It is gone now, but a fellow on byoac once detailed a method where he did a "wet fill" of the swirl marks with color. He did it on a Stern Sea Witch, and the results were excellent.

I'm about 80% done using ME on a Mr/Mrs Pacman. The blacks look horrendous after Me because the swirls went all the way through to wood. Clear coating will 'probably' make it look dark again, but I'm going to do the fill method anyways. This Bally had the worst swirling I've seen. Their ink layer is soooo thin. I had a Charlie's angels that was worse, but the ink was so much thicker on it that the swirls completely disappeared.

Basically, he took watered down color matched paint and dabbed it onto the area. Then wiped it off real quick, just leaving paint in the swirls. I've used the same method back in the day on models to add an aged look to them.

Yes, clearcoat will bring it back to black. Wet method makes it look mostly normal. I wish I could show you the results of that seawitch. It was amazing considering the absurd planking it had.