It’s ten years in the future, mutants are at war with mutants, and minds from the past have been summoned to save the day. Your Major Spoilers review of X-Men: Age of Revelation Overture #1 awaits!

X-MEN: AGE OF REVELATION OVERTURE #1

Writer: Jed MacKay
Artist: Ryan Stegman
Colorist: JP Mayer
Letterer: Edgar Delgado
Editor: VC’s Clayton Cowles
Publisher: Marvel Comics
Cover Price: $5.99
Release Date: October 1st, 2025

Previously in X-Men: Age of Revelation Overture: The last time we saw the X-Men, Doug Ramsey and his posse had just arrived at Cyclops’ base in Alaska. He was then admitted to the team, when suddenly Cyclops was struck by some sort of force.

BUILT ON A LIE

X-Men: Age of Revelation Overture #1 starts off in a damaged village. Topaz, one of Revelation’s Choristers, arrives with Psylocke escorting her. Topaz awakens a small child’s mutant ability, which allows her to repair the village herself. At that moment, the group is ambushed, with Topaz getting taken out. Elsewhere, Cyclops wakes up. It’s revealed that his past consciousness has been pulled through time and placed in his body in the current time period. After giving him a brief rundown of things, Magneto shows Scott what’s happened to the world around them. In Philadelphia, Revelation punishes Psylocke’s failure to protect Topaz by making her wear an old X-Men insignia and hunt down Bei, who is on the run. Magneto continues to inform Scott of what is happening, including that Beast was also pulled through time to help. They discover that they’re being spied on. Bei and Psylocke fight, and Bei lets it be known that she’s sent a message to someone out in space, while the X-Men are then visited by Revelation’s Angel of Death.

GETTING A LOT OF INFO OUT THERE

In a lot of ways, X-Men: Age of Revelation Overture #1 is your typical, big event kickoff issue. You see a lot of familiar faces, a lot of time is spent setting up the status quo, lots of exposition to fill in gaps, and then there’s a few moments designed to shock and generate interest in the rest of the event. All of that is here, but it deserves credit in that it does all this very well. With the exception of a single conversation between Magneto and Cyclops, all the info is given either through in-universe means or during moments of action, so it avoids big exposition dumps. Also, while there are definitely a lot of hanging threads left at the end of this issue, as to be expected, there is a completeness to this issue. I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that if this had been dropped in the middle of another title’s run as a “glimpse of a terrible future to be avoided,” it would work. Now, there is a fair amount of death in this issue, and none of it comes off as necessary or poignant. It feels more mechanical, like a culling, just so that there are fewer characters to worry about down the road.

A LITTLE LET DOWN

Visually, both the good and bad of this issue come down to the design work. On the good side, everything is tied to Revelation and his crew. The callbacks to some of the hallmarks of Apocalypse’s design, with the quasi-religious stylings, work great. It creates a nice sense that evil exists in the “cleanest” characters of the story. On the flip side though, there’s a real lack of creativity with the remaining X-Men and their buddies. For the most part, it’s just the old costumes, either ripped up or with a tattered cape added. This approach to the outfits fails to convey a real sense of change in the last ten years, even though things have clearly changed a great deal.

BOTTOM LINE: MAYBE NOT THE GRAND OPENING THEY HOPED FOR

X-Men: Age of Revelation Overture #1 is for the most part, a very fine comic book. There’s some good action, a decent amount of intrigue and drama, and it gets a lot of information across effectively. It simply lacks the explosiveness needed to kick off an event that has double-digit issues across a whole lot of titles, which would require a decent investment to read everything. But it does stand up well on its own and was entertaining in its own right. 3.5 out of 5 stars.

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