Previously On X-Men: Gambit’s Grief Makes For A Great ‘Unbreakable X-Men’ #1

In this week’s X-books, “Age of Revelation” goes wide, with new series set away from the main action — or seemingly having nothing to do with the crossover at all.

Astonishing X-Men #40 by Alex Paknadel, Tim Seeley & Phillip Sevy

The X-Men defend the courthouse as the X-Cutioners launch their attack.

• I love the idea of Paige being the muscle of this group (as she asserts); speaks to how far she’s come from her Generation X days when her ability was much more of a crapshoot.
• Banshee learns that the X-Cutioner has been behind all the various one-off villains/attacks throughout the series.
• In a quietly-unstated touch, Banshee proves to be particularly effective against some of the X-Cutioners, given their use of symbiotes and symbiotes’ natural vulnerability to sonic attacks.

Furthers the “wrapping up” vibes. The twist of the prison guard who’s one of the X-Cutioners — and the fact that Paige doesn’t know that — gives its an effective cliffhanger hook for the next issue.

Iron & Frost #1 by Cavan Scott & Ruairí Colemon

Years after being maimed and trapped in her diamond form, Emma Frost follows a trail back to New York laid by the new king of the Hellfire Club.

• Cavan Scott is a writer I know mostly from Star Wars stuff; I believe this is his first work in the X-office.
• The flashbacks to Emma being injured, stuck in diamond form and trapped underground take place four years from the present of the original reality aka six years before the start of “Age of Revelation”.
• The Seraphs Emma and the Avengers are battling are Phaser, Unuscione and Marrow. Phaser is Christian Cord, who debuted as one of Quentin Quire’s gang in Grant Morrison’s New X-Men. Unuscione is a former Acolyte of Magneto. And Marrow is a former Morlock, leader of Gene Nation, and one of the X-Men in the late 90s.
• The Avengers consist of Iron Man and War Machine (Tony Stark and Jim Rhodes), as well as Firestar, who has a specific history with Emma (Emma killed her horse, #JusticeForButterRum #NeverForget) that goes unremarked upon here.
• This issue presents the first dramatization of someone being infected by the X-virus/the X-virus triggering a mutation.
• Emma jokes that Marrow never could resist a cult, a reference to her time as the leader of the mutant terrorist Gene Nation.
• Emma flashes back to her fake marriage to Tony, from “Fall of X” and Gerry Duggan’s Invincible Iron Man series.
• Emma having her heart ripped out and being forced to stay in diamond form seems like an obvious parallel to the early Iron Man status quo, in which Tony had to wear his armor in order to keep shrapnel away from his heart.
• The Krakoan written language is used to leave a trail for Emma, something we haven’t seen much of since the earliest issues of Laura Kinney: Wolverine.

• In the present day, the “main” Avengers team is still operating out of the Impossible City, though the Avengers Emergency Response Squad (from the Avengers Assemble miniseries) used Avengers mansion as their headquarters.
• I’m not quite sure why Tony would be working to cure the X-virus, given he’s more of an engineer than a biologist.

I enjoyed Duggan’s Iron Man more than most, and so, this is right up my alley (honestly, it’s hard to believe Duggan isn’t writing it, between the Iron Man/Emma stuff, Firestar which he recently used in West Coast Avengers, etc.). It’s also the most connected to the broader “Age of Revelation” arc than most of the other tie-ins this week.

Rogue Storm #1 by Murewa Ayodele & Roland Boschi

Rogue Red leads X-Force against Storm, who has gone mad with power.

• This book takes the place of Storm for “Age of Revelation”, with regular writer Murewa Ayodele.
• This takes place five years from the start of the “Age of Revelation” story, so roughly halfway between the “present” and the “ten years later” point.
• Thor’s hammer is shown in orbit; we don’t yet know what happened to him in this timeline.
• The big robots attending Storm are called Storm Engines, which is the name used in the regular book as the basis for the Storm Sanctuary.
• Like the regular book, this has a representative rather than literal splash page.
• It also continues the main book’s trick of using fight move names as sound effects.
• The group of mutants opposing Storm style themselves as the Uncanny X-Force (which was the official title of two different volumes of X-Force, the Wolverine-led book which contained the “Dark Angel Saga” and a Storm-led volume by Sam Humphries). They consist of Rogue, Gateway (a minor fixture in Storm also appearing in the present in Astonishing X-Men), Warpath, Iceman, Fantomex (whose personality was split into three parts in Uncanny X-Force; the Cluster/Lady Fantomax version of the character is in Sinister’s Six), and Akujin, who I believe is a new character. Their Rhino-people-mounts are new as well.
• Warpath did indeed receive his vibranium knives from Storm in Uncanny X-Men #475.
• The Rogue in this story is “Rogue Red”, one of two Rogues who were created during an earlier mission against the Collector (one of the cosmic Elders of the Universe). “Rogue Green” is presented as the “main” Rogue, and is the Rogue in Unbreakable X-Men (who gets to stay with Gambit).
• The split is said to have occurred roughly two years into the Age of Revelation/two years from the present.
• Rogue Red’s titular red suit is reminiscent of her garb from the early 00s X-Treme X-Men.
• She is also lacking Rogue’s flight and super-strength abilities, and is thus set up in parallel to Storm’s much earlier loss of powers in the mid 80s.
• At some point, “Rogue Red” was just going to be called “Rouge”, right?
• In further parallels, echoing Storm’s gift to Warpath, she has given Rogue Red “knuckle dusters” made of an alloy of adamantium, vibranium and mysterious, so basically all the Marvel Universe super-metals.
• The final pages of the issue after the main action presumably take place in the AoR present ie ten years in the future. It’s worth noting that NOW we finally get Storm riding a hippo.

Like the regular Storm book, this is puzzling and weird, though grading on the curve of that series, much more straightforward in terms of what’s happening on the page. What is most confusing is how this has anything at all to do with “Age of Revelation” aside from the various time markers; Revelation isn’t mentioned by name and nothing of the various settings seen here connect in any way to the event. So far, it’s just “weird”, not “weird bad”, and the art is effective, almost Declan Shalvey-esque (better than the last issue of the regular series, certainly).

Sinister’s Six #1 by David Marquez & Rafael Loureiro

Sinister’s Six captures Venom in the hopes he may help find a cure for the X-virus.

• The title is obviously a riff on stuff like “Ocean’s Eleven” or “Magnificent Seven.”
• While not a direct replacement for an existing series, this is more or less a riff on the Krakoa-era Hellions title.
• David Marquez is primarily known as an artist — he’s one of the regular artists in the current Uncanny X-Men rotation; this is his first work as a writer.
• Misty Knight and Colleen Wing are regular fixtures of the Luke Cage/Iron Man supporting cast (and were also featured semi-regularly in the early years of Chris Claremont’s X-Men; Misty was once Jean Grey’s roommate and Colleen briefly dated Cyclops when the X-Men thought Jean was dead because they didn’t know how to use telephones). Their superhuman abilities are the result of the X-virus.
• Black Cat’s role here is a fun surprise, given she doesn’t have a lot of history in the X-books but does have a history with Jed Mackay (one of his breakout books starred her). Omega Red and Domino are well-established X-characters. Cluster is the aforementioned “Lady Fantomax”, created when Fantomax split his personality into three separate beings.
• Nice to see Havok, as the leader of Sinister’s Six, being mostly competent, a pleasant change after the recent iteration of X-Factor.
• Depending on the order you read them in, this issue reveals that SOME mutants get further mutated by the X-virus, rather than just being left alone while some humans die and others become mutants (Firestar, a mutant, is shown to have been mutated by the X-virus as well this week). Having some of those mutants flock to Sinister makes sense, given his expertise in the area. He believes, at least in the case of mutants like Omega Red and Domino, they are more susceptible to the virus due to the way they underwent genetic experimentation (by the Soviets, Project: Armageddon) in addition to their mutant powers.
• It also helps that Sinister here is written much less, well, sinister and drama queen-like, compared to his voice under Kieron Gillan. Whether that’s deliberate or just the way Marquez writes him remains to be seen.
• This is not the first alternate timeline/future in which Havok has had a son; in Mutant X, he had Scott with Madelyne Pryor, while he fathered Katie with the Wasp in Uncanny Avengers. Chris (which is also one of Cable’s birth names) is presumably named after Christopher Summers aka Corsair, Havok’s dad.

• The Nanny robot attending Chris is the same look/design as Magneto’s Nanny robot in X-Men #112-113, “Age of Apocalypse” and Uncanny X-Men #350.
• It seems weird that Sinister doesn’t already know about Venom, right? Like, he’s a relatively high-profile character in-universe at this point.
• The big reveal this issue concludes on — that Revelation, not 3K, created the X-virus, was offhandedly spoiled in Amazing X-Men #1.

In competition for Iron & Frost as the most connected-to-the-crossover issue this week (while still being largely removed from it), this is surprisingly fun and straightforward, the kind of solid tie-in that doesn’t necessarily blow you away, but which events like this need to make the world feel bigger.

Unbreakable X-Men #1 by Gail Simone & Lucas Werneck – Book of the Week

A devastated Gambit deals with the loss of Rogue.

• This is the AoR version of Uncanny X-Men, though at least in this first issue, it has seemingly very little to do with “Age of Revelation” beyond a “takes place in the future” setting.
• Specifically, the story opens three years before the present of “Age of Revelation” or seven years after the pre-AoR present.
• Temper is currently on the Alaskan X-Men team but the Hellfire Gala oneshot established a burgeoning relationship between her and Ransom (which has culminated in them having a kid, at least in this timeline).
• Dome is Chelsea St. Juniors, who is ten in the present day Uncanny X-Men stories. We saw her use her forcefield powers in Uncanny X-Men #10 (when she also said she wanted to use the name “Dome” when she became one of the X-Men).
• This Spider-Girl appears to be an older version of Makawalu Akana, the current Spider-Girl (who is a mutant).
• It’s not clear who Sentinel Boy is, though Justin Seyfert (who controlled a Sentinel in the short-lived 00s Sentinel series) appeared in Alex Paknadel’s more recent Sentinels mini. He’d probably more accurately be Sentinel Twenty-Something at this point in time, but that’s hardly unusual for comics (Jean was still Marvel Girl well into her adulthood).
• All the Shuvahrak/Dark Artery stuff comes from Uncanny X-Men #13-16.
• Temper mentions burning her village to ash; that’s a reference to her backstory as established in Uncanny X-Men #528.
• Seen attending Rogue’s wake/funeral are Cyclops, Nightcrawler, Beast, M and Jubilee. It’s worth noting that a scant few years before the start of the AoR story Cyclops is well-dressed, clean-shaving and not at all presenting like a beleaguered freedom fighter on the run from Revelation and his regime.

• It might an alternate future, but the nicknames are still flying fast and furious: Gambit calls Rogue “One Above All” and later calls Dome “Butterscotch.”
• Gambit’s line about how all he has is some cards and a stick is pretty funny.
• I have no idea why the act of absorbing Galactus’s power turns Rogue into a giant statue.
• Henrietta does that thing where she says, “as you all know…” then proceeds to tell the present characters what they all know, which makes it pointless for them but useful for anyone who might be, say, observing this interaction in a comic book and could use a refresher on the information all the characters already know.

A terrible “Age of Revelation” tie-in but nevertheless a strong issue in its own right, powered by gorgeous artwork and Gambit’s palpable, realistically-rendered grief.