The Age of Revelation has Arrived – And It Is Nothing Like What X-Men Fans Expected

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John Dodge has been an avid consumer of comic books and nerd culture for as long as he can remember. An expert on obscure productions from the '80s and '90s, John has too many opinions about Beetleborgs for someone with an active social life.

Marvel Comics' Age of Revelation has arrived, and it looks nothing like what fans were expecting to see.

A preview of X-Men: Age of Revelation Overture #1 (by Jed MacKay, Ryan Stegman, FP Mayer, Edgar Delgado, and VC's Clayton Cowles) from Marvel Comics begins with the sight of an elder Cyclops waking up to the sight of his fellow mutants crowded around him. As it turns out, this Cyclops has been imbued with the consciousness of his present self, summoned from across time a decade into the future in the hopes that he might turn the tide of battle against Revelation. Of course, that will be far easier said than done, especially considering the fact that Revelation has already effectively won the war.

X-Men: Age of Revelation Overture #1

Written by JED MACKAY
Art by RYAN STEGMAN
Inks by JP MAYER
Colors by EDGAR DELGADO
Letters by VC's CLAYTON COWLES
Design by JAY BOWEN
Main cover art by RYAN STEGMAN, JP MAYER & MARTE GRACIA
Variant covers by AARON KUDER & MARTE GRACIA; STANLEY "ARTGERM" LAU; CORY SMITH & CARLOS LOPEZ; RICKIE YAGAWA & TAMRA BONVILLAIN; and MARK BAGLEY & ALEX SINCLAIR

Teased back in June, the Age of Revelation is both the spiritual and literal successor to the infamous Age of Apocalypse storyline, which gave rise to its own unique corner of the Marvel Multiverse. The lead-up to the Age of Revelation began in the pages of 2024's X-Men: Heir of Apocalypse by Steve Foxe and Netho Diaz, during which the ancient mutant Apocalypse forced numerous others to compete against one another until only his rightful heir was left standing. In the end, it was Douglas Ramsey, aka Cypher, who was chosen as Apocalypse's worthy successor, which in turn led him to undergo a brutal transformation process that reshaped him into the hulking Revelation.

X-Men: Age of Revelation writer Jed MacKay previously discussed what fans can expect from not just the comic book event as a whole, but the specific vision for the future of the Marvel Universe that it has to offer. "We're traveling to the alien future of the Age of Revelation, where the stories unfolding in the Revelation Territories and beyond will decide whether this is the dawn of a new world, or the end of one," MacKay said shortly after the Age of Revelation was unveiled. "We've been exploring a whole world, and it's been really exciting to see other creators make corners of it their own!"

More recently, Executive Editor and Conductor of X for Marvel Comics Tom Brevoort confirmed that not only will the future seen in the Age of Revelation be canon for the primary Marvel Universe going forward, but it will be an ultimately inescapable future that will have profound effects on the Marvel Universe as it stands today. "Going into January and beyond, we’re kind of in the shadow of tomorrow, where the events going forward will all kind of live in the umbra of these events that we have just witnessed," Brevoort explained. "We've just seen things that have happened to all these characters 10 years down the line." Brevoort added, "As far as we're approaching this, these are all legitimate futures. This isn't a What If world. These things exist, as far as even the present-day characters are concerned. So, you’ll see a certain amount of reflectivity in what happens."

X-Men: Age of Revelation Overture #1 goes on sale October 1 from Marvel Comics.