Welcome to the First Issue Bin, where I — Ethan Kaye — randomly grab one of this week's comics that’s just starting up and give you the details on whether it should get added to your collection … or remain on the comic shop shelf.
X-Men Age of Revelation: Overture #1
Writer: Jed MacKay
Penciler: Ryan Stegman
Inker: JP Mayer
Color Artist: Edgar Delgado
Letterer: VC's Clayton Cowles
Editor: Tom Brevoort
It's the big one! The big X-Men event of the year is here! Get out your streamers and/or pitchforks!
I feel like Marvel's Merry Mutants have kind of been in a holding pattern (or hangover) following the massive nation of Krakoa storyline that defined the books for the last four years or so. And that's not necessarily a bad thing, they needed time to establish the new status quo so they could break it again. Marvel doesn't do anything half-assed with the X-Men.
So for Overture (love the music metaphor) to successfully introduce the next three-to-four months of mutant books, it has to acknowledge three things.
One: The Krakoa storyline changed everything for everyone in the Marvel Comic Universe. In case you skipped it, all the mutants of Marvel created an advanced nation-state on the living island of Krakoa, used their powers for the betterment of the whole world, and then were taken down by racist scientists, including Mister Sinister who was mostly on the X-Men's side until he wasn't. Huge things happened. They terraformed Mars! People live there!
Two: The current X-books are still reeling from the events of Krakoa. Instead of being localized in Westchester, New York, there are mutants everywhere doing their own things. Some X-Men are in Alaska, some are in New Orleans, some are in New York, Psylocke I think is in a cabin somewhere. Some worked for the government as reality stars, some, like Storm and Phoenix, are now gods. There is no single story for any of them, so the new crossover has to honor everything happening in those comics.
Three: Not everyone is going to be reading all the X-books. There are so, so many of them and they come and go regularly. Wolverine, Psylocke, Storm, Phoenix, Deadpool, Laura Kinney, Magik, and Ms. Marvel (now a mutant) all have had their own solo books in the last few months, and Wolverine is also starring in team-up books with Deadpool, Ghost Rider, Spider-Man, and Deadpool/Laura Kinney/Ellie Camacho. Whoever is writing any X-Men crossover has to understand that only so many threads from these books can be woven into one story without losing casual readers.
So we get X-Men Age of Revelation: Overture #1, a wise play on the classic 90s crossover X-Men Age of Apocalypse. And I will happily admit that it follows these three rules.
Carrying through a few, but not a ton, of the threads from current X-continuity, we're pulled along with Cyclops and Beast into the near future, where former New Mutant Doug Ramsey, aka Cypher, has begun taking over the world, thanks to instructions from awesome X-Men baddie Apocalypse. Doug has the power to communicate with anything, and he has discovered that he can use this power to control people by talking to their cells. In response to a terrorist group setting off a gene bomb and turning humans into mutants (if not killing them outright), Doug chooses to unite the world's mutants, old and new, under his (and Apocalypse's) banner using the alias Revelation.
Not everyone's into this because, well, even though the "good guys" are in charge, humans are either dying from the gene bomb or dying because Revelation is promoting mutant supremacy. There's a small contingent of mutants, including Magneto, Glob Herman, and Angel, who are fighting Revelation, but their numbers are miniscule. Their plan is to bring Cyclops and Beast, the X-Men's greatest leader and scientist, respectively, to the future to fight along with them. And for the next three months, we see that play out through a series of minis that explore this brave new world.
On the plus side, X-Men Age of Revelation: Overture #1 is a phenomenal book. A lot of exposition, but when you're setting up the stakes, that's fine and we expect it. We get the points of view of both sides and see who the players are. Wolverine and Psylocke are with Revelation. Xorn and Forge are with the rebels. Unlike Age of Apocalypse, this current situation doesn't feel like the result of a long march of inevitabilities, it feels like this is a situation that's still unfolding and can be stopped. Revelation is a phenomenal villain because we've seen Doug Ramsey as a hero for decades. He even died! Came back too!
On the minus side, this is a book that relies on more than casual knowledge of current X-events. Set aside any Krakoa stuff, that's now starting to finally live in the ancient past, it's the relationship between Apocalypse and Doug Ramsey that has played off several earlier stories and I struggled to remember what exactly had happened previously. You will have a better time if you follow the X-Men books regularly, weekly even. The X-continuity is a Frankenstein's monster of Marvel's own creation, serving up delicious stories but essentially telling one massive interconnected tale that costs thousands of dollars a year to stay on top of.
But it's a comic that earns every panel, by clearly showing the sides, the stakes, and the events that got us here. Despite the large amounts of expository text, there are some great action scenes that keep the pace moving forward briskly. Former nice guy Doug Ramsey is now a mini-Apocalypse in both looks and manner. He's imposing, even cruel, but is determined to convince us all he's justified. Writer Jed MacKay shows us he's not playing around by introducing some major character deaths right off the bat, and Stegman's art lets us savor the scale and terror of this new America.
I opened this issue saying to myself, this is going to be a continuity-filled mess, but wound up really enjoying it. It's weird to include in First Issue Bin because it's a one-shot, but it's setting up a whole bunch more comics continuing until the end of the year, and if this issue stunk then the rest of them would be starting off on a weak foot. Luckily I can say that I'm now psyched for everything that comes after, despite the price tag that I'm staring down for all the issues.
Nail biting action: 4/5
Setting up big bads: 5/5
Art: 5/5
Guts: 5/5
New reader friendliness: 2/5
Verdict: A solid, entertaining foundation to build a story arc on, one that rewards fans of the franchise by playing with the toys in a new, and frankly unexpected, way.
