Writer Jed MacKay
Artist Federico Vicentini
Color Artist David Curiel
Letterer VC’s Clayton Cowles
I bought the Skottie Young variant cover, but would have loved to have preordered the Mahmud Asrar variant, that has Magik on the cover.
Juniper, Pennsylvania. The Trask Statue has released the Age of Revelation virus, not to the scale of the original plan, but a healthy dose of it. Well, not that healthy.
3K Airship, Command Bridge. Philadelphia Airspace. Cyclops is concerned for all of the people who died, and Chairman Beast doesn’t care as only the humans would die from the exposure. Grimm goes in for a punch, but Chairman Beast teleports away, so I guess he could have done that the entire time? He was trying to include 3K, as it is always better to work with others.
Launch Bay. Juggernaut is battling Wyre.
I love Juggernaut asking about Magik, making sure she’s okay, and lovingly refers to her as the brat, and Scott knows exactly who he is talking about.
Wyre had a backup plan, an escalation, where the anti-grav thrusters would fail, and this entire airship will crash into Philadelphia.
The Baxter Building, New York City. Magik teleports Grimm and herself to Reed, Sue and 70s Beast. Magik informs them that the airship is crashing, AND the virus has been released. Reed can’t do anything, as he’s about to shrink the Fantastic Four down to go inside of Magneto.
Magik is simply there to make sure all of the eggheads work on the virus, the X-Men will work on saving Philly. She needs the mutant Ben. Not sure how his illusion powers will help here.
Ben is surprised Cyclops needs him, which is an odd reaction. He probably knows that he was on the 70s Beast team, as it was a do nothing job
I do love Magik interacting with the Fantastic Four, I feel like we haven’t seen this grouping before, or not often.
3K Airship. I love Cyclops having to call Commander Bohannan, of O*N*E* as this is a national emergency. Bohannan is still upset, and rightfully so, as his last conversation with Cyclops was Scott threatening Bohannan in his hope, with all of the X-Men present, so there is some tension there. Plus, Bohannan did attempt, and failed, to murder the X-Men.
Bohannan does point out that this is great news, for him, as he’s about to be in charge of this giant operation, having near complete control over the Eastern Seaboard.
Magik teleports to Slim (I so love these two’s friendship), asking if he has any good news, and he can’t recall the last time he heard any. Magik also brought Ben here.
Ben believes, as does Scott, that the airship is where Ben was made into a mutant. Scott believes Ben can help this situation, and just needs the proper motivation.
Below Decks. Wyre wakes up Time Bomb. They need to make a hastily retreat. Wyre still wants to use this class of X-Men, I can only imagine he will change their name to something else. Cyclops has his own Hellions team, so not that name.
Philadelphia. I love Cyclops giving Quentin Quire his kudos for taking care of Cassandra Nova, that’s good leadership there.
Quire and Psylocke are mass telepathically evacuating the people.
I also just adore that Illyana and Scott can have proper conversations about his choices. It comes from a respectful place, so Scott isn’t offended. Magik just wishes he had used a kinder approach.
We then see Cyclops’ approach, and now I’m completely on Magik’s side, which isn’t much of a shocker.
Cyclops chained Ben to a crashing ship, so results have to happen. This is just cruel, and also, a poor decision as Ben is going to resent this.
Ben does take a breath, and summons the alien horde that he originally thought was attacking him from issue 21. Thanks Tom.
It starts to work, and the aliens arrive.
Magik is pretty impressed, and Cyclops is proud.
So, is Ben’s powers to manifest an alien attack? It works, they are solid constructs.
I love seeing Magik being happy. Cyclops tells Magik to go save Ben.
The airship gets righted, and the day is saved!
By Magneto! So the Fantastic Four tie in issues must all be taking place during this issue. Maybe? That is right, thanks again Tom, Fantastic Four issues 17 & 18 are that mission. So we don’t have to read 18, but you should still do that.
70s Beast asks Reed how it went, and Reed has this bizarre reaction of questioning if Beast is a friend, but hands over the data. We might be able to stop the X-Virus!
What a great third chapter this was!
