The X-Men‘s newest event story, “The Age of Revelation”, has just begun, taking readers ten years into the future. Revelation, the former Doug Ramsey, has taken control of a large portion of the United States in this future, all while a virus ravages the human race. The X-Men are the last superheroes left, trying to free the Revelation territories all while keeping the rest of the world safe. Unbreakable X-Men #1 focuses on the Uncanny X-Men team in this dark future for a story that has an interesting build, but never really comes together. Simone doesn’t really use the idea of “The Age of Revelation” to its utmost, and that’s a problem for this issue.
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Gail Simone’s Uncanny X-Men has been the highlight of the X-Men books, mostly because of Simone’s ability to play up the soap opera nature of X-Men stories and there’s a little bit of that here, as the issue begins with a heartbreaking major moment that I won’t spoil here. Simone does a great job of focusing on Gambit’s sorrow over that event, and that is the highlight of the issue’s writing. However, other than that, there’s really not much to like about this issue. It calls back to several plot lines from the Uncanny, including the best X-Men story of the 2020s “Dark Artery”, but I feel like Simone is depending too much on the book’s former identity rather than trying to establish a new one.
This has been a big problem with a lot of “The Age of Revelation” so far. Unbreakable X-Men doesn’t take advantage of the blank slate of the story. We don’t really know who this team of X-Men are in this future. Are they the same team as they are in the present? What is their place in the fight against Revelation? What is their place in the superhero community? These questions aren’t answered, instead making this into “Dark Artery Part Two — This Time with Galactus”. That’s a fine story, but anyone who doesn’t read Uncanny and is picking this up to get the full story of “The Age of Revelation” isn’t going to understand why the Dark Artery stuff is so important and why they should care about this book.
Rating: 3.0 out of 5.0
| Pros | Cons |
| The art by Lucas Werneck is beautiful | Doesn’t take advantage of “The Age of Revelation”‘s blank slate |
| The book hits the right emotional beats | The story so far is a little too opaque to be interesting |
| Barely introduces any of the issue’s new characters |
Artist Lucas Werneck Is One of Marvel’s Finest and This Issue Proves It
Uncanny X-Men has been the best looking of the “From the Ashes” X-Men books since it began, and Unbreakable X-Men #1 continues that. Lucas Werneck has been drawing the X-Men since the Krakoa Era, and supplies some beautiful pencils for Unbreakable. The issue starts out with a battle between Galactus and the team in the rain, and it’s everything you could want from a scene like this. If there’s one disappointing thing about the art I noticed right off the bat is that Werneck didn’t really redesign any of the characters in the book. So, while all of the characters look great, Werneck (who helped design a lot of great costumes over the years) didn’t really get to cook on their looks. It’s not a terrible, just disappointing.
Werneck’s art does have some problems, and they are on display here. Werneck’s action sequences aren’t the most kinetic, and this issue’s action scenes have that problem. It still looks great, but it’s little more than a snapshot of the action. However, Werneck’s line work and detail are impeccable, so it’s not that much if a problem. There are a lot of great images in this comic, and they make up for weakness of the script.
“The Age of Revelation” is basically a rehash of every major alternate universe X-Men story of the last 50 years. Unbreakable X-Men #1 had a chance to get wild with its story, but instead doesn’t really do anything interesting. Simone doesn’t take advantage of the blank slate that she was given, instead just continuing the story that she was telling before “The Age of Revelation”. Now, usually, that would be a good thing, but it doesn’t really feel right for this story. This is a fine comic, but it’s nothing special, which is what it needed to be.
Unbreakable X-Men #1 is on sale now.
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