Previously On X-Men: Spider-Man And Wolverine And Dinosaurs

July was a five Wednesday month, which means the usual batch of issues gets stretched out a bit, leading to only one new X-book this week (plus one I’m getting to late). There isn’t even a new X-Men-related Infinite issue on Marvel Unlimited this week. On the other hand, maybe Marvel could have punted one or two of the previous week’s six (6) X-books into the 7/27 release window?

Age of Revelation #0 by Jed MacKay & Humberto Ramos

Ten years in the future, Shen Xorn recounts the events which led to the Age of Revelation.

• This technically came out two weeks ago, but I was out of town then and Marvel hasn’t made a digital version available (Ed Note: And a bunch of shops had delays in getting it too). And then last week had plenty of other X-books, so I decided to hold my thoughts for this quieter week.
• The “Age of Revelation” is Marvel’s big fall X-Men event, ostensibly meant (at least in part) to celebrate 30th anniversary of “Age of Apocalypse” by doing a similar story with Apocalypse’s heir, Revelation aka Doug Ramsey, complete with the “cancel all the books and relaunch them with new titles set in the new timeline” trick.
• It is not to be confused with X-Men of Apocalypse, a limited series from Jeph Loeb and Simone Di Meo coming this fall that is also celebrating the 30th anniversary of AoA.
• Unlike “Age of Apocalypse”, which was originally meant to be a replacement of the “main” reality (and was later retconned into taking place in an alternate universe), “Age of Revelation” is an alternate future (not unlike that seen in “Days of Future Past”), some ten years from the present day stories.
• It was visited briefly by Cable and Bishop in the 2024 Timeslide oneshot, and listed there amongst the various other storyline hints (including “One World Under Doom” and the current “Ms. Marvel travels through X-Men history” series of one-shots).
• Shen Xorn serves as the narrator of this issue — he’s been hanging around in MacKay’s X-Men, not doing much — offering a fairly straightforward, if broad, accounting of Doug’s rise and the creation of a pro-mutant nation on the east coast of the US working to spread further.
• Doug’s Seraphim, which are basically his versions of Apocalypse’s Horsemen, are Dragoness (one of the Mutant Liberation Front from the 90s), Strobe (Dragoness’ MLF teammate), Chrome (one of Magneto’s Acolytes who died in X-Men (vol. 2) #3) and Hellion (late of NYX, the highest profile character in this group).
• The irony of Doug being Apocalypse’s heir despite him being “the least fit” of the New Mutants (having died in New Mutants #60) is raised again.
• Fabian Cortez, who has an Acolyte and member of the Upstarts was a big deal for a hot minute in the early 90s and later had roles in SWORD and Legion of X during the Krakoa Era, was last seen in the Mystique limited series.
• Xorn says that Illyana died in the raid to free Cortez but Darkchild did not; it’s not clear how that squares with the recent revelations in Magik that Darkchild is part of Illyana, not a separate entity.
• Artist Humberto Ramos seems to think Kid Omega is an actual child, based on how he draws him.
• It’s established that an X-Virus was released in Philadelphia which turned the infected into mutants while also terraforming the land to make it habitable only to mutants, laying the ground work for Doug’s empire. Xorn says people blamed 3K for it based on their practice of turning humans into mutants, but we’re clearly meant to be questioning the truth of that.
• We briefly see Doug’s “Choristers”- power amplifying mutants who serve him. Other than Cortez, the only other recognizable one is Khora from X-Men Red.
• We also learn about the “Babels”, humans and mutants who have offended Doug and been stripped of their ability to use language as a result, which all seems like a setup for the Omega Kids series.
• In the end, it’s revealed that everything we’ve read from Xorn is in service of a book he’s writing to give to the present day Cyclops after the Age of Revelation X-Men pull him into the future to change the past (more shades of “Days of Future Past”), which is presumably going to be the connective arc of the event once it launches proper.
• The Age of Revelation X-Men include an older, scarred, bearded Cyclops, Glob, a paler Beast, wheelchair-less Magneto, Schwarzchild from the 3K X-Men, Jen Starkey, and two other characters who aren’t obviously anyone in particularly but probably are older versions of established characters.

This was fun. On the one hand, the entirety of “Age of Revelation” seems warmed over and excessive. On the other hand, I’m a sucker for “setup the world” type issues like this.

Spider-Man & Wolverine #3 by Marc Guggenheim & Kaare Andrews

Like last issue, but now we’re in the Savage Land, for reasons.

• Somehow even more random than Wolverine and Spider-Man suddenly showing up in the Savage Land (Kraven and Omega Red vaguely get credited for it but no reason is given for why) is the way they also get dressed in their 80s era brown-and-tan and black looks.
• Wolverine pulls the old “I only gutted you last issue in order to calm you down” trick, but the pair do generally seem to patch things up (however temporarily) regarding the role in Wolverine in the death of Spider-Man’s parents in the interest of moving the plot along.
• Andrews seems to do his riff on the iconic Jim Lee Wolverine pose from Wolverine #27 at one point.

• Dreadshadow, who attacks the pair in the Savage Land, appears to be a new character introduced in this issue. He has some goons wearing skull-like half-masks.
• Doctor Octopus, featuring his classic green jumpsuit look, pops up on the last page after the title characters get teleported to China by Kraven.

Kaare Andrews gets to draw Spider-Man and Wolverine fighting dinosaurs while wearing their “cool” costumes. Good for him.