-Virus, if anything the future feels more likely to happen in some form now.

X-Men Omega closed out the Age of Apocalypse and had Bishop fix the past. Age of X ended and had epilogues in the event. Age of X-Man Omega closed out the story and that world, depositing Nate Grey in his own weird other space.

Hopefully something good in the actual X-Men comic

We’ll see. We do need to find out how the heroes stop this grim future. Unless maybe that doesn’t happen and the “Shadows of Tomorrow” are that it still looks certain. Cyclops and 3K Beast have fun clashes ahead, and we’ll see if any of the hints of the future do anything. Also if anyone will care.

In my self-imposed marathon of reading an X-Men comic (or an arc for a spin-off), I would probably take three weeks to get through this and I don’t know if I can bring myself to do that. I’m already preparing a From the Ashes era emergency stop and pivoting to the Legion of Super-Heroes if it doesn’t buck its ideas up.

Hopefully the Shadows of Tomorrow era will be interesting. Tom Brevoort’s mentioned throwing a lot of stuff against the wall, hopefully he’ll find something that sticks instead of cancelling a bunch of series and having mediocre events. We’ll see.