Axis
Once again, everything is in mid-storyline this week. So instead let’s quickly check in on how the sprawling Axis crossover is doing, six issues in.
Despite being billed as Avengers vs X-Men: Axis, the core series is really just a re-labelling of twelve issues of Rick Remender’s Uncanny Avengers, which had been building to a big confrontation with the Red Skull from an early stage. Uncanny Avengers has always been somewhat semi-detached – and indeed, while there are tons of tie-ins being published here, they don’t actually impinge on the main Avengers and X-Men titles, which are getting serenely on with business as usual.
The build to this storyline culminated in Magneto attempting to kill the Red Skull and instead just turning him into a new version of Onslaught. The first act has Onslaught spreading hate all over the globe until he’s stopped by a collection of heroes and a largely random group of villains; the villains’ participation is justified on the logic that the Skull hasn’t made plans to deal with them. Eventually Onslaught is defeated by magic which is supposed to “invert” him by putting the remnants of Xavier’s persona in charge, and burying the Skull in his place.
This is an odd move, since it effectively removes from the board, at the end of act one, the villain who had been built up for months. It’s also a relief, since twelve issues of “everyone in the world is angry” would have been almost intolerable. The tie-ins that connect with this phase of the story struggle to find anything very interesting to do with it; even though there’s an attempt to stress the idea that Onslaught is merely bringing out feelings that are there anyway, there’s really nothing much to be done with “psychic villain makes everyone fight”.
So with act 2 we get to the real point, which is that the inversion spell affects everyone who was there for the fight with Onslaught, not just him. That’s the actual set-up for the remainder of the story – most of the Avengers and X-Men are now crazed baddies, while the villains who were present are now filled with an urge to go out and help people.
It’s a version of the old “mirror universe” trope, in other words, where we visit a world in which everything is basically just like it is here, except the goodies and baddies are reversed. This sort of thing is a staple of sci-fi television, largely because it gives the cast an opportunity to have fun playing oddball versions of their normal characters. Whether it works so well in comics, I’m decidedly less sure.
There’s a tentative attempt to suggest that the inversions aren’t simply a case of “good/evil”, but in most cases any such idea is only marginally present. For example, you could have done an inverted Avengers team who still want to be heroes but suddenly decide to embrace authoritarianism. But in practice the inverted Avengers are pretty much just a bunch of sociopaths going through the motions of their Avengers duties in order to preserve their position. About the only exceptions here are Hulk (a big placid monster who turns into an even bigger monster when he’s angry), Thor (who still thinks he’s a hero but behaves like a drunken thug) and Iron Man (who becomes overwhelmingly smug and self-absorbed, but does still seem to have some marginal interest in showing up to fight bad guys, if only as a way of demonstrating his own superiority). And whether this version of Iron Man is meaningfully capable of being understood as an inversion, rather than an awkward yank of the character in the direction of Mark Millar’s Ultimate take, is highly debatable.
The inverted X-Men no longer believe in the possibility of assimilation and want to set up an independent mutant nation to protect mutantkind. That’s fine as far as it goes, but ought to simply lead to them showing up en masse at Cyclops’ doorstep and yelling “we were wrong!” Instead we’ve got them conquering Manhattan under the leadership of Genesis/Apocalypse, which is about the single least interesting thing you could conceivably do with an inverted X-Men team.
The villains fare rather better – there’s rather more potential for creators to work with in having characters who are plainly unsuited to heroism in every other respect attempt to fulfil their newfound urges. So Axis: Carnage has the hopelessly violent killer trying to his best to be a Spider-Man style hero despite his skill set really not lying in that area, while Axis: Hobgoblin sees the Hobgoblin turn his skills in scheming and image-building towards literally re-branding himself. These are actually not bad at all. The Magneto tie-ins are significantly more disappointing, amounting to little more than expanded re-tellings of Magneto’s segments in the core series; after such a strong opening arc, the series now appears to be engaged in an intensive goodwill incineration programme.
What Marvel likes in an event book is a central hook that can be exported across a range of crossovers to generate legitimate tie-ins that don’t actually have to be worked into the central plot. This makes life simpler for the reader who doesn’t want to buy everything, and no doubt simpler for the editors who have to co-ordinate everything. You can see why the inversion gimmick appealed along those lines; essentially, if you have a story to do that turns on the inversion gimmick, it can be marketed as an Axis tie-in no matter how detached it may be from the actual plot.
But in fact, the possibilities for the heroes turn out to be rather thin, since they aren’t being inverted in very interesting ways. That’s not such an issue for the core story itself, which is a straightforward tale of “the heroes are out of their minds and it’s up to the villains to rise to the occasion and set things right”. That’s a harmless romp and it doesn’t call for any great sophistication. Once you want to stretch out the concept to all manner of tie-ins, though, the limitations become apparent.
Ideally, the effect of this story would be to bring out other aspects of the heroes’ characters, by having them continue to behave in a way that’s distinctively them, even while a central trait is reversed. That’s not happening because the inversion is just too crude to allow for it (and, perhaps, because the plot requires most of the inverted characters to act in groups thus far – preventing them from responding in any very individualised way). You’re left with a story which asks “what happens if you reverse a fundamental value of these characters?” and delivers the answer “they act out of character” – which might be fine for a single story but just isn’t that interesting as the conceptual lynchpin of a whole crossover.
I find it curious that Marvel chose to relaunch so many books during this time. Cap solo and the mighty avengers book feel like they should have waited until after axis. The direction Iron Man now has seems very problematic long term and the first issue just did nothing for me.
The moves that have been made with the X-Men off page feel odd to me. We couldn’t get a mini or tie in to explain? I feel like that character beat is going to be hard to just sweep under a rug or just have Bendis incorporate into his books.
Has the Punisher been involved in this gimmick? Now that would be an interesting use of the character. It is too bad that Wolverine and Ghost Rider are unavailable.
Oh, and Mr. Ross too! Has the Red Hulk been involved?
This whole thing has more or less been a non-event. It’s hard to make sense of this thing mainly because it doesn’t sweep through the other books. I suppose, though, that someone learned their lesson from the original Onslaught arc.
Many of the events of Axis feel redundant as well, particularly coming off of (or still feeling the aftershock of?) Original Sin, in which the characters were all fundamentally changed. To essentially have a parallel storyline where all Avengers and X-Men are fundamentally altered, but contain it within the realm of a few books, really emphasizes the bottle nature and unimportance of this story to any of the real ongoings (except maybe Magneto).
Speaking of Magneto, despite the last few issues being more or less utter dreck, it did have one of the better character moments of the series in issue 12. Magneto and Xavier essentially conceding the other’s point was a nice throwback to their original ideological roles. It’s a shame that this kind of moment will be forgotten rather quickly. But it actually felt weirdly nostalgic to have this throwback.
I’m sort of enjoying Axis. That said, it drives me a little crazy that Magneto left Genosha, travelled to a dozen locations across the globe and recruited Doom, Loki, Carnage etc. and returned while the heroes battle with Onslaught was still ongoing.
Also, the notion that the Sentinels wouldn’t know how to deal with villains made no sense. They just punched the bloody things in the same way that the heroes typically do.
As for the inversions, all of the X-men seem to have turned into pretty much the same character with the same beliefs. Given that Cyclops and Havok disagreed to start off with, how did they end up agreeing with each other after inversion?
This whole thing has more or less been a non-event. It’s hard to make sense of this thing mainly because it doesn’t sweep through the other books.
I’m honestly not that sure it really pays off the setup in Uncanny Avengers all that well, since by definition it’s got to be bigger, louder, and wackier than event hat book ever was. And considering we’re talking a bout a comic that used “they saved Xavier’s brain…as a Nazi superweapon!!” and the destruction of the planet Earth as major plot points, that’s saying something.
A lot of this feels arbitrary and rather weightless. I mean, we’re getting Magneto pulling in the likes of Carnage and the Hobgoblin…but why would those be the villains he’d think of? And, as the review points out, doesn’t this plotline inherently work to marginalize the Unity Team in their own event? (Shades of “Atlantis Attacks,” a celebration of Namor’s 50th anniversary that managed to avoid using Namor almost entirely.)
The Hobgoblin and Carnage minis have definitely been the highlights so far. At this point, it’s interesting how DC and Marvel approach their events. Marvel seems to have an “opt-in, opt-out” policy for most of their titles while DC seems more willing to put 100% of their books on hold temporarily so they can publish tie-ins for a whole month. Neither extreme seems best, but it would probably help Axis if we had a clearer X-Men tie-in to clarify all the nonsense happening among the mutants.
The Genesis/Apocalypse development has especially been disappointing. Remender was the one who created the character in the first place. All of a sudden he’s full-grown Apocalypse and everyone just blindly accepts him as their leader? He was just 12 years old a few moments ago! Where’s the reaction this? Fantomex or any of the X-Kids would be a good character to bounce off of, since Wolverine is dead. Instead Remender is going for the cartoonish villain approach. Sigh.
when did avenger comics stop being about recognizable avengers? If people who watch the avengers movies want to learn more (there must be a few from the millions that watched it), where can they turn? certainly not uncanny, or whatever hickman’s doing that lost me a long time ago. how can there be such a disconnect in a billion dollar property?
I think the disconnect with the “Big Three” and the Avengers books is very much intentional. Marvel needs to move away from them because they’re only going to be viable for so long (most likely the next 2-3 years) and the time to transition new characters into more prominent roles will be now if they want readers and viewers alike to latch on to them.
Much was made of the “character alignment” model (lawful good, chaotic neutral, neutral evil etc) being deployed, but we havent seen it in practice. It’d have been nice to see a 3×3 chart demonstrating where on such a field the chsrsvyers ended up, but that would have required actually following through on their claim. (And where would a true neutral character end up?) Rather than just becoming nonviolent, shouldn’t Deadpool be lawful neutral? But they’d rather write Zenpool. Tony Stark just seems like an exaggerated version of himself, maybe less “good” but hardly inverted. Havok gave up on unity (and quietly forgot about his daughter…) But Cyclops just becomes evil. And we get nothing at all about why the rest of the x-men fall in line, Jean for instance, or Idie. Is Quentin and Genesis mindcontrolling them? Wouldn’t Emma, Rachel, Monet, Psyloche etc notice such a thing? At least there was a gesture made to address the reactions of the non inverted Avengers. What could have led to interesting character moments with the Xmen is off panel, because clearly the story would rather focus on Spiderman and Steve Rogers having to team up with erstwhile villains, or have the Scarlet Witch fight Doom. I still have hope for the third act, however I’m getting less and less interested in the Uncanny Avengers relaunch.
Unless they’re going for pure comedy, there probably should have been a rethink on naming the inverse Hulk “Kluh.”
I feel like the apocalypse angle was a little neutered with Wolverine being off the table. I’m willing to give this till the end and view where it gets us after the inversion angle is complete. Remender has said that this is the end of his apocalypse story. I haven’t been reading any tie ins, so I’ve just been figuring an missing emotional beats is happening on pages I’m not reading.
My main problem with this is that it’s something from Dungeons and Dragons…Is this character chaoitc or heroic? Rather than treating characters like actual people. There really isn’t a dividing line between good and evil in humans. There are always shades of grey in every individual. So, I found it silly to say, “People who were evil are now good! People who were good are now evil!”.
As if Tony Stark hasn’t shown a lot of negative sides in the past.
As if Magneto or Dr. Doom go around thinking of themselves as “bad guys”.
The ideas of taking elements from the characters’ actual personality that they keep hidden and bringing that to the fore and then going completely over-the-top with that aspect taking over their whole personality is fine. That’s sort of what they did with Iron Man, and that’s ok. He’s now all about ego and making money, no matter the ethics.
It’s just this idea of saying, “Iron Man was a good guy, but now he’s become evil!”.
Also, the launch of the new Captain America taking place during Axis has pretty much destroyed any possibility of any one wanting to see Falcon as the new Cap.
In the All-New Captain America book, Falcon was shown as blundering. I get he’s new to the role, but Sam Wilson has been a superhero for a long time now. They shouldn’t be treating him as a rookie. The new Captain America shouldn’t be a book about a guy trying to learn to be a hero.
Then, moving to Axis and Captain America and the Mighty Avengers, we get to see Wilson taking over the role of Cap, just to act like a ruthless dictator (in Axis) or corrupt (Might Avengers).
That’s a great way to get people to accept a new Captain America!
@Andrew Brown: right after Civil War IIRC. Or it may have been with the “Heroic Age” in 2010. My personal preference would be 2005’s “New Avengers” #4 or so, when people began to treat Wolverine as if he were somehow an Avenger.
I remember commenting at the time that calling those teams “Avengers” was completely arbitrary at that point. We have had Defenders rosters that were more recognizable as Avengers.
They might as well [i]be[/i] the Defenders or the “New Fantastic Four” from a while ago. At this point it is impossible to ignore the meta reasons for insisting on using the brand name.
@Fallen Angel: it worked for USAgent…
I don’t get Axis at all. This can’t be Rick Remender’s writing. What happened to Uncanny X-Force’s Rick Remender? Was he inverted too?
Biggest question I have is why inverted Cyclops hasn’t joined the other villains in turning to good…:P
Biggest question I have is why inverted Cyclops hasn’t joined the other villains in turning to good…:P
It is sort of weird that he hasn’t turned into, I dunno, some kind of pro-transparency assimilationist or perhaps a radical assimilationist who trains mutants to do whatever the nice officer says in a confrontation.
It’s almost as if none of this is terribly well thought out, but is instead a collection of splashy moments involving iconic characters strung together with minimal justification.
My GodI Inverted Rick Remender is…Jeph Loeb!
The opposite of the X-Men is the Marauders. They should be going around murdering other mutants for no good reason. They’ve spent the last two decades making mutant homelands all over the place, it’s not an inversion.
The opposite of Iron Man is a luddite who worships open source (Or a Terminator, a robot wearing a flesh suit).
The opposite of Captain America is the Koch brothers. Cynically twisting the American dream for personal gain.
The opposite of Magneto is Gandhi.
D&D alignments are silly. They work ok in the game I suppose, but they don’t apply to even fictional characters in any meaningful way.
“My GodI Inverted Rick Remender is…Jeph Loeb!”
Ha! You know, he’s been on a tear with Deadly Class, Low, and even Black Science (which has paid off somewhat after a slow build and some misdirection in the first arc). I won’t count him out yet, but I think its effected his Marvel work.
I must disagree on Solo Magneto. By hewing to a larger storyline, it feels like Cullen Bunn has started playing tennis with a net, now.
Another good character moment (or at least, a good save) from last issue: the main Axis title has Rogue, unclear on the whole Magneto thing, calling him a Nazi; but the solo title softens this into an overly candid, painfully awkward moment. “Uh, that just sort of slipped out.” “Lol.”
And now suddenly, Roland Boschi is drawing him as Marlon Brando for some reason. To see if anybody notices? I love it.
So basically, inverted Cyclops would logically be pre-inverted Havok, at least the recent version (who’s a generic hero with a crackpot assimilationist ideal in Uncanny Avengers, and a bumbling lawman a la Inspector Javert in everyone else’s book). That would’ve been a more interesting twist, with Scott and Alex shifting places. At least compared to what we actually got, with Scott basically saying nothing and just following Evanpocalypse’s orders.
…unless the inversion of the modern Cyclops is a disposable flunky, like how he treated every mutant except Hope up until the end of AvX! A paramilitary revolutionary figure whose ambitions were flipped towards mere submission and expendability. Delicious irony…
…Or it would be, if this was actually explored. But yeah, this series has devolved into disturbingly Loebesque storytelling.
I’m very disappointed with this whole storyline.
Probably expected too much after the great Kang arc. Well, great in comparison to this at least.
The “I AM KLUH!” “I AM THE HULK’S HULK!” development (he didn’t appear to say either of those out loud) seemed like such a ridiculous parodic development from out of leftfield I burst out laughing. It was almost a non-sequitur
Somewhere, Jeph Loeb is whipping himself with a cat o’ nine tails for not coming up with Kluh himself.
Don’t worry, he’s already planning stories with Red Kluh, She-Kluh…
Der-kluh?
Would it be Der-kluh of Kluh-der?
Der Kluh, duh.
And naturally, Kluh’s Hulk is Ecurb Rennab.
(Kluh’s Kluh is the Hulk)
when did avenger comics stop being about recognizable avengers?
Maybe as far back as #291 c. 1988:
http://images.yuku.com.s3.amazonaws.com/image/pjpeg/980269c1b5dbd16999a95629cecc1b3bfbd386ba.pjpg
The Avengers have always rotated their cast, and there have always been period where “the big three” were more or less absent.
The new Captain America shouldn’t be a book about a guy trying to learn to be a hero.
No, the new Captain America should be about Americans learning to accept a black man in a role they’re accustomed to being filled by a white man; and how that process affects the black man’s ability to do the job.
when did avenger comics stop being about recognizable avengers?
Maybe as far back as #291 c. 1988:
How about #16 in 1965? The entire team apart from Cap quits, and get replaced by an Iron Man baddie and two Evil Mutants. Sure, they’re all recognisable Avengers now…
Damn those evil Koch brothers that build hospitals and fund PBS shows.
“Damn those evil Koch brothers that build hospitals and fund PBS shows.”
Well, I guess if they simultaneously do good, they can be as corrupt as they want. That’s how it works, right?
@Daibhid Ceannaideach: fair question.
The answer, of course, is that the guys of the last few years are not really aiming to become Avengers.
It is a bit more obvious in books such as “Avengers Arena” or “Secret Avengers”, but we have been without true Avengers books for almost a decade now.
As Marvel spread the brand left and right for immediate financial profit, it has diluted its meaning quite fiercely. These days “Avengers” can be anything from guerilla cells to fascistic world-destroying cabals to war criminal accomplices to “wetworks” teams to kidnapped victims.
The Koch brothers, USAgent, Red Hulk, Peter Gyrich, Cable, Wolverine, Storm, the “Secret Avengers”, the Illuminati.
There are quite a few legit inverted Caps.
“These days “Avengers” can be anything from guerilla cells to fascistic world-destroying cabals to war criminal accomplices to “wetworks” teams to kidnapped victims.”
And flexible interpretation is bad . . . why?
In this case, it is bad because it means in effect letting a valuable, hard-earned concept degenerate into meaningless in order to squeeze a short-term sales impact from it.
Ten years ago there was an ethos inherent to the idea of a character being an Avenger. That is no longer the case.
Admitedly, the fall began way back in 1989 when USAgent was supposedly “made an Avenger”. But it used to be resisted to some extent or another.
As of “Avenger Arena” we had reached the point where a group that did not even claim to be Avengers or even any kind of team were nonetheless sold as being some Avengers variant.
Heck, the supposed Avengers of that time were not even present in crown scenes in the last issue where it would make sense for them to take part.
So calling a book part of the Avengers line is no longer just a transparent gimmick; it is also a literally meaningless transparent gimmick. It assures nothing. It is, in plain terms, taking advantage of previously built expectations. In a single word, it is cheating.
@Luis,
So if I understand you correctly, your objection is not so much the presence of a particular character or set of characters, nor the absence of a particular character or set of characters; rather your objection is the use of the name “Avengers” on a book that does not thematically tie in to the Avengers history?
I think that’s legit.
Both.
Hawkeye put it well in an early issue of Thunderbolts. Avengers used to have a clear statement of purpose, which no longer exists.
“it is bad because it means in effect letting a valuable, hard-earned concept degenerate into meaningless”
Amusing, because quite the opposite has happened – the name has taken on new meanings. God forbid anything ever changes.
I think what he means is Avengers was supposed to be the best and brightest come together, when everyone and their pet dog is an Avenger is gone from a position of aspiration to “oh, you’re an avenger, and water is wet.”
There was a clear distinction that the Avengers were steps above, say, the New Warriors. If the New Warriors debuted today they’d probably be called The Incredible Avengers or something.
That’s not elevating anyone else, that’s devaluing the name.
Or it’s adding new layers and meanings to the concept. Don’t be so narrow-minded.
Oh no, Avengers is no longer about a bunch of rich white men who live in a mansion in the middle of Manhattan! Whatever will we do?
Let’s not forget that the Avengers (and the various solo books for its roster) were, at best, second-tier properties, commercially and creatively, until somebody decided to shake them up and do something different with them than had been done for the preceding 40 years.
But now we’ll never get the 47th version of the Vision whining about his feelings and Hawkeye complaining that nobody takes him seriously and Hank Pym trying to atone from sins of the past!
Avengers is ruined! My inner manchild won’t stand for this!
Hi blogger, i found this post on 11 spot in google’s search results.
I’m sure that your low rankings are caused by hi bounce rate.
This is very important ranking factor. One of the biggest reason for high bounce rate is due to visitors hitting the back button. The higher
your bounce rate the further down the search results your posts and pages will end up, so having reasonably low bounce rate is important for improving your rankings naturally.
There is very handy wp plugin which can help you. Just search in google for:
Seyiny’s Bounce Plugin