Those crazy Nazis are at it again! Join Multiversity Comics for our second look at the second issue of Marvel’s second major crossover the year! As with before, we’ll open with a spoiler-free review before moving onto a spoiler filled review. Read on below!
Written by Rick Remender
Illustrated by Adam Kubert
• The heroes of the Marvel Universe storm the beaches of Red Skull’s Genoshian Reeducation camps. What they discover within will lead to a bleak new era.
• The revelation of Tony Stark’s dark secret promises to shatter the fragile alliance between A and X.
• The all-new Captain America pays a terrible price.
• Nova’s attempt at solving the crisis leads to disaster.
• Magneto betrays his alliance to join an army of evil.
One time when I was four years old, I snuck into the kitchen while my parents weren’t looking and downed half a bag of sugar. The kiddie cocaine flooded my systems and my parents found me in the living room with bugged-out eyes, refusing to stop screaming. This was an experience I had hoped never to relive, but one my roommates and I went through after I finished “AXIS” #2.
“AXIS” #2 continues the ongoing battle between Red Onslaught and the crowd of screw-ups called the Avengers Unity Squad. Allegedly, “AXIS” will involve an event wherein the heroes and villains have their alignments inverted. Initially it seemed like this would be a forced event like “No More Mutants”; instead, Remender just goes and writes the heroes as bumbling weirdos and the villains as people who would actually like to get stuff done, which is kind of bomb. If the villains call out the Avengers for just being the worst whenever a major crossover happens, I will eat my hat.
Even though the voices of many of Remender’s characters fall flat and into this obnoxiously self-righteous tone, he still knows how to make a relatively streamlined event. Giant nazi demon monster needs to be taken down, the heroes have flaws, the villains don’t care about their flaws. If I skipped over some of the details, it would make for a rather epic event full of huge stakes and intense action. Unfortunately, I write this column and can’t skip over the details like Iron Man, who is currently fighting Havok for the title of The Worst. I can’t tell if this is on purpose but if it is then props to Remender for (kind of) seamlessly transitioning Tony Stark into a villain. As groan-inducing as it is to read him, it’s worth it when other characters can’t deal with Stark either.
And while Adam Kubert loses some of his shine when it comes to the more emotional moments, he has a subtle humor that occasionally comes into play, though I’m not sure if it’s entirely on purpose. Honestly, it might be my fault for loving it when annoying characters get crushed by big robots. Again, I’m a little baby overdosing on sugar, and as such I’m in love with Kubert’s big action panels. The man could make anything look cool if it has Red Onslaught posing in the background. Still, there is a vagueness in “AXIS” where certain characters just drop in and out for no reason. Last issue I didn’t realize Quentin Quire just disappeared even though he is literally my favorite character, and here several characters are just vaporized with no real consequence.
If “AXIS” has a major fault, it’s that. There’s very little consequence and as a result it doesn’t feel as major an event as it should. Heroes get vaporized? Whatever, they’ll come back. Someone loses half their face? Eh, it looks good on them. This may be a result of this happening so early on in the series, but the battle against Red Onslaught just feels like a staged prelude for what’s to come.
A crazy, crazy, prelude.
Final Verdict: 6.2 – “AXIS” is engaging in the same way a child overdosing on sugar is. It’s beautiful to watch but at the same time you hope it’ll get up and stop flailing about on the floor. And with the final pay-off in issue #2, it seems we may get there pretty soon.
Continued belowAnd now, our spoiler-filled recap.
Before we begin, the roster shown at the beginning of every comic since “Avengers vs. X-Men” features Sue Storm’s name swapped out with Iron Fist. Either that or I missed something from the “Living Weapon” series.
Last time on “AXIS”: Everyone yelled at Magneto for doing something even though he’s the only vaguely competent person fighting Red Onslaught. This time, more of the same. Also, Iron Man straight up made two Adamanitum Sentinels for Red Skull because he’s going to be a villain in Captain America: Civil War.
Now, Iron Man’s knocked out on the ground while everyone around him is being vaporized by his own sentinels. Or maybe he’s just sleeping. That is entirely possible at this point. Well at least his nap gave him time to rest up and come up with a way to stop the sentinels, right?
Oh goddammit, Stark.
Yes, Stark is so useless here that he spends four pages monologuing about how when he was a kid he would make lists of his classmates’ weaknesses so he could destroy them and it’s this inferiority complex that led to him going all “Tower of Babel” on everyone he met, which is really unfortunate. That said, the sentinels don’t seem to actually do anything to take out anyone in particular, they just zap them with blue rays which then imprisons them until issue #8.
Deciding to actually do something, Rogue tells the other Avengers about the vision of Professor Xavier she saw in Red Skull’s head and they discuss how inverting the personality of Red Skull would bring out Xavier’s personality. There’s a dozen things wrong with this. First of all: how the hell? Second of all:
Thirdly: What good would putting Xavier in Red Skull’s body accomplish? What good would putting Xavier in freaking Onslaught accomplish? Did we learn nothing from last time?
So after this “plan” is hashed out, Dr. Strange and Scarlet Witch will fuse their order and chaos powers to fix Red Skull or something, and Magneto reminds everyone of the killing machines Stark built. Stark immediately gets all defensive and calls Magneto passive-agressive even though, as the t-shirt says, “Magneto Was Right”. Then, the two of them fly around sort of fighting the sentinels while Stark calls Magneto a murderer; Magneto, who again killed the Red Skull, and Iron Man, who made giant Nazi robots and is doing nothing but complaining.
At this point, I’m kind of hoping “Superior Iron Man” is just Magneto moving Stark’s freshly murdered body around in his metal suit and making fun of him in a really morose Weekend at Bernie’s scenario.
Meanwhile, Rogue is actually being pretty cool:
No one has ever counted on Wonder Man’s mojo. Also, I just realized he’s still dead, or at least without any powers? Good career choice for him, really.
Also, Nova showed up and is apparently messing up everyone’s day by distracting Stark during his fight with the sentinels.
Nova: Hero of the Year 2k14.
Meanwhile, Dr. Strange Wanda are preparing their spell and they say “The Nexus is stable. The chaos realm surges. Quickly, deliver the energies into the helix!” None of which means a damn thing. I wish there was a panel showing Dr. Strange reading from a Yu-Gi-Oh script. Anyway, the plan fails because it’s not a plan so much as a Magic: The Gathering ad-lib and Strange and Scarlet Witch get vaporized, leaving just Magneto and Iron Man.
Iron Man then begins to get crushed by one of the sentinel’s feet and so Magneto looks him in the eyes and walks away. #MagnetoWasRight2k14
Stark, meanwhile, immediately begins to yell about the greatest generation and Germans because he’s an old man. Nightcrawler then conveniently drops in to save Tony and give my favorite out of context panel ever.
– “Axis” #2, October 2014
Tony wakes up in whatever hole the heroes are hiding in after Red Onslaught crushed the world with some X-Men, some Avengers, and Medusa from the Inhumans because synergy. Also Alex lost half his face because I haven’t been reading any “Uncanny Avengers”. Everyone makes up for whatever editorially mandated angst they were going through including Janet and Alex who start making out so they can replace that daughter they apparently lost in “Uncanny Avengers”, while Cyclops and Nightcrawler shake hands and Scott admits that things have been strained between them lately even though Nightcrawler came back like a week ago. Either Kurt just read “Avengers vs. X-Men” and is pissed or Cyclops managed to screw him over in a week. The latter is really likely.
Continued belowFinally overcoming their inner turmoil and becoming an actual “Unity Squad” (groan), the heroes take the fight back against Red Skull while Havok monologues about how they’ve finally come back together and fulfilled Xavier’s dreams. At least until Red Onslaught vaporizes the Summer brothers, in which case he fulfills my dream. Also: Alex Summers is still a canon fuckboy.
Either he watched Empire Strikes Back while waiting for Tony to wake up or he’s the worst. Guess which option is more likely.
Eventually everyone but Tony gets blasted by the Sentinels which leaves him at Red Onslaught’s mercy. Skull calls Iron Man “a common sociopath with a god complex that rivals my own” which isn’t exactly wrong; dude did spend the first four pages of this comic talking like he was a calmer Jeffrey Dahmer. Thankfully, before we can hear Tony’s self-righteous rebuttal, the calvary arrives.
To recap:
- The Avengers plan was to run right at the deathbots specifically designed to kill them
- Magneto took twenty minutes to recruit the most overpowered squad of villains he could think (the guy literally brought Doctor Doom with him)
- You can order your “Magneto Was Right” shirts on literally any website
Next time on “AXIS”: Jack O’Lantern is in a Marvel comic. Good for him!
