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Be not afraid.

Published 2008

The majority of my exposure to the X-Man Angel, Warren Worthington III, comes from X-Men: The Last Stand. And he’s barely in that. So you can imagine I wasn’t super interested in a multi-issue origin story for him, especially with no other X-Men featuring. I mean what could an Angel origin be, other than a generic mutant origin?

Certainly more than I expected.

This has got to be some of the most intriguing and strange art I’ve ever seen in a book from the “Big 2” (Marvel and DC). But the thing is, the way American comics work, you could have the best art anyone has ever seen, but someone else is working on the story.

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Luckily, our writer also knows exactly what he’s doing.
There are so many levels of complexity operating here. We’ve got:

• Realistic depictions of the strange dynamics in extremely wealthy families.
• A confrontation of pedophilia and its perpetrators.
• Radicalized members of a religion are evil, no matter what religion it is.
• The shame inherent in being different under Catholicism.

I mean, Warren is trying to hide giant wings coming out of his back at the same time that his friend is burned on the back for being gay. I don’t know how you can get more overt with your “mutant=gay” metaphor without stating it outright. I’m going to keep pointing this kind of thing out until people stop saying X-Men are “woke now.”

And when I say “giant wings,” I’m not exaggerating:

That’s gotta be the largest that his wingspan has been depicted in comics, right?
And if you’re thinking: “Wow, in front of the stained glass? That’s a lot of religious imagery.” Buddy, you ain’t seen nuthin’

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Y’see, Warren goes to a Catholic boarding school and the antagonist is a priest. So you could say there’s a bit of religious talk going around. Including the way the antagonist justifies his actions. He’s been going around hunting mutants for a while and the reasoning he’s operating on is the most interesting mutant-hate motivation I’ve heard.

So he’s kinda like an old guy that paid off all his student loans already and doesn’t think the young’uns should get to take take the “easy way out.” So he resorts to very violent murders.

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I highly recommend giving this one a shot for, if nothing else, the art. It’s got a good head on its shoulders and might be my favorite redundant origin for a character I’ve read so far – and I’ve had to read a lot of them recently.
I’ll leave you with some of the dynamic, and often christian-imagery-invoking, action shots.