Review: ‘X-Men’ #23 Is Half Of What Age Of Revelation Should Have Been
by Tony Thornley
And we’re back from the future. It was bad. The world ended like three times. In X-Men #23, someone is going to try to prevent it.
Jed MacKay, Tony S. Daniel, Mark Morales, Fer Sifuentes-Sujo and Clayton Cowles deal with the aftermath of the Age of Revelation.
Doug Ramsey is home with the X-Men, despite his new Apocalypse-granted powers. But when a time travelling Cyclops tries to assassinate him, Doug is faced with a choice. What can he do when he knows he’s already destined to destroy the world?
After a fairly mind-numbing event that could basically be summed up as “Cyclops is shown why he needs to save the world again” this was actually a fairly welcome return for the series. MacKay has quietly been writing one of the best Cyclops stories that X-Men fans have gotten in a very long time. It’s been eclipsed by all the other criticisms of the current era of X-Men but MacKay gets Scott Summers right every time. Here we get a scary and determined version of Scott that’s simply out to prevent the hell he’s seen, and MacKay nails it while giving us a hell of a final page.
Daniel’s art was a welcome surprise. Despite the big differences in style between his work and main series artists Ryan Stegman and Netho Diaz, he fits right in. His layouts are clean and his figures are smooth, which makes the action easy to follow, and he follows that up with excellent character work. Morales adds to the depth of the pencils with his inks, creating an overall package that looks great.
Sifuentes-Sujo continues to grow as a color artist. Here he uses dark shades to match the somber mood of this issue, and it fits right in with the apocalyptic themes. He also uses the team’s trademark colors — Cyclops and red, Psylocke and purple, Quire and pink — and makes them pop off the page as they get their action moment.
Cowles adds to the story in every moment he can. His bubbles are sharp, matching the art’s lines, and flow the dialogue and thoughts from scene to scene.
But here’s the biggest thing this issue showed me — the last three months were totally unnecessary. If the Age of Revelation had simply been slimmed down to MacKay’s core story and this issue, it could have been much stronger, and much more impactful. It also would have seen Doug’s final moments in this issue have a greater impact. Instead of the impact he had as a big bad for 50+ issues of an event, we would have instead been wondering “did future Cyclops stop his timeline or make it much, much worse?”
And that last question will remain to be seen.
X-Men #23 is available now from Marvel Comics.
