Dazzler and agents of O*N*E, SHIELD, and SWORD, are here at Graymalkin Prison to finally dismantle it. Before they can, Sarah Graunt has located the mutants who were given the Wolverine treatment. I do like how the O*N*E agent apologized to Dazzler, she’ s a fan.
Repent tells Rogue that Gambit can only be healed by love, so she takes him Maison Blue Petit Paris in New Orleans. Apparently they have come here before to get all romantic.
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Look how cute Ember is, with Gambit’s cats on his back!
Dazzler calls Logan to tell him Sarah Graunt is on her way.
Logan asks for volunteers, and Monet & Quicksilver will stay behind with the New Mutants.
Rogue and Gambit go to a fancy restaurant, and Gambit refers to the waitress as a nighttime friend, a sweet-cream lady, and that seems all types of gross. But Rogue reminds him to remember who keeps his bed warm, and steals the covers.
Sarah Graunt and her squad are heading straight to Rogue & Gambit, I must have missed that. Logan, Jubilee, and Kurt are outside to combat them.
A few pages after I had the thought of, how has Rogue and Gambit NOT heard all of this fighting, Rogue and Gambit come out in their underwear. Gambit is wearing X-Branded underwear.
Sarah Graunt says, “to me, my Scavenged,” so I guess that’s the name of these mutants.
Graunt will be back in seven days, so that sets up the next issue pretty nicely.
I would have bought the ACO variant cover if I had saw it in time to preorder it.
Issue opens with O*N*E* Agent, Abbie Bennett, wanting to take a splinter group of officers to attack the Alaskan X-Men’s base, while they are away. Doug killed her husband in issue 18, thanks Tom. This cell hates mutants. I do appreciate calling them a cell.
The Factory. Merle, Alaska. Xorn is listening to John Greycrow, who wants to be where the fight is. Just wait, bud.
The way Greycrow talks, one would think he’s on the X-Men, but he isn’t, so he doesn’t get a say in the missions. Kwannon asked him to stay behind, and she’s an executive officer of the X-Men, do they all have official titles? That’s what I’m interested in.
Then the power goes off in the Factory. The Cell has tampered with the Shi’ar stardrive.
Xorn properly gives us the stakes, if the stardrive isn’t returned in time, the reactor core will explode, taking the base, and Merle with it. Greycrow has his mission. Greycrow takes out two of the cell members. Then more, and more of them.
Xorn was on keeping Glob Herman save, so this before Infernal Hulk 7, I guess? Xorn has knocked out the cell members who came for Glob.
We get confirmation that Greycrow killed everyone who came for them, and Xorn picks up on his word choices, Greycrow wants on the X-Men.
Greycrow congratulates Xorn on his deadly approach, but he never made it to Medical. Ruh oh.
Then. Glob Herman woke up, and dealt with his assailants. Bennett went running into the snow. Glob killed all of these folks, and treated himself to a nap as the issue ends.
No Magik appearance, outside of the ACO variant cover.
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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Magik is pretty impressed, and Cyclops is proud.
So, is Ben’s powers to manifest an alien attack? It works, they are solid constructs.
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I love seeing Magik being happy. Cyclops tells Magik to go save Ben.
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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!
After a fun detour of three titles, we are back to our bookends.
We get a flashback to Miles and his mentor, Mister E, who is telling Miles of his destiny. Mister E isn’t thrilled with how Miles’ friends, Illyana, and Laura, are always distracting him.
In the present, Miles, now the Scarlet Spider, is engulfing the planet in crimson.
Illyana, Legion, must know the Scarlet Spider. He was proud that he stopped Laura from becoming the Vision, but actually, he is the Vision.
Colossus, who is a giant sized X-Manifestation, wants to usher in an age of heroes. Since he is still around, we know Laura wasn’t killed, which is a huge relief.
Laura is no longer X-Tremis, she is now . . . Weapon Phoen-X. (Get it?)
We find out Scarlet Spider’s mentor was actually . . . Blackheart.
In another flashback, we see Ilayana bragging on her big bro, being the best of the X-Men, even better than Storm. It would have been pretty cool to get an X-Men title in this event. Well, besides the two bookends, and Ghostlocke. I suppose we got plenty of X-Men in this event.
Weapon Phoen-X makes two attacks. The first to Scarlet Spider, and then apologizes to Legion for the second.
It appears that Laura sacrificed herself to restore Miles, but we mustn’t forgot that she was going by Phoen-X just a few pages ago.
I suppose Laura was apologizing to Legion for the upgrade as now Illyana is . . . Phoenix Supreme! She looks awesome here.
Phoenix Supreme starts cleansing Blackheart.
Before she can clearly defeat him, he attempts one last move, and opens an infinite void.
Illyana doesn’t have complete control over the Phoenix, as she just got it, but Miles jumps in to try to sacrificed himself.
Together Miles and Illyana take the fight to Blackheart.
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That top panel is pretty cool, combining both the Phoenix and Spider imagery.
Illyana hints that they didn’t defeat Blackheart alone.
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I love this chat with the Phoenix and Illyana so much, the Phoenix is so tired of human business.
Plus, Illyana is riding her yokai, Lockheed!
The Phoenix agrees to help Illyana as she loves to fight as much as she love to sleep.
Issue ends with Miles creating a shrine for Laura, who shows up as her own version of a yokai.
We get two pages where we see the cast of the other three one-shots, which I’m sure is nice for the writers who didn’t have to incorporate those stories, they just had to show the character designs.
I definitely liked the first issue more, as it had a lot more of Lockheed, but at least we got one panel of him this issue.
The coloring this issue was breathtakingly beautiful!
Northern Italy, a location no map shows. Three centuries ago. La Cattedrale oi Ferro. The Iron Cathedral. A ritual is performance.
A frecciorossa train in Northern Italy, three centuries later. Rogue, Gambit, Gabriel, and Repent are traveling together. Repent is quite thirsty, and apparently has a demon inside him, but a nicer one than the one Gambit has inside him.
Apparently Repent’s mother died during child birth, which is super sad, and she had a demon inside of her, so when she died, it transferred over to Repent. He tired to perform his own exorcist, costing himself an arm, an eye, and his sanity. I checked, and he has one black eye, and one red eye.
Monet is on day three of leading the Uncanny X-Men, and they find themselves fighting a big bruiser of a guy, Calamity.
Logan, who Monet thinks of as a Canadian, but the way she does it, feels loaded. Logan confirms that Calamity is a 22 year old, who isn’t being mind controlled. Calamity was one of the mutants held captive, until he got promoted to tormentor. With that knowledge, Logan attacks Calamity, berserker rage style.
I really appreciate that Monet isn’t tempted to stop Logan, these are child traffickers. Monet gets the killing move on Calamity.
Monet is tearful that she gets to free the children. Though I can’t help but think about how she was cool with holding mutants prisoner who were just being a little loud in public.
Rogue and company make it to the Iron Cathedral. Repent explain the world has always known mutants, which makes sense as we are well aware of Apocalypse and Selene. Like modern mutants, the ones from centuries ago were hunted as they were feared. Some died here, while trying to cast out demons that didn’t exist.
Rogue threatens to kill Repent if Gambit is hurt. Repent doesn’t seem too concerned.
We learn that Repent’s mutant power is to transmute liquid, any liquid, into holy water. One of those classic mutant powers that is created out of the situation the mutant needed most.
Wyren arrives, claiming the underworld hates two things, mutants and priests. Rogue uses her mutant power to transfer the demon to her, so that Gambit is weakened, and can have the other Eye of Agamotto carved out of his chest.
Louisiana. A guard is freaking out about all of the uncaged mutants, gross, and Jubilee swiftly kicks him. Then she destroys the house they were in.
I like Nightcrawler and Quicksilver working together, plus the green & white looks great with the black & red in these panels.
Kurt says that not every evil wears capes, which is a silly take on that expression.
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Always great to see Ember and the New Mutants joining into the battle.
The land owner tries to flee in his fancy limo, but Howler is there to finish the job.
Howler is justified, but is also sad about the whole thing, Logan tells him it is okay. I love that it is Becca who holds Howler.
I love how the local police show up, recognize the situation completely, and not going to do anything more than give Monet a citation, maybe.
Issue ends with Gambit free of demons, or at the very least, this demon.
Variant Cover Annie Wu, I took a chance on the Muppets variant cover, and was treated to Emma Frost and Miss Piggy, so that was the right choice.
Shadow Play, Part 3
Our Monthly dose of Kitty Pryde, let’s see how much of her we get!
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I do like how this is the title that gives us all of the mutants.
I like how Kitty is the one to approach Wither. Psylocke confirms Wither’s psi-imprint is darker now.
Logan, on the other hand, is being a real jerk, and being rude to Blade.
Blade is fully aware that only his mind is here, but is willing to make Logan bleed. Logan is still holding onto Blood Hunt resentment. Logan clearly doesn’t share my philosophy that we can’t hold characters responsible for their actions during a crossover.
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We see Kitty’s blue glove as Emma calms everybody down. She wants some answers.
Wither is involved in something that Blade attempted to help out with.
I like how Wither has turned to scriptures to express himself in Atlanta.
Wither was attacked by vampires, and turned, so not only does he have a death touch, he also can turn people into vampires, so he can do some touching?
He was about to turn someone when Bloodline, Blade’s daughter, shows up to stop him.
She suspects Wither is the one who killed all of these people, and he tries to explain it, but she just wants to end him, so he puts her into the ground. I’m not sure why her blade didn’t kill Wither, or at least punctured him.
Wither does explain the situation. His vampire powers are messing with his mutant powers, so he has to wait for people to die, then suck the blood as his powers would destroy their organic matter. Which does line up with how I understand his powers, so good job Ewing and Narcisse for taking the time, and explaining this.
Bloodline offers a temporary, and very uneasy, partnership. They can’t hurt each other, so she invites him over to her mom’s house. He’s lucky her father wasn’t here for this nonsense.
Bloodline and Wither attack the vampires, and Blade shows up, and he kills the vampires. Their boss is a mutant vampire, which I like Jubilee quickly saying, it happens. That’s funny.
Blade further explains that the mutant isn’t a real vampire, but a copycat. She comes around vampires, temporarily gets the bite powers, uses it to make more vampires, who are loyal to her.
Prodigy tries to explain to Wither that now isn’t a great time, as they are dealing with their own shadowy darkness.
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I like Kitty and Psylocke hanging out, as Blade explains he doesn’t need the X-Men, he’s just here as Wither asked him to attempt this exchange.
We get Dani Moonstar!!! In an awesome splash page reveal. She’s willing to help Blade. Prodigy will join the team, and since they’re in England, Dani believes they can get Chamber to help.
Blade misses no time in making sure everyone knows he is in charge.
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Iceman is going to check on Magik and Nightcrawler’s class, as he’s being very fussy. Kitty isn’t sure if now is the best time for that.
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I love so much whenever Magik and Nightcrawler hang out, and them teaching together is such a treat!
Magik is so much more than a goth raver with a giant sword! She also has a lot more infernal aura than Kurt.
I love Mal and Gabby, I mean Scout, chatting about Shadow King. Mal wants to know, and Scout offers up a quick sheet about him. He’s evil, a telepath, lies, and makes you doubt yourself and others. Yep, that’s the Shadow King. Plus, a nice reference to Krakoa as Gabby did have to deal with him over in New Mutants V4.
The issue ends with Bloodline, and her captures, Justina – who is wearing a very cute red bow in her hair, and the vampire who created Blade.
This was a solid issue! No Marigold, but that’s okay.
I would have bought the Geoff Shaw Fall Fantasies variant cover, if I had seen it by the time I had to submit my DCBS preorder.
We see the full conversation Chairman Beast and Magneto had, where Beast offers him a place on 3K. We are actually in Magneto’s dreamscape, so he is visited by Xavier. It is nice to get a bit of a recap of Resurrection of Magneto, with his wall of names he’s killed.
We get a different take on what could have happened on The Iron Night, where he just collapses, and dies, so this issue is pretty much Magneto’s It’s A Wonderful Life.
Without him living, 70s Beast continues his other experiments. Oya moved on from her Krakoa torment. Ben Liu didn’t have a mentor, so I guess Magneto has been doing more with them than we’ve been treated to.
We are reminded there was a Second Iron Night, when Myraid grew large and in charge, and attacked Merle. Was Magneto important to that fight? I can’t remember, he must have been.
Without Magneto, when Glob Herman was shot (apparently he will always be shot), Quentin Quire and Oya simply burn through Merle. Which brings missiles to Merle.
Xavier questions why Magneto was given the future virus, which I also have questioned, but figured we’ll find out eventually. Magneto suspects it is because he is the Master of Metal, and like metal, he must endure. I guess this is a reason?
Magneto wants to know if this was the real Xavier, but he plays it coy.
Variant Cover Skottie Young, I would have gone with the Dike Ruan or Tony S. Daniel variants that both have Magik on them, but they didn’t reveal those in time for my DCBS order to be submitted.
Issue opens with Agent Lundqvist hanging out in Juniper, looking at the Trask statue that Juggernaut spent an entire day not breaking.
I love it when characters speak in logo. Do you think it sounds differently?
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Juggernaut fights Galatea, who I’m glad we are name checking people. Cyclops tells them to switch, so now Magik is fighting Galatea.
Psylocke fights Psychovore.
The Baxter Building. New York City. Drs. Richards, 70s Beast, and Ben are still chatting about Magneto. Apparently no two mutants share that much DNA, because of their powers, which maybe makes sense? Magneto’s powers are making it so they can’t treat him properly, or remove the Age of Revelation virus code. Just like how Kate Pryde’s phasing power messed up her resurrection.
Reed needs Human Torch and Ben Grimm here to perform a radical operation. I imagine it is because he views all problems through a lens of how can the Fantastic Four solve this?
3K Mothership. Grimm and Johnny are fighting Joseph.
Chairman Beast knows that Cyclsop’ inside man is Schwarzschild, which I figured was the case last issue. He’s just not that much of an inside man, as he’s not on the mothership. Chairman Beast can’t launch the virus because of a computer error, so Wyre has to do it manually.
Psylocke defeats Psychovore with a poison thought, as she’s awesome.
Oya is fighting Juice, so we get to see a cool ice versus water battle. Cyclops helps in this fight.
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Constellation is down.
I like Magik giving Galatea one more chance to surrender, but she’s not one to ever surrender. She can do this all day.
Wyre shows up to manually release the virus, but Juggernaut has been wrecking the place.
I like Johnny making fun of the knock off versions of Magneto and Beast. He doesn’t know Astra, but is assured she is a knock off of somebody, which is very funny.
Chairman Beast does NOT find this funny, as she’s the original Beast.
I do like that Johnny takes the time to recognized that even he is a knock off of the Jim Hammond Human Torch. So, we’re just having lots of fun here.
Johnny performs the Clean Room Protocol and burns all of the oxygen in the room, which doesn’t hurt Grimm at all. I’ve read that he’s essentially immortal, which is very interesting, and sad, as he has quite the family.
Cyclops walks into the room to declare he has defeated 3K. I love these two chatting, this should be the event. Chairman Beast recognizes the weakness of 3K, and now wants the X-Men to help him.
Turns out Chairman Beast had a backup plan. He releases the virus through the Trask statue, which I knew they should have teleported it away when they had the chance. Or at the very least, put a dome around it.
It is interesting that Jeph Loeb isn’t writing the fallout of X-Men of Apocalypse, but leaving that to Steve Orlando. I wonder if that mini had a different ending, and they decided to add an extra page to set up this mini. This is the mini where Age of Apocalypse Gambit switches lives with 616 Gambit.
Issue opens with the Uncanny X-Men (Jubilee, Monet, Nightcrawler, Rogue, and Quicksilver) fighting a giant amoeba, when AoA Gambit arrives. In a very gross choice, Gambit goes in for a kiss with Rogue, but she stops him, immediately, as that’s not her husband. But why would he even attempt a kiss with her? This was the fans concern, that our Rogue would be tricked into being with this Gambit, and Orlando is smart to immediately shut this fear down, and hard.
We see 616 Gambit (or Wyrn, maybe?) in AoA, and AoA Rogue and Magneto seem to be chatting with Remy like they don’t realize a switch has happened. 616 Gambit wants to know where Annalee is, which is interesting.
AoA Gambit meets up with 616 Vig, hinting that there is an AoA Vig, who is also gross to deal with. They fight fight fight.
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We get a flashback to the Mutant Massacre, the first one, where we see Callisto, Storm, Colossus, Rogue, Logan, and Nightcrawler. There is a lady with short hair between Storm and Colossus, and they are clearly coming out of a stepping disc. Does this issue make it to the collection?
So, 616 Gambit made the choice to switch, as he feels compelled to save the AoA Morlocks, due to his eternal guilt over his involvement in the Mutant Massacre? That does seem worth of a miniseries. Though a lot of work to set up this miniseries, and an interesting choice to not just have two Gambits working together, but I guess it is also an exploration of 616 characters’ opinions on Gambit that we see through AoA Gambit?
We’re off to an interesting start.
Do we think Gambit plays a major role in Avengers Doomsday, and that’s why we are getting all of these Gambit miniseries?
Jubilee drops Logan off at what appears to be a giant mansion. Logan confirms he can smell Glob Herman, Madrox, and others, would be nice to know who else Infernal Hulk has, but from what I can remember, it is those two named characters.
Infernal Hulk references how Damacus was ages ago, but Logan doesn’t remember that. For pages upon pages, which looks very cool, Logan and Infernal Hulk fight, tearing large parts of their flesh off. Then Jubilee shows up, and Logan gets very concerned.
I am reminded that this is the same Jubilee that went head first into danger in Tomb of Apocalypse 1, so I guess this is a new character trait of hers. She is tired of being on the sidelines.
Jubilee blows up instead a great light, who we hear the voice of Angler come out. Logan’s true curse is to outlive everyone, and probably be there when he loses everyone. The bright light eventually turns into Captain Marvel. Iron Man sent her to find The One Above All, and came back with Nick Fury Sr, so now Hulk War is truly in danger.
