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May 20

The X-Axis – 20 May 2012

Posted on Sunday, May 20, 2012 by Paul in x-axis

Plenty of crossover material this week, so let’s get straight to it…

Avengers #26 – It’s an inherent problem with these sort of crossovers that, in order to make each series intelligible in its own right, you end up getting the same scenes repeated from various perspectives.  So this is essentially the team from Secret Avengers being sent off to fight the Phoenix, only told from Noh-Varr’s standpoint, since that’s the focus of this particular book.  In fairness, it does at least steer clear of just repeating the entire fight scene (unfashionably offering a footnote to suggest that you might care to read Secret Avengers if you’re interested in that bit – and I’ll come back to that shortly).

Walt Simonson’s art on this arc is about as cartoonish as he’s ever been, but in a strange sort of way that complements Bendis’s style rather well.  It gives the book the sort of cosmic feel that this sort of story desperately needs, and it also stalls any risk of the book taking itself too seriously.  There’s even a half-decent idea in here, with Noh-Varr having to betray the team over his greater loyalty to the Kree Empire.  Ultimately, though, it runs up against the problem that’s plagued Bendis’ use of Noh-Varr from the word go; he just isn’t a very strongly defined character, and he remains a rather bland figure cast in a major role.

Avengers vs X-Men #4 – Okay, this is starting to test my patience.

Jonathan Hickman takes over the scripting for this issue, and it’s not very good.  A large part of that isn’t his fault; it’s a more fundamental problem with the plot, which requires the series to grind to a halt this issue so that the book can promote assorted tie-in issues.  The whole thing about chasing five false signals, for example, is brushed aside pretty quickly.  Quite transparently, it was only introduced in the first place to provide filler material for the crossovers, and I’m not sure anyone could have made it seem anything more than a desultory exercise in artificially extending the plot.  It’s irritating nonetheless.  Weirder yet, even though these scenes serve absolutely no purpose other than to sell the tie-ins, we’re not actually told which books to read if we want to see them in full.  Not a footnote in sight.  Even the Secret Avengers’ encounter with Phoenix in space – a key plot point which is only shown in aftermath – is not cross referenced to the relevant issues.  (Worse yet, the three dialogue-free pages that we do get are basically unintelligible.  Thor does something with his hammer and looks surprised.  If only I had a clue what was happening, maybe I would be surprised too.)

Leave that stuff aside and the main thrust of this issue is Hope tracking down Wolverine and apparently talking him into an alliance to reach the Blue Area of the Moon so that she can try and take the Phoenix there.  This actually makes a certain degree of sense – Hope is addressing the problem by getting off the planet.  As it turns out, though, Wolverine is just stringing her along until he can call the Avengers, and so we end up with the Avengers and the X-Men squaring off on the moon as the Phoenix arrives.

That’s a fair enough idea as far as it goes, but it has problems.  Leave aside the fact that at the start of the issue Wolverine has somehow found a stray polar bear in the Antarctic, something that apparently slipped past all six credited writers and all five credited editors.  It means that the whole thing with Captain America dumping Wolverine in the Antarctic ends up being false conflict that is summarily dismissed once it’s served its purpose of getting Wolverine on his own.   It’s clumsy.  You don’t expect wonders from this sort of series, but this is an incredibly awkward-feeling issue that does little to inspire confidence that we’re reading anything more than a slender story being padded out with fight scenes and tie-in material.

AvX: Versus #2 – You know, it takes balls to publish a comic which clearly states on the recap page that the premise is to have “Avengers and X-Men pound the snot out of each other one-on-one until there’s a clear victor”, and then run a story in which Colossus is declared the winner over Spider-Man because Spider-Man just realises that he doesn’t need to be there and leaves.

Captain America fights Gambit in an extended version of a few panels from Avengers vs X-Men #4 which still manages to contradict what was shown in the main story and isn’t very interesting anyway.  The Colossus/Spider-Man thing is better, since it plays amusingly off the Spider-Man/Juggernaut stories of the past, but it really needed a proper ending.

Avengers Academy #30 – One of the more peripheral Avengers vs X-Men tie-in books but none the worse for that, since at least it gets to do a story of its own instead of having to work in the margins of the main series.  The kids from Utopia have been brought to Avengers Academy to keep them safe (i.e., out of the way), and this prompts much discussion from both the regular cast and the guest stars about just how far they should be putting up with this sort of treatment.  (General consensus: it’s a Bad Thing.)

Meanwhile, Sebastian Shaw escapes from custody and goes off on his own, in a re-enactment of sorts of Wolverine’s solo role from Shaw’s own debut story.  That’s a nice little inversion for the long-time fans.  What’s a little more curious is that, after Generation Hope went to some lengths to set him up for possible rehabilitation, Avengers Academy is pretty clearly setting out to wrap up the loose threads and restore Shaw to his status quo.  I suppose that makes sense; without the cast of Generation Hope to interact with, there’s not much that can truly be done to pursue the planned storyline, so it’s better to wrap it up and get the character back into circulation.  That gives Christos Gage something to do in his tie-in issues, and it also means that the book has a third-party villain it can use to liven up what would otherwise be the Avengers and X-Men kids debating internment.  But it’s also a glaring wrench away from the previous storyline.

The book would benefit from a more focussed cast – there’s a truly vast number of characters floating around here – but unlike most writers faced with this sort of scenario, Gage is actually able to give them all some personality.  He even finds time to write some nice material for X-23 and Finesse, the two emotionally stunted characters who’ve finally found someone who understands them.  I suspect the book would be better off if it were just pursuing its own storylines, but there’s good stuff in this issue.

New Mutants #42 – Over in the five-issue “Exiled” crossover between New Mutants and Journey into Mystery, the New Mutants have hooked up with Loki and have to cast a spell to restore reality to normal.  Somehow, they’ve already managed to remind Loki that he’s not just the kid from round the block.  Which looks at first glance like it’s terribly convenient, but gets rather cleverly inverted in the closing twist.

I’ve wondered before about what the New Mutants are really contributing to this story, which is first and foremost an Asgard arc.  But I’m starting to see the point here.  For one thing, with the Asgardians themselves out of action, somebody needs to drive the plot.  But more to the point, the New Mutants’ set-up is supposed to be about them living in the real world and trying to have as normal a life as possible, so there’s something to be said for the idea of having them deal with weird magical stuff going on under the surface of their local neighbourhood.  If they’re not truly essential to the plot, at least “Exiled” is helping to establish them as part of the city, which is something this book needed to do.

The idea of Asgardians being turned into ordinary humans isn’t new, but I like the way this story is doing it, with cheerfully contrived set-ups designed to give the likes of the Disir a parallel for their normal status quo, relocated to something as banal as a food allergies support group.  None of them are exactly convincing in their role as ordinary humans, and that’s kind of the point.  A fun issue.

Uncanny X-Men #12 – This is one of the stories where a bunch of characters chase after a false signal and have a fight.  Gillen does his best to enliven it by taking the opportunity to revisit Tabula Rasa and check in on the Apex, but basically, it’s a fight scene drawn by Greg Land.

It is what it is, and what it is is a crossover spreading its plot thinly, by filling an issue with a great big fight scene, while the friendly member of the Apex offers ironic commentary on how it’s basically a great big fight scene.  It’s got some funny dialogue but beyond that, there doesn’t seem to be much point to it, I’m afraid.

X-Factor #236 – I’m not entirely sure what Peter David was going for here either.  The guy responsible for killing the wannabe superheroes of Seattle turns out to be a character called Scattershot, who is obviously meant to be connected to Shatterstar in some way.  He’s also very obviously meant to be a 90s throwback, which is presumably the point of this issue’s retro cover design (though to my mind, it’s more 80s than 90s).  Much of the actual story turns out to be Shatterstar fighting Scattershot, who naturally takes the opportunity to explain his point.  Essentially he’s arguing that the real world is basically no better than the Mojoverse that Shatterstar escaped from, since it’s basically an empty and media-driven society too.

This feels like two distinct ideas that aren’t marching in harmony.  On the one hand we’ve got a revival of the Mojoverse’s usual theme of media satire.  With both Shatterstar and Longshot in the cast, the book has an obvious connection with the Mojoverse, so it’s fair enough that this theme should rear its head again.  But alongside that, there’s some sort of vaguely developed theme about parodying the comics of the 1990s, and that doesn’t seem to fit.  Scattershot’s argument is about the way pop culture is now, not the way it was 15 years ago.    If anything, drawing attention to the excesses of the 1990s just flags up how we’ve dialled back from them, and works against the point.

Obviously this is an introduction of a new villain who’s going to be used further, and maybe the point will become clearer in due course.  For the moment, though, I’m kind of confused.

 

Bring on the comments

  1. Tdubs says:

    I’ve already put the issues away but Avengers, Secret Avengers and AvX don’t seem to synch up at all and might contradict each other. Anyone else have this feeling ? I’d like to think they might just be telling the story at different points but publishing them at the same time. Really could use some footnotes if that was the case.

  2. In a lot of ways, the AvX crossover story feels less like a cohesive story all going on at once and more like a videogame, where the player is replaying the same level over and over with resulting minor variations. The fact that large swathes of the plot so far wouldn’t feel out of place in a Street Fighter game isn’t exactly helping.

  3. Geoman says:

    Ugh. I was so apathetic about the last AvX that I didn’t even catch the polar bear in the Antarctic thing. I’m out. I’m done with this crossover. I’ll read Secret Avengers again once the tie in is done, and I’ll read Avengers Academy since its tying up Gen Hope. But other than that, I’ll read the wikipedia article on it when the story is done.

  4. Mika says:

    I’d only be echoing everyone else on AvX, and I’m not sure I have anything useful to add (and I hate being unproductively negative), but I have to say I’m *really* enjoying Exiled. It’s delightful fun so far.

  5. Daibhid Ceannadeach says:

    Agreed about X-Factor. Also it doesn’t seem to have much to do with the “wannabe heroes in over their heads” theme we had last issue, beyond the fact they’re still around.

    I’m way behind on both Avengers and X-Men, because I get the three-issues-for-£2.95 UK reprints, but is anything made of the fact that the Kree Empire Noh-Varr is feeling loyalty to here isn’t actually *his* Kree Empire? Or has the fact he comes from a parallel universe been conveniently forgotten about?

  6. Mike says:

    Taken by themselves, I’m actually liking the individual issues in the AvX crossovers; some better than others, but still I like them.

    It’s when you try and fit them together to make one cohesive story that it all falls apart. There are so many inconsistencies, so many sloppy editorial misses, that it appears that the editorial team must consist of fan boy 10 year olds who really don’t care about the details. But when you keep showing the different fights or scenes from different points of views and yet – in those different views – people appear or disappear depending on the book, locations change, motivations seem a bit different – it just indicates that this crossover was messily planned and executed. I mean come on – the whole story – at least in the main crossover – conveniently leaves out years of Phoenix history so it can tell the story IT wants to tell. The side books pick up some of those ‘erased’ strands of story, but that just make the whole endeavor that much more nonsensical.

    I just wish we could return to a time when the editors actually edited the book – a practice that seems to have disappeared over the years as editors became the behind the scenes story tellers who just utilize writers to give words to their ideas.

    As for X-Factor, I still count this book, along with Wolverine and the X-Men, and X-Force as THE X-books. But I was disappointed in Scattershot. Based on the story, I was looking for some horrible creature to be responsible for the murders – and instead got a 90’s bright colored buff alien with guns as the killer. Disappointing.

  7. kelvingreen says:

    is anything made of the fact that the Kree Empire Noh-Varr is feeling loyalty to here isn’t actually *his* Kree Empire? Or has the fact he comes from a parallel universe been conveniently forgotten about?

    Since Bendis doesn’t seem to have read — or if he read it he didn’t understand it — the original Marvel Boy series, I’d guess it’s glossed over.

  8. Paul says:

    One of the tie-in books brought it up, as I recall. Forget which one. Secret Avengers, maybe.

  9. Shadowkurt says:

    Paul,
    I read Avengers Academy #30 somewhat differently from you. You write that it is “pretty clearly setting out to wrap up the loose threads and restore Shaw to his status quo”, meaning to villainy; but we don’t get any confirmation from him as to what he’s about to do – we only learn what the adults presume he’s doing, based on their knowledge about his backstory. From my point of view, I fully expect the next issue to reveal that he’s actually trying to help the X-Kids and beating up the Avengers so the children can escape, thus advancing his rehabilitation arc.

  10. Pete Wiggins says:

    Just want to flag up a glaring continuity error – She-Hulk is playing a big role in the current X-Men: Legacy arc, and yet she’s also in the Savage Land in Uncanny. Er, what? Of course, Uncanny could be running before or after the events in Legacy, but there isn’t even an editor’s note to affirm that. That aside, Gillen’s Namor continues to be an absolute joy to read (“Hmm. I feel I am being talked about. This is only correct.”), and Apex earnestly asking if the fight between Namor and Thing is a mating dance was hilarious. Whatever Greg Land’s faults are, Thing’s and Namor’s expressions in response to this were spot-on, and more importantly, utterly priceless. His She-Hulk is dreadful, though. Evidently he couldn’t find any photos of female bodybuilders to trace…

  11. Si says:

    I haven’t read Versus, but isn’t the score so far: Iron Man beats Magneto because Magneto stops fighting, Thing beats Namor by pinning him down even though the last frame shows Namor already escaped, and now Colossus beats Spider-Man by Spider-Man leaving? Has there actually been a single concluded fight in the comic solely about fights? Does Captain America actually KO whatsisface, Cajun zappy boy?

    On the other hand, I’m very happy with Exiled. I don’t know a damn thing about Journey into Mystery and I’m a bit shaky on the current status quo of the New Mutants, but this story is clever and funny and captivating. Loki acting like Loki even when he’s not acting like Loki is just brilliant. A lot of the characters are a bit sketchy though (I still don’t know anything at all about Leah for example), but that’s understandable when you have a cast of over twenty to juggle I suppose.

  12. Pete Wiggins says:

    @ Si: It’s like 2006 all over again – whilst most of Marvel’s books and big-name characters are dragged into a sprawling, badly-planned, year-long crossover, resulting in often inconsistent, incoherent writing and editing, Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning are quietly plugging away doing their own thing and turning out a tightly-plotted, self-contained story which is a pleasure to read.

  13. ZZZ says:

    I THINK the deal with Thor in AvX 4 is supposed to be Thor actually managing to hurt the Phoenix Force by throwing Mjolnr at it, but the Phoenix responding by just zipping off to a nearby planet and burning it up. The exact significance of that I’m not sure, but if I had to guess, I’d say that (for the purposes of this storyline) the Phoenix Force is known for exactly two things – regeneration and destroying worlds – and that scene represented Thor realizing that those two things may be related (i.e., either “it only destroys worlds when it needs to regenerate, so leave it alone and you’ll be fine” or “it needs to destroy something before it can heal something, so if you want it to fix mutantkind it’s going to have to kill a bunch of people first”).

    There’s no way to completely reconcile it with the scenes in Secret Avengers where they attack the Phoenix Force, but I’d wager that it’s supposed to be the second attack, but Romita thought it was supposed to be appended to the end of the first attack and drew it accordingly.

    I’m starting to think that the most enjoyment value to be gained from AvX will be in keeping track of how many uniforms Cap and Wolverine go through, assuming that every time you see them in intact uniforms at a point in the story clearly set after another scene where their uniforms are destroyed, that means they actually changed clothes (as opposed to it just being an art miscommunication). I like to think that, after stomping Gambit, cap put on a new uniform and then whacked him again as he tried to get back up (as opposed to AvX4 both setting up and giving away the ending of the fight, but getting the Cap’s condition at the end of the fight completely wrong). His new uniform, of course, replacing the one he only wore for a few minutes after putting it on to replace the one Wolverine slashed up in AvX3.

    A random musing I had that should probably be it’s own post since I don’t expect anyone to read this far down but here goes anyway: while rolling my eyes at Logan’s antarctic polar bear, it struck me that if it had been a sabertooth tiger or wooly mammoth pelt or even a dinosaur skin instead of a polar bear hide, I would have just accepted it – “guess they were pretty close to the Savage Land when Cap kicked him out” – but since it was a mundane animal, I don’t buy it. I just thought it was an interesting commentary on what we (or at least I) will and won’t accept in a comic book. Impossible? Sure. Implausible? No way.

  14. ZZZ says:

    (Oh yeah, I just realized that when I said there was no way of reconciling it with “the scenes in Secret Avengers” I actually should have said “the scene in Secret Avengers and the Scene in Avengers.” That’s just the risk you run when a subplot zigzags between two books. Though, considering that Avengers repeats scenes from Secret Avengers and has a footnote reference to it, as Paul mentioned, I get the feeling it’s not so much “zigzagging” as “playing out in slightly different iterations” and that we can expect a recap of the events of Avengers in the next Secret Avengers, possible matching the depiction in AvX4 better.)

  15. ARBCo says:

    To heck with the polar bear, let’s count the contrivances!

    Hope has to (spoiler alert, for those who care):

    1) find a high-tech plane (which is never explained)

    2) know Wolverine has been separated from the Avengers (it’s not explained how she knows this)

    3) know where Wolverine is in the Antarctic (it’s not explained how she figures this out)

    4) obtain a fake ID from Kid Omega (not sure when she had time to stop by Wolverine’s school)

    5) Wolverine and Hope have to know the location of AIM Worldworks (it’s not explained how they know this)

    and finally 6) know that AIM Worldworks has a rocket they need (not explained I /know/)

    Whew!

    Obviously, this’ll all be explained in the crossovers, right? Lots of room to explain this over in Uncanny… or Wolverine and the X-Men…

    … oh. I guess they didn’t.

    Comics, everyone!

  16. Andrew says:

    Ah the Marvel Boy mini-series.

    Remember when there was a rumour swirling about that it was set in the Ultimate Universe?

  17. Andy Walsh says:

    I think part of the problem reconciling Avengers #26 with Secret Avengers is that Avengers #26 recaps the entire Secret Avengers mission, whereas in the actual Secret Avengers title we’ve only gotten the first of 3 issues about their mission. I think…

    Re: X-Factor #236 – He has a gun that shoots knives! What more do you need?

    Re: Polar bears – Surprised we got this far without a Dharma Initiative joke. Too obvious? Before we saw Hope, I assumed that Wolverine had littered the tundra around the Savage Land with beer for future survival purposes. He’s there often enough, and visits always involve a crash landing, so it seemed sensible enough to me. From there, it wasn’t much of a leap to figure he’d left other survival gear, thus explaining the polar pelt.

  18. niall says:

    On the contrivances, one explanation for several of those problems would be that Hope’s power copying abilities have been enhanced by the Phoenix’s proximity.

  19. alex says:

    Its not on the list, but i loved the FF point one issue.

    Felt like 80s morrison or 90s vertigo millar.

  20. ZZZ says:

    @niall

    Yeah, Hope’s powers – assuming they’re amped up by the Phoenix Force to the point where she doesn’t have to be near someone to use their powers – basically let them get away with virtually anything by saying “someone somewhere can do it, so Hope can too.” It’s one of those horrible meta-powers that writers think are colorful and interesting but just lead to a character being too versatile to be interesting because they never have to figure out how to do something, they just do it. She could have found Wolverine the way Emma was trying to find Hope.

    Speaking of which, I guess I can buy that Emma can use Cerebra long distance through someone else (though I can’t buy that Toad – narrative whipping boy or not – is the weakest-willed person at the Jean Grey School, though I suppose we can say Emma felt bad about using a student that way and Toad was the weakest-willed person whose rights she doesn’t respect) but how long do you think it’ll be before she’ll be in a situation where that ability would be very handy and the writers forget she can do it? Basically they’ve established that Emma can find anyone anywhere on Earth at any time (as long as there’s someone near a Cerebra unit) and I can’t imagine that’ll be a consistent part of her power spread from here out. (Adding dramatic new “power stunts” to characters is right after “meta-powers” and “ill-defined energy manipulation or magical powers” on the list of things writers think make characters colorful and interesting but don’t)

  21. Adam says:

    I have to admit, I thought that AVENGERS VS X-MEN’s opening parody of those Coca-Cola commercials with the polar bears was rather funny. First you see it reaching for the beer, then you see it’s Wolverine and he’s gutted the thing for warmth? Darkly cute. I didn’t even think about the fact that the story was set in the wrong hemisphere, in part because I’m clearly not paying enough attention to the story (which is rather damning of it, I suppose) and also because a joke isn’t really something you get that deep into nitpicking the zoological accuracy of, so long as the essential elements are there.

  22. Paul F says:

    @ZZZ
    Perhaps Emma’s power’s getting a temporary boost from the Phoenix Force approaching too? Emma’s body has hosted Jean’s mind and powers when Jean ‘died’ and there’s the Emma-Stepford Cuckoos-Phoenix connection from Warsong too.

  23. Magnus says:

    I think Paul might be wrong in his reading of where Shaw is heading in Avengers Academy. I think they are doing a fake-out with this “going back to being evil” shtick, because it is just *too much* on the nose.

    There is a much higher chance that the writer is going with a “don’t make pre-assumptions about people” angle.

    Maybe I am barking up the wrong tree here, but I especially found Madison Jeffries “nature over nurture” remarks in the last issue very offensive.

  24. wwk5d says:

    I’m just so meh on this crossover overall. Sloppy (or non-existent) continuity, the editors all seem to be napping instead of doing their job, the fights themselves are mostly boring…can’t wait for it to be over so we can move on to the next status quo (which will only last a year or 2 before the next BIG EVENT sets up that status quo)…

  25. Is anyone at all surprised about how AvX is playing out? I mean, what did you guys expect? How many more Secret Invasions and Fears Themselves do you have to read to get a clue?

  26. I mean, yes, all the complaints are valid, but let’s be honest: you’ve all had years of evidence to reach the same conclusions before you bought a single issue of AvX. At this point, it’s like complaining that your Atari won’t play PS3 games.

  27. Karl Hiller says:

    @Michael Aronson: It’s fun. As someone on r.a.c. used to say, “But this is Usenet. We LIKE to complain.”

    Personally, I had a hard time reconciling the Wolverine who has to break into an AIM station to steal a fairly low-tech rocket, with the Wolverine who owns an interstellar planet-hopper for visiting space casinos.

  28. DanLichtenberg says:

    @Karl Hiller

    This. The X-Men have had space faring vehicles for some time, haven’t they?

  29. Si says:

    There was a truly awful X-Men and Fantastic Four comic a few years ago where the Fantastic Four needed to go to space, and the only way they could do it was to visit the X-Men and retrofit a Blackbird.

    Just for comparison.

  30. Matt C. says:

    AvX #4 actually surprised me in a good way… because I was really worried the whole “Hope’s in five places, better check ’em all” thing was going to take up five issues of the main crossover comic. Thankfully, it only takes up a couple pages, and the real reason was to provide fodder for the other tie-in comics. So, a pleasant surprise because my expectations were so low?

    Other than that, pretty awful. I’m not sure if the Wolverine/polar bear thing was cute or terribly cheesy. The scene with Thor doesn’t make sense (I like ZZZ’s interpretation, but like most ideas here, it’ll probably be something that makes more sense than what we get on the page). And I’m really glad we got from the fight on Utopia to #2 to the fights in five places in #4 to the fight ON THE MOON!! Gotta keep cranking out those fight scenes!

    (And I agree with Paul’s point re: AvX Vs. that it’s hard to care about these fights when they end in such silly ways. Magneto/Iron Man ended up with Magneto about to crush Stark, only to have an Obi-Wan/Alderaan moment, get punched in the face, and Iron Man ran away (and “won”). Spiderman/Colossus ends with Spider-Man leaving. Okaaaay.)

  31. Thomas says:

    @Michael: Fear Themselves would be an awesome band name/album title.

  32. Jacob says:

    I prefer The Secret Invasions – sounds like some Bowie inspired garage pop hipsters

  33. ZZZ says:

    @ Paul F.

    Good point. Even if it’s not what the writers intend, it makes a perfect explanation for why Emma (and potentially Rachel and Quentin) might be able to do things during this crossover that she’s never done before and may never do again.

    @ Karl Hiller

    Man, that’s another good point. Maybe the ship Wolverine used to get to the space casino is like Lila Cheney’s teleportation power and can only be used for interplanetary distances, so the moon is too close. That makes sense right? Or maybe that’ll occur to someone at Marvel and the next issue of WatXM will show the Shi’ar Death Commandos destroying or repossessing the ship. Not to sound cynical, but I consider my first suggestion more likely at this point.

    Hey, speaking of the Shi’ar, what’re the odds they or Rachel will remember the existence of Korvus and his giant Phoenix-harnessing spatula? Wasn’t fighting the Phoenix his whole deal? Or am I remembering incorrectly due to my utter disdain for the character?

  34. @Karl, complain away, but I hope you’re not actually paying money for the opportunity to do so.

  35. The original Matt says:

    Sigh. Well, at least when I get to this storyline in the trades I’ll know to not expect much. I finally just read Fear Itself recently. Yeah. Sucked. And the status quo changed again? The tower got knocked down, either way. I was sort of settling in for the Heroic Age to last longer than it did. Wasn’t that the point of renumbering Avengers after Seige? Because we were leaving that constant status quo change tunnel behind? Guess not…

  36. Jon Dubya says:

    @#23

    That’s makes sense for the basic context of Avengers Academy (which, let’s remember is about group of teens that other heroes suspect might become super-villians if left to their own devices.) That would be a good way to continue the overall themes of the book, while still in the crossover.

    Also, Paul, it took you until AvsX #4 to lose your patience? I lost in in the middle of issue two. But to give this boondoggle SOME credit, I totally thought the “Hope in five places” nonsense was going to standard “middle-issue-event filler” for issues 4-8, so I’m glad they resisted going that beyond obvious padding.

    Speaking of which, any idea of why a storyline that’s basically a sequential art version of the Itchy and Scratchy theme song is stretched out to mind-boggling TWELVE issues? Even today’s typically decompressed “event” comic is usually of the 6-9 issue range.

  37. DanLichtenberg says:

    @The original matt

    “I was sort of settling in for the Heroic Age to last longer than it did. Wasn’t that the point of renumbering Avengers after Seige? Because we were leaving that constant status quo change tunnel behind? Guess not…”

    Glad to hear this from someone else. I thought the Heroic Age was supposed to be just that; an inspirational new beginning after the melodramatic, depressing hell that was Civil War and Dark Reign. Now here we are again with heroes fighting heroes.

    @Jon Dubya

    “Speaking of which, any idea of why a storyline that’s basically a sequential art version of the Itchy and Scratchy theme song is stretched out to mind-boggling TWELVE issues? Even today’s typically decompressed “event” comic is usually of the 6-9 issue range.”

    Because it means money money money, my friend. Nothing more.

    Something else about this crossover I want to get out there. Let’s see if I can explain it right. Are the heroes pulling punches? Because seriously, how can this many battles with people of these power levels be going on without someone getting seriously hurt? They could have every intention of merely incapacitating their opponent, but Jesus, what are the odds of a simple KO happening in every single fight when everyone has godlike abilities? Also, do all the heroes have the same stake in this? I can understand Cyclops doing something pretty drastic if the chips were down, but Spider-Man? The Thing? Are we to believe the Thing would actually kill Namor if he got too carried away? I just don’t understand this. They’re not fencing or playing chess, they’re beating the tar out of each other with powers that would kill a normal man. If She-Hulk or Gambit or whoever got their friggin’ head caved in, would THAT get everyone to screw their heads on and stop this ridiculous fighting?

    Someone, please?

  38. NB says:

    Why would finding someone via Cerebra be a plot problem? Isn’t that pretty much what it’s designed for?

    Operating it via remote control in this case is the exception, because the Avengers occupied Utopia and they can longer use that one. Otherwise the Cuckoos seem to be at the ready 24-7 just for occasions like this.

    Generally finding a particular person is not a big part of X-Men plots either I believe. And when it is, there are workarounds. Like Magneto’s helmet and here in AvX, Hope’s signal splitter device. Probably learned from Cable.

  39. alex says:

    As an old man, i got a kick out of the references in tbe spidey v colossusnaut fight.

  40. DanLichtenberg says:

    @ Alex

    It was a funny scene and it illustrated just how absurd Juggernaut fights had become for a while (the guy really needed to start wearing sunglasses and tightening his helmet). Remember when trapping him in the cement was a big deal? He was in there for ages. Poor guy. I actually enjoyed his reformation in Uncanny a few years ago (the ONLY thing that Austen did that was even close to a good idea) and was very disappointed to see it undone. Seeing poor Juggy go down via the “get the helmet off” trick time after time made him a joke. The only way to make him interesting was to either reform him or make him a big, nasty villain (which doesn’t really work with him IMO). Oh well.

    I always thought he made a nice Spider-Man villain, though. If you think about it, beyond the Xavier connection there was never much tying him to the X-Men at all. He seemed to have more fun when fighting Spidey.

    And I like how Colossus was just kind like “yeah, whatever” through the fight. I don’t think he knew what the hell Spidey was yammering about or even cared.

  41. Si says:

    ” Are the heroes pulling punches? Because seriously, how can this many battles with people of these power levels be going on without someone getting seriously hurt?”

    That’s a convention of comics that has been around for generations. No matter if the superhero can hit with a force of thousands of tonnes, he will always have enough control and calculation skills to exert just enough pressure to incapacitate without seriously harming. Except (that I know of) for a single case in Invincible, where the hero assumed the villain was super-tough and accidentally did horrendous damage with a punch.

    Though of course in real life, people regularly die after a single punch, often because they then hit their head on the floor. Many more have lasting, sometimes permanent injury. Lots more of course just get hurt but stay standing. But in comics, TV shows, movies, and old detective pulps a single punch is all it takes to safely control a criminal. If the real world worked like that, the police would have a much easier time, as would insomniacs, but boxing would be the dullest sport around.

  42. AndyD says:

    Maybe they will do a AvX:Versus:No Prize issue at the end to explain all the nonsense 🙂

    You just wonder what an Archie Goodwin would have done on this as an editor.

  43. @theoriginalMatt

    While I think heroes fighting heroes is a tired cliche that needs to die, sticking to one status quo would be pretty boring. I don’t think it needs to change every 9 months like it’s been doing (always centered around the question, “Who’s in charge of the superheroes?” This time being a question of Cap versus Cyclops, blah), but there’s no reason it needs to remain static.

    I think Green Lantern’s done a good job of constantly shifting the status quo while telling compelling stories in the meantime.

  44. kingderella says:

    @michael aronson: there have been good crossovers and ‘event’ stories. ‘messiah complex’, ‘utopia’, ‘2nd coming’, and ‘schism’ were all pretty good. not great, and certainly not devoid of plot holes and wheel-spinning, but fun in a blockbuster kind of way.

  45. Rich Larson says:

    I’d add World War Hulk to that. There was some strategy to most of the fights, there was a compelling reason for the battle that had been set up for several years and the story paid off themes/storylines that had been developing in the Hulk comic for a long time. It was a big action, spectacle for sure, but I enjoyed the story and didn’t feel compelled to roll my eyes at each development.

  46. Billy says:

    World War Hulk and Messiah Complex both seemed pretty bad to me.

    WWH in some ways was worse than Civil War. Civil War was a flat out train wreck. WWH was something that *should* have been much better, but Marvel wasn’t willing to go through with what was needed. WWH should have been the comeuppance for the Illuminati and for Civil War in general. It was going to be “Hulk Smash” for all the people who hated Civil War. But Marvel didn’t want it to be the comeuppance, because they had other stuff in mind, and WWH was effectively just a filler event.

    And it didn’t even do good action. Dr. Strange smash? Constant shoving of Sentry down reader’s throats? Bad plotting? It was like every issue had a decent idea, and then jumped off a bridge with it.

  47. Mika says:

    I really enjoyed Civil War.

    (Well, there had to be somebody, didn’t there? It is perhaps quite worrying that it’s the only one of the post-House of M crossovers that I did. Mind you, I haven’t read any of it since it came out, so it’s entirely possible I’d be ashamed of myself now).

  48. kelvingreen says:

    Remember when there was a rumour swirling about that it was set in the Ultimate Universe?

    Quesada said — before the Ultimate imprint was launched — that Marvel had already published one series set in the Ultimate universe, and the smart money was on Marvel Boy being that series. As per usual, Quesada backtracked and the series was folded into 616, even though there are elements that suggest it can’t be set there either.

  49. DanLichtenberg says:

    @Michael Aronson

    “While I think heroes fighting heroes is a tired cliche that needs to die, sticking to one status quo would be pretty boring. I don’t think it needs to change every 9 months like it’s been doing (always centered around the question, “Who’s in charge of the superheroes?” This time being a question of Cap versus Cyclops, blah), but there’s no reason it needs to remain static.”

    You make a good point: Why does the ever-changing status quo always need to settle around who’s in charge or who’s mad at who? The Avengers broke up. They got back together. They had a fight and split into two. Norman Osborn took over. Then the Avengers got back together and took over again. Then the X-Men broke up and split into two. Then the Avengers and the X-Men got into a fight. Christ, this is starting to remind me of high school.

    A common complaint of comics (one that is true more times than not) is that nothing ever really changes (in spite of NOTHING WILL BE THE SAME). Even so, there have been some successful status changes in the last few years that have stuck pretty well that haven’t centered on the back and forth “who’s the leader” question. I’m not talking about Decimation. Smaller things, like making Xavier’s school an actual school for really the first time ever (I’m not counting New Mutants), breaking up the never ending Cyclops and Jean romance and successfully replacing it, etc. Genosha and Decimation are just dark clouds that hang over everything, but they’re not really interesting. Spending five years trying to break the spell is not interesting. The smaller changes work because they actually give writers and characters things to work with. We can see these things happen.

    On a side note, I thought Civil War was an okay idea, but it was just too heavy handed to really enjoy. Characterization went out the window and the whole thing was just way too real world politics for me. That said, I didn’t hate it. I did, however, hate House of M. To this day I have no idea what the point of that crossover even was. Was it whether or not to kill Wanda? That could have been decided in an issue. Was it to get us to the Decimation? That probably could have been done in the next issue, and it had nothing to do with the content of the crossover. Was it to show us a weird, ill-defined alternate reality that nobody really cared about and that had zero to do with anything that followed? Hell if I know. If they just wanted to present the problem with Wanda and do the No More Mutants thing, that’s fair, but the actual House of M itself was probably one of the biggest, most pointless non sequitors I’ve ever read.

  50. Using Green Lantern again for comparison, I think the problem with Marvel’s status quo shifts is that they’re just immediate, sudden shifts that affect (and interrupt) the majority of their books. SHIFT! No more mutants. SHIFT! Iron Man’s in charge of the superheroes. SHIFT! Everyone’s a Skrull. SHIFT! Norman Osborne is everywhere. And so on.

    Whereas in Green Lantern, a major story changes the status quo, but the new status quo keeps developing and moving toward the next shift. There’s always a natural progression and buildup, so that the shifts are expected and welcome rather than jarring. With Marvel, it’s more like, shift-fallout-shift-fallout-etc. A couple books here and there lead into the shifts, but not enough to make it feel natural or welcome. Even books that led into the shifts, like the buildup to Secret Invasion in Bendis’ books, was poorly telegraphed after that one Elektra reveal.

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