Thirty years ago, the X-Men starred in one of their most popular stories: “Age of Apocalypse.” To celebrate the beloved alternate future’s thirtieth anniversary, Marvel is putting the X-Men through a brand new adventure inspired by that story. “Age of Revelation” follows Revelation, the heir of Apocalypse, taking over the United States ten years into the future. Once the X-Man Douglas Ramsey, then called Cypher, Revelation infected the populace with a mutant virus that killed millions of humans, and left whoever survived to be ruled by him.
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However, this story is even more than a tribute to “Age of Apocalypse.” The inciting incident for the main story of the comic is the present-day minds of Cyclops and Beast being pulled into their future selves, which pays tribute to another of the X-Men’s best comics. Not only does “Age of Revelation” call back to “Age of Apocalypse,” but this plot element also pays tribute to and reimagines a key aspect of “Days of Future Past.”
Plots of Future Past
The main story of “Days of Future Past” imagines a different apocalyptic future, where the mutant-hunting Sentinels have taken control of the United States and either imprisoned or killed most of the heroes. The Sentinel Program was given unlimited resources and power to take down mutants because, in the present day, Mystique murdered anti-mutant senator Robert Kelly, Moira MacTaggert, and Charles Xavier. To avert this disastrous timeline, Kitty Pryde’s consciousness was sent back to the body of her past self, which allowed her to prevent the assassinations.
“Age of Revelation” is pulling on this idea of moving people’s minds throughout time, but giving it a smart inversion. Instead of sending people back in time to prevent a terrible future, they bring the minds of those people to the future to help improve it in any way they can. This lets the heroes we know and love explore a brand new world, combining the strengths of the dystopian future and the mindsets of characters that we understand, without anything like ten years changing how they act. Marvel can acknowledge not only the great impact that “Age of Apocalypse” had on the X-Men, but also how influential “Days of Future Past” was, and it sets up some very interesting plot developments.
The Price of Mental Time Travel
When Cyclops and Beast were first awakened in their future selves, they were told that the older versions of them were rendered all but comatose by Revelation. In actuality, that was a lie. It’s currently unknown why they refused to tell the heroes that, but Beast and Cyclops being two fish out of water and slowly learning they can’t trust the rest of their team provides immediate tension. It brings up the question of what happened to their future selves, as well. Did they really overwrite them, or did they switch places, and their other selves are running a secondary mission to avert their own timeline?
Unlike with Kitty, Cyclops and Beast’s return to their true time is based entirely on an outside source, instead of being automatic. Should anything happen to Schwarzchild, they could easily stay trapped in the future indefinitely. This setup combines two of the strongest pieces of “Age of Apocalypse” and “Days of Future Past,” exploring the dangers and charisma of an Apocalypse-like figure and the tension of a time travel plot. It adds its own spin onto both of these plots by inverting the time travel and having Revelation be an originally pacifist character.
These X-Men comics are two of the most influential stories they’ve ever told, and it’s clear in how much attention is being paid to them. This isn’t just a tribute to “Age of Apocalypse,” but a story that gives credence and draws from all aspects of the X-Men’s mythos. Even when Marvel celebrates the anniversary of another major story, “Days of Future Past” is never far from the minds of X-Men fans and writers alike. We’ll have to see if more aspects of the story emerge as everything unfolds, or if this is the only callback Marvel makes. This connection could easily be an intentional setup, but it’s equally possible that it could be a coincidence.
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