Previously On X-Men: ‘Cloak Or Dagger’ #1 Is The Surprise Hit Of The Week

The final week of the initial “Age of Revelation” launch comes to a close with a solid-but-not-spectacular batch of titles. Collectively, there’s some strong premises here and it’s nice to see some broader ties to the larger event in this week’s books; there’s more of a sense of these all taking place in the same setting than in previous weeks, which is much appreciated.

Astonishing X-Men #42 by Alex Paknadel, Tim Seeley & Phillip Sevy

With Cassandra Nova revealed, Banshee must rally his teammates to save Morph.

• Feels like more villains should just punch Banshee in the throat to put him out of commission.
• Cassandra Nova being the villain here in addition to her role in the 3K storyline feels odd, but there’s symmetry (unintentional or not) to the way she’s positioned as the devil on a shoulder for both X-Cutioner here and Robin Cobb.
• In the end, the conflict gets resolved via a deus (Generation) ex machina, as Gateway drops Mondo, Chamber, Synch and Jubilee onto the scene. Mondo last appeared earlier in this series, Chamber was most recently part of the team in Weapon X-Men, Synch had a recurring role in NYX, and Jubilee is currently a cast member (if an underused one) in Gail Simone’s Uncanny X-Men.

Marvel is culling its Infinite titles, and this book has been cancelled. It does at least get to wrap up its story, though bringing in a solid chunk of the old Generation X cast then cutting away before they do anything sure is…a choice (admittedly, one likely forced by some combination of the limitations of the format and the cancellation — its easy to imagine a scenario where their arrival is an issue-ending cliffhanger).

Cloak Or Dagger #1 by Justina Ireland & Lorenzo Tammetta – Book of the Week

Dagger works to shepherd human refugees out of Revelation territories as Fenris works to expose as many humans to the X-Virus as possible.

• While officially not mutants currently, Cloak and Dagger have a history of being mutant/X-Men-adjacent and were, at various points in time, considered mutants (they even had a series in the late 80s titled “The Mutant Misadventures of Cloak and Dagger”). All of which is to say, having them headline an “Age of Revelation” tie-in is arguably more relevant than, say, giving Spider-Man a book.
• Presumably the Flex in this issue is meant to be the late 90s Alpha Flight character.
• Fenris debuted back in Uncanny X-Men #194 and have popped up semi-regularly ever since (including a story where they battled Cloak and Dagger, making their role as villains in this book less random). The children of Hydra leader Baron Von Strucker, they’re generally depicted as fascist Eurotrash characters.

• The way they’re explicitly using the X-Virus as a weapon does more to sell the threat of the disease (and the evil of Revelation for creating/unleashing it) than anything else we’ve seen this far.
• The status quo which explains the use of “or” instead of “and” in the title is a nod to the classic Captain Marvel/Billy Batson setup (as well as the later Captain Marvel/Rick Jones version at Marvel).
• It’s not entirely clear where the other goes when they switch, whether just…somewhere else, or some kind of pocket dimension/extradimensional space like when Rick Jones went to the Negative Zone.

I can generally take or leave Cloak and Dagger, but the twist in their relationship/status quo is intriguing, the art here is really good, and the plot makes good use of the event, doing its own thing that still contributes to the overall narrative. A genuinely pleasant surprise.

Emma Frost, The White Queen #5 by Amy Chu & Andrea Di Vito

The continuity-implant series concludes as Emma makes her move against the Hellfire Club.

• In retrospect, I kind of like the structural idea that the plot requires Emma to travel to a bunch of different Hellfire Clubs, holding her/the main club in New York for the climax here. Though that doesn’t change the fact that issues #2-4 are essentially filler.
• An offhand bit of dialogue seems designed to confirm that the Da Costa who is in the club in this series is the cousin of Sunspot’s dad (which fits chronologically).
• The reveal that Noor is a triple agent secretly working for Emma against the club elements working to oust here is well done, in that its both surprising in the moment but obvious in hindsight.
• As the closing pages of the issue underscore, Tessa’s motivations in this era of storytelling are difficult to parse, but assuming she didn’t know all along that Noor was still loyal to Emma, I guess we’re meant to assume Noor’s own powers were blocking Tessa from picking up on her game.
• The sequence with Noor and Emma on the Astral Plane features some particularly cool black and white art.

• The biggest thing in this series that feels chronologically out of place is Emma defeating Noor but not killing her. The Emma of this era (sometime between “Dark Phoenix Saga” and Uncanny X-Men #151-152) absolutely would have killed her, but Chu is writing the character with decades of heroism (jaded, occasionally self-serving, but still heroism) to her name, and I assume having her kill Noor felt like a bridge too far relative to the Emma as we know her today even if it would have made narrative sense.
• The Xavier and Tessa/Sage conversation is a surprisingly rare instance of a continuity-insert story acknowledging/using Claremont’s retcon.

This issue highlights one of the weaknesses of the continuity-insert series: it manages to put all the pieces back together to where they were at the start — Emma is the unquestioned White Queen of the Hellfire Club, no one remembers Noor which is why we never heard of her before this story — in a reasonably-competent, entertaining fashion. Yet in doing so, it begs the question of what the point of any of this was, if at the end everything was going to be the same as when it started (which it ultimately has to). Usually, the work around is that the story also casts the main character in a new light, but we don’t really get that here.

Expatriate X-Men #1 by Eve L. Ewing & Francesco Mortarino

Ms. Marvel, Bronze, Melee and Rift lead a crew of rebels against Revelation.

• This is the “Age of Revelation” version of Exceptional X-Men (though the presence of Kamala and Mortarino also sort of makes it a version of the cancelled NYX).
• Also, Kitty is over in Book of Revelation, Emma is starring in Iron & Frost, Iceman is in Rogue Storm but Axo hasn’t turned up on AoR yet.
• Colossus is on the cover, but doesn’t appear in the issue.
• Rift is Reggie McNair, Bronze’s crush who was revealed to be a mutant who can create time-travel portals in the closing issues of Exceptional.
• The way Rift’s power works here — they fail their mission the first time, then go back in time and get it right w/knowledge gleaned from the first failure — isn’t at all how time travel is meant to work in the Marvel Universe, but that was true of Reggie sending Kitty through time so at least we’re being consistently inconsistent.

• Doop, Toad and Northstar are members of the Expatriate crew/crewmen on Melee’s ship.
• Lyrebird is a new character; a lyrebird is an Australian bird with a knack for vocal mimicry.
• The Expatriate’s mission to get Lyrebird to Darkchilde represents an unfortunately-rare bit of cross-series connections within the event.
• A sizeable majority of these tie-in miniseries conclude with some kind of mystery hook; this one — Melee is secretly working for someone else, at odds with her teammates — works better than most since it sets up potential character conflict as well as just trying to be a “come back for more!” hook.

While not necessarily the best of the “Age of Revelation” books (or even the best book out this week), it is the one that feels the most like a spiritual successor to an “Age of Apocalypse” series: it’s not directly contributing to the overarching plot, but its worldbuilding is connected to it while still setting up plots and conflicts of its own. Plus, it’s nice to finally have one of these books other than Amazing X-Men be about characters fighting against Revelation.

Undeadpool #1 by Tim Seeley & Carlos Magno

Reduced to a zombie-like monster but still in control of his mind, Deadpool hunts a group of super-powered kids trying to find the X-Men.

• Deadpool didn’t technically have a solo series prior to “Age of Revelation”, but this is essentially the AoR version of a Deadpool solo book. Whether or not you consider Deadpool to belong under the X-Men umbrella or is more of a X-adjacent standalone spin-off character like Alpha Flight (I tend to fall into the latter category) doesn’t really matter since we’re getting other non-X-book tie-ins to this event regardless. And Deadpool does have a new solo series coming after the event.
• The level of dystopia in the AoR timeline continues to be inconsistent, with the portryal here much more like “Age of Apocalypse” in terms of devastation than, say, in Cloak Or Dagger.
• I think the idea is supposed to be that things are different based on location — inside Revelation’s territory, on the edges of it, far away, etc. but the individual books could be doing a better job of making that clear.
• This issue also introduces even more new characters, though most of them get killed off by the end. Linking them to existing characters (Kid Man-Thing, Fantastica) at least makes it a little easier to latch onto each of their general schticks.
• Magni (the Thor-inspired character) shares a name with the actual son of Thor from an early 00s alternate reality story who recently reappeared in Immortal Thor.
• More links to the broader narrative (which I appreciate): both the rebel flotilla from Expatriate X-Men and the Omega Kids from, uh, Omega Kids get referenced.
• Deadpool mentions “Steve, Worm, Jacques” making wagers with him at the “hero factory”; that is all a reference to his time in the Weapon X project, when the “failed” subjects were sent to the Hospice to be experimented on and ran a “dead pool” on who would survive the longest (which is where Deadpool gets the name Deadpool), all of which was established in Joe Kelly’s late 90s Deadpool run.

• Deadpool name-dropping Siryn is another throwback to the Kelly days, a reference to their quasi-romance.
• Cable makes his “Age of Revelation” debut, his techno-organic arm have either grown out of control or having been fused with Warlock (who has yet to be seen in the event). At the very least, he’s adopted Warlock’s “self-__” verbal tic.
• This is one of two “someone is possessed by the Technarcy/maybe Warlock” reveals in this week’s books, which is an oddly specific plot point to appear twice in one week.

The premise here is solid — do a slasher story from the perspective of the slasher, and the slasher is Deadpool — and the art serves it well. But putting Deadpool’s constant yammering into narrative captions instead of dialogue boxes doesn’t functionally change all that much from the typical approach, and in this case, undercuts the menacing atmosphere that is needed to make this sort of thing work (there’s a reason Jason Voorhees and Michael Myers don’t speak much).

X-Vengers #1 by Jason Loo & Sergio Dávila

The Avengers, led by Dani Moonstar, repel an alien invasion.

• The Avengers are obviously their own thing but given the way the current series has been positioned as a sort of honorary X-book during “From the Ashes” (presumably due to the fact that Jed MacKay is currently writing it), it’s not surprising to see an “Age of Revolution” version of the Avengers in their own book.
• Playing off the idea that the X-virus gives everyone (it doesn’t kill) powers, the somewhat famously powerless Avengers like Black Widow and Hawkeye now have powers (one is made of water, the other has multiple arms; Shang-Chi is a rock person).
• Also, Vision is now either infected by the Transmode virus or is also possessed by Warlock, the second of the two “seems like Warlock” reveals of the week.
• While Dani Moonstar has yet to serve as an Avenger, Cannonball was one (alongside Sunspot) during Jonathan Hickman‘s run.
• At one point, Dani is wearing one of the Avengers-branded leather bomber jackets, which made me smile.
• It’s established here that Sam Wilson (former Falcon and Captain America) is president, which casts further confusion over the state of the US towards mutants and its relationship with Revelation (which seems generally more amicable toward both here than in some other tie-ins — I can see Sam maintaining a detente with Revelation, but not being virulent anti-mutant the way some books seem to suggest the US is).
• Revelation’s Seraphim in this issue are Thunderbird, Random (most well-known from the Peter David/JM DeMatteis X-Factor runs), Sunspot, Boom-Boom, and Rockslide.

• Notably, while the Avengers and Seraphim are ostensibly on opposing sides, they are on friendly terms and don’t have issues working together (which makes sense given the New Mutants ties across both books) but again, cuts against some of the other tie-ins which seem to suggest a more frosty relationship between the US and Revelation Territories.

Perfectly fine for what it is (an Avengers story framed through the lens of this alternate timeline) but the most interesting stuff about it gets backgrounded; if ever there was a book that could offer a window into how Doug’s former teammates who knew him best feel about his change to Revelation, it’s this one, featuring two new Mutants in the cast and appearances by a couple more. But none of that really gets brought up here. Why do a book with Dani Moonstar leading a team of superheroes in a world in which one of her longtime friends has become a world-conquering super-villain but then largely ignore all of that?