{"id":2825,"date":"2014-12-29T22:00:49","date_gmt":"2014-12-29T22:00:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=2825"},"modified":"2014-12-29T22:00:49","modified_gmt":"2014-12-29T22:00:49","slug":"avengers-vs-x-men-axis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=2825","title":{"rendered":"Avengers vs X-Men: Axis"},"content":{"rendered":"

I already wrote about this series halfway through its run<\/a>, and not much has changed since then (and, as previously noted, we’re behind in the reviews department) – so\u00a0this is one I can probably keep short.<\/p>\n

For the assistance of anyone stumbling upon this post years after the plot has faded from memory,\u00a0Axis<\/em> is\u00a0the lynchpin series of a three-month crossover in which the Avengers, the X-Men and a bunch of random villains\u00a0team up to fight the Red Skull, and can only defeat him by using magic to invert the morality of everyone in the area. \u00a0So the Avengers and the X-Men are both evil now and they have a big fight and the villains stop them because they’re heroes now and basically everything is back to normal at the end except for a few characters who aren’t.<\/p>\n

It doesn’t really work. \u00a0Axis<\/em> is plainly a transition between the two volumes of\u00a0Uncanny Avengers<\/em>, and its biggest problem is that the inversion concept is a cute little gimmick that might have worked just fine in single arc of a few issues. \u00a0Instead, it’s been pumped full of steroids and forcibly converted into a multi-title crossover, and the idea just won’t bear that weight. \u00a0It’s simply not interesting enough. \u00a0That’s why it’s precisely well suited for a single arc; it looks more interesting than it really is, and\u00a0if you\u00a0get out after\u00a0a couple of issues, you leave ’em wanting more.<\/p>\n

You might think that that would only be a problem for the tie-ins, rather than the core series itself. \u00a0But the overexposure of the idea drags down the original story too. \u00a0And besides, as I\u00a0wrote about with\u00a0Death of Wolverine<\/em>, the way a story is presented\u00a0and promoted is all part of the storytelling these days, because it primes\u00a0how the reader reacts. \u00a0The inversion gimmick is\u00a0silly<\/em>, and it belongs\u00a0in a camp, fun little piece, if you’re going to do it at all. \u00a0When\u00a0it’s forced to be Big and Important and World Changing, it’s not up to the job.<\/p>\n

Not that all that much actually changes as a result of\u00a0Axis<\/em> – again, presumably a result of its origins as a transition arc in\u00a0Uncanny Avengers. \u00a0<\/em>Yes, Iron Man gets\u00a0a revamp, but we all know he’ll be reset in the end. \u00a0Sabretooth and (less expectedly) Havok also remain changed. \u00a0Evan turns into Apocalypse and vanishes from the story about\u00a0halfway through the final issue, after somehow becoming the only character to restore his normal personality by force of will – something which I was initially tempted to write off as contrived drama, but could\u00a0just about be justified as\u00a0a mirror of his\u00a0normal angst point,\u00a0surrendering to his inner evil nature.<\/p>\n

But am I interested in where any of these characters are going? \u00a0Not really, no – which brings us to the other problem with\u00a0Axis<\/em>. \u00a0If you’re going to do\u00a0the inversion schtick as anything more than a short term gimmick, it’s essential that the characters still somehow feel like themselves. \u00a0That’s not easy, but it’s the challenge you take up by writing the story. \u00a0And pretty\u00a0much none of the characters\u00a0felt recognisable at any point, resulting in several issues of everyone acting wildly out of character for reasons that can’t be ascribed to any\u00a0sort of conventional motivation.<\/p>\n

With minor exceptions, everyone who gets inverted ends up as either a one-dimensional villain or a one-dimensional hero. \u00a0So not only are they not their regular characters,\u00a0they’re not really any other sort of character either. \u00a0They’re pod people. \u00a0And this doesn’t seem like a promising – or even viable – starting point for any kind of storytelling with the characters who remain inverted. \u00a0What will happen in practice, of course, is that later writers will simply ignore the ravings of\u00a0Axis<\/em> and treat the inversions of these\u00a0laggards more subtly. \u00a0They’ll have to, because\u00a0the\u00a0characters are\u00a0unusable otherwise – and indeed the\u00a0epilogue with Sabretooth seems to\u00a0suggest\u00a0some backing away towards a more rounded character.<\/p>\n

A bit of a write-off then – which is a shame, as\u00a0Uncanny Avengers<\/em> has done some good stuff in the past. \u00a0But like I say, this\u00a0would probably have worked better as a gaudy\u00a0confection in a single title. \u00a0It’s a gimmick, and\u00a0it should never have been pressed into service as a crossover premise like this.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I already wrote about this series halfway through its run, and not much has changed since then (and, as previously noted, we’re behind in the reviews department) – so\u00a0this is one I can probably keep short. For the assistance of anyone stumbling upon this post years after the plot has faded from memory,\u00a0Axis is\u00a0the lynchpin […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2825","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-x-axis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2825","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2825"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2825\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2870,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2825\/revisions\/2870"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2825"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2825"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2825"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}